Mary goes out to see her neighbour wearing some leggings

Where are you going this morning, Mary? enquired her best friend Annie.

I’m going to take “The mathematical l experience” to Jane’s house.

How can you take an experience round someone’s house?

Well all your experiences have made you into the person that you are and so they’re always with you wherever you may go. But this one is actually a book. I think Jane’s daughter will enjoy it.

Well it would be no good to me, said Annie unless someone like E Nesbitt rewrote it for children the way she did Shakespeare’s Plays.

I think  E Nesbit  is dead but it would be wonderful if someone could do that.

Now what shall I wear ? 

Mary donned a pair of six trousers but there seemed very tight .

Have I put weight on, she murmured?

No those are leggings, they must be winter leggings. You can’t go outside in those.

Why not?

They show that your knee has collapsed which is not a British site and also there may be too clinging around your female organs.

I whar the difference is between being clinging and too clinging?

It needs the expert eye  of a woman who loves clothes.

Suppose I wear a very long jumper over the top Mary replied plaintively.

Well lt won’t hide your knee but then who is going to look at you now?

Only a very old partially sighted man I suppose Mary replied feverishly

Maybe a horrible neighbour will notice and pass a remark

Mary told her we can’t live our lives trying to escape the rude remarks of horrible neighbours. In any case it’s all in our paranoid imaginations. Everyone is through caught up in their own thoughts to notice these details. Anyway stop talking I’m getting tired.

That’s the trouble with being old Annie replied. Nearly everything is too tiring whether it’s talking getting dressed or washed. Or especially vacuuming the house and garden

Not to mention the pavement

Mary gently picked up the mathematicak experience from the table in the hall

She went outside and across the road to where her neighbors Jane lived.

Hello Jane. I have brought a book for Rosa.

Jane looked at the book and said that’s very kind of Mary but Rosa has decided to change to social work.

That’s a big leap from mathematics said Mary randomly

Well Rosa is concerned at the state of the world and she was trying to escape by going into the world of mathematics but unfortunately it didn’t work for mainly because she’s never been very good at mathematics but also it seems inhuma spend all day with numbers and symbols.

So now she wants to help people who are suffering as they always on her mind anyway.

Wow said Mary she must be a very thoughtful intelligent girl with a very kind heart

Come in said Jane and Mary went in followed by Emile her little cat

Hello Rosa she cried I brought your book but your mother says you are no longer doing mathematics. Would you like me to get you something by Richard Hoggart ?

I’d love to read The uses of literacy  the teenager replied sumnily

I’m sure I can get one on eBay Mary told her ignorantly; that’s where I got this mathematical experience book.

You can take this anyway because you might even keep  mathematics as a hobby.

Thank you very much Rosa re people it may help me to understand why otherwise say sane people go to university to study mathematics.

Archimedes didn’t go to university, said Emile the cat. Then nearly everything that’s been invented was not invented in a university and maybe that’s the problem of our time. By the way how did you teach your cat to talk?

We didn’t teach him to talk and the vet says it’s probably genetic

One of his ancestors must have been able to speak English and he has inherited it although listening to the conversations between me and my husband Stan might have helped him.

Yes it did the cat informs them and I miss Stan very much.

And so do all of us