#7 THE MAGIC NUMBER 7

THE MAGIC NUMBER SEVEN: this the seventh post on this blog and so we devote it (mostly) to this singular numeral which has a higher profile in many cultures than any other. Everyone from spiritualists to scientists acknowledges the special quality it has, how it occurs in every sphere and is the most popular 'lucky number' of all. George Miller found that any number of human phenomena could be found in groups of seven, plus or minus two. Away from science 7 recurs and recurs. Can you add any usages to these:

Len Goodman, Strictly

Seven Seas

Seven continents

Seven pillars of wisdom

Seven brides for seven brothers

Seven Sisters

Seventh son
Seventh son of seventh son

Picasso: dance of the 7 veils

Seven colours of the rainbow

Seven: the most significant number in the Bible, Torah,  very significant in Islam, Hinduism, Catholicism & many different cultures e.g. Japan
Seven dials

Dance of Seven Veils....................



Seven ages of man

Seven: the most frequent lucky number

Seven swans a swimming

Seven year itch

Seven hours – optimal amount of sleep for humans

Seven deadly sins

Seven virtues

Seven tribes of Israel

Seventh heaven

Seven days in a week

Seven ancient planets

Seven dwarfs
Seven Samura

Magnificent Seven

7 openings to the head
7 digits in old telephone numbers

The Secret Seven
Seven (the film)
Opposit sides of dice add up to seven
getting desperate now...
Seven Horsemen of the Apocalypse (incl. 3 subs)
Seven shades of grey...
Seven Spielberg
77 Sunset Strip

Seven Bridge  :-)                                                        

CLASSIC HYMN:    7 reasons to buy Reebok Classics

For about 15 years, maybe more, I’ve bought white Reebok Classic trainers (it's my daughter groaning that you can hear). I know they are not cool, in fact they are a trade mark of my demographic, which cannot be cool, by definition. So why bother? I buy them because:

     1)    You have to have some white trainers; any other colour with skinny white legs, in shorts, brings back awful memories of polio in the 1950s.

     2)    Not being cool, they are immune to the momentary whims of fashion

     3)    They do not have go-faster stripes, luminous inserts, horribly clashing colours, or ludicrous air bubbles in the soles and heels. I am not street and have no need for these things.                                                                                                             
      4)    They are extremely comfortable, for my feet, and they are reasonably priced, and last.
      5)    I am not doctrinaire, I have had (in white or other colours) Adidas, Nike, Puma, K-Swiss and Diesel. None of them work as well for me as Reebok Classics. 
      6) They proclaim ‘old white bloke’ who does not want to be mistaken for a pathetic youth-craving old hipster, all brands and logos, and hankering to be in the Quinoa Set.  
      7)  I like them, and I have reached the point in life when I can say, WTF, I’ll do what I like.

      

      
      MIND YOUR LANGUAGE       (marked absence of 7s here? Ed.)

      I'm not a grammar Nazi, or a spelling obsessive. I understand that language is fluid and evolves and new words will sidle in, be celebrated and slink off after over-exposure: 'iconic' is threadbare and no longer iconic. I like regional dialects (with one or two exceptions) and appreciate the great colour they add to our spoken language. I like breaking the rules and starting sentences with And or But. And so on. Punctuation is more relaxed than it used to be, which is fine except when it's risible:

      On the other hand, I think there is a place for Standard English and Received Pronunciation. They are a kind of gold standard which provide a reference point - invaluable for English-learners, who possibly don't want to learn to speak our language with a regional accent. I imagine a Norwegian attending a language school in Birmingham: now that would be something to savour; cockney rhyming slang with a French accent would be ... different. It is enough that people have to deal with all the intrinsic contradictions of English pronunciation (see below), without also having to clear the hurdles of class-based propriety. Fortunately these things have relaxed over the last fifty years or so. Listen to Rank film starlets of the 50s and they sound like the young Queen (nee Princes Elizabeth). TV news readers elocuted perfectly, with an upper class twist. Even the young Jimmy Greaves interviewed just after he signed for Spurs, sounded like Sir Laurence Olivier, so perfect was his pronunciation, and yet 20 years on he was a professional Lundunner once again.

We can welcome new words, but less welcome are old words given new meanings, e.g. the new one doing the rounds is 'momentarily', as in the shop assistant (serving another customer) who says to you "I'll be with you momentarily". Wrong. It doesn't mean that: it means for a moment, (e.g we stopped in the lay-by momentarily) Not in a moment (after a short while). Likewise 'a conversation' used to be a chat between 2-4 people, say; Cameron and Co, have hijacked it to mean a national discussion over an issue like the EU or fox-hunting, with its fake inclusiveness, and listening-to-the-people tone.  'Narrative' is coming on fast up the rails as the new buzz-word to mean...practically anything that's something like 'story' only 'with added sounds-like-sociology, critical theory and psycholinguistics as a BOGOF.'

But then again:

      “When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”

― Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

SEVEN OF THE BEST NUMBER 7s

QUOTE/UNQUOTE


S.J.Perelman:

From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it.

Fate was dealing from the bottom of the deck...



POST OF THE WEEK (1):

POST OF THE WEEK (2):

      I would add another one:   'a positive attitude' in some ways the most important (not because it makes 7)

GALLERY:  

The persistence of memory:  Salvador Dali



I do believe one of the clocks says five to seven. Is that the time?

                                                                       I must be off.

