We are at school for parents’ consultation evening. This involves a ten-minute chat at a table facing a teacher, and when you have more than one child in the same school, it feels a bit like some weird version of speed-dating, where all the chairs are small, and there are three people involved. Hmm. Perhaps better not go there.

Anyway, while we wait for our consultations we are treated to a cup of coffee and allowed to sample food from the school canteen. The food is absolutely marvellous, and a far cry from the slop I remember being served up when I was a child. Indeed, as I am delivered of a plate of spinach curry I have a sudden flashback to a stern-faced dinner lady force-feeding me semolina until I throw up. I am vaguely sure that this did happen, but then again it could have been something I saw in a Catherine Cookson TV adaptation at an impressionable age.

Curry and coffee disposed of, our allotted time-slots approach. Our daughter is taught by Mrs Card, who I do know reads this column and who has asked me repeatedly never to mention her name here, but unfortunately that’s unavoidable this time.

Mrs Card is telling us about literacy, which I (thankfully) have something of a handle on. Then we start to talk about maths.

Suddenly I feel as though I am shrinking to accommodate the tiny chair I am perched on. The walls are receding. I can taste semolina in my mouth. Maths. I wonder if I have a note from my mum in my pocket to get me out of talking about maths. It always has this effect on me.

Regardless of my pale, sweating state, Mrs Card forges on regardless with her talk of addition and subtraction. It is the subtraction bit, though, that really throws me bodily over the edge. Because, as if the Old Ways of doing maths weren’t bad enough, there are New Ways.

I hope Mrs Card will forgive me if I misquote her slightly here, because I had a tsunami-like roaring in my ears at this point. But she was explaining that subtraction is now called something like “taking numbers away by counting up”.

I can tell that the sheer insanity of this is going to blow my tiny mind. My mouth is dry. “What?” I whisper. She replies: “Taking numbers away by counting up”.

All I can think of is the round in popular radio comedy panel show I’m Sorry, I Haven’t A Clue, which is called “One song to the tune of another”.

Mrs Card valiantly tries to explain with a series of diagrams but the numbers and shapes swim in front of my eyes. My wife, I can tell, is keen to get me away before I say something stupid. To calm down, I count slowly to ten.

But I don’t know if I’m taking numbers away or counting up, any more.