Chiding streams betray small depths below

Why does water (sometimes) make a noise?

A huge river like the Essequibo can flow almost silently, while the tiniest drip of a tap can sound very loud

The first thing I hear on waking each morning at home is the sound of the stream on the other side of the road. Before I even open my eyes I can tell what the weather is like, just from its sound. Too angry? If only I could just go back to sleep & forget about today! A gentle babble? Oh what a beautiful morning!

Would Niagara still make a noise if it was falling on to something soft & spongy? Like giant foam rubber cushions?

Obviously (?) the speed/force with which the water is moving is part of it. And it has to be moving against something hard. But then what? Explosions of gas?

Plus ca change

While it may be said that this government circular frankly recognises many of the evils created by motor-car traffic, & shows no disposition unduly to favour the motorist, it contains no indication of any intention on the part of Government to grapple seriously with the real difficulties of the situation

British Medical Journal 1908 p941

Unexpected effects

The papers have been carrying reports this week that bus passes have been putting increased strain on local government finances. Over-60s have been travelling further & more frequently than had been forecast. Quelle surprise

Another unexpected effect is that, at least on my route, drivers will no longer change £10 or £20 notes. This is because they simply do not have much change these days. All those half-fares or flat-rate 50p fares they used to collect are no more. Yesterday evening the driver of my bus had a grand total of 2x£1 coins in his tray

A cold snap

Some people are suggesting that this winter may turn out to be as cold as that of 1947. I do hope not - I can remember that one

We were pretty much snowed in - not that much traffic came down our lane anyway. The milkman came with a horse-drawn van, but I dont think he could make it throught the snow

I do remember my father bringing the District Nurse round - he pulled her along on a toboggan. She was a story book nurse, all bustling & round, brisk, cheery & competent. She used to wear a uniform coat of dark brown gaberdine & matching round brown hat with a flat turned back brim, not unlike the woolly ones in fashion now

I can also remember going out on some expedition, sitting on the toboggan with my mother sitting behind holding on to me tight

And it was cold & there was no electricity & our prefab was made from asbestos which provided almost zero insulation

Malcolm Marshall

Malcolm Marshall was unusually small - for a Weat Indian fast bowler, that is. But probably the most thoughtful of his generation, thinking in detail about every ball, making the most minute adjustments to his fields. You never doubted he could put the ball exactly how & where he intended

He had quite a bustling run. The moment of his delivery was a wonder to behold. Both feet off the ground, arms & legs extended into a star shape, then thwuupp every inch of his body whipped behind the ball

Justice

When we can be sure of doing perfect justice in the simplest police case we may begin to talk about the infallibility of a tribunal of pedants

ET Raymond:Portraits of the Nineties

Tactile paving

Miles Kington once said that some clever marketing men spend their time, not on promoting brand awareness but on ensuring that some things have no name at all. This is so that no one can complain about them

Well, now I know its name I can have a REAL rant about tactile paving

This is that horrible pink or vomit-fawn pimply concrete stuff that has sprouted on pavements everywhere. Even in villages

Now I agree that it is a Good Thing that blind people should be given an indication of where to cross the road. But why do these excrescences have to stretch all the way from kerb to property line & fill the whole of the space between the railings they erect to herd us into crossing the road at the prescribed spot?

You cannot avoid walking across the stuff several times each day. If you suffer from peripheral neuritis, or have a bad back, or almost any kind of foot or leg problem, IT HURTS. On a bad day I almost let out involuntary squeals each time I have to do this

The MRC should immediately commission reseach into the effect that this tooth-rattling shaking has on babies & young children in buggies. And all supermarkets should be required, BY LAW, (are you listening, Sainsburys, Hazel Grove) to provide a smooth level pathway for people pushing laden trolleys out of their stores

Amputation

In the outset, I am bound to express my regret, that the riches of our great hospitals are rendered so little available for enquiries like the present, that these noble institutions, which should be storehouses of exact observations, made on a large scale, and for which accurate ideas should be disseminated throughout the land, are almost completely without the means of fulfilling this very important object

Benjamin Philips Esq FRS, Surgeon to the Marylebone Infirmary
Journal of the Statistical Society 1838; 'Mortality of amputation'

