- by Owen Morton
What happens only once every four years? No, it�s not the anniversary of Heath the Rat�s death (that�s actually only once every seven years), but it is this bizarre thing known as a Leap Year. Now, it occurs to me that today is the first one since Heath the Rat�s Silly Page got going, and � if we�re going to be completely honest with each other � I think it�s rather unlikely the website will be still going in 2008 (though, of course, one should never say never, which is a stupid clich� if ever I wrote one), so we should take this opportunity to write a stupid article about it.
So, let�s all wrack our brains (I love the word �wrack�: it brings to mind all sorts of images, the primary one � for some completely inexplicable reason � being a large roast lamb joint) to try to work out exactly what a leap year is. I recall when I was very little, a Leap Year sounded a most exciting proposition: a year when everybody had to leap. I was born in 1983, so technically my first Leap Year would have been 1984, but I remember very little � indeed, nothing � of that year, so I�m inclined to suggest that the first Leap Year I had any particular experience of would have been 1988. To a five-year-old, the prospect of seeing everybody leaping about for an entire year is a very enticing one, and the possibility that this is not, in fact, what a Leap Year entails does not really enter one�s head.
Sadly, however, my father broke the news to me that the only person likely to be doing any leaping on 1988 on account of it being a Leap Year was me, and he voiced doubts that even I could keep it up for the entire year. Well, I proved him wrong! Well, actually, I proved him right, but I attempted to prove him wrong first.
Anyway, exciting as this little anecdote has been, it has brought us no closer to actually discovering what a Leap Year is. One image that does spring to mind connected with Leap Years is, of course, a kangaroo, obviously due to the use of the word �leap�. The kangaroo that my mind conjures up has a really quite mean expression on its face, rather like this:
But, to be fair, this has little or nothing to do with Leap Years.
A Leap Year, as probably everyone reading this drivel is aware, is a year on which some genius added an extra day at the end of February. Personally, I�d have put it in July or August, so we could have an extra day of summer. (Yes, I know that�s not how it works, but I really couldn�t care less.) As it is, we get an extra day of cold, skanky February, when there�s nothing to do but write stupid website articles about stupid days of the year.
I�m bored now. See you in March.