Calculus

… has been affected by a lifelong love of hallucinogenic substances. Especially his clothes sense. Yellow cotton tunic, orange corduroy flairs, wooden clogs. Yes, that’s his standard outfit.

The clogs mean he is usually heard before he is seen. Giving those people with highly developed aesthetic sensibilities the chance to make their escape.

It is chiefly owing to his appearance that he gets called all kinds of names. My favourite, despite its clumsy alliteration, is The Mescaline Mad Methuselah of the Mountains. A moniker with two potential meanings: that Calculus has been rendered insane by mescaline and/or that his desire for the drug is very strong. The ambiguity appeals, allowing for both interpretations to be true. Not that he cares one jot about what people think.

His official name really is Calculus. It is on a birth certificate whose paper format goes to show how very old he must be. My great grandparents, neo-Pythagoreans with a Leibnitz fixation, named their son Calculus in the expectation that he’d develop a love of mathematics. You won’t find a better example of successful nominative determinism.