Running Numbers

I never saw running numbers

When I was little

I learnt running writing.

Walking writing was slow and upright.

Printed letters, upper and lower case.

In a fast and rapidly changing modern world there was no time to walking write.

With our Globalite bags and greaseproof wrapped sandwiches we were heading somewhere new.

Man on the moon in the space age.

In our running writing haste,

We neglected to teach the numbers to run and so they have been rambling along behind with all the time in the world

Reflecting an appropriate relationship between pragmatism and the economy.

Now though, It is the age for Running numbers.

The time is come.

I just tried to write some but they just kept walking.

There was no language I could employ to make them run.

Imagine if the numbers would run into each other like the letters do when they run, without losing accuracy.

Calculators run with numbers but they do it sheepishly, without appearance, behind the mask of the little screen.

The little calculator screen came before ‘screen time’.

I would like to see the real running numbers though.

Running sums.

Running subtractions.

Running Calculations.

Running with the indignity by which the words have come to be reconciled.