The Boeing 717

I first noticed the Boeing 717 in the summer of 2003 when the weather was nice enough to use the bus stop up the hill where you get a good view of the sky. It can get wild & woolly up there so I usually go to the next stop along the valley floor

Why go back to the number 717? I always wondered why there wasnt one

Anyway, its a beautiful plane. With its slim form, swept back wings & neat engines perched under a high tail, it sems to dance in the sky

There is a whole procession of them coming into Manchester airport from the east around about 4 to 6pm. We are under the flight path but far enough away for the planes to be high enough not to disturb us with noise pollution. A beautiful sight on a sunny summer evening with only a few high whispy clouds & contrails gradually turning into herringbones

Michael Holding

From a purely aesthetic & visual point of view at least, Michael Holding was the greatest of the great West Indian fast bowlers

He used to remind me of a young stallion, standing at the start of his run, with all the power & vulnerability that that implies. I dont think he actually used to paw at the ground with his foot, nor blow steam from his nostrils - it wasnt usually that cold, even in England. But he always ducked his head at the start of his run

And what a run! Dickie Bird said that he never liked standing at the bowlers end to Holding because you never heard him coming

Lies, damn lies

After Lord Palmerstons death, Lord Russell did not venture on leaving in the Chief Secretaryship a man who had made himself obnoxious to every Irish member, & decided on replacing him with Mr Chichester Fortescue, an Irish landlord

Before Mr Chichester Fortescues appointment, however, was made, the outbreak of Fenianism had furnished a rude commentary on Sir Robert Peels statistics. It had burst like a clap of thunder on a clear sky. Even if Sir Robert Peel was right, & Ireland was prospering, Fenianism made it plain that prosperity had not cured Irish disaffection

The people of Ireland seemed to be divided between those who wished success to the movement, & those who disapproved its methods, but sympathised with its ends. It was no longer possible to deny that they were animated by a passionate detestation of English law & of English rule. Sir Robert Peel might be the best of all possible Chief Secretaries, in the best of all possible Ministries; but the Irish, so it was evident, had no terms to make with the Government which was pondering over the statistics it was collecting in Dublin Castle

Sir Spencer Walpole:The History of 25 Years

The late Peter Fryer

In the 1960s I read a book which had in its title the name Mrs Grundy. The lesson I took from the book, & one which stayed with me, was that euphemisms - for example words to do with sexual activity - eventually & inevitably themselves become unacceptable in polite society because it is the thing or the activity itself, not the word, which embarrasses us

This is. I think, proved over & over in modern political correctness, which attempts to suppress words such as fat or short but allows slim or tall to pass

When I became a blogger - thinking to concentrate only on Great Thoughts - I tracked down the book, intending to use it as a launching pad for musings on our current usage of the word black. This has always seemed especially ironic to me (though not to be denigrated on that score) since I was taught by my school Latin teacher that the Latinate form Negro had been adopted because it was thought that the Old English black - with its connotations of darkness & evil - should not be applied to members of the human race

I never quite felt I had found the right words to express these thoughts, so the piece remains sitting in my blog as an unpublished draft only

I also remember, in the mid-80s, reading reviews of a much acclaimed history of Black people in Britain - Invaluable, S Rushdie - but since that was a time of upheaval in my life I never got round to reading it

Off & on, over the last couple of years, unable to remember either author or title of the black history book, I have been trying to track it down, ever since I discovered a Victorian quote about Sir Arthur Sullivan. With no success. even when, with renewed vigour, I consulted the website & promotional literature during Black History Month last October

Then, last December I think, I heard on Radio 4 an obituary of a man who had written what sounded like that book. Off to the Library next day - catalogue confirms they have a copy, in Basement storage. Approach the desk in anticipation - only to find that it has just been issued to another borrower. Obviously heard the same programme

Yesterday - finally - the catalogue reveals the book is available once more. This time I leave the library with the book safely in my bag & repair to Caffe Nero for a reviving cappuccino

Turn to the biographical note: Peter Fryer was born in Yorkshire in 1927 .... several books .... including .... MRS GRUNDY: STUDIES IN ENGLISH PRUDERY !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I had completely failed to make the connection before

