If a Tree Falls in your Back Garden....

....and nobody is looking, does it make a sound?

Apparently the answer is yes, about which more here.

Greetings, Internet nomads,

It may not have escaped the notice of those of you living in the United Kingdom that it's been a bit - well - windy over the last few days. I like to think of myself as the observant type, so it wasn't too much trouble to take note of the somewhat violent weather conditions this week and wonder if it would have any effect on me.

At about midday today, my dad was apparently sitting in his study, safely locked away from the howling gale outside, when he heard a mysterious creaking sound. Not too perturbed by it, he was surprised to look up a few minutes later and discover that the tree in our back garden had fallen over on top of the shed, as well as on top of another oak tree in the garden backing onto ours. Understandably he was a little surprised at this, and after ringing my mother, the insurance company and a tree surgeon, he went off to the people in whose garden our tree had carelessly landed to apologise. Not that it was his fault, of course - but it seemed to be the polite thing to do.

He returned home about half an hour later and went back to work in the study. By the time the tree surgeon arrived, however - at about half past one - the job was twice as big as he had been expecting. Unseen by my dad, another tree had fallen over from our garden into somebody else's. Once again, he had heard the noise of the tree falling over, but put it down to the tree that had already fallen finally crushing its way through the oak tree on which it had landed. Instead of this, we now have a fence broken in two places, two fallen trees in our garden and a big hole where the first tree was uprooted. "Never mind," my mum apparently said when she heard the news, "we've got room for that pond we've always wanted now!"

I didn't know about the tree incidents when I was sat in my Maths exam this afternoon, struggling over the first question: "If the inverse sine of x is equal to the cosecant of x multiplied by the square root of seventy-seven, find the exact value of x, where x is a real number between zero and pi." Or something equally horrendous.

I wish back to the good old days of GCSE Mathematics: "If Balthazar has 12 sweets and Jane has 47, by what percentage is the teacher who has given out the sweets intrinsically racist?" At least you could understand what those questions were asking you, even if the answer occasionally alluded you. Not only that, but you got to smile at the characters with silly names like "Balthazar."

One thing that GCSEs and A Levels have in common, though, is the hilariously useful "Advice to Candidates" printed in stern-looking lettering on the front of the exam paper. It's not too difficult to imagine some anal-retentive semi-retired civil servant with a monocle and a wooden leg dictating these instructions to his overworked, multi-challenged assistant of questionable species: "Yes, yes ... put that in bold .... No, bold. Like this. That's better. Now, how about a numbered list? No, no, you're right .... that would be stupid."

For your entertainment, I quote a list of advice I was given for this maths paper, which may have been revised slightly for comic value. Or I could have made the whole thing up. The point is, the "Advice to Candidates" is thoroughly stupid and deserves satirising on this blog:

ADVICE TO CANDIDATES:

1. Answer all questions in blue or black ballpoint pen, except for questions stating "use pencil for this question" or "all colours accepted, except for yellow or white." Candidates are advised not to attempt any question asking "Cap'n, art thou sleepin' thar below?"
2. Candidates are strongly advised not to attempt to write on both sides of the paper at once.
3. Extra credit will be given to candidates who randomly write parts of their answers in bold. Italics not accepted.
4. This paper will be marked by bored undergraduate Market Gardening students with nothing better to do. Show all working, preferably alongside a recipe for a delicious cheesecake.
5. Candidates who do not write their full name, candidate number and centre number on the front of this exam paper will have humorous names assigned to them by exam board staff, such as "Mike Hunt" or "Sue Flay."

That about does it for tonight. But before I go, I'll leave you with the amusing (but rather vulgar) limerick that was engraved on my desk in the exam - just for your entertainment:

There was once a young mouse called Keith,
Who circumcised boys with his teeth,
He didn't do it for leisure,
Nor sexual pleasure,
But to get to the cheese underneath!

Revolutionary and thoroughly treeless regards,

Red Andy