Article for 2013 Feb 03

2013

2013 Feb

Feb 03 Sun

My friend Andy had invited me and Will (another classmate) over to his house today, for a school project, collaborating on a presentation regarding Pythagoreanism. Amazing what the ancients have posited. Did you know that a Pythagorean would never attribute his discoveries to himself, but let them be communal to the whole Pythagorean world, much like how Andy, Will, and I will present our presentation without ever saying “I thought of that”?

I was engrossed, and the three of us soon had done enough work for us to say we had completed a very good piece of work. So soon in fact that we had a lot of free time. So how did we spend the next hour?

Andy’s house is a very posh house. I’m from Chester, so my idea of “very posh” is very posh indeed. They in Salford think Manchester’s posh; they in Manchester think Liverpool’s posh; they in Liverpool think Chester’s posh; they in Chester think Hoole’s posh; they in Hoole think Andy’s house is posh. They in this house say, “Oh posh! We only have one outdoor pool!”

What a pool they have. But the pool per se is unimportant: what you do in it is the important bit. We had a hilarious game of water-polo, with four people. (Andy’s eleven-year-old brother joined in too; he was on Will’s team.) Gosh I enjoy swimming: the water feels so good! It’s unsurprising that I have a reputation for being a water lover; sometimes people at school call me Duncan Sailfish.

People actually think I’m a Pisces when they’re reading out horoscopes from magazines. People think I get extra time in exams, because I find it difficult to write with fins. People think it’s weird that I compose this without a snorkel.

I don’t care what people think. I should think for myself, and follow my own thoughts, my own beliefs, my own reasoning. I think I should re-think that desire expressed in Jan 06’s article to ditch Swimming.

Andy and I won the water-polo game, 2-1.