Until this week I thought cube roots were diced vegetables

It's been a bit quiet at CovBlog recently, I know. The weather turned normal again, so I've not been out cycling much and taking nice photos. What I have been doing is maths. Never thought I'd say that - and I've been enjoying it too. When I did my 'O' Levels (yes... that long ago) my big success wasn't the A in English, Biology and Geography, nor even the B in Chemistry - it was the CSE Grade 1 in Maths. Without going into boring details, the combination of shortsightedness (didn't realise you were meant to SEE the blackboard till I was 10) and disenchanted or misguided teachers, meant that maths was just not my thing. Thank goodness for Mr Baggaley (it's only the really good and really bad teachers whose names you can remember after 28 years) who pulled the whole class through the CSE syllabus in one year. A third of the class got Grade 1, the golden grade which was equivalent to an 'O' level C, and meant you'd didn't have to retake.

But... I've decided to train to be a teacher, and though my prized CSE is adequate to get into teacher training, I suspected that my maths wasn't up to teaching modern sciences. And how right I was! I've enrolled on an Open University Short Science Course called 'Maths for Science', and I'm slowly negotiating the first chapter. The one which you are supposed to know pretty well anyway. So it's been onto the GCSE Bitesize Revision website (the wonderful BBC!) to revisit hazily remembered and sketchily learnt subjects like fractions, directed numbers, powers, square roots and cube roots. I think I might have been staring out of the window the day we did cube roots. And there seem to be things now called surds which I've never heard of. Actually it's all very interesting, and I do seem to be picking things up, the only trouble is I keep dropping them again. Tonight I had to look at Key Stage 3 Bitesize Revision to remind myself about some things. Fortunately you can take two months to do the course - or five!

Even if I don't get into teaching, I'm hoping that it'll have been worth doing this course. It's a great feeling to work things out for myself, and to realise that it wasn't because I was thick that I found maths so difficult. But I've to negotiate trigonometry, logarithms and statistics yet!

Though I've not been out at weekends much, I've had a few evening expeditions when I got too stir crazy. I've discovered a route out of town which gets into sort-of countryside in about 10 minutes. It goes past the new hideous hosptital (PFI, wards being closed to save money...) across the A46 and up Walsgrave Hill, which even has a trig point on the top. From there you can see the whole of Coventry. Then you can turn away and cycle across a field into Coombe Abbey Country Park and cycle around the woods in the encroaching darkness. Saw a badger the other evening - the first live one I've seen for about 20 years.

Now, I've procrastinated for long enough...back to 'Multiplying and dividing with powers'. I understood it last night, now lets see if I remember it...