Count us in moons

This morning I got an acceptance for the last unpublished flash in my folder. Yikes. I'd better write some new ones. I totted up, and this latest will be my 100th flash to be published. Yikes again. Did they all go to good homes? Well, maybe not all. Would I rewrite any if I had the chance (or the time)? Yes, nearly all of them. But there are maybe a dozen of which I am unreservedly proud, ones that connected with the reader. Which is not to say I regret sending any of them out into the world. The process of subbing and being rejected is essential, I think. Writing is a solitary art but we get better by engaging with our readers. I couldn't keep my flashes unread any more than I could keep children in an attic; words need a turn in the real world of reading, a rough and tumble, the chance to have the edges knocked off them. It's how stories grow and get better.

So I'm going to celebrate my 100 as a piece; we've grown up together.

According to the Scoville Scale charting the comparative heat of chillis, at 100 we're a Peperocini, or Cherry Pepper. In Bingo Calls, we're Legs Eleven (11) plus Dirty Gertie (30) and a Brighton Line (59).

In champagne nomenclature, we're half a dozen Balthazars plus a Jeroboam, or simply five Nebuchadnezzars.

As an American banknote, we'd feature the portrait of Benjamin Franklin.

As a Euro, our colour is green. Our Roman numeral is C. Our Dewey Decimal Book Classification is Philosophy. Were we a Poker Hand, we'd be 25 Royal Flushes.

In Canasta, we'd be Going Out. Count us in decibels, and we're Firecrackers. Or, as a Haydn symphony, we're The Military (in key G).

We're equivalent to 10 Greek Aceana in length, and 20 bushels (measured in man loads) in weight.

Count us in moons, and we have 5 times the number of Uranus; 50 times more than Mars. But we're only one tenth the size of the number of sweetbreads aboard the Titanic.