97. 100 and 5

Last Sunday, October 6th 2013, was the fifth anniversary of my liver transplant and this is the 100th piece I have posted on this blog and so this is a rather special posting for me. 

I can still remember the feeling of trepidation that I had when I pressed “Send” at 6:15pm on Sunday, January 17th 2010 to post the first one, “Bad Umpiring Decisions & Good Pub Quizzes”.  

My grandson, William, was 18 months old at the time and I had only met him once.  I wrote these things hoping that he might read them some day.  He’s five now and going to school but he’s not ready to read this sort of stuff yet. 

The five-year survival rate for liver transplant patients is around 60% and so I feel very lucky to have lasted this long.  My next target is 10 years and eventually, I want to set a new world record but as that record currently stands at 44 years and that person is younger than I am, and very fit and healthy, I will be at least 105 when I break it.  It’s going to be quite a challenge.

A hundred is a significant, captivating number and not just because it’s round and we use the decimal number system and we only probably use that because we have 10 digits on our two hands.

It’s in cricket that 100 is really important, both for batsmen and for bowlers.  100 is the score that all batters want to achieve as they walk to the crease and 100 wickets in a season is the mark of a good bowler.

Just before 6pm on August 14th 1948, Don Bradman (the finest batsman the world has ever seen, despite what the Indians may say about Tendulkar) went out to bat in what he and the rest of the cricket world knew was to be his last ever innings in test cricket.  

His batting average as he walked to the crease on that Saturday evening was 101.39.  He needed to score at least 4 runs in his last innings to retire with a career average of at least 100.  He didn’t.  He was out for 0 and so his final test batting average was 99.94. 

Think about other ways 100 is a significant number.  People never make a huge fuss about a person’s 99th birthday and the Queen doesn’t send out greetings for any birthday after the 100th.  

When I was a boy I would ride on my bike along Clapham Road in Lowestoft and look through the window of the dairy to try to get a glimpse of Ada Rowe, a supercentenarian, sitting behind the counter where she still worked.  When she died in 1970 having lived to be 111, Ada Rowe was the last proven and documented person in the world still to be alive who was born in the 1850s.  She lived in 13 decades!

I spoke to Ada Rowe once when she must have been about 105.  I saw her through the shop window as I rode by and decided that I had to speak to her just to say that I had.  I went in and asked for a pint of milk.  

“Give me your flask,” she said and it was immediately clear that she didn’t sell milk by the bottle, only direct from the churn.  I wonder if it was pasteurised?

In northern Europe, where the temperature scale was devised by Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, 100°F is just about the hottest it can ever get but I’ve never experienced that temperature and 94°F is the highest I was ever aware of in Cayman.  

Returning to my moan about the metric system (Metric Madness), this is a key reason why we should never have given up the Fahrenheit scale – Fahrenheit reflects the human experience.

When travelling in a car, 80 mph is fast; 90 is quick but 100 is thrillingly exciting.  Something different happens at 100 mph that doesn’t happen even at slightly lower speeds.  When I was seventeen and at school, five of us went on our scooters (Vespas and Lambrettas) one lunchtime to take it in turns to have a go on Graham Levett’s motorbike, riding along the deserted coast road to try and reach 100 miles an hour.  I eased off at 90 but others were braver.  No helmets – madness!

Writing this blog has been a little like playing an innings in cricket.  Getting off the mark is one of the hardest parts.  I had written the first one for a couple of days before I decided to post it and once I had, there was a sense of relief.  Unlike a cricket innings, however, I don’t remember the 50th one.  I’ve checked and found that it was, “Where are all the pork pies?” which was about a visit that Caroline and I made to watch Arsenal play Manchester City.

Just as in a cricket innings too, I didn’t really think seriously about getting a hundred until I reached the eighties and now, I’ve done it.  It is also like a big innings in that there have been some edges and false shots.  I once scored 106 against Gerrards Cross after which my teammates told me they reckoned only about half my runs had been made as I intended them.  I admitted that there had been a few edges but I thought they were being a little harsh.

