2012 - Blog

On 121212 I attended an English Research Seminar in Plymouth University entitled Papists and Poets, Polemic and the Stage: The Interpretive Communities of 1 Henry 1V. Daniel Cattell, a member of the English Department at Exeter University, presented his Research Paper: Item 1 on the hand-out I received quoted a personage with the pseudonym ND ' . . . The second Moneth of February . . .' In my diary I wrote ' . . . Shakespeare interesting but dense to JH . . . ' Should a reader of JH's present Treatise dwell on the use of the adjective 'dense' . . . I mean that I could not assimilate all the erudite facts and interpretations!

In any event, I observed that the twelfth day of the twelfth Moneth of '12 will never again occur {until the third Millennium of course} - whether recorded in the English Order as DDMMYY {the '20' of the first century of the second millennium is omitted}, or recorded in the US of A as MMDDYY!

By the Way, 121212 occurred on a Wednesday, the middle of a week with seven days . . . in German Mittwoch, which translation I am bound to know, as I studied German to 'O' Level at evening classes, after my sister became engaged to Walter, my German brother-in-law. Why, I ask myself, has a week been 'constructed' to contain seven days - so that Mittwoch can be precisely identified?

Furthermore:-
Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November,
All the rest have thirty-one,
Excepting February Alone,
And that has twenty-eight days clear
And twenty-nine in each leap year.

So . . . the Gregorian Calendar, which is the Civic Calendar used by an awful lot of the Countries in the World, divides up the year into Twelve Months out of which four have 30 days, seven have 31 days, and one month has 28 days - except for having an extra day added every four years. In one day the earth rotates on its axis so that it has a side illuminated by the sun opposite to a dark side which is illuminated by a poor reflection from the moon. As the axis is squiffy, the sun is not perpendicular above the Earth's surface in the same place all the time: so we have Four Seasons. A year is comprised of 365 days - except when February has an extra day every four years - the time taken for the earth to rotate in an orbit round the sun. I will not be around when a year is even more adrift in its length than can be compensated for by adding a 29th day to February!

Our ancestral brilliant Pundits also contrived to divide each day up in to 24 hours; each hour containing 60 minutes; and each minute containing 60 seconds. I am told by said Pundits that time 'dents' space . . . not to mention being represented on a globe by the International Date Line wandering haphazardly along at 180 degrees longitude through the Pacific.

My Geography Teacher said that an Isobar is not an imaginary line . . . it is a line on a map joining places were the atmospheric pressure is the same. No doubt she would also say - and she is not yet 'turning in her grave' - that the International Date Line is not an imaginary line . . . as Google tells me repeatedly . . . because I can quite clearly see the International Date Line inscribed on my Globe. I am now abandoning Googling!