Recumbent nude

I've mentioned George Dawson, my original professor of Genetics before but only in connexion with his monumental study of ABO blood groups in Ireland which posed a relict fire-hazard. But that presents an unfairly1-dimensional view of his cares. Back in the day, after two years being drilled in the basics, students had to choose the department in which they were going to specialize. I opted for Genetics, partly because they could spell evolution, but mainly for

 the collegiate for all-ranks atmosphere fostered by George. Because of the structures he implemented, I was possibly the first person in Ireland to make chili con carne with a dash of cumin. 

Dawson was also locally famous for his devotion to 20thC art and accumulated an enormous collection of prints, drawings and oils. When my then boss got married in the late 80s, George invited the much younger man up to his rooms in college for a glass of sherry. George pulled out a chunky roll of artworks from under the bed and invited his guest to choose something as a wedding gift. They went through the material and my gaffer said he'd really appreciate this OR this OR this OR this. With an expansive gesture George counter-offered with this AND this AND this AND this. George of the Generous Hand, indeed.

Over 30 years George also blagged his employer TCD into acquiring heavier lumps of crafted metal which were too large to fit under a bed. When I arrived on campus in 1973, extremely green and scruffy, I was not entirely Know-Nothing. I recognised, for example, that the inconnected blobs on a plinth [L] in Front Square Reclining Connected Forms (1969) was the work of Henry Moore.

I knew this because a couple of years before when I was 17, living in rural Essex, and borrowing my mother's Vauxhall Viva to get to parties, I had a crush on a girl from Much Hadham. She was arrestingly pretty despite having been fired through the windscreen of her mother's car as an infant and acquired a a faceful of tiny cicatrixes. She was also the god-dau of . . . HenryMoore, who lived down the way at Perry Green. There was talk of taking me and my louche companion Dom to take tea at Perry Green and see the sculptures. But that never happened, let alone any recumbent nude stuff. The following Fall, I left that part of the world behind to go to college in Dublin.

About three weeks after the start of term, I was hanging out on a sofa [hey, story of my life!] below the left-hand window behind the sculpture in the picture when The Beloved walked into the room and sat on the other end of the same sofa. She was also arrestingly pretty and we've been taking tea ever since.

In 1996, George Dawson made one his last art acquisitions. Seeking to furnish TCD's brand new Smurfit Institute of Genetics he contacted Arnaldo Pomodoro famous for his rotating brass Sfera con Sfera outside TCD's Berkeley [he bin cancelled] Library. Pomodoro, giving back to his early patron, insisted on donating 8 enormous pictures riffing on the dreams of cuttlefish [‽]. I had a quiet word with the Chief Technician at Smurfit and he allowed me to cart off the plywood packing cases in which the Pomodoro artworks had been delivered. All that timber got a second life on our farm as work-tops, partitions and chicken-coops. Thanks Dave! And thanks to George for demonstrating that scientists don't have to be Philistines.