pavement maffematics

You’re probably puzzled by the title of this post, so perhaps I should point out that it’s another of the excruciatingly awful puns that I sometimes use in titles. In this case, maff is a dialect word that I heard—and used—when I was growing up in Penrith, although I haven’t heard it spoken for decades. A maff is a major mistake, a cock-up—it can also be used as a verb—and given that I wrote an analysis of brick paving in Fanling under the title ‘pavement mathematics’ in 2017, you should now be able to guess that I’ve spotted an egregious error in a newly laid area of brick paving.

In fact, I took some photographs of this area because there were examples of single and double basket-weave layouts close together, and it was only when I examined the photos that I noticed what is, in fact, a glaringly obvious maff. I returned, therefore, specifically to take a photo to highlight the error:

The course between the two yellow pointers has been laid wrongly. It’s such a silly error, easily corrected, that I must conclude that this paving was laid by amateurs. All that is required is for the brick indicated by the yellow asterisk to be removed. The bricks to the left of the space created can then be slid to the right, and the brick that has been removed can then be inserted in the space thus created.

Quod erat demonstrandum.