Author: Trefor Davies

Dear Mrs Davies-Todd

May I take this opportunity to observe that I find that there are many opportunities for  social comment in the maths homework that you set me.

This week (section 2 test 9 part C1) is a perfect illustration of the genre.  It is noted that 18% of attendees at a concert were men and 38 percent were women,  the remainder being children.  What can we read into this?

Firstly it is unlikely that, as in the time after the first world war, there were fewer men in society. Why therefore the imbalance of the sexes?  This could be that the concert was in an area of the country where men adopted traditional attitudes about family life and preferred to spend their time in the pub whilst the wife attended to the children’s needs.

On the other hand it may be that the concert was something arranged by the Women’s Institute and that therefore the entertainment on hand may have been less than suitable for the man of the house.  If this was the case then we should either pity or admire the 18% of males who did turn out.

The concert may have taken place on the Saturday of the FA Cup Final.  If this was the case then it would have been unreasonable for a wife to have expected her husband to turn out. The 18% might then have been accounted for by the fact that there are undoubtedly men in society who have no interest in football.

If the concert had taken place during the school holidays then there would potentially be more mothers than fathers available to attend as the former may well have been at work.

Finally could you please explain the principle behind and uses of the square root of minus one.  My father insists that there is an answer to this.  As my respected teacher of mathematics I am confident that you can explain this to me.

Best Wishes

Tom

Dear Mrs Davies-Todd
I note from this week’s maths homework, section two test 8c, question eleven that Mary gets paid three pence for every two pence that Tim receives.

I hope you don’t mind my asking where you got the idea for this unusual renumerative differential. As you may be aware it is often the case in the real world that Tim will get more than Mary. This is regardless of what you might think of the fairness of this arrangement.

You may have noted that for example in the world of professional tennis the ladies are often up in arms over the fact that their male counterparts get paid substantially more than them. Obviously the establishment response to this is that men play five sets compared with only three for the fairer sex and thus the paying public gets more entertainment when watching men than ladies. This is of course subject to the seasonal downpours that seem to be a regular feature of the Wimbledon Tournament.

As an aside I wonder whether Cliff Richard gets paid for his efforts during the wet periods. Perhaps he gets a refund for his ticket?!

Notwithstanding all this I realise that the debate over the rewards paid to professional tennis players, whatever their sex, bears no real resemblance to the issue of who gets paid how much when it comes to Tim and Mary.

There have of course been some well publicised cases in the national press involving females pursuing compensation from their (generally past) employers for unfair levels of wages in comparison to male counterparts. One can also point to examples of women who are paid much more than men (eg financier and supermum – Nicola Horlick).

In the absence of any real data as to why Mary gets paid more than Tim I wonder if you could shed any light on the issue. This is a real concern to the average 10 year old male who struggles to make ends meet with his one pound a week pocket money.

It would really be an issue if this kind of homework question were to send out subliminal messages (reading no doubt over Tim or Mary’s shoulder as they were sat in the dining room chewing their pencils) to parents to the effect that it was ok to pay girls more pocket money than boys.

On a completely separate note I would be most grateful if you could inform Mrs Bennett that I will be unable to partake in the PE lesson today as I am in dire need of cutting my toenails. Hard contact with objects offering any resistance whilst wearing trainers could cause painful damage.

Your attentive student

Tom

Monday 25^th October

Sitting on the train is a good time to write letters.  Although modern technology allows us to stay connected and communicating almost wherever you are these days, including on the train,  it is a good time take a few minutes out to pen a few notes, thoughts or missives, depending on how you want to describe it. If the train isn’t too crowded that is.

There are two types of people you meet on a train: the friendly chatty type and those who are not in the least interested in talking to you.  Coming out of London you meet the tired commuters who do the trip day in day out and who look completely miserable.  I guess they must typically fit in to the “don’t want to talk” types.  Usually they have to drive when they get to Peterborough or some similar nonentity of a long distance commuting town so they can’t even have a beer to relax. Because they do the same trip every day it would be a recipe for disaster in any case if they got into the habit of a drink on the way home, speaking from the perspective of an individual who wants to look after himself that is J.

