Today’s word –‘Method’
I’m a person of words, not
numbers. A hundred creative ideas may, on a good day, flow from brain, down
arm, through hand to be delivered, via pen, to my battered notebook, but ask me
a maths question and the buzzing begins.
It starts with a click at the
back of my head. It is the sound of the last light being switched off on the shop
floor before the foreman goes home for the night, but instead of empty silence
there is a hum, which increases in crescendo before zipping round with zigzag
speed to plant that frisson of fear behind my eyes. My mouth does its
impression of the Sahara, with my saliva dammed and diverted, to form a clammy
film in the dead centre of both palms.
So today my thirteen year-old
niece asks for help with linear equations. She smiles expectantly and has no
doubt whatsoever that I’ll be there for her. So I am.
Rusty hinges squeal as a quick
Google reintroduces me to long forgotten methods. Thirty-five years of dust makes
quite a pile. Sweeping it aside is as strenuous as raking blown leaves from the
lawn, but suddenly I am there, in that zone of flying where you can see the
whole universe mapped out before you and all you need to do is reach out and
pluck the answers, one by one, from silver branches.
An hour later the cinnamon scent
of best auntie lingers at the desk and I smile. It is all so much more than
maths.
