Phone Calls

0:00 Oh, yes, pretty well. They've done all the tests. I haven't been to see the... Topical people in Paris. I simply can't afford it, but I'm quite certain. I've dug up all the things on the web that I think it could possibly be, and I'm well past the incubation period for anything that, you know, anything that I can find on the web, so I'm going to trust to luck. I'm feeling okay at the moment. You know, like you, a bit sort of, you know, a bit sort of fluey, because the weather here is absolutely vile. But I'm glad you're, you know, you're feeling a bit better. You obviously saw that. Well, that's that's why I'm ringing. That's that's actually why I'm ringing. But before I come on to that, I just wanted to check. You obviously saw the two emails I sent you yesterday. And I hope you I hope you weren't too disapproving about what I had to tell you about the trust. But You know, this business of the trust I was telling you about, that I was telling you about, I mean, it is entirely a tactical expedient so that I can make applications. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I promise you, I really can assure you that there's no way I will be choosing, you know, who to make applications to. And in the unlikely event that Penrose suddenly says one day, oh, you know, would you like some money from Templeton? I don't think for a million, in a million years, imagine that's going to happen. I assure you he would get a very dusty answer from me. Yeah, sure. Okay, I just wanted you to, you know, to feel assurance on that point. Yeah, okay, the bad news I just had today is that the sale of the land is now held up. At least they have now said that they will definitely be ready to sign on the 20th which is disastrous because I have been pressing them to try and bring it forward from the 15th which is when I was told it was going to be to the 12th or the 13th so that I could travel that weekend and for various reasons which I think are mainly to do with the The fact they still haven't received the geometers report, and for some reason, you know, French lawyers just seem incapable of getting off their backside and doing anything in less than a fortnight, and also the fact that the purchaser, the guy who's buying it, is going to be away himself for much of that week, there's now no date earlier than the 20th, which means it's just before Christmas. So my first question is, when are you and Fatima planning to go down to Mexico?

2:30 It's absolutely infuriating. I mean, I'm so annoyed about it because what I was wondering is, is there no possibility, I mean, if you, because, I mean, when would you have been planning to go down to Mexico if I had been able to travel on the 15th? Right, so in other words, it probably would have been about the 21st or the 22nd. Well, what is there to stop your staying with that plan, going down to Mexico on the 22nd? And mine is simply staying in the house and working through Christmas, because I don't celebrate Christmas either, getting the digitalization of the recordings done. And then when you get back, I mean, how long were you going to stay down in Mexico? Well, that's the very first day I can come now, because I've got to be here to sign the Act of Art. And of course, plus also I won't have the money to travel. The guy, the lawyer, I have literally spoken to the lawyer this afternoon, and he says that he has spoken to the geometra, that the geometra has promised that he will have the report this week, and that the actual appointment for signing everything and for the transfer of the funds is now set for 10.30 on Saturday the 20th. It's an absolutely definite appointment now that he's made. I've been pushing him for the last two weeks to try and get it at least a week earlier and you know I wanted to get it done by the 10th or the 11th. That's now definitely impossible but he guarantees me that it will be there and the purchaser has also said that that's fine by him. He will be there to sign. So we've got it definitely set for 10 o'clock on the Saturday morning. So I could travel the following day.

5:00 I might even be able to travel that evening, but I haven't had a chance, obviously, to check the flight times yet. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's what I was afraid of. It's very, very annoying, but I certainly don't want to do anything to prevent you going and getting some warmth down in Mexico. Yeah, but you'll want to go down there, but... Yes, exactly. Yes, I mean, all I can say is I'm very, very sorry to be the cause of, you know, of the complications. Right. Okay. Well, there are various solutions that you, obviously... I haven't got anything in January until, that I've got to be at until the 12th of January. There's something I have to be at over here on the 12th, in fact between the 12th and the 16th, but there's nothing, there's no unbreakable commitments that I have between Christmas and the 12th of January. So if you would prefer me now to come at the beginning of January or even to come after Christmas, whenever, I can, but obviously my concern is that we don't lose momentum. I'd really like to get the material digitalized as quickly as possible so that it's securely there and in the hard drives. But of course I imagine it's also a question of talking to Jack and to Don as to when they will be available. No, if they don't, then that's fine, that's more flexible. Of course, the other aspect of it was that I'd hoped very much to get at least a few days, or maybe it was only three or four days, to talk to you directly about lots of other topics, which I've got a long, long list, including things we've discussed in Calais.

