Troublesome Travels

If you know me well, you’ll know that I could literally get lost in a teacup. In fact it has been said that I have the sense of direction of a plastic teaspoon; a metal one beats me because it could certainly at least find its way to a giant electromagnet, if nowhere else. I’m not joking when I say that I probably couldn’t even follow the flying coins, keys, and various kitchen utensils to find this electromagnet when switched on.

Both my parents are brilliant at following their noses so I really don’t understand where this Achilles’ heel of mine came from but it has always been the case. I remember in French lessons as a very young child being told to map out my house so that we could name all the rooms in French, but being completely flabbergasted by the task. I’m not sure why I couldn’t get my head round it. It seems I just find spatial visualisation very difficult. It’s not just places though; I find that my hand gets lost on the neck of my cello whenever I have to move out of the comfortable position where you learn to play most of the notes as a beginner. I think it’s for the same reason that I’ve never really gotten on with video games that are any more complex than simple puzzles – I just get lost!

When asked what their biggest fears are, many people will say things like “the dark”, “heights” or “spiders” even though they know these things pose no real danger to them. My biggest fear has always been getting lost and I can assure you that it is far from irrational – I have been known to lose my way in buildings as familiar to me as my school or college.

When I had my Spanish exchange partner staying, I arranged with a friend to meet up with her and her  partner in a café a just mile away from my house. It was this friend’s dad, who, after having dropped off his daughter and exchange partner, told me I was leading my Spanish friend in completely the wrong direction. ¡Qué vergüenza!

As you can imagine there has been many a funny tale with regards to me trying to travel anywhere without adult supervision. One time while taking a coach to the other end of the country, despite being ten minutes early, I missed it because the car park that was listed as the coach stop was so big that I didn’t see it arriving. My dad had to then chase the coach down the motorway for two hours so that I could join it at the next stop! At the other end my friend and I had to make our way to the train station about a mile away. We both got out conscientiously pre-printed maps, worked out where we were and then said in unison “Right, so we need to go that way” and pointed in opposite directions!

It has become so much of a joke for my family that whenever I get home later than expected, they simply ask “Did you get lost again?” The sad thing is; it’s usually true.

I have been getting better though – recently I lost my group on a skiing holiday and used a piste map to find my way back down off the mountain – I was genuinely really proud of myself! My train ticket collection now numbers 27, and I get the bus to college everyday, but I have yet to master tubes. They scare me to no end!

To be fair, it’s not just me who’s funny about public transport. I once had a friend who lived literally up the road from the nearest train station but had never caught a train before and ended up chickening out and taking the bus which is for some reason far less frightening. Another friend who took the train everyday but had never ridden a bus before, once had to ask me about how to buy the ticket and pressing the button at her stop. I don’t blame these people because that was me not so long ago. But it does amuse me somewhat because I thought I was late in getting the hang of these things, turns out I’m not as bad as some.

None of this stops me having recurring nightmares about getting lost unfortunately. Having said that, I also have recurring nightmares about being left in charge of motorised vehicles and about my tuba disintegrating– maybe I shouldn’t read too much into it.

So Many Rabbits!

I was going to upload a very different blog post today – I was going to treat you all to a good giggle about my infamous lack of sense of direction, but it didn’t seem quite right.

I’ve been thinking about eggs, as you might imagine, and what they mean to us. I’m pretty sure eggs at Easter are supposed to represent new life, being that new chicks are born out of them and all; but it seems to me that Easter Sunday – the day when we get to eat the chocolate eggs – is never the day when we start a new life, is it? For a couple of months before hand some of us take up new good habits or try to ditch old ones. I gave up farmed meat, because I think we’re generally too reliant on it. A friend of mine bravely gave up chocolate, presumably to see if she could stand the temptation. My little brother gave up coco pops and instead breakfasted on honey cheerios for forty days (I’m not entirely sure of the meaning behind that one). I’ve had friends who have given up smoking, or alcohol, or taken up doing small acts of kindness everyday. And then on Easter day itself, we all go back to our old lives and feast on chocolate.

