MATHS HOMEWORK

Take a look at an F. What is in an F? It comes after E in the alphabet; which reminds me of an experiment I conducted as a boy. My boyhood book back at seven performed at least four scientific functions: it encrypted a node to do with Gravity, stored the idea of the net in writing in the attic to give it a chance to grow all around the world, conducted an experiment into the maths of the new colour and separated the object ‘pollen’ from its name.

To give you a brief overview, and without wishing to disturb the original, the encrypted node in my boyhood book is that if the gravity between the earth and the moon is instant and therefore enough to break light speed, a clock is still only as fast as a cheetah. That’s why one book has

2

JOHN TUCKER

ENGLISH

E

on the front of it and why the next book along has

ENGLISH

JOHN TUCKER

HARECROFT

1

on the front of it.

The split was not even in the end, like one was an ‘on’ and one an ‘off’ function… it was delightfully asymmetrical, this mathematical complication. And when I had had the vision of the internet and when we had dealt with Einstein’s E, a + sign was put in for the ‘f’ of ‘scarf’ in the line:

“I have a scar+ that is red and black.”

Then I wrote a piece called ‘Good And Evil’ where “I woke up at 1 o’ clock,” in other words where the time 1 o’ clock and the first person pronoun ‘I’ were being contrasted.

The separation of the books into part two and part one was the entry for the number two as I counted up. For the number three we find in my maths book a piece – dated and in chronological sequence with the rest of the writing - going:

Colour circles red. How many circles?

Colour triangles blue. How many squares?

Colour oblongs orange. How many triangles?

So it is that I left it a case of mere counting, the maths of the new colour as a cellular mark, after seemingly calibrating an algorithm that sublimates numbers and letters on a cellular level. To read it all you’d only need to go and get a copy of The Sunset Child. People have said the best one in it is called ‘My Dad.’

When I see beer it reminds me of my dad when he is drunk and when I see a police man it reminds me of the time my dad lost his drivers license. When I see shoes it reminds me of my dad's smelly feet. My dad is the sort of person who tells you not to put your elbows on the table when he does it himself and my dad tells me not to ride my bike on the garden flowers when once he reversed the car on them. My dad helps me with my prep and most of the time I get it wrong. Sometimes my dad acts as he is three years old but he is really forty-one. When I say “I should play soccer for the England team” he just says “some chance.”

I would say all my school work was part of the same algorithm: going to a posh school we learned about equations, systems, strange attractors at a young age. My maths exercise books are actually quite beautiful, when you look back knowing what was written at 7.

For example, there is an exercise about the surface area of objects: you have to go through a series of shapes and ascertain:

1. area of whole shape

2: area of unshaded part

3: area of shaded part.

I am sure that could be correlated back to the previous work, for example.

When I published The Sunset Child containing what I had left of the original seven year old book – seven and beyond shall we say – I missed out on the opportunity to include further examples of maths from my maths book. Take for example the two following instances…

EQUATIONS

(1) 3 a + 4 = 2 a + 8

(2) 4 b + 4 = 1 b + 7

(3) 5 a + 3 = 2 a + 12

(4) 5 b + 1 = 3 b + 11

(5) 7 c + 3 = 3 c + 31

(6) 7 y + 1 = 3 y + 25

(7) 11 c + 9 = 8 c + 24

(8) 7 b + 12 = 1 b + 24

(9) 3 t + 5 = 2 t + 12

(10) 5 b + 10 = 2 b + 19

SYSTEMS 11TH MAY

1. 211

2112 ATTRACTOR

2122

1132

211213

312213

212223

114213

31121314

41122314

31221324

__________

21322314

21322314

I think I was quite good at maths but at some stage I would’ve got something wrong. There are several examples of schoolboy errors in my schoolboy book of course. What does it mean when in these circumstances, you get something wrong even as a boyhood mathematician?

At 11 after making some Naturalistic Observations, I redefined the meaning of the words “I’m fine.” Even though the mark didn’t turn out to be the new colour in the end, it still seems an image as big as Oedipus taking out his eyes.

No, it didn’t turn out to be the new colour in the end; nor was it exactly red and black but it was “plush.” So we need to discuss the limitations of the maths for the new colour as a cellular mark; and here my brother James puts it well: if you’re not black it isn’t Universal so might turn out red. My brother Dr. Robert – who was included in the algorithm at 5 – also speaks wisely – it would appear that the maths of the new colour as a cellular mark is private. Still it shows what can be done, shows that the difference between a + sign and an F is enough to slightly alter the course of evolution.

Other than that, and a handful of other things like writing The Road To Heaven by Noj And The Mob, or falsifying the Nirvana barcode, my maths is not the best. I might as well add that the lightning bolt is part of the God Simulation!

It remains to be seen what would happen if some young sprog came by himself to write:

“I have a scar+ that is the new colour.”

It may be that no mark would be left at all.

More to the point, such early boyhood writings might be the reason why I later felt I had found my voice when I wrote a poem called ‘Instant Travel.’ As if I. T. might stand for Instant Travel too. As if Instant Travel is the other side of the same coin from I. T. It was getting into Warwick University that I wrote the poem – and they don’t send them back so I never saw it again. But I remember thinking I had found my voice and even though I was in the dark about my boyhood book, because it was locked in the attic for long storage, I think I was right that I had found my voice.

So it is that we may ask if the encrypted node in the boyhood book is true; and these days you only need watch a Youtube video to know that Gravity has no motion so therefore cannot be said to break light-speed; to know that only things with no mass can travel at the speed of light.

Still the tail end of the node, that a clock is only as fast as a cheetah, feels right. So it is that we may find ourselves asking if the internet breaks the speed of light. Not being a computer scientist I do not know the answer to that one, alas.