Small Numbers can beat Big Numbers

I was born and raised in Guildford in Surrey, or pronounced ‘Sorry’ if you are posh. Not having really been back since I left home in 1979 I follow a ‘Guildford Past and Present’, Facebook page for a bit of nostalgia.

I remember popping back home some weeks after I left to find my mother sitting in my old bedroom not hold an old teddy bear sobbing at my departure but at a typewriter doing some private secretarial work. She and my dad had decorated and turned it into an officer in under a few weeks.

She said I was always welcome back but I did not really believe her.

Anyway, I digress. On the above mentioned Facebook site the other day was an advert dating back to 1976 for a concert at the old Guildford Civic Hall, a place I have been to many a time in my youth to see bands of the time. Yes, Free, and The Strawb’s just to name three.

I digress again. What struck me about the advert was the phone number Guildford 71651. No STD codes back in 1976. Our home number was even shorter being Guildford 4516. Why do I remember that? My first car was KYP778K. A bus that took me into town form the village (Burpham) I lived in was the 715. Strange is it not that the same digits crop up in the three numbers. Just chance I am sure.

The last time I had a job interview must have been getting on for 11 years ago. The Leader of one of the two Councils (partnership working) I was applying for a senior post with asked me at my interview what I thought about numbers.

Well I was initially stumped but I think I manged to waffle and tell him numbers were important as they influence decisions based around costs, revenues, performance targets etc., etc. (whilst my mind was saying, “please stop staring at me and ask me another question”). Anyway I got the job.

The complicated answer if I had been Steve Dresser would have been, “Because knowing the objective world that we live in can be the difference between a hellish experience and a heavenly one. Numbers, maths in general, are crucial to decoding objective reality, or otherwise said, finding consistent patterns in the object world through measurements and observations. Also numbers and maths are a part of probability and logic which is the objective lens the world should be seen through. Or otherwise said, crucial components of the objective toolkit that is available to us.”

Clear, I hope so. So numbers are important. Try these. 2019 the year Covid hit us in the UK. 2020 the year Covid taught us we were in for the long haul. 3.82m the number of cases since the pandemic started. 106,000 the number of deaths as a result of Covid. 8.9m the number of people vaccinated to date against Covid and 34,783 the number of people in hospital with Covid. All numbers correct at the time of writing.

Big numbers show the size of the problems we face and the impact we are having on them. So if we follow Mr Dresser’s logic we don’t need scores of written or hundreds of spoken words to know that we are in the Khazi (hellish experience ,at the moment) and when numbers fall below a certain range we will be out the Khazi and in the rose garden (heavenly experience of relief). Numbers trump the written word.

Have we beaten Covid when the number of deaths and infections get to the same levels as influenza? Or is it an acceptable number we are prepared to tolerate to have our freedoms back?

Mrs F and I this year have been together 40 years. Not a day has gone by without us bickering. How many bickers that add up to I can only guess but it must be in excess of 70,000 and as for tuts, the sound she makes when I am disturbing her, well too many to consider adding up. There are 2 embedded phrases over this time resulting from our being together that stand out for me both expressed by Mrs F. Firstly, ‘why can’t you just do as you are told,’ and secondly, ‘Why can’t you understand that I am right even when I am wrong.’

Trust me I would have it no other way. The woman is a Saint.

We have raised 2 boys and have 4 grandchildren and if we live long enough maybe we will have 8 or more great grandchildren. But whatever happens we have the 2 of us and that is just fine by me as I wipe away a tear of joy.

Now there are 2 (2) words that come to my mind. They are ‘me’ and ‘we’.

‘Me’ meaning a term used by a speaker to refer to himself or herself as the object of a verb or preposition. It could mean ‘He asked me a question,’ or ‘it’s all about me.’ ‘Me’ is about myself and what I want.

‘We’ on the other hand which is also a pronoun. ‘Clara and I love dessert; we really enjoy ice cream.’ ‘We’ is more about us and doing things together.

Both are 2 letter words but miles apart in meaning. When I was young and single I thought about ‘Me’ and what ‘I’ wanted. I had few or accepted few responsibilities other than those I wished to choose. When I married and had children there was little room for ‘Me’ and ‘We’ took over. Now I am older there is room for both ‘Me’ and ‘We’ but ‘I’ have to choose wisely.

When it comes to dealing with Covid it has to be ‘We’ because ‘Me’ alone cannot only do so much. Being a part of the collective ‘We’ gives all of ‘Us’ (another 2 letter word) a greater chance to get out of the collective Covid Khazi we are in currently in. Acting singularly as a group of ‘Me’s’, I suggest means ‘We’ will spend more time in the Covid closet than we currently wish to.

Numbers are very important and just maybe the adoption of the right small 2 letter word can help ‘Us’ triumph over the big bad numbers.

“It’s clearly a budget. It’s got a lot of numbers in it.” – George W. Bush