The Same Difference
 

Although the French evolved a funny way
Of counting, it’s quite useful now and then.
In England, I’d be seventy today;
In France, thank God, I’m only sixty-ten.

(A bit of pure self-indulgent frivolity on my part. Of course, to comply with the guidelines, anyone is welcome to join in - about counting, or the differences between the French and the English, or the differences between wossname and thingummy, or the ways in which Coronation Street is completely invalidated by Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity. N.B. Please, not the General Theory!)

Brian, cheers!

Re Counting, I recall being fascinated in high-school English by an exercise that involved inventing plausible-sounding number sequences: alternatives to one, two, three, etc.

e.g.
ounce, dice, trice, quartz, quince, sex, severance, obelisk, novice, dentist.

ouch, don't, try, foul, quit-it, cease, set-up, opt-out, no-way, denial.

Oh well, it beguiled me then and still does.

Wonder, Tudor, Frieda, fork, fie, sip, Savernake, late, Rhine, decadent.

[quote=Brian Allgar;288818]Although the French evolved a funny way
Of counting, it’s quite useful now and then.
In England, I’d be seventy today;
In France, thank God, I’m only sixty-ten.


But Brian, to the Martian poet
You're still a young thing. Don't you know it?
Rejoice and think yourself in heaven
For you are only thirty seven.


Congratulations on your Speccie win this week. My nephew Max, under my inspiration, was there with you.

And on past sixty-seventeen,
there's youth aplenty.
Instead of eighty, you can turn
four times twenty.

Certain occupations see time as a flexible thing. Physicists compress it by attaining high velocities. Actors and singers shrink it for vanity's sake.

Contractors and lawyers have a tendency to expand it for econonmic reasons.

Here's an ancient joke on the latter, which I have done up in IP;

A lawyer, in his prime at thirty seven
(Collapsed while jogging, from a major stroke);
Examining St. Peter up in Heaven,
Asked “Is this real, or just some kind of joke?”

“Three score and ten the contract stipulated;
You've only honored fifty three percent.
There is a chance you have miscalculated;
I think perhaps you want some other gent.”

“Infallibility’s the standard here,”
St. Peter said, “But let me take a look.”
The lawyer trembled with a rush of fear
As Peter opened up his record book;

“Longevity is not a concrete science
Like physics, math, or biochemistry;
According to the hours billed your clients,
I calculate your age as eighty three.”

(my apologies to those Spherians who are members of the bar; this is about other lawyers)

Excellent, Douglas - especially as I hadn't come across the joke before.

Brian,

My nephew's wife is a lawyer. I think she heard it the first day of law school.

My Hemidecimilleniad!
It's an occasion, to celebrate which I am glad:
I find it's far more nifty,
For seeming young, than 'fifty';
And furthermore, it seems to offer hope
That to live on to the total I have scope -
(That being a thousand); and I hope it earns
Commensurately many 'Happy Returns.'