A long time ago, getting into the habit of writing the new year wherever it appears would have been a lot simpler. Or perhaps it wasn't. Perhaps this is all a hoax, designed to lead you down the garden path, and trapped into something far more complicated. Look, numbers...
Changing a single digit is easy, but remembering why we have to is not. We live in a world which runs on various utterly arbitrary calendar systems, designed by various learned ancient people in order that farming can happen reliably. Farming is the only reason why we ever developed the things. The ancients noted that a year took about three hundred and fifty days, and then science identified the exact figure. That figure becomes imperceptibly larger every day as the Earth slows in its rotation, just as the core of the Earth slowly cools, and the Sun grows ever so slightly bigger. However, ignoring all that, we get about 365 days in each year before the whole seasonal scheme gets back to where it began.
Now, our modern calendar system has two bizarre and incongruous facets built in to it: One, there never was a year zero, and two, the very strange number of months and the different numbers of days in each. The first forms the basis of a new story (with an awesome first line), while the second has puzzled me for ages. Calendar months are different to sidereal months, that latter being the time it takes for the moon to return to the same point in the sky as we observe it. A sidereal month is slightly less than twenty eight days. Incidentally 'moon' and 'month' come from the same linguistic roots. Simple arithmetic reveals that the year divides into a simple multiple of twenty eight days with one day left over, so why don't we have a load of twenty eight day months and one of twenty nine, which would then quite nicely track the moon and fit well into the calendar? We'll get to that in a moment, because it's silly.
Instead of a lovely sensible calendar system, we have what we have, which is nice in its own way. We have a system where there are seven months of thirty one days, four of thirty and one of twenty eight which acquires an extra day once every four years to compensate for the unaccounted for quarter of a day we get each year. The only way to remember which months have however many days is to learn a rhyme - which is personally extremely forgettable - or the sequence of numbers. And why do we do this? The reason is simple, for as like all superstitious peoples we do not like the number thirteen, and thirteen months we would have if we used lunar months.
Getting back to the first point: Why don't we have a year zero anyway, it messes things up and means that any new century begins a year later than we think. I'm reasonably sure it also stops me getting pie when I need it but that causal relationship is yet to be proved. Blast it all. If I'm writing slightly strangely it's because I just watched 'Sherlock: The Sign Of Three' and it was awesome. It was also fundamentally connected to 'Doctor Who: The Green Death' and the sheer nerdery in knowing that and all the canon references in the 'The Sign Of Three' is rather scary. Also, it was sad to see Sherlock walk away alone at the end. I've done that at parties and nights out far too many times myself. Still, not about me. Look, a three headed monkey!
O.
PS It was all about changing a single digit after all, just not the one you thought.
PPS Blast you, heartless Molly Hooper!
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