by macausland » 2:52 pm
Spiral
'Cathedrals make effective observatories....'
So do pubs. You can see life passing before your eyes.
One problem though is to remember how much you've had to drink. It's not so bad with the first pint but get's a bit vaguer as the glasses empty and are refilled. Which reminds me of a site I came across where the local inhabitants were discussing the naming and counting of days.
I forget exactly how the discussion went but basically they found a problem in coming to terms with how our weekdays use the sun and moon and then jump into norse and germanic gods.
Somebody suggested that the reality was that originally the days were counted. One, Two, Three, Four etc. That's usually where I lose count in the pub so I'll stop at that.
I will try and reconstitute the argument with my own input. I'm not sure which is mine and which is theirs. A bit like pints on a pub table really. It was an honest mistake, really.
If we think of the prisoner in his cell he keeps track of time by scratching lines in the wall with a cross bar at some point to bundle each line/day into an easily counted number.
So, Moonday, is really One day. Tuesday is really Two day. At this point, for convenience we have a Wednesday or Wait day which is the cross bar.
Then we have Thursday or Three day ( yes I know, let me finish my pint) and then Friday or Four day ( And there's me thinking it was for Frying fish) followed by another Wait day or Sit day or Sat day.
Imagine these days are not scratches on a wall but sticks of some sort. We put them in two and tie them with a flexible stick to make a bundle of three. We do it again with the next three.
We then take the two bundles and tie them together with a Seven day which is a large circle around the two bundles. Seven becomes Sun and even Sun as the round hot thing in the sky. We start the week cool and finish up hot. The end of one cycle.
If we need to count the number of days before the beer has brewed to perfection we could lose count so all we have to do is pop completed bundles into a bag or put them on an altar of sorts and it will be easy to see how many days have passed at a glance.
As for Day. Germanic languages call a day something like Dag or Tag.
If we have a sack full of sticks that are waiting to be counted we need a convenient means of differentiating between those counted and those not counted.
When we put the first stick down for One Day all we need to do is put a Tag on it and we know that it's done. The same with Two Tag, Wait Tag and all the rest.
The assumption is of course that people counting in bundles could actually count to seven and know that there is a difference between the names of the Tags in the bundle and the actual number of the Tags.
A bit like keeping the score on the dartboard which is not exactly like the score which means twenty but we understand the difference.
Which reminds me, I'm getting Thursday, er Thorsday, er what's the word again. Ah I know, 'looks good, tastes good, and by golly it does you good.'
I am in the right pub aren't I?