November 7th 2015

As part of my stay-alive training I check my weight each morning just after I uncarry a motion. For the last two mornings I weighed in at 66.6 kilos.

I kid me not. Is somebody down there somewhere trying to tell me something? May be I should eat a little more or train a little harder.

I did cursory research into this 666 business and found shag-all. The number or symbol of the beast! What beast? Is it Mark Labett, one of the chasers in the popular TV quiz show of the same name? The fact that phonetically his name in French sounds like la bête, meaning "the beast" is a harmless coincidence. Then we have Tendai Nihal Mtawarira, a South African Rugby Union player from Zimbabwe who is affectionately known as the "Beast" because of his physical prowess in tackling and general play. Aside from all this we have the Fairytale, Beauty and the Beast, written in 1756 by Jeanne Marie Leprince de Beaumont, (somewhat similar in storyline to Cinderella), wherein the ‘Beast’ turns out to be a prince!

In the Bible we hear of the ‘birds of the air’ and the ‘beasts of the field’, beasts being defined as animals under human control. Another form of beast is a ‘beast of burden’ which might be defined as any animal harnessed to carry mans’ load. In the dictionary a beast is defined as a non-human animal.

The word ‘beast’ always reminds me of a philosophy of my old man. When he was younger he plied his trade as a dealer in calves and cattle. He owned no land, had no capital and didn’t care about bovines except as a means to make money yet he survived for decades buying and selling calves. He would arrive at a fair, do a ten minute scout, spend an hour drinking and then pick his mark. He would buy any number of calves from one to twenty but never before he had identified a chancy man to buy off him in turn. He never paid up front for what he bought but his word was good and he always paid before the day was out. He never sold at a loss. By using his knowledge of calves and humans he could survive and feed all of us scamps, essentially on his wits.

In later years I quizzed him about his superior knowledge of livestock and how he could always buy good stock at a price which was guaranteed to make a subsequent profit. He answered by making a very simple yet profound statement;

“Never judge the ‘baste’; judge the man”.

The word ‘bestial’ in general parlance means being animal-like. My dog China has more positive nature in him than any human being I have ever met. Would that we humans were more beast-like.