So the Sub-Registrar was despatched to Norman Greenwood’s office, which was the nearest one there, explained the situation to my secretary, who was in the outer office, and she came in and told me. And so I said, 'Well, that’s a bit of a nuisance. Can’t they find someone else?' But it turned out that I was... fortunately, I’d been in my room. I may well have been in the lab, so I started to take my lab coat off, and she said, ‘No, don’t take it off, they’re interrupting your work; you go in with your lab coat on and they’ll realise that you’ve been doing something else’, which was a very astute observation. So I went in and, I think, impressed is the wrong word, but it was noted that I came in a lab coat, and sat there to make up a quorum, and then left.

That was Jean, but she was very helpful and astute in judgements of people and things, and, of course, I was making my own decision. But she had comments which were well worth hearing, and also, she knew that in some situations that we’d been in before, I would normally have sent a letter to thank for help, couched in appropriate terms. She got used to typing these letters and knew my mind, and would draft the letter, and say, ‘Do you want to send a letter along these lines?’ And if it was inappropriate, I would obviously modify it. If not, I’d say, ‘Yes, that’s fine’, and so there weren’t many people who felt they’d been left out. And that was partly due to Jean’s nurturing of the professor. It’s a very important point that’s sometimes forgotten.