Chicken, Dreamies and Lickelix - the Excellent Cats form a disorderly queue

[TheBroonOneAndTheWhiteOne]

..... behind Gizmo, of course.

Calling all cats! Come and get some chicken.

I've read before that people who are good at maths are also good at music. I unfortunately am the exception to this rule. I have a degree in maths and economics, but despite years of piano lessons I only just managed to scrape through the first three grades before my parents agreed I could give up.

I’m tone deaf apparently, though I sing at home sometimes & Kitty puts up with it. My maths skills are mainly limited to statistics & algebra nowadays, if working out formulae on Excel counts as algebra?

I actually did do history and physics but I was crap at the physics so I dropped it after the AS level. Finished history and English (lit and lang).

I've also heard that maths and music go well together and they both tend to suit people with a certain way of thinking/learning. I have no natural talent in either so am impressed with people like your DS, @Pianoaholic!

I loved maths at school but decided not to take it for A-Level as I found it too easy and wanted something more challenging. I picked essay based subjects instead (English Lit, French, and Classical Civilisation) as I found them harder. Stupid child!

I then picked up a module of Hellenistic Greek at uni. Absolutely useless for anything except studying the New Testament in (one of?) its original languages.

I did English, French & Latin, I was rotten at the sciences.

My niece & nephew are very into them, but SIL is a doctor so they clearly take after her side of the family.

I am very thankful that he is good at maths and never needed any help with the homework!
I remember really struggling at school. Both my parents were clueless about maths and my teacher in yr11 basically gave out the textbooks and made us work through them. He never actually did any teaching. I bought WH smiths revision cards and that was what got me through the exam!
DS and English though....he never saw the point in it!!

My first GCSE Maths teacher was bloody awful. He thought that the best way to deal with people who didn’t understand first time was to shout at them.

I’m pretty sure I only passed because he was in a car accident early in year 11 & the Head took over our class.

My autistic 10yo is a gifted mathematician (according to his teachers, not just me being biased). He loves to bamboozle people with his knowledge of the 64 times table, amongst other things. He started piano lessons a few months ago and his teacher is very excited by how quickly he picks things up. I think it's a lot to do with how your brain picks up on patterns.

Not Greek as in the language, but the literature translated into English. Homer (of course, Odyssey in my year), Plato's Life of Socrates, Medea (Euripides), and the intensely boring Xenophon's Persian Expedition. Luckily I knew that long paper would only be 2 from 4 choices (1 from each book), and the short answers would be any 4 from 8 (2 from each book available) so I could avoid the Xenophon completely in the exams. As I said I'd been brought up on Classical literature, with my parents using them for bed time stories, so I was pretty familiar with the Homer & the Euripides anyway.

Sounds like education has become a LOT more flexible than in my day. Our choices were very much divided into Arts & Sciences (they didn't call it STEM back in the 70's), and timetables were based around the assumption that you would be doing one or the other (that may have been a Grammar school thing though?). But I can see where music & maths go well together as it's a brain type thing rather than a subject thing, like maths & languages. And biology and chemistry paired with maths doesn't really match when you think about it. Physics & maths though... Perfect together IMO!

The divisions also seemed a bit arbitrary as well. I would have considered geography as a science subject, but at my school it was timetabled with arts for some weird reason.

Yes, it is very flexible now. I suppose the issue with that is that it could lead to some odd mixes of subjects if someone doesn't have a clear idea of what they want to do.
Music technology is a newer subject, but DS loves fiddling around on the computer (using a program called Logic) to compose with, so he is looking forward to studying that.

I did English Language, English Lit, French and Music at A level.

I was very good at Maths and Latin, too.

My dad read us books that he enjoyed for our bedtime stories - so we got Three Men in a Boat and The Wind in the Willows.

Your dad had fantastic taste!

My Dad used to read me Bible Stories by David Kossoff. I have no idea why, as we weren't religious and nor was his family. I loved them though as they were written in such a fun way. Dad and I had a very difficult relationship for years, but that has always been a favourite and comforting memory.

I hope it was the original Wind in the Willows with the Piper at the Gates of Dawn, not the fake one about Toad and his motorcar escapades @TheBroonOneAndTheWhiteOne

That's really interesting. As someone who is decent rather than gifted at maths I really love patterns. I'm terrible at music though. I wonder if being good at patterns and tone deaf are two separate things and you need both to be good at music.

Are you saying there’s a Wind in the Willows without The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, @Pudmyboy?

Of course.
I loved The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.

It was one of my favourite chapters.

Dad read the whole book to us. We loved Three Men in a Boat though. I was only saying to DS1 yesterday that we should make plans "in case of getting upset" which was what Harris was always saying. He said it several times, when the Three Men were deciding what to take on their epic trip.
🤣

And dad progressed to Three Men on the Bummel.

I'm shocked.

Hmmmm, my boy definitely can't sing! But he's picking up the piano well. Can you be tone deaf and play the piano? I haven't a clue.

I would say that piano is certainly a better instrument if you're tone deaf than say, a stringed instrument where you have to be very aware of tuning!
I have had pupils who are good players but when it comes to Aural tests where they have to sing melodies back, they're not good at it.

I think so, yes.
You don't have to pitch a note unless you're singing. The piano conveniently has all the notes there.
I'm a singer and I've got perfect pitch, but it can be a curse. I can tell if a piano is even very slightly out of tune and it's very hard for me to listen to it.

But @coastergirl it sounds like your son is doing really well.

He is, thank you. Maths will always be his main love though. In free time at school he grabs a piece of scrap paper and spends the time multiplying numbers into the quadrillions and beyond. I didn't even know that was a thing.

Back to cats, Walter brought in a mouse tonight. WALTER! I managed to release it and now have both cats on houselock. Funnily enough, the wanderer (Benny) is happily settled on the sofa. Walter is yowling at the door and I'm resolutely ignoring him.

Back to cats, Walter brought in a mouse tonight. WALTER! I managed to release it and now have both cats on houselock.

Well done, Walter! He doesn't do that very often.

Frank decided to sample my leftovers earlier. Apparently he likes Brussel sprouts and pasta.

Thank goodness! He used to when he was much younger. I do wish my boys wouldn't hunt!