A story of remembering (and forgetting):

Last weekend @timhayward sent me a this pic. He’d been to see his mum who had visitors, Vernon and Gill. They were in this doo-wop band called The Sapphires - V’s on the L; Tim’s dad is next to him; G’s the girl, obvs.

They’d all shared a house in Bristol in the early 60s. V&G had recently been back there and reported to Tim and Mrs H that it now had a blue plaque commemorating 'a scientist'.
“Was it you who tweeted pic of a blue plaque in Briz a while ago?" Tim asked. “Could they be related?”

Indeed it was, and this was it, and yes, as it turns out, they are. It’s 42 Cotham Road, a house I walk past most days but only recently had spotted the plaque. Paul Dirac, in case you’re wondering, is only the most important British physicist since actual Issac Newton. Who knew?

Well I did, but only he was because he was a pupil at Cotham School, opposite the house, as was my daughter whose father (another boffin) spotted a photo of him in a corridor one parents’ evening. “You are walking in the steps of greatness!” he bellowed to her huge embarrassment

Dirac's Principles of Quantum Mechanics published in 1930 revolutionised the world of theoretical physics; his Nobel Prize was shared with Erwin Schrödinger (he of cat fame).
So a real genuine genius, on a par with Newton, Darwin and Einstein yet few of us have ever heard of him

He was clearly a troubled soul. “I never knew love or affection when I was child,” he once admitted, and he was famously withdrawn. When his infuriated wife exploded "What would you do if I left you?” he thought for a while and then answered "I'd say, 'Goodbye, dear.’"

He wasn't a lover of books - "reading gets in the way of thinking" - but was a devotee of Upstairs Downstairs, refusing dinner invitations on nights it was screened only if his hosts agreed in advance to watch it with him in silence.

"This balancing on the dizzying path between genius and madness is awful" Einstein once said of him. Dirac had correctly predicted the existence of antimatter and did more than any other scientist to reconcile Einstein’s general theory of relativity to quantum mechanics.

Anyway. “This is going to bake your noodle” announced Tim as he sent me this picture later (Gill's maiden name was Stephens). And so it did, but I was puzzled: I had a weird feeling I’d seen this card before. And so I had...

Turns out Tim had posted it in April, which is why I'd been to the house in the first place. We realised we’d had almost this exact conversation on Twitter and NEITHER OF US REMEMBERED IT.
Vern, btw, went on to work for MI5; he and Gill are the only surviving members of the band.

Roger Cooke (R), moved to Nashville in 1974 and was the first (and so far only) Brit to enter the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. His hits include “I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing”. He died last year, rich and happy.

/fin