You never know who is reading ones blog output, but receiving emails to mark the one hundredth (see passim) means that there are people out there in the ether keeping an eye on events. And so onwards to the one hundred and first in the series. 101 is of course the first three figure number to be palindromic. England beat Australia in a one-day international at Edgbaston by 101 runs in June 1977 (J.K.Lever four wickets for 29 runs as the Australians slumped to 70 all out; not out batsman J.K.Lever 27). How we enjoyed that day!
Although I’ve watched the TV programme Room 101 on many occasions, the derivation of “Room 101” has eluded me. Had you asked me thirty or forty years ago I would have pinned it down instantly, but it has somehow fogged over in the mists of time. Disgraceful, really, for a person who has spent his life in bookselling and publishing, and who played a role in marketing at Penguin Books in the mid-eighties.
What better use of my one hundredth and first blog to put my mind straight and to recall Chapter 5 of George Orwell’s 1984:
'You asked me once,' said O'Brien, 'what was in Room 101. I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world.'
The door opened again. A guard came in, carrying something made of wire, a box or basket of some kind. He set it down on the further table. Because of the position in which O'Brien was standing Winston could not see what the thing was.
Oh, rats, I’ve probably contravened every law of copyright in not asking the Orwell estate for permission to copy that. George Orwell in turn apparently got the notion for Room 101 from a conference room at Broadcasting House in which he sat through interminably boring meetings when he worked there in the early 1940s.
For the more scientific of my readers I would point out atomic number 101 - a radioactive transuranic element synthesized by bombarding einsteinium with alpha particles (seriously). The 101ers were a pub rock band in the 1970s (notable for giving Joe Strummer – later of The Clash – his first signing). The 101st Airborne Division of the US Air Force (the Screaming Eagles) is currently serving in Iraq. At the time of the Normandy landings we could have done without the Schwere SS-Panzer-Abteilung 101 – the crack SS-Waffen armoured unit, and so on, and so on.
