I always try very hard not to make mistakes when writing these blogs.
I create the post in advance, come back to it later, look for errors, try to improve them…
However hard I try, it seems that small mistakes still get through. I find this depressing. If I spot even a small mistake in an old post I will correct it
I am not a big fan of any sport, but over the years, I have watched some formula 1 motor racing. To be quite honest, it’s a great way of being sent to sleep on a Sunday afternoon.
I remember the good days of Senna, Prost, Mansell, Piquet, Hunt, Hill and others.
When Michael Schumacher was driving, he was so good he won pretty much everything. Commentators and others said it was all a bit boring, predictable. Now Lewis Hamilton wins everything (well almost, he has had some penalties), but no-one says it’s boring, predictable, even though it is. I wonder why?
Sometimes things do happen to make it interesting, but usually it goes:
I’m not trying to say that Hamilton does not deserve to win, or is not good. Just that generally, it can be dull stuff. Even the Sky commentators say that.
It struck me the other day that it must be exactly 50 years since I did my O Levels, age 16.
It’s so long ago I am not sure I remember what I did. Let me think: French, German, English Language and Literature, Geography, History, Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry. That makes nine, which sounds correct. I passed them all. I tell you that not to boast, and I certainly only scraped History which has always seemed a pointless thing to me, but to highlight that, in those days, we all did ‘traditional’ subjects. No Japanese, DT, Philosophy, Domestic Science. I think the grades were numbers. I am pretty sure my only ‘1’ was Maths, but there would be many threes. Middling. I probably have my certificate somewhere.
I was always reasonable at Maths. We didn’t have calculators, nor slide rules, but we did have books of log tables and trigonometric functions. I imagine that of all those subjects, it would be the only one I could tackle sensibly now.
Coursework was just not a thing. I have a vague recollection that multiple choice exams were just coming in.
We did something called the General Paper. And a University Entrance Test in English. And for my A Levels, Maths, Physics and Chemistry.
In the area where I live in north London there used to be several chain off licences/wine shops.
Nicolas is a French chain that always had a good selection of wines and spirits. It closed, and was taken over by Oddbins, even though there was another Oddbins shop, a huge converted garage, just a few hundred yards away.
Actually, the large shop was really great. The selection was enormous, the staff were helpful and there was even a place to sit and sample wines. They always got my business, and it’s a sign of a good shop if, every time you go in, you find something interesting.
Well, the small shop closed. Last time I visited the larger shop, the shelves were empty. I went past recently, and they were removing what stock was left.
So now, if you want wine, you go to a small specialist shop, which is fine, or a supermarket. I think Majestic is still on the go, but is many miles away.
I used to enjoy Maths. At school, it was my favourite subject. I was not the greatest at it, but it made sense to me.
Partly, i suppose, I got it from my dad, who had that kind of mind and was good with numbers. I had some great teachers. But mainly, it was logical, more so than History, for example, which was all about learning unrelated facts, something I can never do. I mean, look at the dates of Kings and Queens of England and tell me the logic behind it. None, of course. Chemistry was similar. Possibly there was some kind of logical system in naming organic and inorganic compounds, but it was never explained to me.
We didn’t have calculators in my day. We used books of tables, and great fun it was. You really understood sines and cosines, and could do logarithms like nobody’s business.