Up, up and away

Emma left for the United States today. She has gone to keep Angela and Sophie company while Ken is busy, beavering away at the Smithsonian. She has also gone to have an adventure, to see the world and return with tales tall and true. Somewhere along the line I agreed to look after Noah and let her travel unencumbered, so we lit a bonfire to say goodbye and then this morning went to the airport to see her off.


According to Noah a bonfire is "...better than going to the beach, or a party, or everything." So she’d have something special to remember us by Noah and I hid some things in her diary while she was in the toilet at the airport. She will be gone for 33 days in total. I have been toying with the idea of linking the entry for each of the 33 days with something else that has 33 things in it. A bit like the 12 days of Christmas, or the 7 wonders of the natural world. The problem is most things with 33 in them are just plain weird.


The first thing that sprang to mind was Jesus being 33 when he died. So was Alexander the Great. But where can I go with that? LPs rotate at 33(and a turd) rpm. Rapidly running out of ideas I looked at Wikipedia. Mathematicians get a bit excited about 33. After all 33 is “…the largest positive integer that cannot be expressed as a sum of different triangular numbers. It is also the smallest odd repdigit that's not prime (unless we consider 1-digit integers to also be repdigits).”


33 is the atomic number of arsenic. How romantic. There are 33 bones in the human spine - when the bones that form the coccyx are counted individually. I'm not sure bum bones are going to work as a theme. It’s the country code when dialling France. Nope. Freemasons get very excited about the number 33. Enough said. One of the most interesting things was that doctors in some European countries get patients to say 33 when listening to their lungs with a stethoscope. Treinta y Tres. I gave up.


However, a month or two ago we had some friends stay who introduced us to what you might call a way for proud atheists to say grace before a meal. It simply involves holding hands and each taking turns saying one thing that you are grateful for from your day. So each day I will relate what Noah was grateful for on that day. 33 times.

“I’m grateful that we chopped the wood and had a lovely fire.”