If we had eight digits on our two hands like Homer Simpson, we would probably use an octal number system, used sometimes in computer programming.  For those of you unfamiliar with number bases, concentrate!

If we counted in base 8, “100” octal runs in cricket would only be the same as 64 runs – hardly enough to signify much of an achievement.  In a base 12 cricket match, “100” runs would be 144 decimal, which is too many.  100 is perfect.  

“100” in base 8 or octal, is equivalent to 64 in our decimal system.  If Homer Simpson played cricket, would he feel a sense of achievement about scoring “144”?  That’s what he would need to score to have the 100 runs the way we count?  I really doubt it. 

We certainly wouldn’t get very excited at scoring “1100100” runs in cricket, (64 + 32 + 0 + 0 + 4 + 0 + 0) if we counted in base 2 or binary.

Apparently, there are “10” kinds of people: those that understand binary and those that don’t.  This is Caroline’s second favourite joke.  If you don’t get it, send me an email.

Why do computer programmers get Halloween and Christmas mixed up?

Because to a programmer, Oct 31 is the same as Dec 25.

Octal “31” is equal to 25 in base 10.  (Oct 31 = Dec 25)

Apropos of absolutely nothing, here’s a lovely maths poem to accompany the two maths ‘jokes’:

A Dozen, a Gross and a Score 


Plus three times the square root of four, 


Divided by seven, 


Plus five times eleven, 


Equals nine squared and not one bit more.        

                                                            John Saxon

I admit now that there are a few “edges” among the 100 posts in my blog.  There are a couple that make me cringe when I read them again but there are a few that I am rather proud of and I still enjoy reading.

Bradman’s highest ever test score was 334.  I am not going to reach that unless I do live to be 105.

96. Doppelgänger

Yesterday morning and for the first time in my life, I experienced aggressive prejudice and abuse because of who I am.  I became the subject of a form of atheophobia.  If you have never come across that word before, you will find out what it means later.  

I was at Sainsbury’s, where I go only whenever I have to buy the coffee we like. Coffee is kept about 120 yards from the lift that brings shoppers up from the underground car park. 

By the time I got back to the lift, after 20 minutes of walking around the huge arena that most supermarkets seem to be these days, every arthritic joint in my left leg was aching agonisingly.

I pressed the -1 button and slumped over the trolley, trying to take the weight from my leg and then waited for the door to close.  After 20 seconds it started to shut but I could see a man, who looked to be of Pakistani origin, pushing his trolley towards the lift.  I put my walking stick in the way of the sliding door and that caused it to open again so that the man could enter.  He reached behind me and pressed -2.  I went back to leaning on my trolley.  The pain was becoming intolerable.

At last the door began to close again and I felt better in the knowledge that in two minutes I would be sitting in my car.  But no, because a mother with a toddler sitting in the trolley approached us and I stopped the door once more.  I was getting desperate.

When the door began to close for the third time I could see another man, also of Pakistani origin, some 20 yards away and walking towards us.  I did nothing and allowed the door to close.  At last!

I can see now, that to the man and the woman in the lift with me and perhaps to you too, my action appeared selfish but they had no idea of the pain I was in.  All I could think of was getting to my car and sitting down.  All the same, I was surprised by what followed.

“That wasn’t Christian,” the Pakistani standing next to me said.

“I’m not a Christian,” I said.

“What are you?”

“Nothing.”

“Then you’ll go to hell,” he said with some venom and conviction.

I just shrugged and wished that I had a good response.  Five seconds later, I left the lift at -1 but he stayed on to go further down to -2.  As I hobbled away he shouted after me.

“I hope there’s a bomb under your car!”

Now you know what atheophobia is.  It’s a hatred of atheists.