I don’t think it was the lovingly cooked bacon and sausages I ate this morning that left a stale taste in my mouth. I think it was the fact that after building this healthier habit, which was more in line with my principles, and to be honest I enjoyed eating more; I had chosen this day of all days – the day of new life, to break that habit. And feast on way too many chocolate rabbits (side note I received all rabbits this year, no eggs).

Because I’ve learnt recently that Easter isn’t about chocolate related indulgence – it’s about giving a gift, enduring suffering, or going without, so that others might be able to lead a fuller life. Even if you think those others don’t really deserve it. Even if you have done nothing to deserve being denied that lovely chocolaty goodness.

So anyway, assuming I remember, which I probably won’t, next year instead of receiving Easter eggs from my family, I’m going to ask for that money they would have spent and donate it to a local night shelter. Because, not gonna lie, I’m half way through my first chocolate rabbit already and it’s more the fact that it’s there, rather than the fact that it’s tasty, that I’m still nibbling away at it as I’m writing this.

Maybe this is another one of my stupid ideas. Maybe none of you will want to join me. Maybe the money spent on my rabbity confectionary items is so insignificant that this endeavour is pointless. Or maybe someone out there agrees.

Happy Easter everyone! 🙂

Busking Adventures – My Untameable Morals

Last time I went busking, this guy came up to me and said: “I’ve just won several hundred pounds on a scratch card, but you can have this.” And gave me a ten pound note. First off I want to explain to you how much he didn’t look like he had just won money on a scratch card. It’s not that he looked sad, just not particularly happy either. He had that sort of general unkempt look about him that made me wonder if he was in fact homeless.

“Ah thanks! That’s really kind of you!”

“And if the police come up to you later saying you shouldn’t have it, just tell them to go away – none of their business!”

…

“…O…K,”

Like, what!?

Had he just stolen that money from a bank? A shop? Was it from illegal produce? Drugs? What on earth did he mean by that? And where on earth did the money in my hand come from?

What if the police really had come asking about the money I’d earned? It’s not like that sort of thing had ever happened before but I suppose it was possible a police officer could approach me asking if I’d seen anyone acting suspiciously. And I would have to tell them wouldn’t I, even if it meant they needed to take back that tenner for evidence or whatever.

No one came up to me. My unusually high profit remained intact, and as I headed off to my bus stop I was beginning to think about things I could spend it on, until I saw a police woman talking to someone sat outside a shop. It’s not that I could actually hear what they were saying, but I had this awful feeling it was about the strange man I had talked to earlier and his mysterious misdeeds. ‘Maybe I should go up and tell her what happened,’ I thought, but I could just picture the situation where even if she had no idea who the guy was or anything about his possible crimes she’d end up taking the money off me.

So I started to walk past her thinking if that did happen I’d walk away ten pounds worse off regretting it, when my feet ground to a halt. Actually no I wouldn’t – I’d walk away ten pounds worse off but knowing that even if it hadn’t made any difference I’d done the right thing, and as it was I would regret never finding out where this money had come from. So I doubled back.

I know it was only ten quid but this made me think about my morality. I’d never really thought about it much before until a friend had fairly randomly remarked “You’re really a moral person.” My friends often seem confused if I pick up some rubbish that they were going to leave behind, or return accidental extra change to the counter in a café. I remember one time sitting in the back of the bus with some friends on the way to college and there being this young mother with a toddler sat right in the middle of us. Now my mates are nice people but I suppose it could be argued that they were somewhat scary looking. Completely black outfits and guyliner was fairly normal. So whilst this toddler was sat there happily playing with his sock and the back row was filling up around him, his mother next to him started to look more and more intimidated. Not that we were doing anything wrong, teenagers can just be scary looking, I get that. Anyway as this woman picked up her son to leave and walked down the bus, his sock fell right off his foot. So naturally I picked it up and chased after her. “Your son dropped this.” I smiled, and she thanked me with what appeared to be pleasant surprise. I don’t know if she really had been thinking we were aggressive delinquents who would probably eat her child given the chance, but either way I quite like to surprise people by showing them how actually moral youths can be.

