Until one of our Support for Learning ladies sent me a little computer application via e-mail, I was only vaguely aware that my brain had a couple of hemispheres, left and right, that did different things. Left seems to be the logical, step-by-step part and right appears to be the “big picture”, creative bit that can’t put up shelves.

Apparently, you can be left dominant, right dominant or balanced, which affects the sort of learner you are. The aforementioned computer application was a quiz that assessed this. I had a go, and came out left dominant. Then I tried again (different questions came up) and came out less left dominant.

After a few more goes I began to become concerned. Sometimes I swung to the left, at others to the right, and occasionally I dangled in the middle. Any right (or perhaps left) thinking person would have dismissed this as the random error built into any sort of assessment method but I came up with another explanation. What if my two hemispheres were locked in a continuous power struggle? Sometimes one would come out on top, sometimes the other.

The Christmas holidays provided fuel for this line of thinking. Last year I was using my quiet moments to try to write a story for children which has thus far failed to ignite the passions of the publishing world. Still, it sounds like a bit of a right-brainer to me. Contrast that with the recent festive break.

I don’t know why, but this year I decided I was going to teach myself JavaScript. Can there be anybody out there who has not heard of this computer language which can be embedded in the HTML code of a web page, interacting with the Document Object Model to bring Internet pages to life? Hmmm, yes, I thought so.

For the first time in my life I bought a Big Dummies book and started trying to code. After a while I knew enough to construct Harry Potter and Supermarionation quizzes for my children and to draw the accusation from my wife that I was (though she phrased it differently) a sad, reclusive git. She relented when I explained the educational possibilities, having mentioned her own subject and midi files to strengthen my case.

So, if I’ve got the theory correctly, the left-hand side won out this year. Maybe next year will be different. Meantime, I still have to work out if I’m an auditory or a visual learner, but that’s another story.

Gregor Steele got a can of rust-proofing wax and a white Toblerone for his Christmas.