Blog & News

Day: April 29, 2011

Message from a Hostel – Dividing the Cows

Nora you are from a farming background so how would you deal with this situation?  What situation Alistair?  Well this fellow is after dying and leaving his 17 milking cows to his surviving wife, son and daughter.  He is after leaving 1/2 the cows to the wife, 1/3 of the cows to the son and 1/9 of the cows to the daughter and the solicitors can’t sort it out.  Ah Alistair we had sheep not cows, it’s the same difference Nora.  Well you would make a good framer if you can’t tell the difference between a cow and a sheep – they are not even the same colour Alistair. Nora it’s all about how do you divide the 17 cows by ½ then 1/3 and 1/9 and it does not matter whether it is sheep or cows.  Well Alistair I beg to disagree with you but I’m the farmer here and pigs’ cows and sheep are all different colours, but I would borrow a cow from Mrs. Wilson in the next farm. Why would you borrow a cow from Mrs. Wilson Nora?  Well Alistair the wife would then have 18 cows and she could take ½ of the 18 cows for herself which would be 9, she could then give the son 1/3 of 18 which is 6 cows and then give the daughter 1/9 of 18 which is 2 cows.  So 9+6+2 =17 and then she could give Mrs Wilson back the cow she borrowed. Well done Nora you should have been a solicitor – for f**k sake Alistair what do they know about farming as usual they would only complicate things, anyway the solicitor probably doesn’t even know Mrs. Wilson has a cow.

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