SUNSTRIPES

Walking to the shops - reluctantly - I noticed how the sun made these symmetrical stripey shadows on the fence of a nearby school. I tried to work out why it happened this way...if the angle of the sun does this and the line of the fence does that...sort of thing. But I was hopeless at maths at school and ever since. I once had a book called Mathematics for the Millions, but I guess I was the one in a million that didn't improve.
Got a book called Number Freak out of the library. A mathematical compendium by Derrick Niederman, thinking that might give me something clever to talk about, but as soon as I've closed the book I forget the point he was trying to make. But I did find the nine muses listed under the number 9. For your interest they were:
Calliope - Epic poetry
Clio - History
Erato - Love (and I always thought it meant mistake)
Euterpe - Music/lyric poetry
Melpomene -Tragedy
Polyhymnia - Sacred songs (lots of them!)
Terpischore - Dance
Thalia - Comedy/bucolic poetry
Urania - Astronomy.