Numbers are not just things we add together, they have varying significance for each individual. By finding out a person’s first reaction to a number you can usually tell what are his pastimes and interests.

To a housewife number one may suggest Kelly’s Eye and the local bingo hall ; to a football fan number nine will instantly evoke thoughts of his centre-forward idol ; number five may mean to a young lover the house where his girl lives, whereas the same number will mean to a businessman the number of shillings profit he can make on certain goods.

Numbers are universal symbols, 9 is 9 in anybody’s language. While it may be impossible to communicate with a foreigner by speech, mathematics may provide a mutually comprehensible language. The Americans are experimenting with this theory in attempts to contact beings on other planets.

Numbers are deeply rooted in our lives and many of them have religious or magical significance, especially the numbers seven and three. Strangely, in many varied civilisations, although they have developed in completely different circumstances, the same numbers are considered to have mystical significance. In China the seventh son of a seventh son is thought to have special powers, while in England if you break a mirror you incur seven years bad luck.

Three is also a mystical number, the number of the Trinity. Misfortunes are supposed to come in threes and three is also held to be a lucky number - “third time lucky”. If we multiply together three and seven we get another mystical number, twenty-one. So numbers are not just reserved for the Maths lesson , they play a deeper part in our lives than we usually give them credit for !

I. Kelly

From Tercentenary Edition 1961

(Sorry Peter but this masterpiece had to be published !)

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From School magazine 1963

A POSTAL POSTSCRIPT

I wonder how many people ever think about the letter boxes in their front doors. Until I worked on the Christmas post I mistakenly thought they were roughly the same.

Some people seem to dislike the very idea of a letterbox and leave little notes asking you to push the mail under the door or leave it with Mrs. Jones at No. 42. Others find it looks attractive to have their letterboxes at the bottom of the doors. In some cases I must agree with them - it does look better - yet would they like to grovel on a wet doorstep in the rain trying to push letters through their inaccessible boxes, balancing a heavy mailbag and clutching a bundle of letters in their other hand ?

However, these people are not the only defaulters. On your rounds you find tiny letterboxes with strong springs which may keep a burglar out but also the postman. At the other extreme some letterboxes are high up. This is all very well in a land of giants but for short people like me it makes work very difficult.

So please - for the sake of the regular postmen and for those who come after me on Christmas post - please could you install a large letterbox with a weak spring in the middle of the door ?

J. Guest.

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