Think of all the misery and horror there is around the world that has religion at its heart and cause.  A few years ago, on American television, I watched a studio debate in which one Christian of a particular denomination told another Christian of a different denomination, that she was no better than an atheist for not believing in the same way she did.

The Centre for the Study of Global Christianity has estimated there are 43,000 different Christian denominations around the world.  I suppose that must mean that Christians of any particular denomination believe that 99.998% of other Christians are no different from atheists. 

If you add together all the different Islamic sects as well as the different types of Hindus, Jews, Taoists, Sikhs, Rastafarians, Mormons and Druids, and add to those all the thousands of folk religions around the world, it means that statistically and to all intents and purposes, most people who believe in heaven and hell think that virtually everyone else is doomed.  They can't all be right can they? 

I don’t much enjoy science fiction films.  They require too much suspension of belief for me.  If I have to believe that a man can fly or travel through time in order to get pleasure from a film, then I won’t.  A science fiction film that I did quite enjoy, however, was Doppelgänger, a movie released in 1969.

The plot is fairly simple. Travelling through the Solar System in 2069, an unmanned probe locates a planet that lies on the same orbital path as Earth but is positioned on the opposite side of the Sun.  Because of its position, we here on Earth 1 had been completely ignorant of the existence of Earth 2 until then.  A manned joint European-NASA mission to investigate the planet discovers that Earth 2 is a mirror image of our Earth.

Everything on Earth 2 is a mirror image of Earth 1.  For example, instead of 11% of people being left-handed as they are here, 89% are left handed on Earth 2 and consequently on Earth 2 they write in what appears, to us, to be mirror writing.

In 1969, before Voyager began its journey, I could almost believe that such a planet could exist even though I realised that its presence would have been detectable from the effect it would have had had upon the orbits of other planets.  That was how Pluto was discovered.  The American astronomer, Percival Lowell, thought there might be another planet somewhere near Neptune and Uranus because he noticed that the gravitational pull of something large was affecting the orbits of those two planets.  That large something was Pluto.

Suppose though that there were such a planet; a planet of the same age, size and physical characteristics as Earth.  Life forms on that planet could have evolved exactly as they have here on Earth.  There would be human life forms identical to us and at the same stage of development as us.

Their science would be exactly the same as ours.  Water would freeze and boil on Earth 2 at the same temperatures as on Earth 1.  The pull and the effects of gravity would be the same on the two planets.

People on Earth 2 would commute to work in cars driven by the same engines as ours have and their aeroplanes would look pretty much like ours. The laws of physics, chemistry and maths would be uniform on the two planets as they are throughout the universe.

Some people on Earth 2 would be religious because there is a basic, primordial need for religion.  But just as we have probably more than a hundred thousand different religious sects or denominations, so would they and they would certainly be different from ours. 

Would everyone on Earth 2 be going to hell as well?  I can’t put it better than Penn Jillette, the magician and the larger part of Penn and Teller:

“If every trace of any single religion were wiped out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again.  There might be some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact nonsense.  If all of science were wiped out, it would still be true and people would find a way to figure it all out again.” 

The next posting I put up will be the one hundredth since I started this blog.

95. Times are hard

A couple of weeks ago I was looking at our online bank statement and as usual I was wondering what we could cut back on.  It would be nice not to be waiting desperately for the next pay cheque every month.  I saw an outgoing that I didn’t recognise:  £5.99 paid to DHC Ltd.  

I looked up DHC on Google and it appeared to be a Japanese cosmetics company. “Have you been buying cosmetics online from Japan?” I demanded of Caroline.  “What’s wrong with Boot’s?”

She said that she hadn’t and also that it was none of my business where she bought anything.  Then, she pointed out that it was my card that had been used.  We had a tense moment or two.

I rang the bank but the woman I spoke to was not much help, telling me that she would look into it for me. Eventually, I discovered that I had bought a large bottle of windscreen wash from a filling station near Cambridge. All that effort and nervous stress for less than six pounds!  Times are hard.

