No.95, Wednesday, 11th. March 2026

Blue sky, muted sunshine, a moderate breeze and temperatures likely to reach over 11 degrees – it almost feels like spring. Any moment now the campanologists will commence their weekly practice, reminding me that it is Wednesday or, as we used to say in past times, Market Day.

We are much less likely to refer to certain special days by their alternative names. For example, in Newton Abbot Wednesday was Market Day and the following day was Half-Day Closing. The notion of shops and other businesses closing for half a weekday seems almost barmy to many people today. Not to me.

It would appear that weeks have changed too. My lucky numbers were always 3 and 7 or, more precisely, three 7’s. I was born on the 7th. day of the month, the 7th. day of the week and in the 7th. month of the year. The 7th. day of the week throughout most of my life and the lives of my grandparents being Saturday. Even the Oxford English Dictionary defines the week as starting on a Sunday and ending on a Saturday. And yet in recent times I have come across people for whom the week starts on Monday.

Does it really matter? I’m not sure it does. Human days are not ‘real’. Natural days are real and slightly different to human days, which is why we have leap-seconds and leap-years. If I were to borrow the Tardis and travel back 400 million years to the Devonian period, a day would be 21 hours and 20 minutes, and there would be 410 days in a year – and I would be 61 years old rather than 69. Which is daft when you think about it because I would be the same natural ‘age’. It is just the units that change.