Heck, advancing years are a terrible thing. Apart from the obvious drawbacks — and let’s not go into those — you start forgetting stuff that once upon a time you kinda knew a bit about. Ok, the things that you’ve regularly lectured on/written about sort of stay in place, more or less. It’s the more peripheral stuff that you find has been dragged to trash by the passing of time. Humppphh. So there I was, sitting like an idiot in the math logic seminar, not having had time to do enough homework, and just not able to recover what I once knew(?) from Bell and Slomson’s Models and Ultraproducts. Duh. But then I suppose I can look on the bright side. There will be the fun of rediscovery rereading the book (which I recall as very good) before the math logic seminar gets a bit serious next term. Though I’m not sure that is much compensation.
Something very different I’m currently devouring for the first time as my late night reading — something I wanted to read when it came out, but I’ve only just got round to — is Orlando Figes’ Natasha’s Dance. I’m only about a quarter through but it is simply fantastic. He writes with a novelist’s flair, building up a multilayered picture that throws so much light on what is going on in Russian literature. It’s wonderfully readable. I’m bowled over in admiration. So back to it …