Writing
I began writing in maths magazines back in 1997.
I was fun to get published, and I felt encouraged to do more.
In 2002 I entered a strange frenzy and wrote a book in a month, eventually calling it Naming Jerusalem's Garden.
I realised that perhaps I could write about things other than mathematics.
I've penned much since, both paid and unpaid, and it's been an unexpected liberation,
although my writing was once painfully provocative without trying to be so (see Michael).
Much of what I produce is written in a spirit of play, and I hope I'll be read that way.
As I get older, I seem to be getting reflective; the end nears, and for me writing is a help with that.
In 2005, Helen Williams asked me to write a column for its journal Mathematics Teaching.
I called the column Correlation Street, and six times a year, I picked a story from my classroom to throw out into the world.
Later I wrote for the Times Educational Supplement, and more stories emerged into the wider public.
When I said goodbye to the classroom, I collected up these various stories and turned them into a book,
called 'Does my denominator look big in this?' It is available here.
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In 2009, David Moloney at the religious publishers Darton, Longman and Todd asked me to write a short book on the Bible.
By the end it had become more of an Everyman's introduction to Christianity
in ten thousand words, one hundred words each on the 66 books of the Bible, and a hundred each on 34 Biblical themes.
The book can be found here.
In 2012, an article I wrote for the Times Educational Supplement went viral. The article was called Michael,
and it described how I dealt with a severe case of anxiety as manifested in one of my students.
The right wing press were unforgiving; the Daily Mail wrote an article that was especially strident.
I wrote an ebook later to put my side of the story, which can be read here.
In 2014 I wrote a novella called A Shock of Corn, concerning the adventures of Roddy Smith, a young man who had just come of age.
The book's opening words can be found here.
There's a small collection of my verse and song lyrics called Snow Incense. The opening words are here.
I'm fascinated by tiles, and I've put together a calendar of tiling images here.
The collection is called Tessera, sera (what will tile, will tile.)
The fAtZ of Life is a collection of light poems about the Bible together with cartoons,
and its opening words are available here.
Did We Say? is a short novella about a music teacher called Richard, who feels that he's being persecuted.
Its opening words can be found here
