The Thirteenth Month

I have often wondered why we have twelve months when we say four weekes is a month. If that were so we'd be starting our thirteenth month tomorrow and would probably called Undecember (latin for eleven is Undecim) . Here is an explanation , apparently the romans started with ten months but then tried to match it to the (just over) 12 lunar cycles in a year so a 13 month year would be out of sync with th elunare cycles.

The thing remind me of imperial weights and money systems  (12 pennies to a shilling , 5 shillings to a crown , then there's half crowns , twenty shillings in a pound and twenty one shillings in a guinea. Then sixteen ounces to a pound, fourteen pounds to a stone etc , then you have twelve inches to a foot , three feet to a yard , six feet to a fathom etc.

Then you have tennis scoring which is weird as hell and the Duckworth-Lewis method in cricket for curtailed matches and all the weird scoring possibilities with light stopping play and more.

Metric is a far more sensible measurement system , although people still have problems with our swith to decimalisation fifty years back.

So this is my first post of the month and think I'm going to go with "The Killing Moon" by Echo & The Bunnymen because of the lunar cycles that prompted this post in th efirst place.

The End of The Weekend

I was apprehensive about reading Stephen Fry's "Mythos" mainly due to the number of pages and the small type after James O'Briens' excellent "How To Be Right" (both shorter and with larger type so easier to read for my ancient eyes).

That's one of the benefits of eReaders, you get to choose the size of the font, although the bigger the font the more pages / page turns you effectively get, but it really does put you in control.

Anyway I am a fan of all mythologies and in "Mythos" Fry takes on the Greeks and it is incredibly readable, dashing all my apprehensions. It's like having a lesson from a really good teacher or watching an episode of QI, and he illustrates the very beginnings of Greek mythology often using contemporary illustrations and more than a little humour. He also brings his ego to bear, but non of this is to the detriment of the book, which I am now looking forward to having a very enjoyable ride through.It really is that good.

Today also saw the culmination of the English Premier League with Manchester City pipping Liverpool who were 25 points ahead of Chelsea. Liverpool finished second with 97 points after losing only one match this season, a stunning achievement, but even more stunning was Manchester City taking the title. LIverpool now have a Champions League Final to play.

So a great end to the weekend, and tomorrow sees another visit to the Freeman Hospital for me, though this time it is relatively minor and nowhere near the extreme discomfort of last week's endoscopy.

So I hope your weekend has been good, and just to vaguely find a related song and thought I would go for "Pandora's Box" by Procol Harum, which I always found vaguely sinister with it's off kilter signature motif, though apparently their name is Latin for "Far From Things" so not Greek, although Greek and Roman Mythologies were always interchangeable.