Mathematical daisies

Mathematical daisies.

I am having a bad week.  This is not on account of a vicious encounter with plantar fasciitis, and not entirely to be blamed on the spirit of doom and gloom that pervades every department of every university in the land, though it is not unrelated to work.  It does indeed have a great deal to do with work, but to understand the subtleties of present evil temper, something must be understood about the nature of mathematical research.

Few people outside of mathematics have any very accurate idea of what mathematical research entails.  I've always rather wanted to have a secondary school work experience kid posted to tail me in my days activities.  I would like to observe him or her observing me.  What would she make of the long hours staring at a blank blackboard?  The corridors in our shiny new department have thoughtfully been made circular, presenting the pacing mathematician no obstruction and no need to reverse direction.  If I please, I can be counter-clockwise all day (actually, I prefer clockwise).  I believe they design homes for the demented on the same plan. Would she follow me loyally through the day as I pace out the circumference, many times, as if to multiple check its measure?

What would she make of the hours of feverish excitement, when she is pressed into service as listener, who understands nothing, not that that would reduce the effectiveness of her role, of sympathetic ear that doubts nothing of what it hears.  The celebratory mug of tea, with extra chocolate biscuits, when the conclusion has been reached that the last link in the chain of logic holds firm, that the theorem which depended on the proposition which depended on the lemma is intact, proven beyond reasonable doubt (subject to re-checking the calculations of course).  A fairy pink paints the sky of the late afternoon winter sun, surely there must be a god in his heaven as all is right with the world.  That last lemma effects a deification: god-like I see the shape of the mathematical universe spread out below me as from satellite height, each bend and ripple according to the laws which I have just demonstrated on paper.  I am not totally devoid of earthly ambitions too, I must acknowledge.  The clarity of my vision and the elegance of my arguments, the wit of my prose will certainly win me the honours that have been so curiously lacking in my career.  I will accept them, though tardy, with gracious magnanimity.

What would she make of the following morning, when, shaking the rain off my coat, I come in, late, moody, uncommunicative.  These days come with the predictability of Singaporian thunderstorms; you don't know when, you don't know where, you just know for sure it's going to happen.  The hapless work experience student must imagine me crossed in love, so evil is my temper.  It is not an inapt metaphor; we understand what we see from the point where we are at; we go further, the view changes, understanding grows, sometimes bringing delight, sometimes distress. We are no more able to guess what tomorrow's understanding will bring than sweethearts are able to see tomorrow's heartache on the horizon.  He loves me, he loves me not, it's true, it's false it's true.  How many petals does a daisy have?

But today's vile spirits arise from a source beyond the spectrum of true or false.   The pernicious daisy representing the elegant theory I have laboured long to describe possesses yet another petal that has no parallel in the annals of the affairs of the heart: a deformed brown and shrunken petal labelled Useless.  The whole of the structure is built upon a dream, an M.C. Esheresque contradiction in spite of the local elegance, and the dream itself without point or conclusion, the So What? of judgement without reply beyond the query's own echo.

The wise work experience student would best model her behaviour on that of the hound, who observes with one raised eyebrow and then quietly slinks off to a distant room to wait until the atmosphere has cleared. The student should perhaps consider seriously a career in the City.  Perhaps the hound does.

Today, banned even from venting my temper on my trainers by the pernicious PF, I can only scowl in stationary silence.  But this is our life.  I'll be back at it tomorrow, sifting through the shards of my elegant but shattered structures, trying again and again, most patient of suitors, to win the way to the heart of the matter.  I've done this all my adult life.  I can't see me stopping now, but shall persevere until the mathematical daisy bald of petals proclaims my day is done.

I've known runners like us.  From this perspective, the training schedule stretches invitingly before me.  Plantar fasciitis is but a minor complication which will melt away like last year's snows.  The long runs marked in pencil on the calendar I imagine to be as good as run. Shedding the extra weight is easy - just exercise restraint.  It's as good as done. So my grand theory looked in its youthful stages, the lemmas obviously true just needing careful statement, the whole standing up clear, bright, evident, and above all, important.  Just waiting for the passage of weeks to proclaim it so.  And then it fails.

But we're runners.  Put yesterday's defeat in the past, and find the trainers.  Begin again.  It's what we do.

Training today? No way. Foot not right.

Eye to eye with my running partner.

Alright.  I was an hour or so late.  She can't entirely blamed for indulging in a mild revenge.  We have also only been running partners for a month or so.  She hardly knows me well, I must allow that she might well have felt anxious.  Nonetheless, I was not in a mood to cope with petty vengeance.  The rights and the wrongs of the occasion escaped my notice. This was an offence I did not intend to overlook.