A few days after that the postperson dropped five letters though my letterbox.   I say “postperson” because our regular postman has been ill and off work for three months and most days someone different brings our post.   Sometimes it’s a man and sometimes a woman. 

I was opening the envelopes quickly and as soon as I opened the fourth one, I knew that it wasn’t for either of us.  It was a deposit account statement from a bank that neither Caroline nor I have ever had any dealings with.  

I looked at the address that it was meant to go to.  It was for a “Mr Smith” at house number 6 in a road that I didn’t recognise.  Our house number is also 6.  I could see how the mistake had been made.  I could also see the total amount that Mr Smith had in his account.

It was £2,654,168.89. Two million, six hundred and fifty-four thousand, one hundred and sixty-eight pounds, eighty-nine pence

That is a lot of money.  In fact, that is an absurd amount of money to have in a bank deposit account.  I thought about it for a time, wondering what to do.  I seemed to have five options:

A  Put the statement back into the envelope and then take it to the right address and put it through the letterbox and walk away without saying anything.

B  Take it to the right address, knock on the door and apologise to the rightful recipient for opening his mail.

C  Send it back to the bank with a note telling them that I had received it by mistake.

D  Go and see the “Mr Smith” and give him the benefit of my knowledge of the best way to handle and invest large sums of money.  It’s possible that he could then be so grateful that he might slip me a couple of hundred thousand quid.

E  Destroy the statement and its envelope and do nothing.

I’ve been giving it some more thought.  Yesterday, I drove to have a look at the house that the letter should have gone to. It is nothing special.  It looks like an ordinary semi-detached house, probably with three bedrooms.  

I looked it up on Zoopla and their estimated value of it is £349,000.  If I had more than two million pounds, I wouldn’t be someone who lives in a house like that and I wouldn’t have the money sitting around in a deposit account earning less than 2% a year either.

But the big questions are, 

1. What’s a man with so much money doing living in such a small, nondescript house?

2. How did a man with so much money, living in a small, nondescript house like that, get so much money? and that leads to the next question,

3. Is he a crook?  A drug dealer possibly?

He’s probably not a drug dealer because I know from watching crime dramas on the telly, that drug dealers keep their loot in cash, hidden in the house.  Crooks don’t use banks. 

However, a much more interesting and intriguing question in my opinion is, “Would Mr Smith ring his bank and query an outgoing of £5.99?”  

Seeing that he is gaining around £150 a day in interest alone, I doubt it.  I wonder what sort of sum would make him spend and waste nearly an hour of his time and run the risk of an argument with his wife, checking on it. A lot more than six pounds I imagine.

By the way, I chose option E.

94. Chocolate Pie

I hate South London.  The Romans weren’t stupid.  Marching north from wherever they landed on the south coast, they would have plodded across the marshes south of the Thames looking for somewhere to cross the river.  They found it close to where the Tower of London is today.

“Let’s build a settlement on the north side of the river,” said the General in charge.  “South of the river looks like a stercore-foramen.  In the future,” he went on, “I predict there will be terrible marching problems south of the river.”

Although I lived in London for 40 years, I only deliberately went south of the Thames on very few occasions.  Apart from going to Guy’s hospital a couple of times and going south to play rugby or cricket, the only times I went into South London was to visit Carshalton Beeches, Surrey.  Before the orbital motorway, the M25, was built, getting to Surrey had to involve a trip through the hell that is south London. 

My uncle and aunt are both over ninety now and last Friday we went to visit them in Carshalton Beeches. 

They should possibly be the focus of some kind of medical study.  My father was the youngest of four and he was born in 1923.  His three siblings were born in 1909, 1910 and Jim, my uncle, in 1920.  My father, his other two siblings as well as both his parents were very heavy smokers.  Not one of them lived to be 70.  Jim, who never smoked, is 93.