You also meet the “speak loudly into the mobile phone” types.  Usually the conversation centres around the fact that “they” are on the train and that “we might get cut off at any time”.  “I said we might get cut off at any time. Oh, we’ve been cut off”.  I mustn’t mock because we’ve all done it.

Monday 8^th November

It’s funny how your attitude changes quite quickly to catching the train out of London.  When London represents an occasional visit then the time of the train back isn’t really so important.  Now that I’m doing it once a week, sometimes twice, then catching the right train whilst not actually a matter of life or death climbs the scale of necessities such that running for it to make sure of being on board when the doors slide shut becomes part of a regular fitness regime.  I never thought I’d join the ranks of those rushing up the escalator in Kings Cross.  The fact is that if I miss the 18.50 I have to wait until 19.30.  Not a long time in the great scheme of things but all the same an extra 40 minutes before I get home.

One of the problems facing Londoners is the unreliability of the tube.  In theory it only takes fifteen minutes door to door from leaving the office in Camden to stepping on the train at Kings Cross.  It is only two stops on the Northern line.  Reality is that when you get to the tube in Camden the sign tells you that there are delays, the trains are not stopping at Tufnel Park (for what it is worth)  and the electronic notice board informs waiting commuters that it is eight minutes until the next train (at rush hour) and you have only twenty two minutes until your train leaves Kings Cross.  Result: running up the stairs at Kings Cross.

Ah well.  Still there is a vibrancy about travelling to London.  The neon lights in Camden, the pubs, the late opening shops, the rush of people-like ants on their concrete runs all failing to walk anywhere in a straight line, waiting for gaps in the traffic to cross on “don’t walk”.  Corny huh?  They all look tired.  No one smiles on the tube.  It is also a young person’s game.  Where do all the older people go? Or is it my imagination? For somewhere that is supposed to be a happening city London certainly does its best to hide the smiles.  Possibly it takes a couple of drinks after work to bring it out in which case it is a city that seems to thrive only on stimulants.

Dear Mr Jones,
We went for a family game of mini golf this morning. For the princely sum of £12.80 all four of us kids got to play 18 holes. Dad said to the girl in the kiosk that you could almost have a full round of proper golf for that. The 18 holes comprised of two different 9 hole courses, each of which kept the ball after it was sunk on the 9th green. The two courses were the Greenwood Course and the Castle Hill course. There was nothing to distinguish the two really except that you could see all the balls in the hole on the Greenwoods course which was a good job really because I hit my ball into the lake on the second hole of the Castle Hill course and had to go back and fetch another from the Greenwoods 9th hole, if you can follow that.

The rain kept falling steadily and wetly and a number of the fairways were waterlogged. It didn’t dampen our spirits though. The final scores for the 18 holes were as follows:
Tom 89
Hannah 125
Joe 142
John 165
I think there was some creative accounting going on somewhere but I can’t quite lay my finger on it. Also the contestants were not always fully acquainted with the full rule-set of the Royal and Ancient.

Later Hannah and Dad cycled through the rain to the Country Club for lunch. Dad said that he needed windscreen wipers for his specs. Dad likes going off with one of his kids for a little treat every now and again. Whilst they were there they booked a squash court for 10.15 tomorrow immediately followed at 11am by an hour’s snooker. Fun for all the family.

I went off to the pool and was just coming back to get my football kit ready when I met the rest of the gang on their way with their costumes. Apparently they invented a new kind of sling for John made out of a plastic carrier bag. He thought it was pretty cool and spent a lot more time in the water than on earlier occasions.

Mum and Dad are off out for a curry tonight. They have booked a table at Rajinder Pradesh for 8pm. We will all be forced to stay in with me as a baby sitter. There is plenty of popcorn and tortilla chips to keep us quiet. It’s dark now as I write – about 6.25. It just goes to show we are nearly into winter. The clocks will soon be going back. Always seemingly a step function into winter I think. Incidentally we are also having curry tonight for tea and, tapping away here as I am the smells are wafting over from the kitchen, 4 feet away.

