THIS WILL ONLY WORK TODAY..

Don`t really know why but I have long been fascinated by numbers, which is strange because I was hopeless at it at school.  But in later life my enquiring mind has drifted into all kinds of subjects that I overlooked in my school days - things like astronomy, physics, art history and mathematics.   And it was in maths that I came across some remarkable facts about number 26.  Here are a few obscure ones:-

* Walt Disney has won 26 Oscars - the most ever.

* The number 26 appears only once in the entire bible;

*Theodore Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States;

*It takes 26 moves or less to solve a Rubik`s Cube;

*There are 26 red cards and 26 black cards in a deck of cards:

*There are 26 bones in a human foot.

.........and so on; there are more - I won`t bore you - but what is so very special about 26 is this - it is the only number in the whole panoply of numbers from one to infinity and beyond which is sandwiched between a squared number and a cubed number (25 = 5x 5; 27 = 3 x 3 x 3) and it was Pierre de Fermat - he of the famous last theorem - who not only discovered this fact but also provided a proof for it, which turned out to be infinitely more difficult than the fact itself. 

But more to the point - and the reason this post of mine will only work today - is because today we are 26 days away from the shortest day and the longest night of the year.  And if, like me, you happen to be a miserable old git, fed up with dark, the onset of `the season of goodwill` and clinging on to the earnest hope that we will come through this winter, have a vaccine and live happily ever after, then you will understand.

If not, you might reach the conclusion that I might be bonkers.  You might be right.