It's All In The Numbers

It’s All In The Numbers

We all know the old counting rhymes,

Like “one for sorrow, two for joy”,

But it carries on way beyond there:

Never mind “three for a girl and four for a boy”.

It’s a game of two halves, or even four quarters,

Sometimes it’s “a six and two threes”.

And Lotto and Housey-Housey

Can bring you down to your knees.

Some people have a lucky number,

The National Lottery can send you blotto,

With Scratchcards and the Thunderball,

And the forty-nine numbers in Lotto.

There used to be old Bingo calls -

Clickety-click and seventy-six trombones,

Two fat ladies and Kelly’s Eye,

Now everyone’s obsessed with their phones.

Heinz had Fifty-Seven Varieties ,

I admit I never understood why -

I think they just plucked out any old number,

In order to encourage us to buy.

And extremist jihadist martyrs,

Believed in virgins seventy-seven,

When they brought down the twin towers -

Yes, everyone remembers Nine Eleven.

And talking of in seventh heaven,

With ninety-nine red balloons in flight,

You’re bound to start losing the count,

Try however hard you might.

There were the Fab Four and The Guildford Six,

Joe Ninety and WD Forty,

And if you were three sheets to the wind,

Everyone would say that you were naughty.

Two and two can sometimes add up to five,

That’s when you’ve hold the wrong end of a stick,

It simply means that things don’t really add up,

So find another argument to pick.

A UB40 was for unemployment,

If a P45 had been your fate,

Then you needed to drown out your sorrows,

Until you were one over the eight.

Two’s company, and three is a crowd,

And to me that’s perfectly fine:

I’m ready to give one hundred per cent,

Because a stitch in time is said to save nine.

Do you remember 5-4-3-2-1?

That was a song sung by Manfred Mann,

But it got stolen, and they used it in Houston,

Launching their rockets in the space plan.

Now, I only know one man who called himself Dad,

But it’s of fore-fathers that people speak.

Don’t know what happened to the other three,

But does that make me into a freak?

And as each birthday becomes a bigger number,

I won’t be seeing fifty once again.

I mean – how long have we all got?

I’m told it’s only three-score years and ten.

And when I finally decide to go,

And they dress me in my wooden suit,

I’d like the appropriate send-off please,

With a twenty-one gun salute.

They say you’re as old as the woman you feel,

But as I go gentle into this good night,

Don’t say I didn’t give you the count-down,

Due to my incredible fore-sight.

 Copyright Andy Fawthrop 2014