As the year canters towards a close we know that many of you yearn to be supplied with enough of our tedious games, drills and exercises to keep you busy during this festive period. We understand that some of you are already bored to death with everything and anything to do with Christmas. We have heard firsthand from a number of you who are tired of the sight of Christmas trees, sickened at the sight of another Christmas mince pie, completely disinterested in the selection of Champagnes on offer at your favourite wine merchant, have no desire to hear another word of what to do, what to eat, what to drink or even what to watch on Christmas Day. How strange such a state of mind must appear to anyone who doesn’t know you.
But we, as your training consultants and providers of Tedium par Excellence! know you well and understand from your complaints that having been oversaturated with everything and anything related to Christmas since late October and probably earlier, you have developed an early ennui to the whole damned festivity as one irritated housewife related to us just the other day. We assured her that she is not the only one who has grown weary of ‘Christmas before Halloween’, ‘Christmas before Bonfire Night’ or what a diamond dealer penned in an email, ‘Christmas before Christmas’.
Mid November screeching carol singers turned up late on a client’s doorstep rattling a collection box and belting out what sounded to their ears a monotonous drone of Marry Christmas, Marry Christmas, Marry Christmas, Marry Christmas, Marry Christmas, Marry Christmas, Marry Christmas, Marry Christmas. Can you imagine our poor client’s (well, they’re not exactly poor; they run a hedge fund) auditory ordeal as these so-called carol singers demanded money before they had so much as sung a note.
We’re not in any position to prevent Santa Claus from dropping down your chimney a week before Christmas nor to prevent screeching carol singers from descending on your doorstep; however, we can provide you with a mental escape route that will keep you so busy you wouldn’t even hear Santa’s Ho, ho, ho! were the red caped wonder to suddenly appear with gift laden sleigh on your porch. You will be so/So engrossed in our latest treat, which uses only the first two lines of Part 3 Pythagoras of the wonderful Disciple’s Tablet I, that your attention will be too occupied to be distracted by anything considered unwelcome to your mind; it matters not whether it’s your mother hounding you to send off Christmas cards to your cousins, the wife nagging you about the insufficient number of Christmas crackers for the big lunch, the kids pestering you to tell them whether the trip to Disneyland is still set for the New Year, work colleagues texting because they haven’t received your assurance that you will be joining them for the annual Christmas wine bar crawl. Rest assured that we have thought seriously about your collective complaints about the early arrival of Christmas that what we have set out shall ensure that as long as you’re immersed in searching the corridors of your brain for words containing four letters, six letters or even eight letters, whatever’s going on in the world outside will pass without your noticing.
Apart from a willingness to perform this boring exercise, which is not fun in any way, no matter how many times you try to convince your mind that it is, you will require your Smythson notebook, Graf von Faber-Castell fountain pen and possibly an English dictionary if your spelling ability is somewhat suspect or even a little rusty. We shall leave it o you to decide if your spelling is as it should be or whether it is something you may seriously consider doing something about before the year is over. Here is not the place to go off on one, as it were, about the standard of spelling amongst the university classes, so we shall refrain from quoting what a professor of education expressed in rather colourful language to us and the other dinner guests. For a man with a number of quality tomes to his name and numerous peer reviewed papers, his use of the expletive that begins with the sixth letter of the English alphabet and ends in the eleventh letter of the same alphabet, and especially the gerund form was shocking not to us but to most of the other guests.
We understand he feels strongly about what he called the fall in spelling standards, and would have understood him just as clearly without the expletive in its gerund form, but, alas, so much of what he expressed was lost on his audience due to not only the repetitious use of the word but also the volume. If you have ever witnessed a drunkard on the tube or on a bus ranting to all in earshot about the state of the world, then you can clearly visualise the scene that took place. The main difference is where our drunkard is on public transport, the professor was in a private house – a magnificent mansion in Hampstead – with the males dressed in black tie and the females adorned in their very best couture. One or two dress rebels were casually dressed. But since they were funding not just the drinks – more than one or two vintages we must add – but had paid for the whole event: food, decoration, entertainers and heaven knows what else, even the hostess was forced to turn a blind eye to the fact that her edict that inappropriately attired guests would be barred entry had been blatantly ignored. She in her wisdom was wise enough to realise that tech wealth does adhere to anyone else’s rules. Enough said on this point. We enjoyed the event immensely and everyone agreed that we were all blessed to be on the guest list. Let’s return to the exercise before we pique some of your curiosity. Sorry for the digression.