Sullivan appears in the Index only in relation to an admiring entry about Samuel Coleridge Taylor without further comment. So I dont think Peter Fryer can have known that Sullivan had more than mere musicianship to provoke fellow-feeling with Coleridge Taylor

Which makes me all the more sad that I cannot write to let him know how I appreciate those two books, & maybe share my small find with him

Related post: Sir Arthur Sullivan: A notable black Englishman

Starstruck

I love Orion. And his sword. And his dog

I learned to recognise constellations when I did my Girl Guide Astronomers badge. I can still recognise a few - Cassiopaeia, Andromeda, & the Plough, of course. Not forgetting Ursa Minor. And the Southern Cross if Im in the Southern hemisphere

But Orion is something special. I have no idea why. Perhaps its because he, of all the ones I know, looks like what he is supposed to be. How can the plough be a bear?

Best of all, at this time of year, he is right there over my back garden when I put the rubbish out last thing at night. Like my guardian angel

Delay

The radiance of the star that leans on me

Was shining years ago. The light that now

Glitters up there my eyes may never see,

And so the time lag teases me with how

Love that loves now may not reach me until

Its first desire is spent. The star's impulse

Must wait for eyes to claim it beautiful

And love arrived may find us somewhere else.

Elizabeth Jennings

.

Step not forth on the dew-dashed lawn

To view the Lady's Chair,

Immense Orion's glittering form,

The Less and Greater Bear:

Stay in; to such sights we were drawn

When faded ones were fair.

.

Thomas Hardy

The Order

The Order was the 1950s version of internet shopping. It was of course only very local. Every Tuesday or Wednesday you delivered a list of your requirements to the local grocer & on Friday a delivery boy toiled up the hill on his bike - one of those heavy ones with a frame on the front to hold the carton of groceries. Yes, it really was as Hovis as that

The goods had to be carefully checked against the order. The prices had to be checked, as well as the arithmetic of the total sum owing. It was important to register any complaints with the grocer - goods out of stock, quality not up to scratch, prices outrageous - before settling up, to demonstrate that you were a careful housewife who knew what was what. But it was also important to give praise where praise was due; that too ensured good service.

My Nana used small black notebooks for her order - my mother just used to use pieces of paper. How I wish I had thought to ask for those books when Nana died; but of course that was the last thing on my mind

An Anglo Saxon Christmas

My name is Leonilla but my friends call me Lilla. My father was a thegn and I had three brothers; the eldest was killed fighting for our king. When I was still a child my mother gave me to the abbess here because I wanted to learn to read and to study the word of God. The abbess is a great and noble lady, the daughter of a king, and very learned

The monastery has grown - we even had builders and glaziers over from France to build a stone church & to make coloured glass for the windows and to teach some of our brethren how to make glass. They have made lamps for the church and now everyone can see the pictures

The brothers sleep in their own quarters separated from our dormitories by a thick hedge, but we share the refectory and the church and sisters work alongside the monks in the guest house & the infirmary & the herb garden; the whole of our monastery is surrounded by a high wall but we have lived peacefully and never been attacked since I came here

I have my own cell which is a special privilege for those whose main work is study and prayer and reading. My bed is a simple pallet and pillow without hangings and I have only a bed cover to keep me warm. In winter when it is very cold I keep my woollen gown on at night and sometimes my cloak as well, though usually I just sleep in my linen undergarment; I am too delicate to wear rough wool next to my skin as some do. I keep my clothes in a sturdy wooden chest which I keep smelling sweet with cloves which I beg from the kitchen. I also keep my leather shoes in the chest; these are soft and kind to my feet and they are kept soft by regular greasing with pigs lard. My spare pins and my best amethyst beads are in there too; I just wear glass beads most days, together with my gold cross

My mother had a theory that regular washing is necessary to keep away the diseases of the skin and they say that the bishop Wilfrid used to wash himself every night, winter and summer, in holy water. I have no means of washing in my cell, but as often as I can I go with my sisters to the lavatorium where our attendants help us to bathe in warm water

