I have never found maths to be a particularly enjoyable endeavour. Even when I got it right, which was less often than I’d have liked, it was more like relief from torture than the warm satisfaction of an intellectual job well done.
Figuring out how Mrs Somerville’s Monument comes together has provided a similar experience to doing maths, with one important difference. Whilst the intellectual effort required to achieve a semblance of narrative logic was similar to that which I experienced as an undergraduate trying to figuring out some pharmacokinetics puzzle, when completed the feeling is not one of exhausted relief but of giddy excitement. I mean, we actually get to make it! How cool is that?!
Just need to glue my brain back together now. And build some stuff.