It seemed very simple.  According to the Sat. Nav. it was 74 miles and would take 90 minutes.  We left at 11.30 am but we didn’t arrive until 2.30 pm.  The M25 was closed because of a very bad accident and so we were forced to divert into central London and then out through Hammersmith, Clapham, Tooting, Streatham, Purley and then on and on and on – for ever!

Unlike north London, which almost gives the appearance of being somewhat planned, with wide, straight four-lane roads leading north, south London is just a maze of 16^th, 17^th and 18^th century random rural tracks that have been tarmacked over without widening them first.  The few main roads going south from London are narrow and have traffic lights every 150 metres or so.  You can see that the Roman General was right when he said it would become a shit-hole. 

We left Carshalton Beeches at 5 pm and intended to be home by 7 and then think about getting something to eat.  But the M25 was still closed.  Traffic had been building for six hours and so off we went through the wilderness that is south London.

At 8.30 pm, after 3½ hours, we had only travelled 32 miles and were on the Archway road, still one and a quarter hours from home.  On the positive side, the traffic had cleared the moment we had crossed the river into north London.  I had an idea.  “Let’s go to the Capri.”

The Capri is an Italian restaurant that Caroline has been going to ever since she moved to London and which she and I visited many times over the last 15 years.  It serves simple, cheap but beautifully cooked Italian food that is prepared in full view of the diners by the owner/chef.  The restaurant is small, catering for no more than 24 covers.

Because it is so cheap, when we lived in London, the Capri was the sort of place we went to midweek, when we had nothing in or just couldn’t be bothered to cook.  This Friday evening it was busy and to accommodate more diners, the tables had been pushed closer together.  We were shown to a table for two that was next to another, unoccupied, table for two.

The first and main courses available are very Italian but the desserts, written in chalk on a blackboard, are eclectic and that is good for me because most Italian deserts contain alcohol which I can’t have.  There was lemon tart, crème brûlée, zabaglione, tiramisu and chocolate pie.

Whoever wrote these deserts on the blackboard was running out of space by the time they came to ‘chocolate pie’ and had been very cramped for room.  Consequently it appeared as:

c  H  O c o L a t e P I e

As we finished our first course, a young woman came in.  She stood in the middle of the restaurant and by gesture alone, summoned the waitress.

“I’ve booked a table. Fletcher.”

She was shown to the table next to ours and sat down diagonally opposite me.  After a moment or two she got out her phone and made a call.

“I’m here.  Fourth table on the left.  Where are you?  How long?  Bye.”

Why did she have to tell the person where she was sitting, I thought.  Perhaps they don’t know each other.

A young man came in.  He walked to the table next to us and held out his hand to the woman sitting there and said “Hi.”  She reached out for his hand but instead of shaking it, she tugged at it, yanking him forwards so that he could kiss her cheek.  He seemed flustered.

“First date,” Caroline mouthed silently at me.  I nodded.

“We shan’t have a starter,” the woman told the waitress and also, probably, her partner.

Twenty minutes later, I was convinced that this date would be the last.  She was horrible - assertive and domineering.  I knew all about her: where she was born; where she went to university; who she worked for; her salary (!!) and that she really, really loved her mother who was also her best friend. 

As for him, I didn’t even know what accent he spoke with.  The poor bugger.

The waitress came across to take their dessert order.

The woman looked up at the blackboard.

“Tell me about your chocolate pie,” she said.

But, that’s not actually what she said.  By putting on the French accent that she had either been taught at the very expensive private school she'd been to, or had picked up on one of her many holidays in Biarritz, she pronounced ‘chocolate pie’ as,

“shocolatterpee-yay".

We laughed out loud and, be honest, you would have done too.

93. That's DISGUSTING!

I’m returning to a subject I’ve briefly touched on before.  I do so unashamedly because I feel so strongly about it.

In “I'm Merely Observing!" in December 2010, I wrote about my experience while using the Gents lavatory at The Royal Free Hospital where I witnessed a man leave a cubicle and walk straight out without washing his hands.  The only way that I could also leave was by gripping the same door handle upon which the filthy bugger had possibly just deposited some of his euphemism. 

