Why science is still a closed book

holes, wormholes and the warping of time and space. And I understood roughly 10 minutes of its near-threehour duration. As soon as I saw Michael Caine tying himself in knots with complicated equations, I knew I was lost. I don’t do equations. I was convinced e=mc2 was a rapper.

Some brains are wired for science, some blow a fuse at the mere mention of chemical reactions. Mine belongs firmly in the latter category. If a proton isn’t a crunchy element of a soup, I don’t want to know about it.

This led to some trying times at school, especially while serving my stretch at secondary. Kids of Blairgowrie High, if there is still a nasty stain on the ceiling of your lab, that was me, circa 1971, courtesy of a Bunsen burner, a solution which escapes me, and a wandering mind. The explosion scared the bejasus out of me. For years I got the heebiejeebies at the mere flick of a Clipper lighter.

I tried, I really did. I just about coped with biology and its associated dissections of frogs and fish eyes. Chemistry, though, as illustrated above, remained a closed book. And physics was a case of a highly resistible force meeting the immoveable object that is my bonce.

I don’t blame the teachers. It just wasn’t to be. I was hopeless at everything bar English, History, Modern Languages and noughts and crosses. In a technical drawing exam I once set the benchmark score of 1 out of 25, which mathematicians will recognise as four per cent. The mark was for spelling my name correctly. I would have doubled my tally if I’d remembered to add the date.

Perhaps, though, in these pre-dotage days, there might be a chance to set things right. You’re never too old to learn, they say (quiet at the back, there, whoever is muttering about old dogs and new tricks). I note that tonight on BBC4, there’s a programme called The Secrets of Quantum Physics. I’m tuning in. I want to be able to show my face at the cinema.