15 in nojomo 2013

My hero. Hmmm. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's johnny!

When I was a kid there was a programme called Think of a Number presented by the ever-laughing mathlete, Johnny Ball.

He was one of the few people who made maths understandable, he made it seem obvious, when others left me drowning in numbers.

Link to a choice of clips to watch

Almost ten years ago I got to meet him! I know! He was doing a talk here in our town's railway museum and rich bought me tickets for my birthday. If I remember rightly, it was actually on my 33rd birthday. We had just moved to this house and for some reason the buses weren't coming when we expected them to. It looked like we were going to miss the show. A couple of weeks earlier I had been involved in a car accident and my car was being mended. My boss had lent me her car so that I could get her daughter to and from school but I was a little naughty... We ran back home and took her car with us.

We watched his talk which was as energetic as always and afterwards lots of people were going up to him and saying (okay, freak out moment - tal just put her radio on and I heard johnny ball's voice! Then an announcement that he'd be on in two sings time!!!) that they'd watched him as a kid and he thanked them all. I went and stood near him and waited. Once everyone had finished he turned to me and said "hello," so I told him about the discalculea (i know, I should learn to spell it!) and that he was one of the few people who made maths make sense. We had quite a long conversation about it. It was five minutes of my life that were really special :)