Maths: I'm doing a bit of tutoring in my spare time - it's always the same, nobody can do fractions, percentages, decimals. Why can't they teach this stuff properly at school? Even John (my son, now doing Maths at Uni) admitted he wasn't 100% clear about adding fractions when he did his GCSE. Instead, they have to learn how to 'transform' random shapes across the page (sorry - 'translate' (traduire?)) - or worse still, in a year 5 textbook they actually showed how to do 7/3 by LONG DIVISION!! (to give 2 1/3).

Music: First time for everything - learning and loving a Haydn sonata; previously a firm fan of Mozart and Beethoven.

French: pas grande chose a dire, sauf que je pense souvent a mon frere et sa famille qui ont demenage au Sud de la France l'annee derniere. J'imagine que les enfants parlent Francais couramment maintenant.

Puzzle for the day: Apparently this used to be a standard puzzle to get into Microsoft a few years ago. You have 5 minutes to do it or you have failed:- " Four people had to cross a bridge at night. The bridge only supports a maximum of two people at a time. They need to take a torch over with them on each journey (they have one torch between them). So basically 2 can go over and one come back each time. Each walks at a different speed - one can do the journey over (one way) in 1 minute, another takes 2 minutes, the third takes 5 minutes and the fourth needs 10 minutes. They have to stay together during the crossing, and travel at the speed of the slowest person. What is the minimum time they can take to all get across the bridge?" By the way if you do this in less than 30 seconds you have almost certainly not found the right answer!!