When this friend randomly remarked about how moral I was, I was somewhat confused – does that mean that other people aren’t moral? Are people unconcerned with what is right and what is wrong? That’s the thing though my friend remarked “You’re really moral,” not “you’re really nice.” It kinda makes me think people don’t particularly value morality as a good trait in a person. As if you can be kind to your friends but not care much about strangers and that’s alright, that’s normal.

Around this time you’re probably getting bored with me going on about my superior morals but the thing is I never really considered myself an especially moral person. And to be honest I’m not sure I actually am. To be honest I think I return extra change because there’s a slight OCD twinge in me that is annoyed by the incorrect transaction. I think I pick up rubbish because I always have, and the thought of just leaving it lying around makes me cringe, not because it ruins the environment or whatever but because there are bins around and that’s what bins are for. I think I gave that toddler back his sock, not out of kindness, but because socks belong on feet, and whilst he was missing one his limbs looked terribly unsymmetrical. I think I went up and talked to that police woman because the thought of not knowing where that money had come from annoyed me more than the idea of not having it.

So in the same way my friend can’t bare to have one pencil pointing the opposite way to all the others on her desk, I just can’t stand it to have even a tiny passive part in the insignificant injustices of life. I feel somewhat enlightened, if slightly disappointed in myself.

Anyway when I told this police woman my story, what she said was: “He probably just thought that we would think you shouldn’t be getting money off people in general, like you were begging or something, which obviously you’re not.” Oh, yeah I guess that makes sense. So it turns out I had that little epiphany all for nothing and I ended spending that ten pounds on concert tickets. Never mind.

The Pot of Gold

Sunlight refracts (bends) as it goes into a raindrop, reflects off the back, and then refracts again as it comes back out. The amount that light refracts depends on the wavelength (or colour) of that light, so blue light with a shorter wavelength will refract more than red light with a longer one, but as it is refracted twice (once on the way in and once on the way out) red ends up on top and blue on the bottom.

…You don’t need me to tell you what a rainbow is!

But, have you ever seen a snowbow?

That’s when the sunlight refracts off tiny snow crystals in the air instead of raindrops and it’s what I saw while skiing last week. It turns out the amount by which light refracts also depends on the refractive index of what it is refracting through. For example you get smaller radius rainbows through salt water spray off the sea and my snowbow was more of a parabola (kinda like a semicircle but stretched). It was also really close, so close it looked like I could ski right underneath it.

So did I turn around and go the other way, thinking I’ll leave this mysterious natural phenomenon just that, a mystery? After all who knows what happens when you go underneath one, the myths say nothing about that, and if nothing happened, that’s my childhood imagination ruined forever, right?

Hell no! Like any human would I went straight through the middle. Or at least I tried.

I never found out if there really were riches at the end of the rainbow because the ends sort of disintegrated into swirling sparkly snow crystals, as I got closer and closer. I kept thinking a Lepricorn was going to pop out at me any second and try to make some sort of questionable deal with me!

Interlude: There’s this cupboard in the room where my brass band practise, where we keep spare instruments, sheet music and colouring pencils. However, what mostly goes unnoticed is a door at the back of this cupboard into a second cupboard that never seems to get much use. So far, not that exciting until my friends and I learned that there was in fact yet another cupboard behind this one, a third cupboard. And yet whoever we asked we could find no one who had ever actually been in there. Or rather, no one who had actually been in there and come back alive! So we swiftly decided that this third cupboard was heaven, and spent many an evening while collecting music stands not daring to go there. “It’s not the right time.” We would say. But one fateful night we could bare it no longer, it was the right time, whether them cupboards liked it or not!

We’re not the most intelligent bunch, but we’re sensible enough to know that nothing was actually going to happen when we went in. Still there was that doubt though, that little spark of make-believe left over from our childhoods, that little spark of fear, that was enough to keep the adrenaline pumping and keep our little fantasy alive.

So it was with that mixture of experienced confidence and childish trepidation, that third-cupboard-feeling, that I skied right under what was left of my rapidly disappearing snowbow.