These days the bishops are always telling us that we should wear sober dress without colour or embroidery, as well as telling us to stop using the curling tongs on our hair. I enjoy using my needle to help make beautiful cloths for the altar and vestments for the priests; to my mind it is just as much to the glory of God if we use these same skills to make beautiful edgings for our tunics and cloaks or ribbons for our veils; it is certainly not at all unchaste to take pleasure in such finery, and it is not our aim to attract strange men. Our work is much admired everywhere and we have sent altar cloths and vestments as gifts to foreign churches, even to Rome itself

As I said earlier, life has been peaceful here since I came and we live well; our 10 hides of land and the outlying estates provide abundantly for us and together with what the men bring us from the river, the forest and the hill we have all the food that we need. We eat twice a day, good cooked meals in the refectory, except that we fast every Wednesday and Friday until Nonce, as well as on the special fast days. Our Mother does not believe that excessive fasting, nor excessive penance, are required; she says that lack of food and sleep dull our minds, especially for study

The bishop comes to stay regularly in the guest house with his retinue and then there is great to-do in the kitchen preparing the feast; once some earls came and then it was terrible - 3 days and nights they were drinking, wine as well as ale. The bishop drinks wine which comes in special jars from France, but only in moderation. Sometimes we drink ale but mostly milk or water or the drinks which Brother Bertred makes from infusions of herbs from the garden; he is very clever and makes all the herb medicines which are needed in the infirmary as well. After Terce we always drink a special concoction of bruised herbs to cleanse away the evil humours

We have a special feast at Christmas; we have roast beef, boiled goose, dolphin and venison, pressed curds and honey and special white bread, with mead to drink. We all tell stories, about the old times when there were warriors and sailors, about miracles and about journeys to Rome, and we sing songs to the harp and the lyre

I spend most of my days studying; I dont work in the Scriptorium though sometimes when I was a little girl we were allowed in to watch and help the monks grind up the pigments. One winter it was so cold that nobody could write properly; even Brother Bertreds herb and honey mixture could not cure their chilblains. It was so bad that they said we would have to start eating the horses when the meat ran out, but fortunately it never came to that. It was terribly cold last winter too, that is why we often sat in the cells in the daytime, to keep warm; we were not being immoral

Because of my studies I spend a lot of time in my cell; sometimes one of the cats comes in to keep me company, and of course that helps to keep the mice out of my bed as well. There was a big argument last week because a mouse fell in to the crock of skim milk; Brother Bosa said the milk had to be thrown away because the mouse was dead, but Brother Felix said it was still alive so the milk would be all right to drink after it was sprinkled with holy water

I study the Holy Scriptures of course, as well as the expositions by the Fathers; I practise grammar and have learned Latin and I like to try to put the Scriptures in to verse but I am not very good at it. We also have to study chronology, which is very important for working out the dates of the festivals, but it is very hard; I always get in to a muddle when I am counting on my fingers. Our Mother likes us to read to her in the evenings; she is often sleepy but always notices if we make a mistake. Another thing that often happens in the evening is that one of the brothers sings to us because he has the gift of turning the lessons into wonderful verses. Then we take it in turns to sing to the harp

We have about 20 children living in the monastery; some are orphans and some have been given by their parents to the abbess to learn the Word of God. I sometimes help to teach them to make their letters on their writing tablets. I still use writing tablets myself for practising my grammar and composing my poetry, or copying out passages from Scripture which I am to learn by heart; I have one very special stylus of copper and silver which was given to me by my mother and is decorated but I usually use the plain bone kind

In the afternoons, if the weather is good, the children play outside. Some of the monks are like children themselves and like to join them in their games of tag, running and jumping about; they dont even always let the children win. There are even brothers who will go out with the servants hunting foxes or hare coursing or go out with the falcons, though they are not supposed to

We nuns all sit together to work on embroidery with the servants who help us. Our main work at the moment is an altar cloth which is to be sent as a gift to Frankia. It is on linen as we do not have any silk cloth to work on, and we are copying some of the biblical figures from the pictures in the Church, which came from Rome. I like to work on the coloured sections which we sew with silk thread using split stitch and stem stitch; we have all sorts of colours of thread, red, cream, green, blue, and yellow. The gold threads are hard to couch and they hurt my fingers; and wrapping the core threads with the gold is boring so we usually leave that to the servants. Sometimes it is hard to see what we are doing, and only the very young ones have eyes that are keen enough to work. I have heard that some noble ladies have made pieces that are all in white, which must be really difficult to do because you would not be able to see it

