It was just last week, as I was enjoying a lavender-infused foot bath, that I asked Juan to get for me, from my extensive library, Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time.
Juan, the boy who looks after my needs as age eats away at my faculties, rolled his eyes as he turned to complete the task.
On this occasion I chose not to admonish him.
It must be the 50th time I have asked him to climb up to the area of the library where the books on theoretical physics gather dust.
Later in the day, he always has to make the 12m climb to that shelf to put it back.
I must get him a ladder.
The reason for the quick return, of course, is that like everyone else, I am unable to make head nor tail of Stephen Hawking's brief book ...
Theoretical physicists are a little like mechanics.
You just have to believe what your mechanic says is wrong with your car, and give it to them, along with all your money, to fix.
With theoretical physicists, you just have to believe what they tell you is wrong with your understanding of the universe, give them your system of beliefs about God, life, and everything, and allow them to modify it as they will.
Tomorrow on Prime, the BBC takes on the deeply incredible story of a man with a very large brain, who world-famously speaks in a strange computer-voice from his speech generating device.
Hawking's key scientific works to date, of course, have included providing, with Roger Penrose, theorems regarding gravitational singularities in the framework of general relativity, and the theoretical prediction that black holes should emit radiation, which is today known as Hawking radiation (or sometimes as Bekenstein-Hawking radiation).
These matters are almost as complicated as the reason your cam belt goes after about 100,000km.
At 8.30pm tomorrow, Hawking begins with our hero, a bespectacled young fellow, playing Wagner inappropriately at a young person's party.
It follows his discovery, as a 21-year-old, that he has motor neurone disease, his spiral into depression, his marriage to Jane Wilde, his ground-breaking discoveries and his 1978 Nobel Prize.
The 2004 television movie stars the wonderfully named Benedict Cumberbatch (I would change it to Benedict Cummerbund), who won an award recently in last year's excellent movie remake of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
The acting is good, and you can't go wrong with the material.
Fatal diseases that are overcome, Nobel Prizes, love and triumph over diversity - all these a great story make. You probably won't end up understanding the history of time, but that's OK. Nobody does.
- By Charles Loughrey