Whilst doing the exercise you should have *The Shipping Forecast playing loudly. Ignore whatever is being said, just ensure you can hear clearly what is being said if you were to pause to listen. You are not, however, to pause or to stop what you are doing to listen to the forecast. You are to focus completely on the tedious exercise you have set out to do. If you find yourself paying attention to what is being said, begin the entire exercise all over again. It doesn’t matter where you’re at: the start, the middle, or nearing the end, begin the exercise from Exercise A.
You will probably find this instruction annoying, but it’s been added here to help you to focus on one thing at a time and to prevent your mind from wandering off. Have you ever stood on the kerb having a conversation with an old schoolfriend or work colleague? Did you notice that despite the noise of the traffic you were so engrossed with your conversation, for most of the time you didn’t actually hear it? This is the same state you are attempting to recreate as you do this monotonous exercise.
*The Shipping Forecast – BBC Radio 4
Part 3 Pythagoras*
POLPLL;MS;OMASPOMONIARTYOURDNIMTO
ETARTNECNOCBECAUSETICANPMDSCAOK,
The above two lines in upper case are an excerpt from Part 3 Pythagoras The Disciple’s Tablet I posted on March 4, 2017 on WordPress.
Preliminary exercise
Using your Smythson notebook write down the following:
Letters of the alphabet that appear in the excerpt.
Letters of the alphabet that are omitted from the excerpt.
Vowels that appear in the excerpt.
Vowels that are omitted from the excerpt.
Consonants that appear in the excerpt.
Consonants that are omitted from the excerpt.
Exercise A
How many Y’s?
How many M’s?
How many A’s?
How many S’s?
How many E’s?
How many K’s?
How many C’s?
How many T’s?
How many L’s?
How many U’s?
How many D’s?
How many O’s?
How many N’s?
How many R’s?
How many B’s?
How many I’s?
How many P’s?
Exercise B
Perform this exercise aloud.
1.) Read aloud all the letters on the first two lines, beginning at P (first letter) and ending at K (last letter) on the second line.
2.) Read aloud ONLY the vowels on the first two lines, beginning at O (second letter) on the first line and ending at O (penultimate letter) on the second line.
3.) Read aloud ONLY the consonants on the first two lines, beginning at P (first letter) on the first line and ending at K (last letter) on the second line.
4.) Look at each letter on the first two lines, beginning at P (first letter) on the first line and ending at K (last letter) on the second line, and wherever you see a consonant say out in a loud voice “consonant”.
5.) Look at each letter on the first two lines, beginning at P (first letter) on the first line and ending at K (last letter) on the second line, and wherever you see a vowel say in a loud voice “vowel.”
6.) Look at each letter on the first two lines, beginning at P (first letter) on the first line and ending at K (last letter) on the second line, and wherever you see a consonant say in a loud voice “vowel”.
7.) Look at each letter on the first two lines, beginning at P (first letter) on the first line and ending at K (last letter) on the second line, and wherever you see a vowel say in loud voice “consonant”.
Exercise C
Exercise 1
Using the first two lines of Part 3 Pythagoras ONLY, write a THREE letter word for each letter.
Below are the first six letters as an example.
POT, OLD, LED, PIP, LOW, LEG…
Now complete the rest of the letters on the two lines.
Exercise 2
Using the first two lines of Part 3 Pythagoras ONLY, write a FOUR letter word for each letter.
Below are the first six letters as an example.
POOL, OGRE, LAMB, PEEL, LATE, LOOT…
Now complete the rest of the letters on the two lines.
Exercise 3
Using the first two lines of Part 3 Pythagoras ONLY, write a FIVE letter word for each letter.
Below are the first six letters as an example.
POKER, OUNCE, LEGAL, PROUD, LATER, LABEL…
Exercise 4
Using the first two lines of Part 3 Pythagoras ONLY, write a SIX letter word for each letter.
Below are the first six letters as an example.
PEBBLE, ORANGE, LITTLE, POLICE, LEGION, LOCKET…
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