Two's company

Things are better together.  Greg and Ethan
contemplate the surf. (Pic by Carrie).

There is magic in the number two.  No, really, there is. Some time ago I heard a snippet of a programme on Radio 4 about the number two.  (The things they find to make programmes about on Radio 4 never cease to amaze me).  The snippet in question was a story about a young boy who went on to become a maths genius.  Whilst he was still in primary school, in an effort to keep the class quiet, the teacher told all the pupils to add together, without a calculator, all the numbers from 1 to 100 (that is, 1 plus 2 plus 3 plus 4 etc etc).  The boy in question put his hand up after a couple of minutes and announced he'd finished, and that the answer was 5,050.  The teacher was baffled at how he had done the sums so quickly. He explained simply that he'd divided the numbers from one to one hundred into pairs. Each pair added up to 101 (1 plus 100, 2 plus 99 and so on), and there were obviously 50 pairs, so the answer must be 101 x 50 = 5,050. Simples! 


Beyond the fantastic simplicity of such mathematical equations, I think there is magic in the number two on a different level.  My sister and brother in law have two daughters, and I have been lucky enough to spend the last fortnight on holiday with them in Cape Town.  What a fantastic place - sun, sand, sea, shorts, flip-flops, wine, steak, prawns, coffee, people enjoying the outdoors, having fun, relaxing, swimming, amazing scenery, its all there.  What was really magical though was seeing my nieces Emily (3 and a bit) and Lucy (one and a bit) playing together. They will, with luck, be great friends for the rest of their lives.  It got me thinking about the other half of my very own sibling twosome, my older sister Liz.  


Liz is many things that I sometimes wish I was: sensible, organised, calm, clear headed, infinitely patient. It was only fair that I got to put that last attribute to the test. One day on our holiday Liz and I decided we would walk up to the top of Table Mountain.  We got up at six, packed a single water bottle, a flap jack, a small handful of raisins and set off.  How hard could it be? The answer was: very hard.  First we climbed up an increasingly steep ravine. As we got higher, we progressed from walking, to scrambling, to pulling on exposed tree roots, to crawling on our hands and knees up steps of rock covered in dirt.  Eventually our way was blocked by a band of sheer cliffs, too high and too steep to scale.  I had earlier declared with totally unjustified (not to say illogical) confidence that the path we were on must take us to the top "because its too steep to climb back down".  It was only once our route terminated at the cliffs that we realised we had been ascending a dry river bed, rather than a marked path (in fairness, none of the paths were particularly well marked).  I looked at Liz and suggested we spent five minutes laughing hysterically, which we did.  We then sat down and consumed the flapjack and wondered what to do.  Liz suggested that since we could go neither up nor down, we should simply stay where we were and wait to die. She explained that she never thought her last meal would be half a flapjack - "It wasn't meant to end this way".


Of course, we made it back down the ravine and, as luck would have it, found the path that we should have been following.  To her credit, Liz suggested going up the right path to the top, although we were already over an hour behind schedule (I was assuming we were on our way down for coffee and cake).  She explained that her decision to go up was solely based on the fact that she couldn't bear to put in the effort only to be denied the crumb of satisfaction of having reached the top. I asked her "are you enjoying this in any way?". Liz confirmed she was not.  She clarified her position by further explaining that she would not be going walking with me again, ever, unless I could guarantee - GUARANTEE (her tone suggested capitalisation) that I knew where I was going.  My feeble explanation that an an adventure isn't an adventure if you know where you are going fell on deaf ears. To compound our comedy of errors, having reached the top and descended again, we managed to get lost in a maze of footpaths for an hour. We later realised that for that entire hour we were never further than ten minutes from the car.  We arrived home, hot, thirsty and exhausted, almost five hours after we set off for our two hour walk. 


But, and I appreciate that Liz may disagree, for me it was one of the best - if not the best - mornings of the entire holiday.  I got to talk to my sister, uninterrupted, for the entire morning.  No snatched conversation over lunch during the working day; no trying to concentrate on what each other was saying whilst keeping an eye out for accident-prone kids; no blackberries, phones or emails to interrupt the flow.  I loved every minute of it.  Growing up as children, Liz was at times my best friend, but also my worst enemy and tormentor (she once tried to bite my finger off and deliberately poked my birthday cake). Sometimes we would fight, physically - I think we both actually wanted to genuinely hurt each other. Later though I like to think our relationship matured.  Liz became my financial adviser, confidant, on-call taxi service and occasional money-lender.  Most recently she has been my career advisor, sounding board, emergency hospital visitor and childcare mentor. I may have got us lost on Table Mountain, but I can honestly say that on a more metaphorical level I would be lost without her.  I hope that one day Anita and I will be lucky enough to give Lara a sibling. Because for me, being one half of a two is magical indeed.