There’s never enough time to do all the chores and leisure that a human wants to do. There’s still many mountains to climb, rivers to cross, swamps to ford, twisters to outrun. More time is needed and I have the solution.
Previously, I proposed an extra hour in the day. A 25 hour day would be manna from heaven. This gives us more time but it’s as clear as daylight that this pilot plan does not fix the problem. My suggestion now is to add an extra month to the calendar. This idea is not as crazy as it sounds. It’s obviously been done before.
Consider the calendarial ber month prefixes: sept, oct, nov, dec. I’m not an expert on these things but an educated guess would be, seven, eight, nine, ten. Yet these months September, October, November, December are months number nine, ten, eleven and twelve respectively. Somebody, somewhere along the line has added a few extra months to the total. Well played, that man, I know where you’re coming from. They must have been short of time in the Dark Ages or whatever and thus made more time available.
It would be no big deal to add another month. Things change, all the time. Poor Pluto got booted off the planets list, didn’t he? There goes his chance of making it onto the remake of Holst’s The Planets Suite with the extra bonus track. It could get worse. One of the horoscope signs might get dumped. Pray it’s not your Zodiac star; that tattoo on your arm will look more foolish. But the mathematical business required in the calendarial case is not to take away, it’s to add. +
Again with no knowledge on the subject, I refuse to google, I’ll guess that the extra months added to knock the ber-ending months out of sequence would be the ones in the middle age. The girlie named ones: April, May, June. The Dark Ages man’s old girlfriends have been set in stone on the calendar. As it’s my brainstorm I get to select the name of the extra month. I’ll go with tradition.
Morag.
The month of Morag will be after June so it won’t be long coming. It’s magic, isn’t it? All those new dates of birth, birthday cards, diary entries, extra holidays. And there’d be time for those many mountains to climb etc. It will give the cultural world a shot in the arm, too. Poets and writers will have new material to play with. The Hunt for Red Morag, The Teahouse of the Morag Moon. My love is like a red, red polythene bag, that’s newly sprung in Morag.
Another addition is that I’d give the month of Morag 32 days. The old nursery rhyme, Thirty days Hath September, will have to be drastically amended giving Morag her pride of place. The reformed calendar signals a new era for Mankind. I await the thanks for all the Fergie extra time I’ve created.
Boadicea's Chariot 
And think of all the extra calendars that will have to be sold! A boon for the economy.
Could I suggest an alternative solution? Add 7 Fergie Days to the 2 months which always end too soon, May and September.
Am I compelled to explain those -ber months’ names – and not for the first time here? Early Romans had ‘hibernae’, winter for two months. Why? There were no farmers’ markets, no legal or other official meetings and the Serie A took a break. The month of Primus began on our 1st March. Simples. QED.
I blame Barbara Dickson.
Gawn yersel, JW.
The Barbara Dickson comment is, in my opinion, one of your best ever. It’s a fine song too.
I wonder if he’ll get the reference.
Que?
J: One of her hits was “January, February”. Good singer, I have seen her in concert.
Ah yes (I think).
Close but no coconut, FEEG.
JW was clearly (my opinion again) referring to a song from BD’s folk period LPs.
All of her You Tube renditions are blocked but here’s Christy Moore’s version of what is obviously a reference to our own, cherished Gadfly.
(Sniff) That’s just too lovely, JM. 😂
My old man played his country and folk records every weekend. Still can’t get some of those tunes out of my head. As we’re talking calendars, January Man was indeed the one on my mind.
Well played, JM. With an honourable mention to his beardy front row buddy, FEEG.
A lot of my blogs contain a few double meanings and allusions. I’m not doing it to be smart or get one over people (Far from it, I know my place. I’m most likely to be the least smartest blogger on this site). We’ve all got our own styles and this is one of mine. When one of my subliminal messages is discovered, that’s great. The majority do pass into the ether and that is probably the best place for them.
For example, I didn’t expect anyone to get the connection between the Gores and the death metal band, Cannibal Corpse. The Corpse made an album called Gore Obsessed. Ah well, that’s one pulled in from the ether.
… further to Janus’s comment. Until 1750 New Year in the UK began on the 25th of March – thus allowing the various ‘ber’ months to retain their original meaning. The first New Year on 1st of January was in 1752. Later that year the UK’s calendar changed from Julian to Gregorian and eleven days were ‘removed’ to bring the UK into line with the rest of Europe. It took other countries somewhat longer to change.
Far from adding more days it seems that, historically, all we’ve managed so far is to ‘remove’ days from the calendar!
Hi Boadicea.
Please don’t forget that Scotland was, as usual, different? We made the change to starting the year on January 1st in 1600, which explains why we are so much better at New Year celebrations, having held them at the right time for 151 years longer than the English
Thanks for that JM – I knew that most Catholic countries adopted (slowly) the Gregorian Calendar from 1582, when it was first introduced – but that many Protestant countries thought it was all a “Fiendish Papist Plot”!
Clearly the Scots, despite being Protestant, saw the science behind the change and, being an independent country at that point did the “Right Thing”.. I’m surprised that your Jamie didn’t introduce the change into England. But he was quite a shrewd cookie and I guess he thought it wasn’t worth the hassle of upsetting his newly acquired subjects!
Dating documents pre-1754 in the UK is a nightmare. Before that time most parish registers start their New Year on the 25th March, others, however, begin on the 1st of January. For those trying to trace their ancestors it is imperative that they go back to the original documents… too many transcriptions do not show whether account has been taken of the ‘old form’ of dating… and one ends up with a lot of ‘illegitimate’ children, or children dying before they were even born!
Acts of Parliament are dated in the whatever year of the Reign – so one has to work out the date of the accession of the relevant monarch. I think that is still the case?
And agricultural documents, most especially accounts, are dated from Michaelmas (29th September) to Michaelmas the following year.
The whole dating process is chaotic!
I do, however, sympathise with the Royalist’s plea for more time! I think I could do with living in at least three time frames so that I can do all the things that I want to do,,,
Boadicea: oh heavens, be grateful that you never read East Asian history! All years were based on imperial calendars which often changed several times during an emperor’s reign. In Japan, the first emperor to stick to a single name and calendar was Meiji and that didn’t start until 1868. Even then, it’s amusing when domestic documents like a driving licence are shown to non-Japanese. One Japanese man I know is actually younger than me by about 13 months, but whereas my ID states my birth year as being “1985”, his driving licence states his birth year as being “60” — the 60th year of the reign of the Showa Emperor. (Hirohito)
As a result, virtually all historical research in East Asia either gives ranges of dates or embraces the Western calendar for the sake of sanity and clarity.
And Backside thought Kalends, Nones and Ides were bad! 😷
Gawd!
Well at least I read all this.
I’ve got quite enough to do in this life and time thank you very much. sod extra days of further farting about.
Probably be quite glad to die just to get a rest.
JM: I don’t do folk music so I have never heard of “January Man”. I only like BD in her later persona 🙂