Can chance childhood thoughts shape a whole life? Maybe a lifetime studying the nuanced complexity of humanity alongside the elusive simplicity of mathematics comes down to The Woodentops.

I’m guessing I was four or five. The Woodentops was an early BBC children’s TV series, which featured a family of (wooden) puppets and their dog Spotty.  It aired alongside other favourites such as “Tales of the River Bank” and “Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men” in the Listen with Mother slot just after lunch time (we called it dinner then), when pre-school children were at home.

One day the Woodentops’ parents went out for the day leaving the children and Spotty to look after themselves (in the days before social services would forbid this).  The childen had many adventures … all within a quarter of an hour episode.

Towards the end of the episode the parents came back and asked the children about their day.The eldest recounted the events, “we did this, and then that, and then something else, then you came back and then it was now.”

“… and then it was now” … my young brain recoiled. No it wasn’t ‘now’, because then you told them about the day … but no if you had told them that it still wouldn’t be now, because you’d then have to tell them about telling them …

At that point, faced with the infinite regress, my infant reasoning gave out.

Many years later I learnt about infinite series in mathematics, recursive functions in programming, and of course Zeno’s paradox, but each merely added to that heady mix of confusion and wonder as a child.  Years later, that Woodentops episode still speaks to me about the amazing complexity of everyday things and the need to accept the limits of understanding as well as probing those limits deeply.

I am not alone in this wonder as is evident from the general fascination with fractal patterns like the Mandelbrot set, and Russell Hoban’s  last visible dog in “The Mouse and His Child“.

Maybe this early experience also led to a lifetime’s fascination with time itself, and the elusive nature of ‘now’.

In The Woodentops episode, unlike Achilles and the tortoise in Zeno’s fable, there is no second runner except time itself, the past rushing headlong and relentless, but never catching the ever receding present.

… and if you would like to expand your cultural and philosophic horizons … here are a couple of Woodentops episodes on YouTube: