Yesterday I failed to win the Sunday Times crossword clue competition, from a couple of weeks ago. The light was ACETYLENE. C2H2. While sipping my coffee in NEXT I idly mulled it over, but I misremembered the chemical formula as C2O2, which was remarkably dumb of me as the gas is a hydrocarbon, not an oxide. COCO, I thought. So I came up with:
It’s Coco Chanel, yet ’e drops H for Barney Rubble (9)
When I subsequently remembered it wasn’t COCO, but rather H – C = C – H (that should be a triple bond between the carbons, beyond the scope of my QWERTY keyboard) and that I was wasting my time in pursuit of a mirage, I tried again:
Bonding between the goal posts, couple of Charlies gas (9)
Didn’t win.
If J. Alfred Prufrock measured out his life in coffee spoons, I’m in danger of frittering mine away doing crosswords. I suppose it is one way of diverting one’s mind from the appalling international situation. The defence spending review is due out today, and we are to be gloomed up for the prospect of war. Not only must we pour money into munitions, we must all develop a warlike attitude. Mr Healey will sound like Henry V on the eve of Agincourt.
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility,
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger.
Stiffen the sinews, conjure up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favoured rage.
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect…
Presumably the gentler sex must emulate Lady Macbeth.
Come, you spirits,
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty.
Meanwhile I am like M. Manette, Lucy’s father, in A Tale of Two Cities, driven by the revolution, and PTSD, back to his cobbler’s last. And continuing on the anodyne theme of preoccupation with trivia, I burst in on a conversation this morning as I popped into the village store for my morning paper.
“What’s the point in tipping for a buffet?” My opinion was sought. “Would you give a tip at a buffet?”
I shrugged. “I suppose if the food was good.”
“Yes but you’re serving yourself!” Then my local shopkeeper had a recollection. “You’re at a function attended my 100 people. 50% of the adults eat 3 sausage rolls each, 75% of the children eat 2 sausage tolls each. How many sausage rolls are eaten?”
“Sounds like a non sequitur. A bit like Question 7.”
“Question 7?”
“A memoir by Richard Flanagan. Chatto and Windus 2024. Won the Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction.”
“What’s the question?”
“Posed by Anton Chekhov. I paraphrase. Or rather, embellish. A train leaves Aberdeen at 3 a.m. in order to reach Penzance at 11 p.m. As the train is about to depart Aberdeen, an order comes through that the train has to reach Penzance by 7 p.m. Who loves longer, a man or a woman?”
“That’s absurd.”
“Precisely. Back to the sausage rolls. I suppose it’s a piece of algebra. Leave it with me.”
“No. You’re on a game show. You’ve only got 30 seconds.”
“Give in.”
“150.”
“Pourquoi?”
“Suppose the hundred guests are all adult. 50 of them eat 3 sausage rolls, ergo, 150. Suppose they are all children. 75 of them eat 2 sausage rolls, ergo, 150. Say there are 60 adults and 40 children. That’s (30 x 3) + (30 x 2) = 150. See? It always works.”
“I’m not convinced. Suppose there are 90 adults and 10 children.”
“Well, that’s 135 + 15.”
“No, no. That means seven and a half children eat 2 sausage rolls each, which really is absurd. A half child isn’t capable of eating anything.”
“I think you’re taking the scenario too literally.”
And I was reminded of the arithmetical problems we were posed in primary school, when we were introduced to algebra by stealth. I suppose Chekhov’s Question 7 was a spoof, much like a subsequent piece by the Canadian humourist Stephen Leacock. You know the sort of thing. If it takes 3 men 4 days to dig a hole 20 feet deep, how long would it take 2 men to dig a hole 10 feet deep? The trick was to realise that you were merely manipulating numbers. It had nothing to do with men, or holes. If you started thinking about men and holes, you realised that the problem was much more complicated than it appeared. The third man, who has been made redundant; was he a toiler or a slacker? Are the soil substrata of the holes the same? Do the men take tea breaks? Have they organised? What does the union think? It was always assumed that the people adept at solving these problems were cleverer than those who sweated endlessly over them. But I don’t know. Weren’t the people who appreciated all the potential complications actually more insightful? And the people with the facility for simplicity were, in reality, simpletons.
The sausage rolls reminded me of Gauss, the mathematical prodigy. At school, his class was asked to sum all the integers between 1 and 100. Perhaps the teacher wanted a break, to read the newspaper. The class settled down to the laborious task. But, so the story goes, Gauss realised instantly that 1 + 100 = 101, 2 + 99 = 101, 3 + 98 = 101… 50 pairs = 50 x 101 = 5050. Just like that. I wonder if the teacher gave him a pat on the back, or two swipes of the Lochgelly, or its Teutonic equivalent, for the unpardonable breach of discipline that is precocity. It was such a minefield, education. Sometimes I would deliberately aim for mediocrity, just to keep my head under the parapet. I once wrote an essay on Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale which I think – I still have the C2 ink exercise jotter – was quite good. Mr George handed it back to me with a cool demeanour and dubious, pursed lips. “It’s very good, Campbell. Where did you get it?”
“I made it up, sir.”
“Hmm.”
jamescalumcampbell 