You read it here first, folks.

Have you thought about the significance of next Wednesday? It’s 12/12/12. And that’s the last of a dodecade of palindromic dates for a thousand years (nearly).

We’ve had 01/01/01, 02/02/02 etc right through the memorable 11/11/11, and next Wednesday will be 12/12/12.

But that’s the last of them. There can’t be 13/13/13 or any other similar date until the next millennium. We can’t have 21/21/21 or 50/50/50 or any other until 01/01/(30)01.

Makes you think, doesn’t it? What a great time to be living through, from the Sixties through the turn of the millennium to now. Very few in history get to see the turn of a millennium.

It’s also the last time that American dates fall in line with the rest of the world. Almost alone, they use MM/DD/YY, whereas we and most other countries use DD/MM/YY. So 12/12/12 will be the same date in USA as it is here.

Speaking of significant dates:

Three generations. L-R Dad’s mother, my mother, me, in 1968, the year I turned 21.

Outside the Bennelong Flats in South Perth. It seems both an awful long time ago, and as if it were yesterday. Strange.