For me it’s all about arithmetic, sums and numbers. I never went on to study higher level maths. I spend my life working to inspire kids to engage in the subject at that basic level, the point at which so many disconnect. That’s also how I keep myself interested – for me there’s no mental challenge in the arithmetic everyone else has to think hard for; it’s all about thinking of new and exciting educational ideas.
My skills used to be useful for companies. Investors, for instance, would want me to look for patterns in their trades. But since the advent of the super computer I’m a little less helpful to them. I’d have been more useful, I think, if I’d been born hundreds or even thousands of years ago.
My next big thing is to get the rest of the world to use the calendar I’ve invented. I’m all about efficiency, and right now the way we measure time is a mess. Sure, we have no control over the fact there are 365 days in a year, but there’s simply no way to make that divide neatly into 12. Forget October, November and December – if you ask me, there should be 13 months in a year, each lasting 28 days, plus a zero day to kick each year off. I’m going to try and convince the world to try it out in 2023, the next time my calendar matches up with yours.
‘I can play any piece of music I’ve ever heard’: Derek Paravicini, 40, London
‘Being blind, I’d never even seen anyone play the piano, but I could copy tunes note for note’: Derek Paravicini.
‘Being blind, I’d never even seen anyone play the piano, but I could copy tunes note for note’: Derek Paravicini. Photograph: Marios K Forsos
Like most children, I spent my early years surrounded by music. I’ve always been blind. I was born extremely prematurely, so it is through sound that I experience the world. I had a nanny who looked after me and she tried everything she could think of to interest me. Then one day, when I was 18 months old, she had a brainwave, and retrieved a toy organ from the loft that someone had once bought in Woolworths.
Of course, I don’t remember, but what my family found I could do with it was amazing. Without any help from anyone, I could play the music I’d heard, from Cockles and Mussels to the hymns that my family sang in church. Being blind, I’d never even seen anyone play the piano, but I could copy these tunes – and their accompaniments – note for note.
It became obvious pretty quickly that my musical brain was wired up in an extraordinary way and, once my parents purchased a piano, I’d use everything, from my hands to my head and my elbows, to play what I could hear in my head. They soon realised that my fingers would need help to catch up.