The third cupboard as it turns out, was just a room with no floor boards and a boiler. You might think we would have been a little disappointed by this, but I think it was this final chance of ours to really play pretend like kids in the playground; to imagine we were like those children in the Chronicles of Narnia, who faced not just adventures but also grave danger, but ultimately stuck together; to forget our troubles and enter this half imaginary world we might never return from. But we did. And it was fun, but it’s over now.

It was the same with the pot of gold. It’s kinda sad to have to let go of childish fantasies when you actively prove them wrong. But you have to go do it. You can’t just turn around and say “I’d rather not know – I’ll keep my childhood intact, thank you very much!” Because what child would do that?

Busking Adventures – what I love about bus drivers

The fourth in this little series of mine, but this time not such a fun one. It all started fairly normally – I strolled into town after lunch and tuned up in my usual busking spot, at the front of this big alcove sort of thing on the high street.

It’s weird when I’m busking, some people are really nice – they’ll stop and listen to me, maybe talk to me and give me their spare change. But others are less than considerate. They’ll walk really close by me when they go past, sometimes strutting right between me and my ukulele case, like they’re really annoyed that I’m there getting in their way and they have to walk maybe an extra two metres to get past. That stuff I found weird at first but I’m very used to it by now. What happened today, I’m not so used to.

A few songs in, these guys on BMXs started cycling around in the sheltered area behind me. I didn’t really want to look around at them but I guess there were maybe four or five of them and they were a little older than me. They were shouting and swearing at each other in that annoying obnoxious way that you know is more for the benefit of the people around than themselves. I figured they were just passing through and they’d only annoy me for a few songs. I’m probably being paranoid but I feel like it was mostly because I was there that they decided to stay for the entire hour I was busking, going up on their front wheels and spinning around and then cycling up really close behind me, all the while shouting and laughing about nothing in particular and sometimes singing along to me like drunks do.

I dunno, maybe I’m being a bit of a loser, but just that they were there the whole time and I was facing the other way so I couldn’t see what they were doing until they nearly cycled over my heels, it was just a bit intimidating. Not to mention the fact that them shouting over me probably didn’t help me earn any money. So even though I saw two friends while out today and one of them gave me chocolate, I wasn’t feeling the best as I walked up to my bus stop afterwards.

Who’d ‘a’ thunk it though, bus drivers can really make your day. There’s this one guy who’s known around college for being the loveliest bus driver in the world. Whenever I have to bring my cello on the bus, he always asks me whether it’s ok in the luggage rack, and asks about my day, and everyone else’s day and is just generally really friendly. But today he was driving a completely different bus, and whilst waiting to leave the bus stop, he pointed at my uke and called out to me: “Oh no, has your cello shrunk?” I laughed and we had the briefest of conversations, but it just really cheered me up and completely restored my faith in humanity.

You know what they say about buses though, you wait all day and then three come along at once, well something else brought a smile to my face: I’ve just counted, and having said that shouting BMXers would not be good for busking, it’s the most money I’ve ever made in an hour!

Teething Problems

Something I’ve been asked a lot recently is: “Have you always had braces?” No, of course I haven’t, what a silly question. So I tell them that I got them about two weeks ago and the next question is always: “Why so late?” Good question my friends, good question. The tale is long and I’m tired of telling it, so here it is out in full once and for all: the story of my teeth.

So when I was a kid my dentist was this jolly South African bloke who always used to be really pleased with the fact that I cleaned my teeth everyday. “You make my day!” he’d always say and whenever we asked about me having braces (because I’ve had wonky teeth as long as I can remember) he’d just say to wait until my mouth had grown more.

A few missed appointments and dental office staff mishaps later, I found myself with a new dentist, with an accent that I found very difficult to understand, who referred me to an orthodontist. Unfortunately when my dad was booking me an appointment he very helpfully booked for a time when I had a school lesson and failed to tell me about it until I got home that day, when I had already missed it. “Never mind, you just phone up and book yourself another one then.” But I was (and still am slightly) scared of phones so I just didn’t. For about a year.

