31

You can compose all kinds of things about the number thirty-one. For example, you could write your own little rhyme (not a very good one) about the days of each month in the calendar.

Thirty-one days hath January,
March/May have, July annually;
August October December be
As rich, but the others have thirty
And saddest is poor February
Who by the seasons was done dirty,
Cruelly shortened by two or three.

Some people have said that February's shortness has to do with limiting the winter months to 90 days, so that while two of those months have 31 days, February exceeds budget. A long March follows with a springy feel, while April compensates by being shorter, and so on.

Or you could imagine some sort of terribly intensified low-budget Battle of Thermopylae, with only 31 Spartan warriors dying at the hands of a horde of Persian invaders. Or you could note that 31 is a Mersenne prime, of the form 2ⁿ-1, where n = 5.

Or you could just combine them all. Thirty-one interesting people, some more heroic than others, some more expansive and some more intense than their peers. Thirty-one heroes, some dying inside for the cause, some avoiding death by miracle or by teflon-style slipperiness. And perhaps thirty-one, prime and indivisible from now till the ending of days.

Today I was sitting through one of those painful but necessary meetings that all flesh is heir to, when I realised I was suffering a serious, almost psychedelic, migraine headache. It was short but intense (oh no, those words again!) and left me knowing that my mind had very sharp visual images of every single one of the thirty-one. I was going to describe those images here. Then I realised that I should find a special place for them. All of them. We'll see.