As you can see I live a very happy life here and hardly miss my family at all. I hope to keep on with my studies, if we are spared, and one day make the pilgrimage to Rome. Then one day, when I am truly learned and have become truly pious, maybe I can become abbess

Links
Works by the Venerable Bede
A History of the English Church & People
Life of Cuthbert

Lives of the Abbots of Wearmouth & Jarrow
Life of Wilfrid by Eddius

The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England edited by DM Wilson
The animal resources by J Clutton-Brock
Monastic Sites by RJ Cramp

The Medical Background of Anglo-Saxon England by W Bonser

Dress in Anglo-Saxon England by GR Owen-Crocker

Needlework Through the Ages by M Symonds & L Preece

Women in Anglo-Saxon England by C Fell

Feminae gloriosae: women in the age of Bede by J Nicholson published in Medieval Women edited by D Baker

Works by Thomas Allison
Pioneers of English Learning
English Religious Life in the 8th Century

Anglo-Saxon Art & Culture AD 600-900 edited by L Webster & J Backhouse

The Age of Bede DH Farmer
Anglo-Saxon England by Stenton

Exercise v Exertion

Any discussion about obesity soon descends into a discussion about why people do not participate in sport

But sport is not the only way of exerting oneself, of burning off the calories; it is a rather strange, competitive activity

When I was little, Mondays involved my mother, with my 'help', filling & emptying a dolly tub, possing the clothes, then putting them through the mangle before hanging them on the line. These days the most a mother would have to do to exert herself would be to pick the clothes up from the floor, sort them, put them in the machine & press a button; she might still have to hang them on the line

Even hoovering the house on Friday might have involved a fair degree of exertion - household machines were heavy & made of metal. Modern plastics & engines make machines much easier to push

Cooking no longer involves the need to whip cream, pound potatoes, beat eggs or even peel potatoes. Just put into the microwave & press a button or pick up the phone & take a takeaway delivery

Shopping involves much less carrying of weights - just put it in the trolley & push (though watch your back as you pick up & put down all those bags)

Going in to & out of shops is also much easier as doors open automatically & steps or stairs become things of the past - making life easier for the disabled also means asking less of the able bodied

So is eating or exercise the real problem? Surveys show that people are actually eating less - eating fewer calories. If we are putting on weight then it is because the reduction in calories does not match the reduction in exertion

If I were trying to make a Just So evolutionary story out of this, what would it be?

Simla

The clouds came down in earnest today at Simla & when I woke up this morning I found them in bed with me

William Russell : My Diary in India in the Year 1858-9

Hearing Voices

Am I the only person who can 'hear' voices? Obviously not

I am not talking about schizophrenia, hearing extraneous voices in my head, but about hearing tone, intention, attitude, when the voice is all I can hear, when I cant see the face of the person who is talking, for example on the phone or on the radio

The first time I can remember being conscious of this was during the Westland debate between Thatcher & Kinnock in the House of Commons in [1986?]; I had a small, tinny transistor in my office which was used mainly for keeping up to date with cricket scores; the Westland scandal caused great excitement among my fellow civil servants & we were all anxious to hear the (only recently introduced) broadcast of the Commons debate. For some reason there was a panic at work & we were only able to foregather in my room to listen to the broadcast as Thatcher began her reply to Kinnock. After a few seconds I said 'Oh, shes won'; my colleagues all turned towards me in astonishment & said 'How do you know that?'

I was confused - how could they not know? It was obvious from her voice that she was confident of, she knew that, she had won. We had not heard Kinnocks speech, but many later analyses have pointed to the fact that he was too verbose & threw away the opportunity to get the better of her; without having heard him I knew from her tone that this was what had happened

The next time I can remember such a significant 'hearing' concerns John Diamond, who used to present a late night programme on 5 Live. To be honest I never found his voice or style all that attractive, but one night I found his gabbling too much to bear, switched to another station & composed one of those 'letters in my head' to his producer, asking him/her to tell John to slow down & talk more clearly. He never did another show & I learned soon afterwards that he had throat cancer. Was it the cancer that made his voice so hard to understand?