For space and also for health and safety reasons, pulling the handle inwards is the only way to open that outer door.  That is the case with almost all public lavatories.  Ideally and hygienically, I should have been able to lean on the door with my shoulder and exit without touching the handle.

Any person walking in the corridor being whacked by an opening door is at minor risk compared with the dangers that arise from the transmission of E. coli, a bacterium that can cause serious food poisoning and that can survive for long periods outside the gut on a door handle.

“It is ridiculous,” I told my consultant shortly afterwards, “that at the Royal Free Hospital of all places, the lavatory doors don’t open outwards.” 

He didn’t disagree.

There is an Italian restaurant on The Green in Southgate.  I visited it once and left without waiting for the food I had just ordered.  Shortly after placing my order I went to the lavatory.  As I went in, a young man in kitchen garb came out of the cubicle, walked to the door, opened it and just walked out, presumably straight into the kitchen.  I left immediately and I will never go back.

A few weeks after that, in the Atticus column of the Sunday Times, Roland White ridiculed the Conservative MP, Nadine Dorries who had informed the world that she always wraps a tissue around a public lavatory door handle as she leaves.  I wrote to him saying that there are many aspects of Ms Dorries’ opinions, attitudes and behaviour that are worthy of derision, but her admission of a fear of contagion is not one of them.

I told him in my e-mail that what I always do is to tear off several strips of toilet paper to wrap around the door handle and then drop the paper on to the floor just inside the door as I walk out.  It is litter but I am unrepentant. 

Mr White replied and conceded that I had a valid point and perhaps he had been a little harsh on Ms Dorries.

A few days ago, between 7:20 and 7:45 in the morning I was listening to the radio and heard these quite startling statistics:

1. The average age at which a child in the UK gets his or her first mobile phone is 7½.

2. Over her lifetime, the average woman spends £166,000 on beauty products and spends 320 days applying it.  (A woman I know hardly bothers at all)

3. 40% of women and 62% of men fail to wash their hands after using the lavatory.

4. 28% of mobile phones bear traces of faecal matter.

3 and 4 are among the most disgusting things I have ever heard.  I don’t care much about the contaminated telephones because I don’t think that there will ever be a need for me to use or touch somebody else’s phone.  But, if these people are contaminating phones, they are also polluting other things too - door handles especially.  At some time or other all of us have to make contact with door handles!

Whenever I have the opportunity in pubs, restaurants and hospitals and if it is appropriate, I raise the matter.  I’ve never got anywhere.  Those responsible, always talk with no apparent sense of irony, about health and safety issues and space limitations. 

Now that you have thoughts about it, aren’t you outraged too?  If you were to join me in my crusade, perhaps we will eventually see change.

92. This week or next?

It was said by George Bernard Shaw that England and America are two countries separated by a common language.  If that is true, then Caroline is England and I am America.

For three weeks this August, we are spending a lot more time together at home than we usually do and all because ten years ago, Caroline embarked on a Masters degree.  However, she didn’t realise that was what she was doing at the time. 

To begin with, Caroline thought that she and other members of her team in Camden, where she worked, were merely attending a 6-day course on “Mentoring and Coaching” that was run by the Institute of Education in London.  Upon successful completion of the course she was awarded a Graduate Certificate. 

Two years later, when we were living in Cayman, Caroline commissioned the Institute to run a National Education Leadership Programme for headteachers and other leaders of education on the island and she participated in the course herself.  

At its successful conclusion, the visiting professor from London told Caroline that if she cashed in her graduate certificate from Camden, she was well on the way to obtaining a Master’s degree.

The final module in this marathon is a 20,000 word dissertation and as the deadline for its completion is September 2nd this year, Caroline is devoting her (and my) 2 weeks summer holiday to finishing and submitting it. 

