Hey! Welcome to the 42nd instalment of the Olim Love Letters - a weekly newsletter written by me, Eloise. Here, we talk about connection, copy, Really Weird Childhood Stories™, and the odd linguistic snippet thrown in for good measure.
Disclaimer - I’m writing this on a train, and there’s very little WiFi to speak of - so GIFs will resume from next week!
The straps of my Hunka Munka satchel dug into skinny six-year-old shoulders, one knee sock lurking round my ankle.
“Welcome to Stepping Stones, Eloise!” The man said, joy in every corner of his voice.
“I’m Charles! Let’s go upstairs and do some maths, shall we?”
I followed in his wake, into the tiniest space I’d ever seen - kettle crammed in one corner, beakers for juice and an assortment of biscuits on the countertop nearby.
Furnishing me with both of these items, we then ascended the stairs - also tiny - and winding, to a mezzanine level about the size of a postage stamp.
Charles, with a cup of incredibly milky tea, settled himself perpendicular to me. Not across, nor side-by-side, but diagonally: so we could look at each other, and my mental maths exercises.
Mental maths was, as far as six-year-old Eloise was concerned, Satan's very own handiwork, designed specifically to torment small children who would rather be elbows-deep in a storybook.
I detested it. Would have spat on it, if I had known that was a thing, would have cheerfully set it on fire and watched it all burn down.
But being able to do basic mental arithmetic was apparently considered pretty important for my cognitive development, so there we were.
Why did I hate it? Pretty much the reason anyone hates anything: I didn't understand it, and that made me scared.
As a child, a few things came naturally to me: drawing, reading, telling stories, spelling, even belting out hymns during music, which I'd do with lots of gusto and very little pitch.
Maths, though? Nae chance, pal. I vaguely remember my teachers being puzzled that basic maths stumped me so badly*, and they must have mentioned something to my parents, who decided to get a little extra help.
*Even to this day I can get confused about when you start counting - is it on the number, or after?!
Enter Charles, his angel wife Margaret, and Stepping Stones.
Once a week, after school, for about an hour, Charles would painstakingly go over my exercises with me. I remember inadvertently treating him to accidental silent treatment as I pondered the mysteries of the universe (4+7-2), but his kind, bottomless patience persisted. Ages later I found out that Charles is a reverend, which made a lot of sense.
Over time I went to Stepping Stones for all sorts of other things.
French lessons with the magnificent, eccentric Anne.
Debate classes run by Charles' and Margaret's son, Simon (there were some heated arguments about animal testing and capital punishment, til both teams agreed that criminals committing capital offences should be tested on instead of the animals, which was grim from a group of 12-year-olds).
Homework sessions with Sarah, their daughter.
Latin lessons with Stormin' Norman who once berated me for sneaking strawberry chewits into his class (Have you ever conjugated parare without a sugar rush, Reader?!)
But the best sessions beyond anything at all were the creative writing afternoons with Charles himself.
"Ah! The childer!" He would exult, as we careened into the room with half-baked tales handwritten on scrap paper.
"Childer?" I said. "Don't you mean children?"
"Oh no! Childer! Wonderful old Irish word for children. What do you think?"
What do you think? That was Charles' refrain. More on that in a moment.
Meanwhile…
"Four plus seven is 11. Minus two..."
Charles nodded.
"Is it eight?"
"What do you reckon?"
"Well it's two less than 11 so if I start counting less than 11 then I'm on 10 so it's eight."
I felt close to tears with frustration.
Charles nodded again.
"Let's take the numbers for a walk, shall we?"
Using his pencil (he was a big fan of a pencil - sharpening them was good thinking time, apparently) he made a dot above the 11.
"It's a very quick walk - just two steps."
He then traced a semi-circle from the 11 to the 10.
"Step one."
He drew another one from 10 to nine.
"Step two. What a quick walk! So, where did we arrive?"
"Nine!"
"So 11, two steps back is...?"
"Nine?"
"Are you asking, or are you telling? What do you think, Eloise?"
This was the kicker. I didn't know what I thought. I could see what he'd done, but my brain spiralled. What did I think? I was scared of giving the wrong answer, that's what I thought.
Charles made no move to hurry me, just looked at my jotter and let me ponder.
"I think it's nine." I said, frowning in concentration.
Charles beamed: "The girl’s got it!"
We grinned at each other, ice broken, mathematical conspirators united against the foe.
The intelligent, eloquent Felicity Wild wrote a piece on thinking that went live today. Read it here. Sign up to her newsletter while you're at it.
Here's what hooked me behind the belly:
"Our poor little brains. They weren't built to process the sheer volume of opinions we now absorb daily through our screens – the good, the bad, the ugly, the informed, the doom-mongering, the toxic positivity, the clueless, and everything in between.
When your thinking space is constantly invaded by an algorithm-curated stream of contradictory viewpoints, it becomes increasingly difficult to:
- Hold onto your own perspective without second-guessing
- Trust your instincts about what feels right for you
- Write copy that sounds genuinely like you
- Make decisions without spiralling into analysis paralysis"
Feeling like she's shone a light inside your brain, Reader I sure am.
The greatest gift that Charles and Margaret and the whole Stepping Stones team gave me was that thinking space.
They offered a quiet, steady reminder that what I thought was valuable. That it was of interest. That it was worthy, that it could be trusted, it should be well-fed with the fruits of curiosity and patience, nourished like a plant: given air to breathe and grow.
Stepping Stones created the sort of space where all these things were the norm. Those spaces are under threat - and as long as we think that what we think doesn’t maybe matter all that much, they’ll be quietly slithered away from us.
Don’t let that happen, Reader. Protect your thoughts. Protect your thinking space. It’s precious, and so are you.
Don’t believe me? My friend Charles says so.
Big love,
Eloise x