Not many months later a similar thing happened with Vincent Hanna, who also presented an interesting late night programme on 5 Live. One week, when he had as well been sitting in for Jimmy Young on R2, he sounded so exhausted that I wrote another of those 'letters in my head' to his producer, telling him not to work so hard. Within a week or two he was dead of either a heart attack or stroke. I began to feel very spooky

What is it about voices that gives away ones age? Why are 3 year olds so distinctive? Why is it so obvious that a voice belongs to an old person? Is it just collagen, or some other feature of the vocal chords?

How do some people learn to speak 'beautifully'? For example Fi Glover speaks with almost a Mozartian or Bachian melodic line (though not necessarily with the same rhythm). Is this something to do with her physical make up, or does it reflect elocution lessons or her psychological attitudes? How can some people like her speak challengingly without aggression?

I have been thinking about hearing without seeing or watching - using just one sense at a time. Why is it that looking, eg at a parliamentary debate on tv, removes this ability to 'hear' what the politicians are really thinking or feeling? And why do I sometimes have to take my glasses off to hear?

Why is it so instructive to watch, eg on tv, the reactions of the actor(s) who are not speaking, to deliberately remove ones focus from the actor who is? One thing you do learn is that English actors have the terrible habit of reacting before they have heard what the other person has to say. American actors do not do this - or is it all in the editing?

The verb TO BE

The verb to be

When a language has a verb 'to be' it is usually, though irregular, considered one of the simplest verb/words, so simple that other languages manage to take it as simply 'understood', much in the same way that zero was simply understood as a number before the place holder was invented. Why do you need a word or symbol to stand for nothing? Why do you need a word to stand for the basic obvious fact of existence? Well zero holds a place, enables the wonders of place value in mathematics, makes all the difference between 1, 10 and 100. A difference that can, tragically, mean the difference between life & death when applied to drug doses for example

During the Clinton impeachment almost nothing, not the stain on the dress, not the mind-boggling implications of what was going on under the desk during those phone calls, invited more universal derision than the response It all depends on what is is

Is is actually very complicated. To try & unpack this a little, let us move on to the plural version, are

Men are taller than women is a statement that would not attract much flak even from the most ardently feminist or politically correct. Not even from me, despite the fact that, at 5'10" I am taller than most men - or at least I used to be. I am now over 60, so the addition of all those giant 20-somethings & the death of all those tiny 80-somethings may mean that I am now below the average height of the British adult male

But we all understand what the statement means; we know that women rarely pair with a man shorter than they are, we know that on average women are shorter than men & that the very tallest humans are always male

For centuries, logic has taught us the essential point of the syllogism - all men are liars does not imply that all liars are men. Elementary logic does not however teach us how to cope with the less definite assertion that most men are liars. From this alone we can conclude nothing about the truth of the statement most liars are men.

This may not seem to matter much in every day life, except when it comes to statements such as Women enjoy shopping more than men or Men are better at maths than women. If you are rash enough to make one of these statements on, say, national radio, be prepared for the flak. But, just as one tall woman does not disprove the ordinary sense of the statement that men are taller than women, the existence of women who do not enjoy shopping, or of one brilliant female mathematician, does not disprove the truth of the other two statements

By the same process of reasoning, the simple statement that in some parts of London most muggers are black does not mean that most blacks are muggers, even if sometimes both police & the black community seem to think that it does, or that that is what is being implied.

In saying this last I do not wish to imply that either the black community or the police are being particularly dense; I still remember with wonder a Newsnight discussion of several years ago during which a participant seemed to argue that the existence of one young woman, the only female ever to study for a PhD under Stephen Hawkins, was enough to disprove the assertion that men are better at maths

Our problem here is language, or rather grammar; we need a different case, voice, tense of the verb to be to cope with ratio numbers. As far as the verb to be is concerned we are stuck in the time when numbers were simple counting numbers - 1,2,3,4 … The Ancient Greeks realised that these were not enough & got at least as far as understanding that ratio numbers needed to be added to the mathematical armoury. Mathematicians have since moved on to the realisation that we also need real numbers, imaginary numbers, complex numbers & heaven knows what else. But our everyday language has still not caught up