After ten years, the end is in sight! 

Our language problem started at lunch yesterday, Sunday August 4^th.

“What’s your schedule?” I asked.

“I hope to have it finished by the end of next week.”

“Twelve more days then?”

“No, I hope to have it finished by next Friday.”

“Another twelve days then?”

“No Friday, next week.”

“Another twelve days then?”  I was becoming irritated.

“No, next Friday.”

“Next Friday is the sixteenth.  Today is the fourth.  Twelve days!”

“No, you idiot.  The next Friday is in five days time on the ninth.”

“Look,” I snapped in some exasperation, “the next Friday is the ninth and so you meant THIS Friday, not NEXT Friday!”

We ate the delicious lamb and ginger curry I’d made in an uneasy silence for a minute or two.  Then I had another thought.

“You said Friday, next week.  The next Friday is in this week, not next week.”

“That depends when you start the week,” was Caroline’s strange response.

“Well I and most other people, start the week on Sunday.  Sunday is the first day of the week and so this Friday is in this week.”

“Monday’s the first day of the week as far as I’m concerned,” she said.

“But that’s like saying that the year starts with February or that there are 26 people sitting round this table because you start counting at 25.”

“All right then,” Caroline countered, “What days make up the weekend?”

“Saturday and Sunday, of course.”

“Yes.  You see?  Sunday is the end of the weekend and so it can’t be the start of the week.”

I reluctantly conceded that she had a point.  I thought about it for a while: Today is Monday August 4^th and so in conversation with someone:

Tuesday would be “tomorrow”.

Wednesday is “the day after tomorrow”.

Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday would be “this Thursday or this Friday etc.”

Monday August 12^th and every other day that week would be “next Monday…. etc.”

Monday the 19th would be “on Monday week” and so on for all the days of that week.”

I think that Caroline unwittingly put her finger on the cause of the problem. 

Some people call Sunday the first day of the week because, according to the Old Testament of the Bible, Saturday is at the end of the week as it was God's day of rest after six days of work, beginning on Sunday.

But there are difficulties.  For instance, Microsoft is confused. The 'United States' setting has their calendar week start on Sunday but for the 'United Kingdom' setting, the calendar week starts on Monday.

Countries that use Slavic languages treat Monday as the first day, Tuesday as the second day while Saturday and Sunday are the only days in their week that are named rather than numbered.  In Hungarian, a non-Slavic language, Tuesday comes from the word for 'two' and so, by implication, the week starts on Monday.

The word 'weekend' was first recorded in 1878 and it refers to 'the period between the close of one working week and the beginning of the next'. This concept firmly places Sunday at the end of the week and therefore Monday is Day One.

Airline timetables also number the days from Monday as 1, Tuesday as 2, Wednesday as 3, etc.

However, in Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries, western-based businesses are told not to try to arrange a visit on a Thursday because it is the start of the weekend.

Some years ago, the International Organisation for Standardisation, in an attempt to clarify matters, specified Monday as the first day of the week.

The evidence therefore seems to me to be overwhelmingly stacked in favour of Caroline’s assertion that Monday is the first day of the week.  I, however, still think that the week starts on Sunday but as with the metric system, it seems that The USA (and I) are out of step with the rest of the world and maybe, just maybe, Caroline is right. 

She may also be right in her opinion that the lamb and ginger curry would be improved unless by the addition of sultanas but I won’t try it unless she is right and then I would never hear the end of it. 

Wednesday afternoon - the day after tomorrow



We've just had lunch with Tom, my son. He, much to Caroline's huge annoyance, agrees with me that the week starts on Sunday and to back up his view he sang the first verse from the theme to the American 70s comedy series, "Happy Days"

Sunday, Monday, Happy Days,

Tuesday, Wednesday, Happy Days,

Thursday, Friday, Happy Days,

Saturday, what a day,

Rockin’ all week with you.

That is definitive proof. To have happy days, the week starts on Sunday.