I eyed her coldly and deliberately. Neither of us spoke.  It may have had something to do with her mouth being full at the time - of my hands, as it happens, along with the as yet unidentified hostage.  I was going to win this battle.  I had to win this battle.  She looked directly back at me, not a twitch of remorse, not a second thought in her mind, but that my tardiness fully justified her pique, that I had earned the consequences and must pay the price.  I looked directly at her, tight lipped, and said nothing. I could surely outlast her, couldn't I?

Ok, I didn't. How long it would have gone on I don't know, but I have to acknowledge her the winner.  In the end, after perhaps five minutes, I resorted to force majeur, and let it be known that I was not pleased.  There were harsh words (on my part). And then I felt bad.  The disputed property? An unmatched pair of socks.  Did a pair of socks matter so very much? And holes - as long as they don't occur where toes might peep through, or where a heel might rub, do they matter so very much?  (And they weren't my socks anyway!)

It was a shabby way to reward a near ideal mate.  She lets me choose the route, whether we walk or whether we run, whether we go fast or slow.  She has been ever willing to head out the door, neither rain nor cold diminishing her enthusiasm.  And I quibble at a pair of socks?  That are not even mine?

We have made up.  There have been hugs and kisses both ways.  I have played toss, and she has played fetch, and I have even stooped to her favourite game of tug of war.  Lumps of cheese have fallen from the table, and there may have been more of interesting bits in her dinner than is normally included the ration.  She is now having a carefree woof outside, and I shall not chide her.

She won indeed, and I, chastened, but in possession of a slightly moist un-pair of socks, have received her unqualified forgiveness.  I have also forgotten what I was cross about.  It can't have mattered, no more than an un-pair of socks at any rate.  We have, in past engagements disputed more coveted items: a hat, a sports bra (which stood up remarkably well to the teeth and the rough and tumble), two rather expensive pairs of eyeglasses (which did not), and a five pound note.  But even these were but a small change to pay for the companionship beyond price of partners in training.

Today: another 40 minute run with the beast, the last until after the weekend, and then only if she comes back to lodge with us again.  I have a fear that after a weekend back at her real home, her people may not wish to be parted from her.

Meditations on a double bass

The thing to remember about a double bass is that it is big.  We had one in residence one summer, for a fortnight.  Its case lay in a vagabond way over the armchair in the front room, while the body stretched like a somnolent teenager occupying the whole of the settee.  Every time I entered the room I half expected to find a selection of empty beer cans on the floor beside it.  Watching television became impossible; I could hear it snorting its disapproval at my choice of entertainment.

I am reminded of this fact (that a double bass is big) every time I resume work on the instrument.  Work began 18 months ago, and I am slightly vain about its progress.  The body is now complete, and it is safely resting on high (of course, the best place to store a double bass body is on a high shelf requiring one to stand on a high stool to get it up there) awaiting the union with neck and fingerboard.  The scroll and pegbox are very nearly complete.  The fingerboard, nearly a metre of it, is in place, and the task of Tuesday was to ready the neck for joining to the body.

Did I say a that a double bass is big?  So, proportionately is the neck and fingerboard.  I can look over at other makers on other benches doing the corresponding job for a violin, or even a cello.  It seems but the work of an hour to flatten the bits of the neck root that need flattening. No need to finish the neck; that can all be done after neck and body are one.  Things are different with a double bass.

I look at my lump.  There are three hours of gouging to remove excess wood before final flattening with a plane can even begin.  But the time is not the issue here, it is how to hold so large a beast.  Gouging is a whole body experience, legs arms braced, the gouge itself merely held by the hands, but driven through the wood with body and soul propelling it. The minimal vices that suffice for the smaller instruments are not really up to securing this lump immobile while I attack it.  Even the bench need be firmly anchored to the spot.

I should not complain of the neck and fingerboard being unwieldy.  For a start, it was worse.  The neck arrived in the shape of a young railway sleeper.  Lifting it was done only after careful thought, and after a place to put it down again could be guaranteed.  Secondly, it will be worse.  Once neck and body are united..

Hence the need to proceed to the final finishing of neck and scroll before that union takes place.  Even so, the task is fraught with awkwardnesses.  One stage of the finishing process is best done for the smaller instruments (yes, even for cellos) by slinging the body of the instrument over your shoulder, holding the scroll in one hand while wielding the knife with the other.  Er, I think, in this case, not.

