Numerically challenged

SOMETIMES, things are better left misunderstood. I spend my life in a netherworld, not quite sure of the difference between gross tonnage and gross registered tonnage. I have tried very hard to register the distinction, even going to the extreme of sitting in a darkened room with a vinegar bandage on my head chanting the mantra that the tonnage gurus have tried to drum into me. Nothing works.

The truth is I don’t care enough to take the intelligence on board. And I’m happy that way. I also pondered for thirty years why Sam Cooke would be singing about "dancing with the chicken slacks" before I discovered that the lyrics to Twistin’ the Night Away refer to "the chick in slacks". I still sing it my way.

Similarly, I have held the coats of several people who have engaged in bare knuckle fighting over the question of whether or not the US bankruptcy code should be written as Chapter 11 or Chapter X1. Now we know. According to William Hagendorn, a New York lawyer, it should be Chapter 11. Arabic, not Roman. Mr Hagendorn feels so strongly about the subject that he wrote to a national newspaper about it. They ignored him the first time, and ridiculed him the second.

I am gratified to see that Mr Hagendorn concurs with my thinking on the subject, never mind that my reason for writing Chapter 11 is that I can never remember the Roman numerals for eleven. But I suppose the truth is that, if you’re bankrupt, you don’t give a fig anyway.