Lost Days in September

Well, right up until this evening, I was really struggling to come up with anything interesting going on in my life right now worth mentioning. It's not been dull at all, but I've been so busy with everything and most of it just the routine stuff's big brother of more time consuming routine stuff.

That should ease next week though, and there'll be more to say. Until then, let me distract you from my boring life details with SUPER AWESOME SHINY THINGS!

I bet that worked, didn't it? That beautiful rainbow fern creation there is my prize from Critmas 2016, courtesy of Mythiril . Isn't it gorgeous? And there's a whole load more shiny where that came from - so don't forget to check out the rest of his gallery.

But wait! There's more lovely art to come. Scroll down for some more features, an overview of what's on this month, and an article I've been looking forward to posting ever since I heard about the subject way back in January!


No particular theme this month - just a selection of generally wonderful artwork I've found recently!




As ever primarily focusing on lit news, but there’s a few wildcard extras tucked away in there for those of you not interested in them words and stuff.

Remember, the Literature Gallery now has three CVs. You can find their DD suggestion guidelines below:


On NOW, ending 30th September: Flash Fiction Contest: THE GAUNTLET - Yes, it's the craziest thing to come out of dA lit this year. Nine writing challenges of increasing levels of difficulty, are you ready to face The GAUNTLET?
(As a reminder, this is meant to be almost impossible. Don't get put off by the last challenge's insane requirements - do your best and get as far as you can!)

Running through September: Monthly Prompt September + Weekly Prompts - not only do you have prompts for every week, but there’s a collaboration challenge for writers to work with visual artists and make something amazing together!

On NOW, ending 30th September: Monthly Feature Challenge: EQUINES - here’s one for the NON-LITERATURE folks. Make, draw, build something around the theme of ‘Equines,’ and get it featured next month.

On NOW, ending 30th September: August-September tWR Prompt: Memory in Reverse - write something for this crazy memory prompt, and you could win points!

On NOW, ending October 31st: Flash Prompt #12 - September 2017 - Feeling those crazy Flash Fiction Month challenge withdrawal symptoms? Never fear! Flash Prompts have started up again, now with two months to complete each one. This one looks like great fun, do go check it out! 

Sign up NOW, starts October/November: Project: NaNo Squad - Not long to go now before NaNoWriMo starts. For the uninitiated, that's where loads of crazy writers (like me!) set themselves the challenge to write a 50k word novel during the month of November. WhiskeyDreamer has cooked up something special this year in the form of a support group, so take a look and sign up now if that's your thing.

And remember NaNoWriMo-Group's doors are always open too. Lots of exciting things coming up there.

---

Memnalar's Halloween contest might not start until October - but that doesn't mean you can't start getting excited about it. Take a look here: Halloween is Coming

Remember the Game of Genres contest from last month? We're still awaiting the final results - but individual week results for the first two weeks can  be found here if you missed them: A Game of Genres, Week 1 Results, A Game of Genres, Week 2 Results.

Looking for more gadgets to accessorise your virtual writing space? Wondering how you're going to plan to fit in all these events? Look no further! Have a read through this list, the fourth article in the series: Modern Writer's Toolbox IV

And here's the winning entries to the DeviantArt birthday writing contest last month too: 17th Birthday Contest Results!

projecteducate's 'Art in the Professions' week has started. You can find the schedule here: Art in the Professions Week - Intro! Don't forget to check the group page for each article as they're released. I'll update this at the end of the week to include all the links.

And for some lovely features and a far more in-depth look at what’s currently going on out there in the lit world, check out these articles. There's more in there than I could ever hope to showcase here, so well worth a look!

---

Phwew, seems like there’s more to mention every time I do one of these. That’s all for now though, and I’ll try to keep this updated as the month goes on.

Time now for one of my favourite stories from history.

For this month’s topic, we’re going to visit one of my favourite silly slices of history: the English Calendar Riots of 1752.

