This is why I don't write historicals, family sagas or generational stuff. BECAUSE I CAN'T COUNT...

I can't do maths.  I'm well known for my 'not being able to do maths' abilities. In fact, in the 'not doing maths' stakes, I am approaching near-genius level.  I should point out that there are lots of other things I can do, although the rumours of that thing with the ping-pong balls has been greatly overstated... I can bake a cake without a recipe (and even, on occasion, without scales, although for that to work you have to like your cakes rather on the 'biscuity' side), I can ride a horse (without a saddle or bridle if I know the horse), I know the latin names of a lot of plants and animals... you know, stuff like that.

But maths, no.

I just see badly spelled words.

My inabilities rarely cause me problems - I have a calculator at work which does the heavy thinking for me, and I can do the functional things; percentages (I work out one per cent and multiply up), adding, subtracting and basic multiplication, and am driven into a barely contained rage when people refer to it as 'timesing'.  But today I had to do some maths for the purposes of a story.

It's the old, old thing... I had this person.  And this person had to be related to someone whose younger brothers died in the First World War.  As in a great-great something grandson.  In order to get the number of 'greats' right, and not have either somebody in the family tree having to give birth at the age of 10, or my person having to be about 80, I had to work this out.

I thought I'd got it all right, and then I realised that I'd made my child born in 1898 and any subsequent younger brothers would have been too young to have fought in the First World War and could only have died during it if someone had tipped up the pram. So I took it all back twelve years, added a layer of 'great's and recalculated, and finally managed, with a lot of crossing out, to get it to add up.

And now my brain hurts, I've got a piece of paper covered in dates and scribbles and crossings out which looks like the result of a hit and run family historian, and a ghost story that hopefully won't make anyone scratch their head and announce that it only works if someone became a father when they were three...

Fingers crossed for me, everyone...