7:30 I really wanted to try and conduct an interview with you, if possible, about a whole load of things, including many of the things you were telling me about in Calais. Set theory as a branch of algebraic geometry, which I'd like to sort of go into further, but I guess those things can wait. But the great deep recording certainly shouldn't wait for longer than is absolutely necessary. No, I mean, I've got no problem if there's any way that we can work this, or, provided you don't have any problems with my being in, you know, the other house over Christmas, of coming. You could do the work over Christmas and the New Year. That would be a problem, would it? That would be a problem, would it? Well, I mean, is there no way that we can just stock up the refrigerator with enough for me to get through Christmas? Yes, that is a problem. I'd obviously need to stock up with, you know, supplies in the house over Christmas. But your house is pretty... I mean, your house is pretty... Oh, I'm sure it will be. I'm coming prepared for that. I wouldn't feel abandoned at all. I can work steadily. Okay, but I have got no, put it this way, I've got absolutely no problem with doing that and it would of course give me the chance of getting my head down and just getting the work done in one hit without any distractions. But... Well, or another waveform. MP3 seem to be the obvious things to convert them to. I mean, I've got all of these instructions now about using this software to convert audio cassettes to MP3 files or indeed to other waveform files.

10:00 Benoit, the guy here, has been taking me through it, and I think I won't have a problem. If the worst comes to the worst, I... Well, of course the problem is everything will be closed over Christmas, so if I did need to speak to a local recording studio or anything, of course they wouldn't be open. But I have been doing quite a lot of practice, and I don't think there will be a problem. I've converted about 30 hours of recordings, audio cassettes that I had in the archive, on to MP3s in the last month to practice for doing this with the Grosvendieck material, so I do know how to do it. A great deal of material, the big DVDs now, I suspect that we could probably get almost the whole archive onto two or three DVDs, the big capacity DVDs. Yes, it is amazing how much material you can. You can get a huge amount of audio material onto these very big DVDs now. But of course, DVDs are not expensive. I mean, if it had to be 10 or 20 or even 50, I mean, I could come with a couple of hundred. You know, they sell them, as you know, in these big stacks and they're not that bulky. And the other thing, of course, is to actually travel back with it. No, return the originals to you and to give back to Jack and have a complete set of DVD copies for you, but actually to come back with it I could put the whole thing into a USB stick or possibly two USB sticks depending on, it's under a hundred hours isn't it, so it should actually be possible to get it all on one USB stick, well in that case it would probably be two USB sticks. No, exactly, but on the assumption they are, then it's probably about that length of material. That would probably be two USB sticks. They also sell these days, they sell these, you know, detachable hard drives, which are not expensive, and I could just put everything into, yeah, I will put...

12:30 That's a reasonable medium, I take it? Absolutely, I thought that's the way we should have it. In fact, I was even thinking of getting two detachable hard drives, one to leave with you. So that you have a copy of the entire thing, I mean in digital form as well obviously as the originals, and one to take back with me. Yeah, there's no need for you to bring them over, we can hear. But how many gigabytes does it need? I think actually it might, well, okay, yeah. Straight off the top of my head, I don't know, but it's certainly big enough to put the whole of that archive in. I'll ask Benoit how much capacity they are. He thinks, and he's obviously looked at what I've told him in the specification on this, he doesn't actually know what the archive is, he doesn't know that it's Groden Dijk recordings. But I've just simply told him there is this big archive that we need to copy, that 100 hours should be used, 120 hours, two USB sticks should be quite ample to carry all of those, or failing that, even if we had to put it all on CDs, it still wouldn't be more than probably a dozen, or maybe at the very most 15 CDs. So you'd just be looking at one little tower stack of CDs, the kind that you can put inside an attaché case. Well, I hope we're going to work out something. Yeah, so do I. Well, look, talk to Fatima, because she always has a very wise head on her shoulders about these things. If it has to be delayed till after Christmas, well, so be it. But I certainly don't want you to miss your break in the warmth of Mexico, which I think you almost certainly need. And I would honestly not have any problem at all about being on my own in Buffalo over Christmas, provided, obviously, that I had some food in the house. But then it would be a question of, you know, if you're deciding when you wanted to be back. It might work out better if we left it until after you get back from Mexico. As I say, I have no commitments here until the 12th of January. I have to be back in Paris by the 12th of January. Well, actually, another point is...

