Numbers

 Everything's quantified, isn't it. I remember once in work some figures had to be provided as a pie-chart so they could see what the situation looked like, as if 72% was too hard for them to grasp. I suspect it was more to do with the new facility on the computers to provide graphics and they wanted to feel hi-tech.

From looking it up, I understand it's Bhutan that prefers to measure happiness rather than the economic indicators that most countries believe indicate success or otherwise.

My own indices are those of the chess ratings and the year's position on the tuurf account. With the first two of the Wiseguy tips posted here yesterday sluicing in, Fantastic Lady would have made it boom time but maybe the soft ground was against her. Still, it was more progress gradually upwards and was followed by successfully hauling the rating for Classical Chess (30 mins) above the 1900, which is great for me and where I was in all three disciplines overnight.

Today's horse got beat and I moved to Blitz Chess and put together a losing run but it looks good enough nonetheless. The barometers are set fair but one wouldn't want to be complacent.

There are other numbers one can check on from time to time. An increasing awareness of health matters has added the awkward question of one's weight to the blood pressure and cholesterol readings. They are addressed with some reluctance but they give one an interest, I suppose.

Finance isn't something I've worried too much about in recent years, my modest lifestyle being adequately catered for and it's all under control at present, touching wood. It makes a change from those long-off days when a fiver had to be made to last nearly a week until pay day by taking it into the bookies each lunchtime.

One other number I can think of is the uncollected poems towards any further booklet. Poems tend to migrate from the A folder to B once they are deemed not good enough and then we see what we're left with. Considering I've thought myself more unproductive than usual for the last three years, I'm surprised that figure is 10, with one or two heading off the A list in due course, I'm sure. But I'm not convinced they constitute as good a book as my last. Once you stop improving it's time to wonder if you should carry on but we'll see. The enjoyment is in the effort of doing it and any satisfaction to be had afterwards. Once they're in print they're already history.

No longer taking part in any sport beyond chess, no longer having goals to count, batting and bowling averages to think of or personal best times on a bicycle, I can't think of any other numbers by which I gauge my life. But I have always wondered how many books I have. Over a thousand, surely. Maybe not two thousand, though. Let's see. Above, shortly.