Tuesday, November 1, 2011

The New Baby


Yes, they laughed at me. Everybody laughed at me. And I dare say that you would have laughed at me too, during all those months when I remained steadfast in my forecast that the new baby would be a boy, and would be given a strong, virile, dynamic, forename like IAN.

Well, I was proved right. As you can see, Kathy’s new grandson has all the attributes of a fine wing forward - 21.3 inches tall and weighing in at over 9lb.

The proud parents had already agreed on a name for a baby girl, but they hadn’t quite settled on a name for a baby boy. And so the matter remained undecided for the next few weeks, whilst all sorts of alternative male names were successively mooted and then discarded.

And occasionally, I would chip in with my halfpennyworth: “How about a name like IAN?” I would suggest, helpfully.

So I was delighted when they settled on JACK.

You see, IAN is the Scottish for John, and a common nickname for John is JACK. Moreover, the first letters in IAN and JACK (I and J) are alphabetically consecutive, and both names share the same second letter (A).

And if we consider each letter in the alphabet to be represented by its sequence number (A=1, B=2, C=3 and so on), we find that the C plus K in JACK is equal to the N in IAN.

So the two names are virtually identical :-)

But the really exciting outcome is this: the letters J,A,C,K equate to 10,1,3,11 which multiply up to 330, and these digits sum to SIX, whilst the letters I,A,N equate to 9,1,14 which multiply up to 126, and these digits sum to NINE.

The answer is always 69.

Apart from the baby, what can possibly be more perfect than that?
: - )