Introduction to Richard's Web Site

(last edited on Tuesday 18th September 2007)

This is not a large site; the principal components are some Philosophy, some pictures and some notes on my hobbies.Since December 2006 I have each year added a survey of my activities during the preceding year. There is also an account of the building of my extension during 2005 and 2006, so that I might refer people there when they ask about it.

It seems to be the fashion to make web pages look like tabloid newspapers, with diverse bits and pieces scattered about around the screen. Sometimes their authors even stoop to the vulgarity of flashing lights, scrolling text and twinkling objects flitting around the screen. I have no idea how to achieve such effects, and find them confusing. My ideal newspaper was The Times in the days of its glory, when the front page was devoted to classified advertisements, including the delightful Gourmet section, so I've tried to make this site plain, clear and simple, though it does not yet have a gourmet section.

On many pages, including this one, I have not defined a font. These pages will therefore be displayed in the default font set in your browser. Don't complain if you don't like that font, because you have chosen it, if not deliberately, then at least by default.

A custom about which I have mixed feelings is that of including among one's web pages a brief autobiographical essay. Although I usually read such essays with at least moderate interest when I visit other people's pages, I still sometimes wonder what the point can be. What do people do with the information provided? What could anyone do with the mundane recollections and ramblings in this note?

I suppose that reading a profile gives people an idea what sort of person they are dealing with, so they can pigeon hole them and decide how far to trust what they say, but if there is any doubt as to someone's reliability, that doubt should, if rational, extend to what they say about themselves. The other advantage of writing about oneself is that it helps to make one feel important, and even if that feeling is an illusion, it may still be comforting if one can maintain it till the end of one's days.

Here then is my biographical note. I'm Richard Thompson, born in Leicester in 1938 and educated at the City of Leicester Boy's School, at the time a rather good grammar school, and then at King's College, Cambridge where I read natural Sciences Part I followed by Moral Sciences Part II (subsequently renamed as ‘Philosophy') in which I specialised in Logic. I followed that by taking an MSc in the Philosophy of Science. I then got a job teaching Mathematics and Science, but gradually concentrated more and more on Mathematics.

I spent most of my working life teaching Mathematics in a college of Further Education in the Greater Manchester area. After retiring early from full time teaching I returned to Leicester to take over the parents' garden and sort out Father's remarkable collection of books. For a while I taught part-time, until I took what I like to call my 'terminal retirement' in 2002.

In outlook I'm skeptical, pragmatic and individualistic, deeply suspicious of abstractions, movements, powerful organisations and therefore especially of governments and their agencies. Politically libertarian I don't belong to any political party. I have no religion

I'm now trying to accustom myself to the fact that I'm getting old - note that I can't quite bring myself to say that I am old; such understatement seems to be part of the condition. We often hear old people say ‘I don't feel old' and I found that most odd until I found I had to make an effort not to say it myself. That may be partly because by ‘old' we mean ‘so much older than me that I can't understand them', but I expect it is also partly because we don't notice any sudden change in ourselves, and that in turn is probably because there usually is no sudden change, but change there definitely is, in outlook, perception of the world and way of life. At this point it needs great self control to restrain myself from starting a long and probably tedious meditation on antiquity.

It is conventional for the old to grumble about the young. Yet clichés should not be allowed to stand unchallenged, so I propose that instead young and old should unite to grumble about the middle aged. To say the middle aged have lost youthful spontaneity without acquiring the wisdom of age would be to substitute two clichés for one, so, having put that idea in your head without actually saying it, I'll just say middle age often brings a fussy self-righteousness on the part of people who have started to think of serious things, but haven't yet learned to do so light heartedly (another cliché, alas), and what's more the middle aged seem to control almost everything. So lets all grumble about them, but I'll try not to grumble too much because I'm coming to feel more detached from things, as if this is ceasing to be my world and I'm becoming a spectator in someone else's. It is the young who'll have to live here the longest, so I'm inclined to let go and let them shape the world to their taste.

People have suggested that I keep a web log, but I'm reluctant to do so. It isn't just that old thoughts, once topical but now stale and superseded by later comments, can hang around indefinitely. The main drawback of the web log is that information appears in the wrong order. I like to begin my stories at the beginning, not at the end. A friend of mine once had a backwards lunch in a café, starting with pudding and ending with soup. Although I haven't tried that yet, I'm sometimes tempted to try it just once, but I shouldn't want to eat every meal in reverse. Finally, I want to keep this a cheerful and friendly site, but find that reflection on current affairs usually makes me bad tempered and prone to say nasty things about people I disagree with. For the time being I choose silence.

There no site map here, in the sense that there is no single page containing a link to every other page. That is deliberate. Every page can be reached by a logical series of steps, and if it takes several steps to reach a page from here, that is because there are several other pages you should read first. There is also pleasure to be had in exploring. I have designed my garden so that it cannot all be seen from a single point, and a similar sentiment inspires the design of this site.

I'm quite careless and accident prone, so please don't be surprised, still less annoyed, if some of the links on this site don't work, though do feel free to send me a polite email telling me about it, but if you do, be prepared to wait very patiently for however many months it takes me to put things right. I can't abide impatient people!