Eventually I got myself re-referred and examined by an orthodontist who told me I had severe overcrowding (great tell me something I don’t know) and that they’d send a letter to my dentist to remove some teeth. Months passed and no word from the dentist. I phoned up again to ask them to resend it but clearly there’s a tooth care related problem with the postal service where I live because after three letters had supposedly been sent the dentist was still insisting “What letter? We haven’t got any letter.” What made it worse was that every time the orthodontist had to sign this letter personally but they only seemed to work about one day a week, so it just seemed to never get done.

In the end I personally went to pick up a copy of this letter from the orthodontist and then hand delivered it to the dental practice, only to be told that it wouldn’t be read for about a week because the dentist was on holiday. I think I might go for a dramatic change in career plan and tend to people’s teeth because it seems to me that they almost never have to work!

Anyway, eventually I did get those four teeth taken out, so that was fun! It sounds stupid, but it just never occurred to me that there would be centimetre deep holes left in my mouth where my teeth once were. They were kinda cool to look at but just the right size for rice to get stuck in, unfortunately. Other fun experiences relating to my tooth extractions were sneakily stealing salt from the canteen to make salty water to rinse my mouth out with, and deciding to keep not just one but all four of my removed teeth, which now make an excellent bookshelf decoration.

Then of course I had to wait another two months or so before I finally got braces fitted. And of course it would be the day that my friends and I decided to go busking in the pouring rain and the rest of the town (by which I mean a shop on the same road as my orthodontist) would catch fire. Because the road was closed, I had to follow this random stranger through a winding back alley route and then duck under some police tape just to get there, squelching onto the dentist chair in my sopping wet trainers.

You won’t be surprised that I was not feeling prepared / looking forward to this. However funnily enough that night I was feeling pretty good about having braces. I felt no pain; I could speak completely normally; and I chewed through sausages the same as normal without feeling a thing. I was beginning to wonder what anyone had been complaining about.

Oh how naïve I was.

The following morning after my teeth had started to move, I spent a full half hour just getting through a sandwich. Incapable of biting, I had to rip the bread into tiny pieces and then hold them one by one in my mouth until my saliva had mostly dissolved them. And even that hurt.

Worse, I soon realised though, was the longer lasting lip pain that comes from the brackets rubbing against the inside of your mouth and causing all sorts of cuts, ulcers and blisters. It was this that forced me to sit in maths holding my lip away from my face so that it wouldn’t rub, looking like at 18 years old I still sucked my thumb.

Never mind, the pain is over now, and all I have to deal with is my list of banned food items, which includes: fizzy drinks, fruit juice, and sugar in your tea; not just toffees but all chewy sweets, hard sweets and acidic sweets; tomato ketchup and vinegar; crisps; apples, raw carrots and nuts; crispy roast potatoes, pizza crusts and crusty bread; dry cereal and toast; chocolate and basically anything else with sugar in it. Yeah, nobody keeps to this stuff.

What really happens

The other day my little brother commented on my blog saying it was boring. And I’m sad to say he’s right. The thing is it doesn’t have to be like this. It’s not like I lead a boring life; it’s just that I only tell you about the boring bits. So I’m gonna come clean. This is what really happens.

Most days I am woken up at 6.42am by a cursed Chinese hair pin that makes a loud meowing sound every morning at precisely this time. It’s pretty annoying but it does at least give me time to forage for some locusts and wild honey for my breakfast, which I tend to wash down with celery soda. It’s bad for my teeth I know. My dentist never shuts up about it.

Anyways my friend Lindsey normally gives me and our other friend Quentin a lift to PigfartsCollege on her giant caterpillar Augustus (who was in fact the inspiration for that controversial Anthony Horowitz novel, The Very Hungry Caterpillar). Of course what Horowitz didn’t mention was that Augustus is actually not hungry for leafy vegetables and fruits but humans. So every morning Lindsey brings one of her slave children for him to snack on. He doesn’t kill them. No, worse, much worse. He sucks out their souls.

