The day of the palindrome
Sir: Next week there occurs what 1;// Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable calls a 'palindrome date': 28.9.1982. A date, that is, which reads the salve backwards as forwards.
There will be only two more palindrome dates this century: 19.9.1991 and 29.9.1992• After that we will have to wait more than a century for another — 10.12.2101 (unless one is prepared to accept unsatisfactory `cheating' variants such as 10.02.2001).
Starting on 28 September, therefore, vie intend to hold a Palindromes Conference• There will be lectures on the history of palindromes, and participants will also be invited to improve on such masterpieces of the genre as, 'Now stop, Major-General, are negro jam-pots won?' and the brilliant example composed by the Scots poet and translator Alastair Reid: `T.Eliot, top bard, notes putrid tang emanating, is sad. I d assign it a name: "Gnat dirt upset on drab pot toilet." ' Edward Llewellyn
Plas Llewellyn Arts Intercommunication Group, Plas Llewellyn, St Nerrot Isle, Glamorgan
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