ICE CREAM AND SPIDERS

 "Danny you are completely hopeless!"

 That's what Mr Grimshaw, Danny's maths teacher, had said yesterday.

 In fact Danny could do all sorts of things like climb trees, and make his own breakfast, and draw, and read, and he was good at music too.

 But he wasn't so good at maths. He could count, and add up, but recently they had started times tables and he couldn't understand them at all.  All the other teachers were nice, and helped children who found schoolwork difficult, but Mr Grimshaw was a horrid man who spluttered when he spoke and had stains down his shirt where he'd spilt his dinner. He was nice to the clever children, but he enjoyed being nasty to children he didn't like, the dunces as he called them. And Danny was, according to Mr Grimshaw, the biggest dunce of all: The bottom of the class.  

Danny felt really miserable.   He didn’t know why anyone should bother learning tables, and even when he did try, he just couldn't get it right.

 As Danny set off to school, he was so busy worrying about the tables test that Mr Grimshaw had promised for twelve o clock, that he forgot to pay attention to where he was going. Instead of walking to school, he went in the opposite direction down the lane towards the meadow where he liked to go during the holidays. The day was warm and sunny, and Danny strolled along in a bit of a dream, which wasn't unusual.

 "Where are you off to then?" asked a creaky voice.

He turned to see Old Belinda sitting outside her cottage knitting as she often did on sunny days.  The other children called Belinda a witch because she was very old and wrinkly and had a huge nose with large hairy warts on it.  She was a bit of a fearsome sight, and Danny was rather afraid of her, as he had heard she was slightly mad.

 "I'm going to the meadow,” replied Danny.  I don't want to go to school.  There's a tables test today and I don't understand tables and I can't remember them and everyone says I'm stupid." The words came out in a rush and he began to sob.

 "Oh tables is it?" Croaked Belinda.  "Tables isn't so bad when you understands how they work. Would you like an ice cream?"

  Danny brightened up at once.  "Yes please." He replied.  

Belinda disappeared into the cottage and soon returned with an ice cream.

It was delicious. Quite the best ice cream Danny had ever tasted, Strawberry vanilla, black cherry gateau, toffee pecan nut sundae with chocolate rum truffle mints all in one. It even had sparkly bits in it that glinted in the sunlight.

 "Mmmmmm.  Mmmmmm, slurp mmmmmm, was all Danny could say as it began to melt down through his fingers and he tried to lick up the drips at the same time as eating it.

 "How would you like two ice creams?" asked Belinda.

"Oh yes please thank you!" replied Danny who was now trying to keep up with an ice cream which was dripping onto his shirt and getting all over his face as he tried to lick and speak at the same time.

 "Well two ice creams is twice as many to eat as it's twice what you already have and twice an ice cream is two ice creams which is twice as many as you started with."

 "No wonder people think she's barmy," thought Danny but he was too surprised to speak because at that moment Belinda said "twice" again and Danny found he now had an ice cream in each hand.

 "There you are, twice in a trice is twice as nice as one ice with twice the ice of one ice cream or two ices to be precise." She cackled. "Now off you go."

 Melted ice cream was now running down both hands and it was even more difficult for Danny to keep up with it, let alone trying to follow this nonsense.        

 He set off towards the meadow feeling completely bewildered by her strange talk. He thought that she must be some sort of witch if she could make ice creams appear from nowhere.

 "I simply multiplied by two." He heard her call after him.  He couldn't reply, as he was too busy keeping up with melting ice cream. "You get double the number you started with. It's not difficult."

 He reached the stream and sat down to finish the ice creams, which seemed to taste better and better with each lick.

 "Have you got it yet?" Purred a soft voice next to him.

 Startled, Danny looked up to see a large ginger cat sitting next to him licking her paws.  Before he could answer the cat moved closer and licked the last dribbles of ice cream from Danny's legs, which tickled and made him laugh.

 "Got what?" asked Danny. "I got two ice creams, but that Belinda is barmy and talks in riddles, and she might even be a witch."

"Twice as many ices as you started with." mused the cat.

 "Don't you start,” said Danny, but the cat ignored him.

 "Now how many legs do I have?" asked the cat as she stood up.

 "Why four of course."

"Which is twice as many as you.  Or twice two, if you see what I mean. And by the way my name is Cassandra, but my friends call me Cassey Cat which I think is rather cool. She stretched, and arched her back, and looked cool in a cattish sort of way.  