15:00 Gosh, you mentioned that, didn't you? Yes. Well, that's another reason, frankly, for looking seriously at the idea of my coming over and spending Christmas there and doing it over Christmas. Because, I mean, I don't celebrate Christmas either. And, I mean, obviously if it's going to be rented out on January the 5th, that assumes that you would be back from Mexico by January the 5th, does it? Or not? I'm sorry, really I'm sorry to be the cause of these problems. I'd hoped so much already to have been able to come over and do this by now, but it's just been one delay after another. We'll discuss this in a moment. Okay. I will be here through the weekend. I've got to go to Paris next week on Monday for a couple of things, but if you send me an email, I can obviously contact you as soon as I get it. Just one question. The question I asked at the end of my first email, did you get a chance when Jack told you about this in Wonderful Archive, and of course you actually took it into your safekeeping, About the fate of the notes that Grothendieck had written, that you told me about, that were written on the tablecloth of the... Yes, when I was there... But he thinks he still has it. Oh yeah, he would have it. So it shouldn't take that much tracking down, let's say. Again, I think I've told you this several times, I'm not thinking anything about logic. This is entirely my... Okay, okay, I'm so sorry, I wasn't, okay, so it's your perception that this provides a method of bypassing logic? And also, if it was not, then there was no Chinese restaurant. Was it? Oh dear, I didn't, why on earth did I have it in my head that it was a Chinese restaurant? What a strange idea, why would I, why on earth would I have got that impression? There are sorts of different fantasies that you've never seen in the actual...

17:30 Yes, must be, I'm really sorry about that. I don't know why on earth I had it in my head that something had been said about it being on the tablecloth of a Chinese restaurant. I wonder why that was. Anyway, I'm sorry to have misremembered it. The other things have passed. Well, maybe it was... Very serious. Oh, yes, about Bristol. It happens that just before... Right. I simply got from Richard Pettigrew, who was the chap who was actually putting together the detailed plans for the meeting, and who is the recipient of this British Academy grant. He had written to me proposing a meeting and he had just asked me to contact you and find out what would be your preferred dates and we spoke about it briefly about a few weeks ago I seem to recall and you said that because you're going to be in Cambridge of course the previous weekend for the meeting in honour of Martin and Peter's 60th birthdays that the weekend after that might be the... It might be the most suitable. It has to be over a weekend because, of course, of, you know, other people, speakers, absolutely agree. So, I thought it was an opportunity, which I...

20:00 It's certainly not anything, I mean... Richard would will certainly want to fall in with anything that you want and he's a very very amenable guy but I have no idea of course what what they you know how far they can juggle the the funding that they've got available. Well, that sounds to me like an absolutely ideal plan, but of course it's completely out of my hands, you know, because I have no idea what the constraints are from John's point of view, but I'll certainly, okay, maybe we'll light a fire under him. Well, I had literally only got this information from Richard in the course of the last five or six days, so that's why I hadn't been in touch with you any earlier. I only heard from him about the, you know, he said, could I get in touch with you and find out what your preferred dates were? And he's now a postdoc and a British Academy fellow, and he's the guy who's actually got the funding for this meeting. Well he's a very likeable, very very likeable young man and he is certainly immersing himself in category theory at the moment and so you know I think you know the signs are very positive but of course he's been working mainly with John on his program on arithmetic systems of different you know different lengths at a program of John's that I've obviously discussed with him in the past, you heard about him in Florence and when you came to visit Bristol in 2003, but he's got very interested in category theory as well in the last year or two, very serious, I mean I have been doing everything I can obviously to stimulate that interest, and it seems to have been bearing fruit very seriously, very serious fruit in his case.

22:30 Okay, well, I'll keep my fingers crossed. I'll certainly keep in touch with you closely about that, because obviously I'd very much like to be involved myself in that, and if you are going to be there for as long as a two-week period, which would be marvellous, I mean, it would be a huge bonus, I was thinking you were going to say that you couldn't stay there for as long as even two or three days, which is great news, that it could be anything up to two weeks. Then I'm hoping that you might think seriously about... Giving, during that period effectively in the seminar, giving perhaps three talks on the very topic of set theory as a fragment of algebraic geometry. Well, I just wanted to plant the seed of the suggestion. Okay, I quite understand Bill. Okay, let me know what you and Fatima decide and if you send me a message I'll give you a ring as soon as I hear from you. I'm sure we can come to a good solution, and my main concern, as I say, is just to get that material digitalized and get to work on it. Okay, but obviously also possible to spend some time with you, so fingers crossed. Let me know. Okay, best of luck. Thanks very much for your time. Okay, love to Fatima.