A few Thursdays ago, Lindsey was supposed to bring a slave called Kunta Kinte for Augustus to feast on the soul of. But she forgot because she was a bit preoccupied by daydreaming about a boy she liked called Brick.

“LINDSEY!!!!” groaned Quentin. “You’ve let me down, you’ve let Danielle down, you’ve let Pigfarts down, you’ve let Headmaster Rumbleroar down, and worst of all… you’ve let yourself down.”

At this point I couldn’t blame Lindsey for completely flipping out at Quentin. “Well if that’s how you feel, I guess we can always feed your soul to Augustus!” What we failed to remember however, was that being ginger, Quentin didn’t actually have a soul. And so, when Augustus tried to suck it out, he sort of sucked himself inwards instead, eventually exploding in a huge bang that literally painted the entire sky bright indigo. It was pretty exciting. But Lindsey was understandably a little upset, so I shouted up to Augustus “The more you bleed, the more you succeed!” in the hopes that it would comfort her, which it did. Unfortunately we still had no means of getting to class.

As luck would have it though, at that very moment a herd of puppy sized elephants came running down the road. With relief, we lassoed a pair of them and rode them to college, (Quentin had by this point been kidnapped by a taxi driver and been steam cooked alive) arriving just in time for Arithmancy with Professor Vector. “We so Cauchy Riemanned that!” I whispered to Lindsey and she slapped me round the back of the head as this is our personal high five.

Later on, whilst snacking on topologically impossible pineapples with our friend, who I’ve only ever known by the name 1980s; Lindsey and I were discussing how disgusting it was that none of our other classmates were vegetarian, and all 5000 of them were currently being fed with women and kids by the dinner ladies. And then a dragon flew out of nowhere for no apparent reason whatsoever.

So now you know the truth. This is the sort of thing that really happens in my life. As a matter of fact I spend very little time busking at all; I’m normally too busy underwater basket weaving.

One of those Christmases

As it’s the holidays, I don’t feel particularly obliged to write a really coherent post for you all. So here is a good old-fashioned bullet point list of some of the amusing things I got up to this Christmas.

• My friends peer pressured me into attempting to put a whole mince pie in my mouth in one go and then eating it, which considering I don’t even like mince pies was not an enjoyable experience. I guess I only have myself to blame. The stupid thing was, I did this again on Christmas Day with four Ritz crackers, without any pressure – just of my own accord, and ended up having to leave Christmas dinner to choke on them. Yay!
• I borrowed my friend’s Santa hat, only to have to delay giving it back, because I had accidently dropped it in a puddle of my own spit! (Yup, I’m thinking only brass banders will really understand this one.)
• I left almost half of my Christmas shopping until Christmas Eve.
• Whilst waiting for a (very late) bus on Christmas Eve, I got into a conversation with a complete stranger and we ended up talking about how as a nurse she had to work almost everyday over Christmas and still decorate the house and do all the cooking and stuff. Eventually I phoned my brother for a lift for the two of us instead, not because I desperately needed to go shopping but because I felt bad for my new friend, who might have got into trouble at work for being late on top of everything else. Of course that was when the bus turned up.
• One of the presents I bought was a book for a friend by an author we both like. I was a bit worried she might have read it before but luckily this wasn’t the case. Instead it happened that she had got me the exact same book! You’d think that would be awkward but we just thought it was the coolest! What was awkward was that whilst buying it, I got short changed by a supposedly very reputable book shop. I am yet to write an angry letter.
• On my bus on the way home, I was the only passenger and when it broke down, I had to phone the bus station, because with the storm knocking down a tree and taking out the power cable supplying the driver’s house, she had been unable to charge her mobile the night before. With this and more fallen trees blocking roads and changing our route, the driver and I had plenty of time to talk about how she wouldn’t be able to cook her turkey with no electricity and she’d have to go round a friend’s for Christmas dinner. Her words were “I have a feeling it’s going to be one of those Christmases.” All I could think was: What funny things allow you to break the ‘No talking to the driver’ rule.
• We have a tradition in my family of going to the cinema on Christmas Eve and this year we saw The Hobbit. Now, obviously being the second of three films there are going to be a lot of loose ends left to tie up in the last one, but the question on our minds on the way home was: “Why on earth was Kíli the dwarf using a bowl of walnuts as a pillow?”
• Another household tradition is that we always play Monopoly each year on Christmas Day and only on Christmas Day, because my older brother says that our younger brothers are too immature to play with, but he makes an exception for Christmas. Personally I’m more a fan of Cluedo but I play along because ‘goodwill to men’ and all that. However this year we were all amused by my younger brother’s eccentric insistence on keeping all his money in the smallest change possible. It only got more surreal when his obsession changed from £1 notes to £5 notes. Anyway, it didn’t help him at all. My older brother still won like he always does.
• Whilst taking the dog for a walk as it was getting dark on Christmas afternoon, we lost him, only to later find out that he had just run to the other side of the woods to join my parents, who we didn’t even know were there, and who turned out to be the couple we had seen earlier making owl noises. Knowing my mum, I guess we should have known.
• On Boxing Day, my younger brothers paid us with chocolates to play Monopoly again, so that we could team up on the older one and not let him win. That was the plan, and yet between them they sold him the very same set of properties that he had won with the day before. In spite of this he did end up losing – something I was quite jealous of as that was what I was trying to do because I’m not the biggest fan of the game. In fact I came second in both games despite my best efforts to lose quickly and in our house, second place means you have to pack up the board. Yay again!

