Shifting Mental Loose Change

It's 1986. The Sunday morning routine. Four or five hours of mathematics homework.

I'm in sixth-form college in my home town, studying for my A-Levels, the exams that will take me away to university. Two of the four are Maths and Further Maths, and I'm struggling.

This does not come easily to me.

It's been like this for months, me dragging myself along at the bottom of the top class. This is a new experience, and I'm finding it difficult. There's some seriously talented people in my class, folks who will breeze through both this homework and the final exams before elevation to Oxford and Cambridge.

As I'm wrestling with second order differential equations, I have music to keep me company; a much-loved and well-worn cassette tape copy of Synchronicity by The Police.

It's fabulous stuff; bold and varied and daring and just a tiny bit crazy. Totally irresistible rhythms, perhaps not the best music to listen to when you're trying to concentrate.

But it's cool and familiar and it speaks quietly to me as I work.

This album has been my companion since the start of the course. Of my twenty hours in the classroom every week, thirteen are devoted to maths. Four different teachers impart different aspects of the mathematics curriculum, and pound us with homework. I'm doing as many hours at home as I am in class, and with a little bit of coaching from a couple of sympathetic brainboxes - again a new experience - I'm hanging in there.

As the album ends, I fumble absently with the cassette player, eject the tape, flip it, put it back, slam the deck shut, and press Play.

The driving synths of Synchronicity 1 have faded into the lilting Walking In Your Footsteps by the time I crack the question on the third attempt. The unhinged Mother and the comical Miss Gradenko slip quietly by in the background as I try to make progress with the next equation.

Then, the grandiose Synchronicity 2 demands my full attention, and I down tools mid-question for a few minutes. I'm moved by the song's beautiful chord changes, but puzzled by its impenetrable lyrics.

I have no idea what synchronicity even means.

Every Breath You Take kicks in, a haunting story of obsession. Somehow, this shifts my mental loose change about, I return to the equation with new focus and knock it correctly into touch by the time King Of Pain hits my ears. I feel I'm on the downward slope now, and five more questions grind painfully-mechanically past me as Wrapped Around Your Finger gives way to the closing track, Tea In The Sahara.

Three more sets of questions await me; Chi-squared statistical tests, matrix transformations, and a proof of the volume of a sphere using an integral method called volumes of revolution.

I flip the tape wearily.

Sunday mornings are long.

It's 2010. The Sunday morning routine. Four or five hours of blogging.

I'm at home in Cambridge, trying to get my mojo together. Ideas, photos, juxtapositions, intentional incongruities, humour. But I'm struggling, and have been for months. I love my blog, I love my output, but it's hard work. Every entry is a labour of love.

This does not come easily to me.

As the thought that this reminds me of something passes through my brain, an item of junk e-mail arrives. From a major internet music provider. Special offers. Classic albums. Looking for some inspiration, I click the link and the web page fires up.

Synchronicity by The Police is at the top of the list.

Twenty four years after I first heard the word, I now know what it means:

Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events that are apparently causally unrelated occurring together in a meaningful manner. To count as synchronicity, the events should be unlikely to occur together by chance.

The very definition of this event.

Synchronicity revolving round an album called Synchronicity.

Synchronicity squared.

I buy, download and jockey the album up. I set the Repeat function, and click Play.

It's fabulous stuff; bold and varied and daring and just a tiny bit crazy. Totally irresistible rhythms, perhaps not the best music to listen to when you're trying to concentrate.

But it's cool and familiar and it speaks quietly to me as I work.

I type away happily.

Sunday mornings are long.

But not as long as the used to be.


Indigo

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