"Our laziness is like the number 8. The moment it lies down, it becomes infinite." Anon

It's a very uncelebratory day - cold and wet and moreover it's a fasting day, so not very celebratory at all. No popping of bubbly corks or indulging in rich and decorative cakes like the one above. Nevertheless, like one's actual birthday, one shouldn't let it go by without just at least a tiny bit of celebration. And yes I do feel good about achieving 8 years of this, although every now and then I guiltily feel that I should stop and do something much more useful with my remaining years. Maybe my years of spending large chunks of time on this exercise is indeed a bit like the opening quote. Maybe writing trivia for my entertainment is my way of lying down, giving up - infinitely. But I just had to use that quote because when I was thinking about the number 8 it did indeed make me think that on its side it was the symbol for infinity.

Infinity is such an ungraspable concept however isn't it? And certainly not one pertaining to our short lives. Looking at that cake though, and its spiky flowers I am reminded of fractals - which have something about infinity about them.

The rain and the miserable day have reminded me that this blog began in the middle of winter, which just goes to show that winter is a really good time to just sit down and think, to write, to look, to cook, to create. In summer - spring and autumn too - it's just too enticing to go outside and do more physical things. One still thinks of course, and looks, but we probably spend less time on indoor activities. So winter should perhaps be thought of as a highpoint of creativity in the year.

When I was collating those posts from years gone by (see the Postscript at the end of the post) - I noticed that 2020 is missing. This is because I deleted it - part of a project to lessen the size of this website. After all nobody's really going to go back to the beginning and read them again and I'm using up my allowable space at Wix. They're saved in PDF form on my computer however, and I found that on July 15th 2020 I wrote a piece on LVMH - the giant french luxury goods conglomerate, entitled From lots of little things, big things grow, which could also be a metaphor for this blog - though I obviously missed that when I wrote that particular post.

A blog is a collection of small pieces, which assembled together grow into something large - so large that I really should do a bit more deleting because there are masses of pictures taking up valuable space on the Wix servers - posts too. Each post is also a collection of little bits and pieces - and it's not just those oddments posts. Every post has random pieces collected from here and there, together with the very random thoughts that pop in and out of my brain. And this post is a major example of that.

So here are some random facts and thoughts about the number 8.

To the Chinese the number 8 is hugely lucky. They try to buy houses with the number 8 in the address. We shall never sell our house to a Chinese person as ours is number 4 - the most unlucky of Chinese numbers - because the symbol is the same as for death. At least I think that's it. In the same way that 8 is like the symbol for obtaining prosperity.

To demonstrate this the opening ceremony of the summer Beijing Olympics began at 8 seconds, 8 minutes, past 8 p.m on the 8th day of the 8th month (August) 2008. Sort of wow! It makes you wonder whether they deliberately went for 2008 as their Olympics year. According to Wikipedia:

"the welcoming ceremony began by a flame and an ancient Chinese sundial, awakened by the light of time from the sky, lights up 2008 bronze Fou drums. The drums, running like a time machine, form giant digits (in both Hindu–Arabic and Chinese numerals) to count down the seconds to the Games."

Numerologists seem to think along the same lucky lines - if you are associated with the number 8 - I don't know how they decide that - you are a person who measures life by the goals they reach - 8 represents an ultimate form of achievement - and balance too.

Demonstrated literally by the figure of eight exercise that ice-skaters perform in competitions. I doubt that you could get a more perfect version than this particular one. Infinity if you look at it fom the other side.

I looked up how you get your Destiny number - very complicated:

"Your destiny number is also called your expression or name number. It can be calculated by adding up the numerical digits associated with each letter in your full name and reducing them until you reach a single digit or master number."

Which is followed by a complicated code. Not for me.

In popular culture we have 8 maids a-milking - now is that 8 maids milking one cow - how is that possible? or 8 maids milking 8 cows? It's somehow a nice idea though, and a nice picture to illustrate it - and a foodie one at that.

The Beatles wrote a bouncy song called 8 Days a Week which initially came from the idea of working very hard but in the song is transformed to express: "Eight days a week Is not enough to show I care"

The eighth day has a religious meaning as well, in some ways analagous to the meaning in the Beatles song:

"early Christians believed that the resurrection and ascension of Christ signals the renewal of creation, making the day on which God accomplished it a day analogous to the first day of creation when God made the light."

There are other religious meanings in other religions, but so many that I won't go there either.

Other trivia? Not a lot - really just "Pieces of Eight" which were the evenly divided pieces of a Spanish dollar and associated with pirates because of Treasure Island's parrot whose favourite phrase it was. Or have I remembered that wrongly?

And at last something foodie (maids a-milking excepted) - Nestlés After Eight mint chocolates, which I love. I love dark chocolate and mint. It's a match made in heaven.

One last thing with respect to food and the number 8. Back in the day when we hosted dinner parties, the number of guests was almost always 8. We saw it as a numebr that allowed everyone to be able to communicate easily with everyone else on the table - just because sometimes eight is just two many for one conversation in which everyone participates. Nevertheless if often fragmented into two - even three conversations. Eight was also a good number for a dinner party because (a) it was easy to double recipes for four people - four seems to be the standard - and (b) it was also easy to cut things into eight if required.

Not having really found much to do with the number 8 I looked up National food days and found that today is:

"National Tapioca Pudding Day

National Gummy Worm Day

Hot Dog Day

Orange Chicken Day" Bitesize Traveller

The same days were noted elsewhere so I guess they are genuine. But really what a selection of low-level foods, even if the hot dog is indeed important food-wise. One is almost tempted to say junk food. And indeed, sort of because of that, all candidates for a post some day. Just like people write academic theses on Mills and Boon novels.

It's Rambling Rose's 8th birthday and I have definitely rambled. I think the attention to detail of the opening of the Beijing Olympics was my wow moment of discovery today. Just think of the planning involved in that. There is no plan to my rambles. I just start and keep going until I run out of anything more to say.

And like I said, I'm not eating today so it's not worth showing the inside of my fridge today. My first ever words in my blog writing career were:

"The picture is a snapshot of the contents of my fridge on July 15 2016 - but I’m willing to bet that they would be much the same at any time of year - the fruit and vegetables, just might be different."

So true.

POSTSCRIPT

Here is what I found for my birthday years:

2023 - A French lunch on Bastille Day - I obviously forgot it was the blog birthday and just reported on the day before's lunch with friends.

2022 - Six years of blogging deserves bubbles - yes it does!

2021 - 5 years old today - Inside my fridge again

2019 - Paul Bocuse and celebrations

2018 - Happy birthday to my blog

2016 - Inside my fridge

2020 is, of course missing. 2017 is also missing - we were on our last overseas holiday. So only 6 posts, not 8.