And with that, I leave you to enjoy the rest of Christmas because remember – there are in fact 12 days of it and this year we even get all of those off school. So although it sounds weird now, Merry Christmas everyone!

Busking Adventures – that person I met

Yup, looks like this has become a series! So if you haven’t read about my previous busking adventure you’ll want to go do that, or this’ll make no sense. (Hey look I did a link, how cool am I?)

I left you last time saying I still had this funny bloke’s card on my desk and was wondering whether to email him or not. In the end I decided it would be kinda fun to busk with a random stranger, but by that point, the moment had passed and so I resolved to pretend I had lost his card if I ever saw him again. Which, as you might have guessed is what happened today.

Walking down the high street with my ukulele earlier, passing two guitarists on the way and giving them a little loose change; I caught sight of my new friend and smiled at him.

“So do you want to do a couple of songs together then?” he asked.

“Yeah sure, should be fun. I dunno what we’d both know though.”

He suggested that some simple nursery rhymes or folk tunes like drunken sailor or something should be something relatively easy that we’d both know and everyone on the street would recognise. That’s about when I realised that this little partnership of ours was never going to work because I don’t know the chords to any nursery rhymes or old folk songs. I literally only know the chords to seven (eight as of this evening!) songs. And they are the seven songs that I play. And my new friend didn’t know any of them.

Well, he had at least heard of I’m a believer, but unfortunately never played it before. So I strummed through the chords whilst he struggled through. Playing by ear, to be fair, he must have been actually quite musical ‘cause he was getting it at least partly right, but it was very difficult for us to play in time, when he was pretty much making it up as he went along.

After he’d done struggling through a few more of my songs, attempting to teach me Twinkle twinkle little star, and getting out a duck taped guitar to try and improve things; I suggested we might try some simple pop songs (as they always have the same easy chords) that I could sing to. But after we decided we couldn’t really be bothered to tune his guitar to my uke, I ended up playing I’m yours with this guy playing a funny improvised tin whistle counter melody over the top.

I think it’s safe to say it was weird at best.

But when I had finished singing, I kept strumming through the chords a few times whilst he kept playing, and to be honest, it didn’t sound that bad, so we decided to keep going.

“And if they don’t like it -”

“Then stuff them!”

So we just carried on. Me strumming through the same old chords, whilst he improvised this folky tin whistle melody (well, as folky as you can get with typical pop song chords), people giving us funny looks because we were such an odd pair, but we really didn’t care, ‘cause it was the best we’d sounded all day and even if we weren’t making any money, I think we were just happy to have found something that we could make work.

And that’s when my bus came. So I left him with the single pound we’d made and said I’d see him around. In a way I guess I was exactly right: it was fun, just not the most profitable busking trip I’ve made.