In considering the history of numbers & language we need at least to consider three aspects; the word - two; the symbol 2 or for example; and the abstract concept - the twoness of two

This might seem a bit twee or airy fairy but think about it this way. Many standard histories of mathematics make the claim that primitive man could not count beyond 3 because languages seem, almost universally, to have contained only words for one, two, three, many

But as Menninger pointed out you dont need words to count, & the fact that no words seem to exist for numbers beyond 3 does not imply that people did not understand, or comprehend the differences between, larger numbers (even just the difference between 4 & 5). In the same way, in future millennia, historians may believe that we cannot perceive subtle differences in skin colour, simply because our language seems to contain only the words black or white to describe these

There is plenty of evidence that ancient man could count; one of my favourite stories is about the use of simple clay models of sheep to keep tally of the flocks. And tally sticks were in use in the British Treasury right up to the time that they were destroyed by the fire which burned down the old Parliament building in 1834. Were the civil servants of those days any less in control of public expenditure than their modern counterparts with their digital or analogue computers?

The really odd thought is that ancient man seemed to think of twoness as a property of the particular object: two apples were different from two pears. A strange thought, unless you remember being taught in your schooldays that You cant add apples and pears. Of course you can - the answer is a number of fruit. The existence - the continuing existence - of different words for the same concept of twoness - pair, couple, double, twin … is evidence that ancient populations struggled with this notion. Do primary school children still have to learn the 'correct' words for many - a flock of sheep, a herd of cows, a clutch of eggs … ?

So it was a struggle, between the need to comprehend the abstract notion of number & the need to come up with zero as a place holder. Together these ideas mean that we can go from 0 to ∞, in the symbolism of number, with no more than the code 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9. Did number words only follow (emerge after) this code? Probably

We have not really advanced beyond these centuries old inventions. We have words for some ratio numbers - half, quarter, third - but few that really convey the sense & complexity. Just as it took an advanced mathematician to do division or multiplication with the Roman number system, it takes a fairly advanced mathematician to work out whether 2/7 is greater than 3/8

There is some evidence of development, perhaps thanks to the metric system. The use of % - a key on the keyboard which I am using to type this - is now quite widely accepted even outside of statistical tables. When I started my career in the civil service in the 1960s the use of the symbol (rather than the words per cent) was infra dig. But we still dont understand percentages very well

Not too long ago a kind of high tech version of the rhythm method of contraception was being marketed under the promise that it was 94% effective. There were soon widespread reports that it did not work reliably; a tv programme gave a platform to young women who felt that they had been misled because they had not realised that this meant a 1 in 16 chance of becoming pregnant (6 out of 100 sounds so much less). It was however never entirely clear whether the claim meant 1 in 16 times of making love or something more complicated such as once in 16 menstrual cycles you will be making love during your fertile period. I do not think that this is just a female problem, but I am tired of pointing out that the idea that breast cancer affects 1 in 12 women means that I am 92% certain not to get it

Per cent, as a word or phrase, does at least imply the ratio, but we still have no simple means of describing what is a percentage of which. Most of the time we seem to think that this can be taken as read - there is no need to specify the period when we talk about house prices rising by 5%; we can talk about the % of women managers and somehow take it as read whether we are talking about the % of women who are managers or the % of managers who are women

Which brings us back to the beginning of these musings. Women are taller than men: we have no simple language to say whether this means simply that the average woman is shorter than the average man. But at least here we are, or think we are, talking about overall majorities

Our first past the post political system requires only that one candidate achieve the largest number of votes; in a 3-member constituency with 100 voters the one who gets 34 votes can win, even if each of the others receives 33

Children of lone parents can be said to do worse at school because only 17% of them get 3 As at A level compared with 20% of children from 2-parent families. And so on

All the above has been about the problems of is or are as a matter of proportion or majority. These problems are difficult enough if we are talking about a comparison at a fixed point in time. Consideration about 'to be' in time - I am a Mancunian, a statistician - the problems of this kind of statement, the problem of 'before' must be left for another essay

Taj Mahal

It is wrong to call it a dream in marble; it is a thought - an idea - a conception of tenderness - a sigh as it were of eternal devotion & heroic love, caught & embued with such immortality as the earth can give

William Russell: My Diary in India in the Year 1858-59