The Genius in my Basement. Alexander Masters

      The fifth type of grunt emitted by Simon is metaphorical – it’s not a guttural sound, it’s a full sentence. The mathematician Professor John Conway calls it a ‘Thank you, Simon’, defined as ‘a statement that is indubitably true, but the relevance of which is obscure’. For example, in the middle of a discussion with me about whether the Monster might in fact not be a large object at all, but something very small and everywhere, like a flea, Simon will burst out:

      ‘Incidentally, I was once going on a train and the conductor pronounced that we were now approaching “Manea, the centre of the universe”.’

      What can you say after he’s said that? What does he mean? That the flea-Monster, which Simon suspects contains the solution to the symmetry of the universe, is living in Manea, a village in the Cambridgeshire Fens? It can’t be that. Simon is not a lunatic. Maybe it’s just the word, ‘universe’. But he clearly expects some sort of reply. So, after a suitable pause, you murmur, with a slight doff of the head,

      ‘Thank you, Simon.’

      Then you attempt to pick up the pieces of the shattered conversation.

      It’s important to realise that this fifth type of grunt never comes about because Simon isn’t able to keep up with the discussion, or because his brain has short-circuited and popped out the non-sequitur in a fizz of misfired neurons. They appear for the opposite reason: he has dashed too far ahead, gone off on a side path, left the ponderous, sequential-talking rest of us behind, raced up into the hills of puns and synonyms and humorous, leapingly interconnected memories … then jumped back with the result, waving his arms and grinning in triumph, like a child ambushing us from behind a tree.

      As the fact dawns on Simon that no one has the foggiest idea what he’s talking about, he is not resentful. Politely, he allows the intensity of his grin to slip away. Measuredly, he rejoins the conversation.

      (1) Happy, (2) puzzled, (3) incomprehensible, (4) frustrated, (5) phrasal (‘Thank you, Simons’). Sometimes, Simon will go for weeks without offering anything to his biographer but one of these five grunts.

      And then, PING!

      An email comes.

      And behind the grunts, a man.

       Monday, February 8th, 9.19pm

      I’m sorry, I can’t make head or tail of the last chapter you sent me. I think that any reader who shares my way of thinking will be completely bewildered.

       Tuesday, February 9th, 1.17am

      I can’t follow the thread of your writing. If I were someone I didn’t know rather than myself, I suspect that in reading it I would have problems following the story even if I could understand the sentences. Incidentally, this is not something I’d say with your previous book. There I could understand your description of Stuart, my problem was you gave me no motivation to understand his character.

       Wednesday, February 10th, 12.32am

      I’m not sure what you mean [in Chapter 10] by my ‘jocular’ attitude to mathematics, but never mind. You’ve got the calculations wrong – 2⁸ is 256, not 4096, which is 2¹², and the others are similarly shifted. I don’t understand your bit about numbers floating in the sky. No, I haven’t a clue whether it was a right or left leg that the duck was missing.

      [This is followed by fifty-two lines explaining the story of the legless duck, which also includes a self-playing piano, an inferno in the Channel Tunnel, admission that he reads a magazine called Cruising Monthly, and a threat of imprisonment by gas inspectors.]

       Wednesday, February 10th, 12.48am

      I know what the word ‘jocular’ means. What I don’t know is what you mean when you describe my love of mathematics as jocular, I might be jocular, but how can my love of mathematics be? I don’t know what you mean by a ‘Rabelaisian’ series (and don’t say ‘in the style of Rabelais’!). However, unlike you I do know how to spell the word.

      eSimon, the Simon who logs on to his computer at one in the morning, is a different man to Simon the grunter: eloquent, fluent, conversational, reflective, poignant, sometimes funny and – if the subject matter has anything to do with my attempts to understand genius, popularise mathematics or write biography – acerbic.

      Simon’s interview with Kevin, resident of Cambourne, in 2016 (An example of Simon’s clear, fluent, amusing writing style. Abridged from an editorial (2006) in his Public Transport Newsletter, which he writes and publishes three or four times a year.)

      Q: What decided you to move to Cambourne (a village outside Cambridge)?

      A: We chose Cambourne because there was a direct bus link to my job in Papworth, and we could also get buses to St Neots for trains to London. It also seemed a good place for my wife’s ageing parents. And we hoped our house would be a good investment – its value would have gone up had the east–west rail link been built close to the A428, as recommended by the London-South Midlands Multi-Modal Study.

      Q: But I gather things then went sour.

      A: Yes. In 2005 the bus links to Papworth and St Neots were reduced, and I found I had to cycle in most days. The main road was very unpleasant, and the side route via Elsworth took twice as long. Then in 2006 came the Council’s budget cuts to buses. In 2007 the A428 dual carriageway opened, our road became an ‘overspill A14’, and Madingley Road became clogged, making our buses increasingly erratic.

      Q: But things are better now, aren’t they?

      A: Yes, in one sense. The big stores left the city centre because they realised people didn’t want to have to put up with gridlock every time they went shopping. But there’s the downside that it’s now much harder to get to the shops by public transport. Nor could we use internet shopping as there was rarely anyone in the house to accept deliveries, apart from my mother-in-law who was often asleep, and even when she was awake she could never get to the door on time.

      Q: How have your family been coping?

      A: My father-in-law died in the bird flu epidemic. My mother-in-law has become increasingly frail. Visiting the children in Oxford and London is a problem – the bus to Oxford has been taking ever longer because of growing congestion, and it’s a long walk from the city centre to the rail station. For a time we tried the coach, but then they moved the coach terminal to the rail station too …

      Q: Have you ever thought of buying a car?

      A: Yes, often. But then we’d ask, how could we face our children knowing we’d helped to ruin the world for them? Our generation has badly betrayed our children’s.

      Q: I gather you’re leaving Cambourne soon?

      A: Yes, we’ll move to London or Oxford as soon as we’ve settled on a place for my mother-in-law. Good riddance – to the Cambridge area I mean, of course!

      see www.cambsbettertransport.org.uk/newsletter93.html for the full version.

      10 Mars

      People do sometimes tell me how nice I am looking (e.g. at my mother’s funeral) when I wear new clothes, but it always makes me feel very embarrassed. I say, ‘I don’t want to know that.’ I don’t want to be thought of as someone for whom personal appearance is important.

       Simon

      ‘I’m going to see a Martian. He aaah, hnnn … it lives in Woking.’

      Simon blocked my sun, his holdall swinging slowly to a stop after his unexpected rush off the pavement at my café table.

      ‘Hnnn, aaah, uugh. As I say, my grandmother lived where the Martian is. Hnnnh. Would you like to come too?’