Counting hippopotami

Dammit!

This sleeping thing is really bugging me now. Last night I was telling Fab Friend how I wasn't sleeping and I dropped into the conversation that I was going to have a soothing cup of green tea!

And she told me off! It's littered with caffeine and would keep me up all night, she said.

So instead I had a hot peach squash, dimmed the lights, read myself a story and drowned my pillow in Champney's pillow mist.

Ho hum…

Tap, tap, tap, tap

Still no sleep...

One hippopotamus, two hippopotamus, three…

Yup, they're definitely more effective than sheep as that's just about where I drifted off.

But on the subject of the hippopotamus, there was an error in yesterday's blog. It was pointed out by Snowboarding Boy, the only other person in the world, apart from Pa, who seems to know more useless information than me.

And I thought I knew a lot!

Anyway, it turns out that one hippopotamus only covers 330m not a mile as I previously thought.

I would love to tell you how many hippopotami are then in fact in a thunderstorm mile but I struggle with working out how much a handbag with 25% off costs – and that's when I'm actually motivated to do the maths. So I don't stand a chance here.

Maths has never been my strong point. I once got 10% in an exam when I was about 9. It was horrible.

But physics, I am even worse at. Just remembering those little stick men on the seesaw that you had to balance, brings me out in a cold sweat. I remember I once got 3 out of 23 in a physics test and promptly threw up in the science lab sink with the stress of it all.

I think some of it was that I couldn't hear in class and was also totally incapable of teaching myself, like I did in all my other subjects.

But I think most of it is that my brain just doesn't work that way. It sees numbers and scientific problems and shuts down.

I had a year of weekly physics coaching to get me through my GCSE, with an old man called Uncle Frank. Best Friend And Head Girl and I used to go to his house after school, and his wife, Aunty Mary, would feed us home-made Eccles cakes.

We'd begin and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, I'd fall asleep.

Best Friend would be studiously paying attention and I'd be slumped in my chair, one eye open, willing myself to stay awake long enough to learn why x over y equals q

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Ah-ha! I've got it. Tonight, when I can't sleep, I will study physics. It's bound to work, in fact

*Yawn…

Just the thought of it is working already.

*snore