The Horror ! .

We've been on holiday to Anglesey in North Wales and the weather was brilliant and we did lots of walking , the only slight 'downer' was that I forgot to take any reading matter with me , so I  ended up perusing  the books in our hired cottage . There was the usual selection of dog eared paperbacks - you always get an Agatha Christie and a James Herriot or two - but I was surprised to see this book 'Teach Yourself  Books - Algebra' . This brought a shudder to my soul ! - I was taught Algebra at school in the late 1960's , I was in the 'A' stream and so was thought worthy to be given this dubious privilege , it was taught by no lesser personage than the Headmaster Mr Foss and it blighted my life and set in place a scheme to leave education as soon as I could . The book was originally published in 1942 (you would have thought they would have had other thing on their minds ?) and brought back painful memories , it is a tribute to the teaching skills of Mr Foss that I did remember the odd thing about the subject when dipping into the book (removing brackets ! - why?). I can say that I'm not aware of ever using Algebra in the next 50 years and have felt much better for it ! . It was obviously a work of love by the author P. Abbot who wrote very enthusiastically on the subject in the forward - but who would want to teach themselves Algebra ? . I carefully replaced the book next to the James Herriot's and left it for the next visitors to muse over.