The Genius in my Basement. Alexander Masters

      In words, turn Triangle once, then turn it again, and the result is two turns: one plus one equals two. It is easy to spin Triangle head over high-heels, if that’s what you want:

      2 + 1 = 0

       (two turns, followed by one turn, returns Triangle to its original position)

      Remember, in Group Theory, turning a regular shape right round is taken to be the same as doing nothing at all. Full, completed turns don’t get totted up. It’s only the overall adjustment that matters:

      2 + 2 = 1

      The corresponding table (which, as with Square, looks like a pint-sized sudoku table) is therefore:

      Once again, we’ve got through a mathematical section with a suspicious lack of awfulness, like someone who’s committed a crime in the woods.

      Is that all there is to it? Was that really mathematics?

      The mist in these woods is hushed. A distant leaf clatters among the branches like a falling pin.

      Let it be whispered: a saucy chapter is approaching.

      12

      I had a camera once. When I found it wasn’t working, I had a sigh of relief.

       Simon

      The name ‘Norton’ is a fake. Simon’s paternal grandparents, from Germany, died before he was born – ‘No Nazis involved.’ His paternal grandfather anglicised the name from Neuhofer – i.e. New Towner, usually turned into Newton – then fiddled the result to sound less desperate. The only thing we can say for certain about these people, Simon pronounces sententiously, ‘is that when the surname was being used in Germany, the one place the Neuhofers did not live was in any village called Neuhof’. Then he sits back and stares at me happily, waiting for understanding to dawn.