When I were a little lad at prep school in North Wales, our headmaster and maths teacher was an ancient old codger called Charlie Rhodes. He was immensely pleased with himself. He drove a Mark II Jaguar and took holidays in Spain; we would have three consecutive days of slide shows in the autumn term. The first time I saw 100+ mph on a speedo was when he drove four of us along the beach in his Jag. He proudly informed us that he had a nine inch penis, and we looked at each other in wonder, wondering what a penis was. He woke us from our dormitories and took us down to the beach at night to see Sputnik I flying over.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the school no longer exists. Old Charlie (he must have been at least 30) was probably unsuited to today’s PC world. He would swagger into the classroom and announce “I’m the best bloody maths teacher you’ll ever see!”

And you know what? He was right.

The reason, he cheerfully admitted, was because he was thick. As a child, he found maths incredibly hard. He just couldn’t work it out. Then, little by little, he began to see chinks of light. The mysteries unveiled themselves. And because he had struggled with the difficulties, so he understood the way to the answers. There was no intuitive understanding, no revelation, no flash of realisation. Light dawned slowly. He took us down the same path. We all learned.

By the age of 11, we were doing Maths ‘O’ Levels. By 12, we were doing differential calculus, quadratic equations and ‘A’ levels. Not sitting the actual exams of course, the education board wouldn’t allow it, but we did the papers with ease.

I was finally allowed to sit my Maths ‘O’ level and my Advanced Maths ‘O/A’ level the term before I went to my public school. I passed both with top marks, Grade 1. They were a doddle.

So I arrived at Haileybury & Imperial Service College with two O-levels under my belt. “Well, you’re only thirteen,” they reasoned, “so we can’t have you doing A-levels with 17 year olds. So you won’t be taking maths.”

End of that part of the story. I haven’t had a maths lesson since then. And now I have to take my socks off if I want to count up to twenty. What a stupid, unimaginative, inflexible school Haileybury was.

I write this on the 47th anniversary of the day at Haileybury & ISC that I was beaten by the Master, beaten by my Housemaster, then handed over to 47 gathered and slathering housemates with the injunction “Headley has Done Wrong. He has already been sufficiently punished by the Master and Myself.” And the door was discreetly shut.

When I came to, I was informed that I was to be gated for the rest of the term, then gated for the whole of the summer term, in which I was to take my ‘O’ levels, and then at the end of the summer I was to be expelled in disgrace.

The Saturday night film in Big School was “Kind Hearts and Coronets.” Naturally, I was forbidden to go. To this day I have never seen the film.

Being gated, I would obviously have no distractions, so I was put down to sit fourteen ‘O’ levels, which with the two I already had would have given me sixteen. 16 ‘O’ levels. Many more than the average Haileyburian’s 5 ‘O’s. Rather more than the Oxbridge entry level 10 ‘O’s and 3 ‘A’s. Naturally my father was invited to pay the plump fee per exam.

I won’t embarrass myself further by revealing the results. But two years later I was in a rock ‘n’ roll band on the King’s Road in Chelsea at the heart of the Swinging Sixties. There could not have been a greater differential of contentment.

Why am I writing this? I intended to write a note about pixels and dots per inch. I’ll now have to write that on the fotoLibra Pro Blog. And when I’ve done it I’ll post a link to it from here, so you can see the tenuous connection.

I can never forget what I did, and what happened to me as a result, on March 3rd.

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