Dear Friends, I appeal for support if any of you - like me - have had a lifelong problem with arithmetic.

I remember how it started in infants school some time in the 1950s: there were squares round the classroom wall giving numbers as they appear on a dice (a 'die' if you want to be grammatical). So number one, was one dot, number two was two dots and so on.

This I understood, but nothing else. I could not multiply, divide, add or subtract. The only lifeboat for me was the multiplication tables: two twos are four, three twos are six ... etc and chanted to a rhythm which I still use seventy years later. Oh dear.

It gets worse. I must have been about thirty before I realised that seven times five, is the same as five times seven. And even unto this very day I hate odd numbers ( seven and thirteen especially) and tolerate even numbers. Don't ask why because I don't know.

And yet, and yet ... I am not dim. I have an honours degree in biochemistry and a Ph.D. concerned with the interaction of Chloroquine (an anti-malarial drug) and the plasmodial DNA. So who's a clever boy then? But I still can't do sums. If I buy anything I give more than asked, and do not count the change because I cannot. Or these days I pay with a card or just tap. Happy days indeed.

So, and because I rather suspect I am not unique, and because all we innnumerates dare not admit it for fear of being labelled stupid ... I ask you, my friends, if any of you are like me? Do tell. I would be so happy, and I think you would too.

All the very best, John Drake