The eleventh hour - 11.11.11

We often talk about the eleventh hour. The last possible minute to do something about a situation before it is too late, just before we edge over that waterfall and plunge down, down, down to disaster.

It’s a biblical phrase from the book of Matthew, referring to some workmen being hired very late in the day: “And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle?”

“Dunno mate, dunno.”

Eleven is the atomic number of sodium and in chemistry Group Eleven includes the metals copper, gold and silver - the metal that Judas, the eleventh disciple, supposedly sold Jesus out for.

Eleven is the number of spacetime dimensions in M-theory as Dr. Who (who is currently in his eleventh incarnation) would know, and Apollo Eleven was the first manned spacecraft to land on the moon.

Eleven is the first (I wanted to write fist) number that can’t be counted on eight fingers and two thumbs (so, toe required) and it’s the largest prime number with a single morpheme name (morphemes are what make up words apparently, but they aren’t like syllables which is a shame because I un-der-stand syllables).

It was on the Eleventh day of Christmas that the gift of ‘Eleven pipers piping’ was made, and as those noisy buggers would know the interval of an octave and a fourth is an eleventh.

An eleven-sided polygon is called a hendecagon, eleven is the second unique prime, it goes into ninety-nine exactly nine times and eleven is a Størmer number, a Heegner number, and a Mills prime number.

Football and cricket team have eleven players, and of course as all bingo callers in the land know so well there is always a whistle for ‘Legs Eleven’ – twit-twoo.

So why am I going on so much about eleven?

Well, of course it's on this day that we remember eleven because World War I, the Great War, the war to end all wars, ended with an armistice on November the eleventh, 1918. It went into effect at eleven am - the much spoken about eleventh hour - on the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

Eleven.

Lest we forget.

I’ll be silent now.