Under The Counter took a sudden and unexpected interest in genealogy recently.
Not because SLR’s resident coffin-dodger supreme wanted to form a deeper connection with his ancestors but because he wanted to shave two years off his age.
UTC reckoned this was entirely feasible if he could dig up some South Korean roots on his somewhat withered family tree.
This nonsense made perfect sense to the Auld Boy, as South Koreans all became a year or two younger last month when the country scrapped its unconventional age-counting methods.
For reasons that must have seemed reasonable at the time, much like cracking open a bottle of Bailey’s at three in the morning instead of taking two paracetamol and going to bed, South Koreans had been using a system which said that newborns were a year old. Even better, you then racked up another year on 1 January.
It doesn’t take a genius – luckily – to work out that someone born on Hogmanay will therefore turn two on Ne’erday.
Even North Korea ditched the frankly bonkers practice back in 80s, around the same time as UTC was cutting a dash in a Sergio Tacchini shellsuit.
Anyway, the closest the Auld Boy got in his fruitless search on ancestry.com was a great-great grandparent from South Lanarkshire, not South Korea.
It’s all a moot point though because, just like infinity plus one is still infinity, ancient minus two is still very old indeed.