And so a happy hour or five is passed, finding ways of supporting/restraining carving the neck as it increasingly resembles that which should be attached to the top of a double bass body.

Does this, you may ask, have anything at all to do with running the LAMM in June of this year?  No.  Not really.  I just thought you'd like to know about it.  It does, perhaps explain why long training runs don't happen on Tuesdays during term time.

Or maybe it does.  The LAMM is itself no small matter, not something that can be tossed over the shoulder of a runner's year, details to be worked on at a later date.  On announcing at the workshop that my intention was to make a double bass I was given plenty of (unsolicited) advice, mostly variations on the theme of "don't", most particularly and emphatically from some who have themselves previously made double basses.  They have watched surreptitiously as I slogged through the desert wastes of gouging and scraping front and back, and thicknessing these.  The pleasure of completing these tasks receives a dash of spice through proving the doomsayers wrong. So eyebrows rise when I reveal my intention to run the LAMM.  I know there are watchers..

More parallels appear.  I made five cellos, if you like, by way of apprentice pieces.  I have run five marathons, if you will credit the Run for Phil unofficial run as a marathon (it was every bit as long and rather more muddy).  And I find the same calm of purpose in approaching the task.  Yep, it is a big one.  There's a lot to be done.  But I have learned, from those five cellos, those five marathons, the rewarding discipline of doing the training, one run at a time head down, secure of purpose.

Enjoy the run folks.

Today's training: 2.5 miles with the beast - a rangy golden retriever on loan for a few months.  Just ticking over, out of respect for a poorly foot.

First day on the blog

You've got to start somewhere. Hi. I'm new here.  I'm having a look around the space, hoping that I can remember how I got here, hoping that when it comes to logging in again, I will be able to find my way.  I must remember to leave some crumbs as I go, and hope the birds don't peck them.

This is to be the story of preparing to run the LAMM mountain marathon, six months from now, somewhere in the northern parts of Scotland.  It will be a story about training, for sure, but I will have to tell you some stories about what happened before, before what is happening now makes any sense.

For starters, the picture is me, enjoying a highly non-standard half marathon recovery routine.  The place is the Teng Ge desert, north of Zhongwei, in Ningxia Province, PRC. The race occurred half way through the 2004 edition of Les Foulees de la Soie.  I didn't actually finish that half marathon.  I was ignominiously scooped into the sweeper van.  But the honour of leading the dragon dance was a delight no placement could have brought.

Foulees de la Soie of that era was an eleven stage race held in half a dozen cities scattered along the course of the Silk Road.  I went as a walker, with my husband, in 2001, when I could walk only with the help of a pair of sticks.  Recovering the ability to walk, the aim of repeating Les Foulees de la Soie as a runner became an obsession; a really useful obsession.  The return from sticks to running was a sequence of progress and regression that cycled the spirits: one day I could run, the next I couldn't walk without the sticks.  The neighbours were puzzled to see me thus; so was I.  The only constant was the obsession to run Les Foulees, a daily whispering imperative, ever the more insistent on days when I was back on sticks.

I got there in 2004.  You will almost certainly here more about it.  Since then, lots has happened.  I have run a total of five marathons, if you count one unofficial one that I measured out along the banks of my home river. I've got back to work. And I've kept on running. I have made a number of stringed instruments. And I've kept on running. I've spent almost every summer since 2004 in China, working with the mathematics department at a university in Shandong Province. And I've kept on running. I've studied the language. And I keep on running.

The running is both the goal and the therapy that allows me to reach the goal.  Leave home, out the door with reluctant legs grumbling at each step.  It might be a mile or five, and if I'm lucky the magic moment will come when whatever is locked releases and my feet come alive again.  And if I'm unlucky, the magic moment may not happen at all, that outing, but there is the consolation of knowing that it's one or three or five miles banked, and muscles still strong against the day when it does all come alive again.

It is essential to have a goal to set against all the tough locked leg miles, just as the 2004 Foulees shone as lodestar through desperate moments in the return to running.  This year it is the LAMM, 11-12 June, the D course.  Those hills, somewhere up in the north of Scotland.  I will lift mine eyes up unto those hills.  That'll do for now.

Today: 40 minutes run with the dog on leash.  She doesn't like it much, but she's really a very good training partner.  Suffering with foot problems at the moment.  Massage man suggested that trying to run London Marathon in April would jeopardise running LAMM in June.  So we don't run London in April. We can live with that.  More important, we can run with that.

Now to do the homework: s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g.