Basically, for reasons I’ll get on to in a bit, in 1752, eleven days were removed from Britain’s calendar – from 2nd September to 14th September. This reputedly caused all sorts of repercussions, from crazy bets to rioting in the streets, and the effects are still apparent today in the strange dates of certain events in the modern calendar. While the story may have been rather blown out of proportion in legend since, it’s still a fun tale.

So first off, why did the powers that be decide to skip out these eleven days?

This has a lot to do with leap years – and the date of Easter. You all know that every fourth year, we have an extra day in February, right? Well did you also know that in every hundredth year, (which is also a fourth year) we don’t have this extra day?

But what about the year 2000? We had a leap year then, didn’t we? That’s because, every 400^th year (which is also a 100^th and 4^th year) we DO get a leap year. That extra bit of complication is the reason behind the Gregorian calendar, unveiled by Pope Gregory in 1582 – correcting an error in the Julian calendar which had been used up until then in most of Europe.

Except, while the Julian calendar got the solar year wrong by 11 minutes, they still haven’t got it quite right yet. The Gregorian calendar is out by 26 seconds per year – set your alarms now, since in the year 4909, we’ll have to drop another day to keep on track! Anybody who writes sci-fi and wants an obscure prompt for a story, there you go!

Did I mention it was the Pope who unveiled this new calendar? Unsurprisingly, the non-Catholic countries at this point – most notably England and Germany – didn’t take too kindly to this change. Germany lasted until 1700, and England stubbornly held on to the old ways until 1752 when it was finally decided that enough was enough.

In 1752, the English Parliament passed a bill to align the English calendar with the rest of Europe by dropping 11 days out of September; so the 2^nd September 1752 was followed by the 14^th September 1752. At about the same time, they also moved New Year’s Day from 25^th March to 1^st January.

All this is still relevant today; the tax year in Britain still starts on the rather unlikely looking date of 6^th April rather than say, the start of the calendar year. This is because before 1752, the year and the tax year both started on 25^th March (another mostly forgotten religious holiday). When the calendar changed, nobody wanted to pay up early – so most financial dates remained set around that old New Year, but adjusted by the 11 days to 6^th April.

This is where confirmed fact finishes and we get some fun stories of what the populace made of this change.

Aside from the Protestant vs Catholic debate and the politics surrounding that, there were more important issues in the minds of the general public. Were their lives now eleven days shorter? Would they lose out on those days’ wages? Did they still have to buy a birthday present for their brother whose birthday was on the 8^th September?

The story goes that all this uncertainty caused rioting in the streets – of Bristol for some reason. In reality, it seems the majority of the ‘riots’ were unrelated to the lost days. The theory of their connection came from a few stray remarks made during a later election campaign, and one painting by William Hogarth – below.

Almost invisible on the blackboard beneath the seated man’s foot are the words ‘give us back our eleven days’ – and that is almost the only evidence for the ‘riots’ (any other riots and death counts cited tend to be equally attributed to other on-going problems at the time).

It is said that there were some people who even welcomed the change. Benjamin Franklin wrote, “It is pleasant for an old man to be able to go to bed on September 2, and not have to get up until September 14.” - And I'm inclined to agree with him!

From another source, in the book ‘Murders Myths and Monuments of North Staffordshire’ by W.M. Jamieson, there is a story about a clever fellow named William Willett of Endon who bet that he could dance for 12 days and 12 nights without pausing to rest. He then proceeded to set off dancing around the village on the 2nd September in the evening, and stopped the very next morning – 14th September according to the new calendar! The source claims he won the money – but I can’t imagine anybody was too keen to pay up…

Either way, this remains one of my favourite stories from history – one of those ones that while it’s important to know most of the fun parts never actually happened, it’s still far too entertaining to imagine that it could have done!

I’ve linked a few of the webpages I used below if you want to read up further. Feel free to share any similar stories you might have about calendars and the ‘fun’ they can cause in the comments! 

---

That's all for this month. Don't forget to keep checking back, as I'll try and keep that 'What's on' section up to date. And if you've got anything you want to add, don't hesitate to do so either through notes or in the comments!