Maths: a defence of, and attack on

Sometimes when I tell people what subjects I do or I want to study at university, they say “Oooh, that sounds horrendous!” Honestly, I think it sounds wonderful but it’s not comments like this that I mind. It’s comments like “Yeah, I like maths too, because with maths, it’s not like English, you’re either right or wrong, you know where you stand, it’s just black and white!” It annoys me because I worry that it’s true. I worry that all there is to maths is formulas that you plug numbers into, and if the right answer pops out at the end, you’re deemed to be an excellent mathematician, and if the wrong one pops out, then, well…. Maybe you’d better go back to English class, where there is no right answer.

Let me explain what I mean. Once as a child I had a question which asked me to make up £6.30 out of just 20p and 50p pieces, where I had to have the same number of 50ps and 20ps. At the time, I couldn’t think what to do so I just added together 50 and 20 over and over until I had 630.

50p + 20p + 50p + 20p + 50p + 20p + 50p + 20p + 50p + 20p + 50p + 20p + 50p + 20p + 50p + 20p + 50p + 20p = £6.30

Nine of each coin.

This took a long time and a lot of space on my paper, but the answer I got was exactly right. The person next to me had a more intelligent approach – they added 50 and 20 to get 70 and then divided 630 by 70, to find the number of 50ps and 20ps they would need.

50p + 20p = 70p

£6.30 ÷ 70p = 9

Nine of each coin.

They had found a much quicker, more intelligent and simpler method to find the same answer. But it was the same answer, so we got the same mark, and this concerns me. My friend’s method was much more intelligent not to mention more efficient than mine, and it showed a deeper understanding of concepts like division – this person had a better understanding of the maths in this particular question than I did, and yet we got the same marks in the test – baffling. I know this sounds controversial but I honestly believe that even when you get the right answer, the intelligence and insight of the method should be rewarded, because (and this is the crazy part) I honestly don’t think the answer matters.

Take English Literature for example. Another fun question from my primary school days was: Who do you think was responsible for the death of the King? Macbeth (who actually killed him) or Lady Macbeth (who convinced him to do it). It’s clear to everyone that in an English lesson, the answer to this question doesn’t matter. What matters is how you argue it. Obviously you’ll get fewer marks for saying:

“Well Macbeth killed him so it’s his fault.”

Than for saying:

“I think that [insert quote here] reflects the idea that, at the time men were considered responsible for their wives and therefore Shakespeare is suggesting that Macbeth was responsible as he shouldn’t have let his wife persuade him/ let her get so jealous of the king’s throne.”

They both came to the same answer, so why not get the same marks?

Because the second has complex reasoning, and evidence to back it up; it has a greater understanding of the historical context and the intentions of the author; it’s more balanced because in a way it’s combating a counter argument (that it was Lady Macbeth’s fault for persuading him) rather than just presenting a (sort of meaningless) pro argument. In English, you get more marks for being able to think more intelligently, why not maths?

Here’s the crux: Both the Macbeth arguments were valid points – they made sense, they were perfectly acceptable ways of reaching a decision. In the same way the two maths methods both had valid reasoning – they were both perfectly reasonable ways of working out how many coins were needed. But in both maths and English, simply stating an answer should not matter. What matters is how you get there. It’s the evidence, the explanation, the way you choose to go about it and how well you understand what you’re doing; and the best part is there is no one correct way to go about it. A lot of approaches could be valid but it’s with creativity and deep understanding that you get to the top of the class.

That’s what English Literature is. And (I think) that’s what maths should be too.

I don’t think maths is all about blindly number-crunching until you get to the answer in the back of the textbook, even if that’s what it seems like at school. I think it’s about understanding how the universe works by wrapping your brain around the complex nature of shapes, quantities and dimensions; patterns, structure and space.

So yeah, I don’t think it’s right or wrong. I don’t think it’s all black and white. I think it’s about 50 000 shades of grey : P

I dunno, maybe I’m studying the wrong subject. Maybe I’d better just go back to English.