#6

COATS OF MANY COLOURS

B&Q has run through the second half of my life like the word Brighton through a stick of rock (and we’re not talking Graham Greene here).  Over many years, I redecorated half of Southern England, Shropshire and Andalusia, and built wooden shelves, cupboards and bespoke kitchens for the other half. How could this be combined with being a father, full-time academic and an observant Orthodox Tottenham supporter? You may well ask.

Back in the day I used to run quizzes in college to raise funds for a charity supporting the orphanage in Siret, North East Romania (see FESS chapters 53-4). People are really quite competitive when in teams, and no-one was ever satisfied with a score-draw. I devised a series of tie-breaker questions, one of which was never answered correctly: ‘What do the letters B & Q stand for? (Talking of acronyms the company’s website address is a simply brilliant distillation of description, brevity and memorability:  diy.com). No I’m not on a retainer, nor do I have shares. The answer is ‘Block and Quayle’ the names of the men who opened the first store in a disused cinema in Southampton. Until the company recently installed self-pay machines, the throng at the checkouts on a weekend or bank holiday made you wonder whether it was a cute version of the old philosophical axiom, to be is to queue.

I’m on a decorating jag at the moment. Evolutionary theorists or ethologists might say that I was preparing the nest in springtime for a new batch of offspring. How terribly wrong they would be: it presupposes the desire, the energy, and the partner of a different sex and age-group, not to mention, rapidly depleting funds and non-existent patience. No, my own contribution to parenting and step-parenting is done: four little bleeders (and I use the word advisedly) is more than sufficient. I’m simply distracting myself for a couple of weeks while my play is being read by various luminaries of the theatre world (they say) so I can decide if it has legs, or should be binned.

Anyway, at the aforementioned DIY emporium this week, I attempted to match my living-room’s existing colour, which many people have remarked upon favourably: obviously I had not maintained a record of the original mix, because that would be too easy and efficient.  Courtesy of an excellent system of decent-sized card samples, each with a coy name that made you want to strangle the author, I found the right colour: a lightish grey with just a hint - more of a wink, really – of something else. I hesitate to say lilac because it makes me think of toilet spray. I then parted with the kind of money that would still buy you a flight to Spain, which would have been a much better idea.

Back at the ranch, I should have stopped painting after the first brush stroke, but you don’t do you, you are paralysed by the astonishing contrast with what you expected and cling to the vain, self-deluding hope it might dry out differently. No, it doesn’t. I want to make clear that it’s a perfectly nice colour, but the proportions are reversed. Lilac, so-called has become a purple/mauve, and light grey has become dark grey. It invokes a changing room in the days of Biba and harks back to the Mackintosh/ Klimt colours of Art Nouveau, before that. It’s a perfectly nice colour if you want a main living room to look like a teenage bedroom in the 60s, or an Edwardian study. So, £58 worth of top quality matt emulsion awaits anyone who wants it, I’d rather give it away than have it mocking me in my workshop. Seriously, 7.5 litres of Valspar Premium matt emulsion called Waiting Game (R3C). More like Black Cherry yoghourt, but someone else has got the copyright for that. Apply now while stocks last.

I seem to be settling for monologues these days, a vague meandering through several territories with a number of diversions, but which grope towards a finishing line which has something, somewhat to do with the start. I am going to practise this, in the hope of accumulating as many ‘likes’ as it takes to achieve fame and justify the epitaph I’ve always wanted:

“He was a bigger star than Ronnie Corbett”. Cheerio.

PS Btw, Valspar Premium is the best paint I’ve ever used in 50 years of B&Q, I mean, DIY: excellent coverage (so quicker) fast drying, solid colour and washable surface. A bit pricey but well worth it. Other brands are available.

ATM

The papers have come through: I have changed my name to Aaron Titus Milner, so that there be no more confusion in my teenage daughter's mind about whether I am a father or a cash machine.

QUOTE/UNQUOTE

Joan Rivers:                                                                  

I hate housework! You make the beds, you do the dishes and six months later you have to start all over again.

It's so long since I had sex that I've forgotten who ties up who.

My husband wanted to be cremated. I told him I’d scatter his ashes at Neiman Marcus – that way, I’d visit him every day.

POST OF THE WEEK

GALLERY

I've always been surrounded by artists: both wives        

and two daughters, all artistically gifted, The Bristol 
Swans, and a number of other people who are very
accomplished painters, or photographers: Sean Sprague, Dominic Dibbs, Fernando la Rosa, Bill Ling. Not to mention weekly tutorials from a well-known Professor of Art History. None of this seems to have been transferred to me by osmosis. My best effort at school was a lino cut which probably would have been best left on the floor, later, a few good photographs, probably accidental, some silk screen prints from an evening class I rapidly gave up when my first daughter was born, some  political posters for CND, and one painting: in hospital I was encouraged to do some therapeutic painting, starting with a place I loved. Shropshire came to mind immediately and I attempted a painting of a landscape which would be photorealist in its accuracy but was abstract expressionist in execution. It was a rhapsody of greens and browns which might have been titled "Vegan's Vomit". However, I would like to give a platform (not that they need it) to the proper art of some of my friends and relatives. Starting with a photograph from a series Dominic Dibbs has made of Brighton, where he lives.  Very happy to receive copies of similarly admired pictures you have seen or made.  The audience is still 'select', but who knows, it could reach double figures by this time next year. Adios.