dancingthroughchaos

‘Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o’clock is a scoundrel.’ – Dr Samuel Johnson

I laughed out loud when I saw this quote.  As someone who has a personal watershed of 9pm, and has done since my early teens, I must be quite a reprobate or charlatan by now!  However, I have found my mind turning to the significance of numbers since I took a short walk this week. 

Now the evenings are lighter for longer again, it’s a real pleasure to take a stroll – rather than my usual hike – through the neighbourhood.  Right now, I’m back in the well-walked village where I grew up, and which should really call itself a town these days.  The local park here goes by the name of The Lady Neville Recreation Ground, but has always been known by us all as The Rec.  Of course, as a child I wasn’t sure why it was called The Wreck, since we actually had the best slide and see-saw for miles.  Those have long since vanished thanks to the health and safety police, and been replaced by lame alternatives that would barely raise your hair, let alone your adrenaline levels; so, frankly, what’s the point?  Yet, half a century after my own enjoyment there, children still gleefully make use of the facilities there.

Divided from such low-key pleasures by a wobbly path and a rickety set of wooden staves (purporting to be a fence but more like a long bench), is the cricket field.  Local teams don their whites and head out for weekend games supported by polite applause,  and the occasional cricket tea, from friends and relatives in the pavilion. This installation has undergone a number of refurbishments over the years but still has the old clock that I remember from yesteryear, perched atop its roof.

My Dad was a great fan of, ‘a stump round the cricket field’ to stretch his legs, and take a break from the dilemmas of his latest biochemistry research.  Taking a leaf from that well-worn book, I did the same in an effort to increase my step count after a day of driving back from Dorset earlier this week.

On my first circuit, I noticed that the avenue of huge lime trees, which have stood sentinel for many a long year, and which regularly leave their summer stickiness on the benches below, number twelve.  As someone who tends to count stairs and buttons on clothes (true story), I was surprised that I’d never noticed this in almost sixty years (gosh; can it be so long?).  Twelve giants overseeing the ever-changing scenes below: children playing, teenagers squabbling over phone apps, competing teams, resting oldsters, spontaneous picnickers, and the inevitable army of dog walkers who wend their way through.

In the grand scheme, it’s not remotely important, but Cape Town also has a set of twelve mountains, known as The Twelve Apostles, which stretch their way south from Table Mountain, and form the back drop to the famous beaches of Camps Bay, Clifton, and Llandudno.  They watch over the city in much the same way that the lime trees do here.

Other famous twelves would be hours on the clock face, months in the year, twelve days of Christmas, twelve tribes of Israel (Jacob’s famous sons), twelve people who make up a jury, twelve steps in numerous recovery programmes, twelve in a dozen (eggs, rolls etc), and twelve lots of twelve being termed a gross.  It seems to be a very satisfactory sort of number.  Seven is the biblical number of completeness, and it turns out that twelve is considered to be a number of perfection.

Without venturing too far down the numerical road of all things weird and wonderful, I just enjoyed the symmetry of having the Twelve Apostles in Cape Town and the twelve lime trees of Banstead.  There’s a pleasing balance there at each end of my current life.  

I wonder what happens if I move to somewhere else? The only twelves I know of in Bath are the house numbers and the production of Twelve Angry Men coming to the Theatre Royal in November this year. 

One thing is for sure; I will, Dr Johnson, always be heading for my bed long before 12 o’clock.  After all, no one wants to turn into a pumpkin, let alone a scoundrel.

Thanks to Leopictures @pixabay and Andrea De Santis @unsplash for clock images