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.
I remember Ada Rowe - we were in awe of her and teachers pointed her out when she came to St Margaret's Junior School to vote in general election. She came on her own, completely unaided despite her great age. How interesting it would have been to speak to her - they should have let her talk to us - much better than a history lesson.
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