TEN - TEN – TEN

Ten things tennish…

TEN – The requisite number of viridian blown-glass, narrow-necked vessels required to be set upon a non-specific freestanding solid structure of stone, brick, earth or similar substance in order to suffer a series of individual perilous plunges to destruction due to an unfortunate and catastrophic confluence of unexplained circumstances.

TEN – The required number of ceramic figurines of a preferably non-specific ethnic origin deemed necessary to propel the narrative of a classic tale of murder and mystery as created by a late, lamented English Dame.

TEN – The required number of skittles that need to be knocked down by a heavy ball when propelled along a polished channel designed specifically for that purpose in order to attain a so-called “strike”, and not the number of short pieces of pointed wire added to a food containment vessel needed to make a small breakfast for a robot, a breakfast that they later might well choose to throw at you if their programming goes on the fritz and they acquire a sudden desire to “destroy all humans”.

TEN – The number of men a footballing team will be down to when another man in a position of authority waves a bit of red cardboard in the air above his head after someone has done something unacceptable to someone else. Or something. It seems to involve rather a lot of whistle-blowing, too.

TEN – An indication of female “perfection” as sought out by Roger Moore’s diminutive not-brother Dudley and apparently achieved by one “Bodacious Del” by prancing about on a beach wearing little but a bizarre hairstyle.

TEN -  The number of a house in a street somewhere in the English city of London known as Downing Street where a man or a woman in an unfortunate suit spends much of  their time smiling insincerely at people whilst simultaneously plotting to  take all their money off them.

TEN – The base of the decimal numbering system which meant that certain people of a certain age had to learn to measure and weigh things in a whole new way and also that they couldn’t even be sure for a while how much the coins in their pockets or the small change they were having handed back to them was actually worth.

TEN – The number of English men in a one day international cricket side who will throw away their wicket in a mad dash to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

TEN – The number of sides of a decagon, which is a polygon with ten sides and ten angles and can be both regular and irregular depending on how accurate you are with your technical drawing skills, but this tends to be less of an issue nowadays when you can get any vector based software package to draw you one with 100% accuracy, tedious predictability and without splashing Indian Ink all over your lovingly crafted drawing.

TEN – A number. One more than nine, one less than eleven. When you reach this number in years of age you are amongst the wisest and most significant members of your immediate peer group and looked up to by those who have not yet achieved this grand old age. Soon after rising to this high and mighty status, you are packed off to another educational establishment and return to the humble status of the lowest of the low, thus setting a pattern that will disappointingly most likely continue throughout the rest of your days.

Happy October 10^th 2010.