There’s a photo of me around the age of four sitting with my mum reading a book. She’s not reading to me; I’m reading to her and the book was about the 1800s French chemist Louis Pasteur. Obviously.
He was renowned for discovering the principles behind pasteurisation and vaccines, but for a wildly imaginative four-year-old it was the cartoon pictures of frothy mouthed dogs (to illustrate his work on the rabies vaccine) that was perfect fodder. I take no offence if you’re wondering if I was perhaps a bit of a strange child, because reflecting on this is making me ask that very same question.
I was full of contradictions as a kid – super sporty, but always with my nose in a book,