Danny wondered why everyone kept saying twice and was about to ask when the cat continued.  

"Look into the water and tell me what you see."  

Danny looked and saw several colourful fish floating by.  

"Fish." said Danny simply.                              

"And what about them?" asked Cassandra with just a hint of impatience.  

"Well they've got eyes and fins and a mouth and tails and three stripes down each side and.."  

"Aha.  Three stripes you say?"  

Danny counted again.  "Yes three."  

"Three on each side?"  

"Yes."  

"And how many sides does a fish have?"  

"Two of course." Danny was getting fed up with this silly cat and wished she'd go away.  

"So how many stripes does each fish have?"  

"That's easy. Six."  

"Precisely, it's twicely.  Three two's are six,” purred the cat.  

Danny was beginning to wonder whether he should have gone to school after all when a pair of dragonflies flew over the water and settled on a stone.  

"Have you ever noticed how many wings a dragonfly has?"  Asked Cassandra.  

Danny hadn't so he looked closer.

The dragonflies were extremely beautiful.  Bright shimmering green that changed to blue, and then to the most purpley purple colour Danny had ever seen, then back to green again.  The colours kept changing and arranging themselves into patterns.

The wings were even more beautiful, like lace but they were sort of alive with even more stunning patterns and colours that moved like the ripples in the stream.  

"Well?"  

Danny had been so enchanted by the dragonfly’s wings that he had quite forgotten the question.  "Well what?" he asked.  

"How many wings does each one have?" asked the cat impatiently.  

"Four." Danny replied.                                           

"And there are two dragonflies are there not, so how many wings altogether?"  

"Eight." Replied Danny counting quickly.  It wasn't difficult at all.                     

Cassandra seemed to loose interest, and began grooming herself. The morning sun shone brightly and Danny began to feel rather warm.  He took off his sandals and dangled his feet in the water to cool them.  He noticed his toes, five on each foot. "Five two's are ten,” he said without thinking.  

"Well done." said the cat "five two's are ten. Or five toes are ten if you twice it." She said with a laugh, rather proud of her little joke.  "It's multiplication you see. If you multiply by two you have twice as many.  Double the number you started with."

"Now suppose you had six buns and you multiply by two.  How many would that make?"  

This was much more difficult for Danny.  It was easy with toes because he could see them, but he found it hard to imagine buns that weren't there.  He gazed into the water.  

"Who are you looking at?" came a gruff little voice.  

Danny couldn't see who had spoken, and then he heard it again.  

"Oy you, you great big flat footed oaf.  You're blocking out the sun. Do you mind”?  

Danny squinted in the direction the voice had come from and saw an insect that seemed to be standing on the water.  It looked like a beetle, but with bigger wings. Its legs were very long, and it had large feet shaped like little boats, which floated so it could walk on the water without sinking.  

"What are you? Asked Danny.

"Ahem." The creature cleared its throat. "I am a water boatman if you please." It said.  "I am one of the few creatures that can walk on water.  This is my stream, and I don't like you blocking out the sun."  It said with an air of self-importance that seemed excessive for such a small creature.             

Danny thought it was a rather cross little thing and was trying to think of a suitable reply when he noticed that it had six legs

(He was getting into the habit of counting things).  Not only that, but he could see its reflection in the surface of the water. It was as if it was standing on a mirror, so he could see two of them, and each had six legs.

"Of course!" Said Danny counting up the legs. "Six two's are twelve!"           

 "You what?" said the water boatman. "Oh well, please yourself, you just stay there and I'll move to a sunny patch."  He grumbled as he floated off downstream.  

Danny was beginning to see numbers everywhere he looked.  There were some large daisies growing by the stream.  He counted the petals.  There were seven petals on each so counting up he quickly found that seven two's are fourteen.  

A spider was busy with her web on a nearby twig.  Danny knew spiders have eight legs and he wanted to count how many legs two spiders have so he'd know what eight times two was.  

"Excuse me. Is your husband around?" asked Danny  

"Up there." said the spider without looking up.  

Danny raised his eyes to the top of the web but all he could see was a bundle of legs with no body hanging from the sticky threads.  

"I ate him." Explained the spider as she continued to spin her web. "Except I don't like legs.  Don't taste nice at all.  All knobbly and gristly and hairy and tickly, really yucky. But I do love those succulent juicy bits. I could eat them all day, Mmmmmm."  

