Unsophisticated Taste in Numbers

I noticed the other night that I had managed to get over two weeks into the new year without getting confused about what the date was. Not only had I written "2010" or "/10" correctly several times, but I hadn't even noticed myself doing it. Indeed I can't quite remember or imagine it ever being 2009, as 2009 just seems a bit wrong. This is partly because of the new decade and all that, making the number of the year quite memorable. But it's also cos 10 is just a better number than 9. Ten is right. Nine is wrong.

This is because I prefer even numbers to odd numbers. The best numbers of all are those which have many factors, like 36 or 1024.

My mum, on the other hand, prefers prime numbers. She sewed an extra pocket onto her new coat so that the total number of pockets would be a prime number. I've always felt that my mum was more sophisticated than me because she prefers prime numbers, which are quite clever cool things, rather than even numbers, which are the white bread, the processed sugar, the ITV of the numbers. I am a populist unsophisticated fool in my numbers taste.

I suggested this to Him Indoors the other night and he said I was wrong. He said that it wasn't so much a question of comparing processed sugar with organic home made apple pie, but more like comparing posh caviar with cheap caviar. Most people just don't have favourite types of number in the first place.

The question is, was he right?? Do you have a favourite type of number?

Snow Family Rising

Behold!

Snow!

Woke up this morning to find ourselves snowed in... in inner-city Manchester. Astonishing. The 7-yr-old's school is shut, we can't get along the road to the baby's nursery, my partner can't get to work, and I had to go fetch a scraper and clear six inches of snow off the skylights in my attic office because no light was getting in. And the stuff's still falling.