A NOTE ON MY FIRST NUMBER REVISITED

The train of my thought is the 19. 08, in one ear and out the other. We get on board, us passengers and find our seats. The train gets going, slowly. I am by the window, and see the scenery flowing past. I am reading a good book. It’s something I did with my dad as a seven year old.

The train gets chugging along, wreckety, wreckety wreck.

The encrypted node in the boyhood work, meanwhile, was that if the Gravity between earth and moon is instant and therefore enough to break Light-speed a clock is still only as fast as a cheetah.

I see now that it was possibly adults about me who, for the sake of long storage, when the idea of the net needed storing in writing in the attic, got me to begin encrypting that node with a text called

2

JOHN TUCKER

ENGLISH

E

and to continue with a second text called

ENGLISH

JOHN TUCKER

HARECROFT

1

“but then again who knows.”

The split was not even but asymmetrical like one was on and one was off. It was like spotting the flaw in Einstein. It was like saying if you write Einstein backwards it implies the breaking of light speed. It was even like saying even if we invent a time machine that can equal light speed we can only go back in time because the future hasn’t happened yet.

Then the train slows down, its metal parts expanding and contracting, its wreckety wreckety wreck diminishing. We arrive at a station on the voyage!

At some point, after the Einsteinian bit, a + sign was put in for the F of ‘scarf’ in the line

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

Then there was a discussion of the struggle between ‘Good and Evil’ in a piece where

“I woke up at 1 o. clock.”

In other words the first person pronoun and the time 1 o’clock were being contrasted.

At the station on the voyage some people get on some disembark. The train gets chugging along again and the conductor comes down the aisle to spot new people whom he can ask to show their tickets.

It is not clear if the splitting of the two books happened next, for the number 2 in the sequence, but I think so. In terms of the number three, there was also my maths book where in among the numbers you find a three line poem going

Colour circles red. How many circles?

Colour triangles blue. How many squares?

Colour oblongs orange. How many triangles?

To read it all you’d only need to go and get a copy of what by now I know helped invent the net but which at the time of publication I did not know helped invent the net. It’s called The Sunset Child. People have said the best one in it is called ‘My Dad.’

Counting continued, 4, 5, 6, 7.

4 was my age when I crashed my bike in Sweden. That’s where mum and I used to live when I was a baby. We had a little apartment; and I used to sleep outside in my pram even when it was winter!

5 was my second brother Dr. Robert’s age when I wrote – a poem about my 5 year old brother.

6 was a story, where I drank some lemonade and shrank until I was 6 inches tall.

7 was a time on my digital watch inside the story in question.

I think 7 was as far as it went. That was my age at the time I began the writing. There were in-between bits, that augmented and enhanced what was going on in terms of numbers.

Now we approach our final destination. Please leave the train. All passengers must disembark here at this station stop.

The whole of my early mathematics was based on the above situation, by which I mean school work. At some point you might make a mistake! Some of the bits and pieces look remarkably beautiful in the context. For example

1. Area of whole shape = 80 CM squared

Area of unshaded part = 4 CM squared

Area of shaded part = 76 CM squared

2. Area of whole shape = 72 CM squared

Area of unshaded part = 8 CM squared

Area of shaded part = 64 CM squared

At the age of 11 after having encountered both the juggernaut and a literal monster without knowing what the Hell was going on, I received the thin stripe up the underside and redefined what it means to say “I’m fine.”

It didn’t turn out to be the new colour in the end.

At the train station there are other trains waiting to depart. There are a lot of people filing out through the turnstiles out onto the street. I follow them, putting my ticket through the machine.

All this should’ve been what I wrote about in GCSE maths but I couldn’t because the book was locked in the attic for Long Storage. During the GCSE maths exam I was bleeding. In the morning, before school, I picked up my bassplayer’s bass which for some reason I had; and dad said “no, it sends the wrong message for the morning of your GCSE maths exam. You’re not taking it to school.” He confiscated it off me and locked himself in the house, and I banged on the front door saying “give me back my bass,” and my hand went through the glass. I turned up to the maths exam dripping blood. If only I had used it as ink and written the maths of the new colour as a cellular mark.

I don’t wish to put a dampener on things but when I first asked A. I. whether my attempt at the maths of the new colour could be used to find a cure or vaccine for cancer it thought about it a bit and said the new colour becomes a metaphor for the cure. Having been surrounding by friendly voices I gather I have already said this elsewhere.