Turty Tree

Whee! It's me! And today I'm turning turty tree!

Yep. I've just turned the grand old age of 33. Same age as Jesus. In earth years like.

And the same age as Abi Titmuss too! (In dog years).

Regrets I have a few. Principally I really can't believe I wasted the best part of my 32s by not blogging. They were my peak years. I'll never get those posts back you know.  

Interestingly, well maybe not but it's good a bridge word as any, Bilbo Baggins, at the outset of the first book in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, held his eleventy-first birthday on September 22nd. So I'm a little put out that I don't get to share my birthday with the little big man himself, missing out by a week. Instead, I got Tommy Lee Jones, Prince Harry and Marco Polo, who of course when you think about it all have Hobbit-like qualities themselves to varying degrees.

However, I have noted that littler bigger man, Frodo Baggins, a hobbit for the younger generation, also turned 33 that same day (I'd be a mere stripling in hobbit terms it seems, I'd move there for the social cachet with the Hobbit-ladies but couldn't be up to all that banging me head off stuff and besides, I refuse to entertain females any hairier than myself). Further investigation reveals that 33 is when hobbits are said to have 'come of age' and don't forget, as a present Bilbo also gave Frodo the keys to his, no sniggering, Bag End. So you see, in hobbit years, it really is the equivalent of my 21st, or something approximating it at least. Maybe I'm only 18 actually. So there.

At 33, I'm £25.99, in 'old' money. You can do the puns yourselves. I think I'm better value now though.

If I was a bingo number, they'd call me two little fleas, thirty-three, Gertie Lee, Dirty Knees, Sherwood Forest (all the trees) or All the Feathers. I've googled and can find no explanation for All the Feathers by the way, and this is annoying me, which is in itself a sign of getting older I suppose.

Personally I'd call it Boobs and Bellies, 33. Heh. I like that.

Anyone who drinks Rolling Rock beer will also know that the number 33 appears, for no apparent reason, on the print on the back. The theory goes that it was a word count of the original blurb: Rolling Rock - From the glass lined tanks of Old Latrobe, we tender this premium beer for your enjoyment as a tribute to your good taste. It comes from the mountain springs to you. The company submitted this to the bottle maker and left the word count (33) in the print afterwards and the printer put it on the bottles, and it was deemed too expensive to correct later. So consider yourselves educated.

Turty tree is of course a number beloved of the English, because they love to hear the Irish say it in our unique way, just like I spelled it there. This is rich coming from a people who will exhort us to say 'Free Fur-hee Free' in our 'cute' accents and see no irony in it whatever, but we'll forgive them their foibles as they have forgiven us ours, e.g. Henry Kelly and Bryan McFadden.

So. Today's post was brought to you by the number 33 and the letters S, I, G and H.

Terence out.