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One Hundred

 



This is my 100th post!


It's interesting to wonder why the number One Hundred enjoys such special status.

Is it because it's the first time three digits appear together?

Or is it because, with the one and two noughts bringing an awareness of going back to the original, it feels like an entry into a new chapter, time, world even?

It's certainly both an end and starting point, suggesting completion and new beginnings at the same time.

So here it is – the unique symmetry of ten times ten creating this heavily serious number of One Hundred, the rhyming One Hundred.

One hundred. one hundred, one hundred...

That one hundred provides the per cent through which we tend to perceive and think about our fractionated world.

And so much more...

Those chronicled centuries rolling back in time…

The tight-knit ranks of a defined unit commanded by the Centurion…

The lines that the errant schoolboy was told to write…

The occasion for a card from the monarch…

The ancient subdivision of an English county…

The round score of the skilled batsman…

The ton of the fast rider/driver...

 

Not to mention the Metric System – but that’s the cue for my poem.

 

One Hundred

We watched the needle rising

past seventy approaching eighty –

he turned and smiled at us two boys

with the Afsluitdijk before us

long and straight – ninety now

faster than ever our little Ford van

with no back windows could manage

until suddenly there it was – climbed

all the way, the needle was over

the one and only One Hundred!


You're welcome – his familiar refrain –

but our Dutch uncle never told us

his were kilometres, not miles.

 

Still, the number was right

and when all was said and done

whatever they were, it was a hundred.


Comments

  1. Andrew1 August 2025 at 09:44

    And the coin in the hand,
    a gentle man.
    The very special light in, and smell from the racks of tulip bulbs in the sheds

    And the Velsen tunnel, and the sand biting your ankles,
    the jellyfish, those strange wicker basket wind breaker seats
    And cacolsc
    and the Dakota, the Nissan hut at Heathrow

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Mark Haworth-Booth1 August 2025 at 10:56

      Splendid - you have changed this number and phrase for me. Thanks a ton!

      Delete

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