Well that’s it for now I think unless I can come up with some inspiration as the closing paragraphs take form. It’s more a question of weariness rather than writer’s block. I say paragraphs but it is more likely to be paragraph really, although I am not aware of any rule limiting the length of a paragraph and in practice could extend it as long as the mother of invention requires. That isn’t to say that the paragraph would be extended without good reason. I mean to say I’m not going to waffle on for the sake of it.

Bye for now.

Dear Geoff,
I hope you don’t mind me calling you by your Christian name. I realise that it is normally considered inappropriate for a pupil to call his teacher by their first name but I think that the medium of the letter is quite an intimate one and within the four corners of this piece of paper I feel able to open up a bit more than I might otherwise do in the confines of the classroom. It’s a funny thing. My Dad tells me that he used to call one of his old headmasters Mr Phillips until both Mr Phillips retired and Dad went to university at which time he changed from Mr Phillips to Pete. He’s dead now. Pete that is, not Dad. He was a golfer, as is Dad.

Anyway this is not developing the theme of the letter as it should be not that I have a particular theme in mind. There are no threads coming out of this train of thought; no revelations; no profundities. Two good words there: revelation and profundity. I think I prefer profundity but really have nothing against revelation. This in itself is not much of a revelation nor is it a profundity. If I were to tell you that I was a in love with you that would be a profound revelation. In fact it would be totally astounding and I also have to tell you that it is totally untrue. I thought I’d get that in quick to make sure that there are no misunderstandings here, Geoff. It’s all very well playing around with words but we have to draw the line at playing with fire.

Staying on the subject of fire there is a fireworks display on at the rugby club in Lincoln. It has been an excellent event for the last couple of years. Good value for families and safe to boot. I don’t use the word boot in the context of rugby footware here of course but I’m sure that you realised that. We are a fairly keen rugby family here. I play with the Under 13s at Lincoln RFC, my brother Joseph and John play with the Under 8s and Under 6s respectively. Dad is past it now and sticks to writing the rugby reports for the Echo and the Chronicle and he also maintains the club website.

Poor old John has had his first taste of rugby injury as he has broken his collarbone during an unfortunate period of rough play with Joe at the club yesterday. They weren’t officially playing – just messing about whilst Dad watched the first XV. John had scored and Joe followed through and fell on top of him. The poor lad was in some discomfort and a friend of ours Sue Protheroe, who is a doctor, made the diagnosis and despatched Dad and John off to the Accident and Emergency department at the Lincoln County Hospital. This is conveniently down the road from both our house and the rugby club. He is going to be out of action for a few weeks with his arm in a sling and is an illustration as to why properly organised mini rugby at his age is non-contact.

Dad tells me that Saturday afternoons at the A&E department was a fairy regular event when he was playing!

Later that evening we were scheduled to go to the 18th Bailgate Scout Group family quiz evening at the Bailgate Methodist Church. Dad said it wasn’t normally his cup of tea on a Saturday night but both he and Mum thought that we should support the event. It turned out that other people we spoke to at the quiz felt exactly the same. There is a scenario whereby everyone taking part in the quiz was only doing it because they felt that they should support the event. I’m sure that the organisers thought that they were doing the right thing. Nothwithstanding this we all had a good time.

I went on Callum Mackenzie’s team much to the annoyance of Dad who thought I should be supporting the family. The Davies and Mackenzie teams were level on points at the halfway mark. Then after the cup of tea Mum took John and Hannah home and the bombshell was dropped. The next round was on the Bible. Of course being complete heathens neither Dad, nor Joe’s Godfather Terry who had come along for the action thought they had much of a clue in matters Biblical (despite being well read!) and with Mum having gone home they had lost their subject matter expert. In the end they called home on Dad’s mobile and spoke with Hannah who relayed the questions to Mum whilst she was reading John a bedtime story.

We got nine out of twelve in that round. Not bad and even Joseph contributed with “frogs”, that being the second plague of Egypt. All those days at Sunday School had paid off at last. The Mackenzies beat us by half a point in the end. Not bad considering we had lost half our team at the break. Clare Mackenzie ended up giving Joseph and myself a lift home and Stuart went to the Morning Star with Dad and Terry. A reasonable finish to the evening they thought.

Off to bed on – more in due course

TTFN