"Er quite." said Danny, moving away a little.  He thought the spider was even worse than the water boatman, but the legs were still there.  He counted. "Sixteen." he said feeling very pleased with himself.  

He was beginning to notice that each time he doubled a number, the answer was two more than the previous answer.  So if eight two's were sixteen, then if he added two, then two times nine was probably going to be eighteen.  

He looked around.  Cassandra was still sitting there grooming her whiskers.

"Where can I find nine of something?"  Asked Danny.  

"I've got nine lives." She answered.  "Or at least I did have until I nearly drowned when that stupid boy threw me down the well, and I probably lost another when a stinky dog chased me up a tree."  

That wasn't much help and Cassandra wasn't being very cooperative just sitting grooming her whiskers.  

"Of course." Thought Danny.  "The whiskers."  He told the cat to keep still while he counted, and sure enough there were nine on each side which added up to eighteen, so nine two's must be eighteen.  

Danny was delighted.  He knew he had ten toes, and he had ten fingers too (if you include the thumbs).  So ten two's were twenty, and that meant he knew his two times table right up to ten!  

He could do it after all.  He ran back towards the school.  He'd show Mr Grimshaw, as long as he hadn't missed the test.  

He ran by Belinda's cottage.  She was leaning on the gate in the middle of the fence that he noted had eleven railings on each side.  Eleven two's are twenty-two, he said to himself almost without thinking.  

As he ran through the school gates he heard the clock strike twelve.  He knew that there were two twelve o clocks each day, one at midday, and one at midnight, and he knew there were twenty-four hours in a day. "Twelve two's are twenty four." He said to himself.  

Mr Grimshaw looked up as Danny entered the classroom.  

"You remembered to come, how very good of you." He said in the especially nasty way he did when he was in a really bad mood.

"We are just about to begin the two times table test.  Perhaps, you would like to begin."  

Mr. Grimshaw glared over his spectacles.  Danny was a little taken aback.  His mind went blank.  Somehow in the rush to get to school he'd forgotten everything.  

"Well?" Mr. Grimshaw glared.  Danny merely stuttered.  

"I thought so.  Danny thinks he doesn't need to come to school, but he can't even manage the two times table."  

Danny noticed that a small piece of Mr. Grimshaw's breakfast was still stuck to his chin.  It looked as though he'd dribbled egg down his face and hadn't bothered to wipe it off.  It reminded Danny of the ice creams Belinda had given him.

 The ice creams!  Of course!  

"Once two is two."  He began thinking of how Belinda had made the ice cream twice as many.  

"Two two's are four."  He remembered that cats have four legs, which is twice as many as children.  Then he thought of the stripy fish.  

"Three two's are six."  

"And four two's are eight." He went on, thinking about the dragonflies and their beautiful wings.  

"Five two's are ten."  He wiggled his toes inside his sandals.  

"Six two's are twelve."  He added, remembering the rather cross water boatman.  For a moment he couldn't remember seven two's. He looked around the room, but couldn't see anything there were seven of.  Then he spotted a vase of flowers sitting on the piano. Of course! The daises!                         

"Seven two's are fourteen."   

By now Mr. Grimshaw's expression had changed from his previous sneering smile to one of utter amazement.  

Danny wasn't going to forget the spider who'd eaten her mate so he continued;  

"Eight two's ate sixteen. I mean ate her mate, I mean eight two's are sixteen."  He finally managed to say.  

By now most of the other children were giggling, not so much at Danny, but at the look on Mr. Grimshaw's face  

But Danny had forgotten again. His mind a blank he gazed around the room, but there was nothing. He looked out of the window. There in the middle of the playground sat Cassandra cleaning her whiskers.  

"Nine two's are eighteen, and ten two's are twenty."  He said in a rush.  

"Very good Danny." began Mr Grimshaw.  "I must say..."  

No one ever found out what he would have said because Danny blurted out,  

"Eleven two's are twenty two and twelve two's are twenty four." As he remembered the fence and the clock chiming as he got to school.  

Mr Grimshaw was astonished.  He was one of those old fashioned teachers who thought that tables should go up to twelve times like they used to in the old days. He was very pleased with Danny. Now he would have to find someone else to be horrid to.  

The other children clapped as Danny sat down. Tables weren't so difficult after all. He was quite looking forward to learning some more. He hoped it would be as exciting as learning the two times....

THE END

Click here for the next story:   Cakes and Butterflies

In which Danny learns the Five Times Table.

Copyright M. Rawlinson 1998

  All Rights Reserved