PENTAGONS & HEXAGONS: from a geometric painting by Catia Goffinet...

 Pentagons & Hexagons…

(from a geometric painting by Catia Goffinet…)

The same fear infiltrated

My presence of mind

When I saw the buried pentagon

And the drifting hexagon.

A fear embedded by a teacher of maths

And his evil, threatening and unkind

Disposition which accompanied a true disdain

For his pupils. A paragon

Of cruelty who demanded definitions

And word perfect repetitions

Of what the geometrical shapes

Were…

I shudder still when I recall

My state of mind

When I was told to define a parallelogram

A trapezium or a square.

A terror emanated from that teacher of maths

And his mean, self-satisfied and unkind

Inclination, which precipitated such strain

For the pupils. A nightmare

Of incivility by a tormentor,

A punishing persecutor

When questions about geometrical shapes

Occurred…   

Yet I can look at the painted irregular pentagon

And the angled painted irregular hexagon

With genuine admiration,

The colours and the placement

Becalming any trepidation.

The fear unaccountably still remains,

 Yet the art soothes memory’s scars and stains…   

Pete Ray

11th February 2022…

The teacher was Mr Harry Tyson, whose catchphrase was “There’s going to be an investigation…” in his slow Lancashire accent.

I was very shy then…

I was picked upon in class one day to describe what a parallelogram was and I was missing just one word from the definition we had been told to memorise for homework. 

As a punishment I had to write out the definition 100 times at home…

For good measure, he asked me the definition of a trapezium too. I was one word out from perfection again. 

I was made to write out that definition 50 times too…

I was never inaccurate again…

I love this image and although the painting brought back some awful memories, I can laugh about it all now…