Sunday, the first day of July, rain for what seems the 127th day on the trot. Time for some high culture, as if to persuade ourselves that uninterrupted sunshine rots the intellect. As the Barry clan makes its pilgrimage to the Lucien Freud exhibition at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, we are confronted by this object looming up from the wild grass outside Kilmainham hospital. Initially, I mistake it for a specimen of egomaniacal installation art by some Damien Hirst acolyte, but the reality is far more interesting.

The James Webb Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2013, is designed to peer even further into the cosmos’s origins than the celebrated Hubble Telescope, which it will replace. It’s difficult to imagine that this enormous contraction decaled with Norththrop Grumman and NASA logos (or rather the real, working version, complete with 6.5 meter diameter mirror) will be hurled a million miles from Earth in less than ten years. The scale of the machinery, and the near-hubris of its mission, could make the creative endeavours (of radically uneven quality) housed in the museum building beyond seem little more than sterile variations on the Lascaux cave drawings.

Still, we need both cultures, Science and Art, even if the former gets all the money.

And Lucien Freud? Well, I can confidently say that when it comes to painting middle-aged scrotums, he is unequalled.