Abubilla Music

Lost socks….

Written by Jimmy

It all started with a little fact.  Each year, in Britian, we lose 17.3 M socks.

There are 62 M of us, so on average, each year we lose roughly a 1/3 of a sock.    Now, I’ll make a big assumption here and say this problem befalls a third of the world’s population or roughly 2 billion folks, leaving us every year with about 666,666,666  lost socks a year.   Golly – this leads us to 2 other facts:

1. Assuming a sock is about a foot long (literally and figuratively), we’re talking about 126,262 miles of lost socks a year.   That’s about 2/3’s the way to the moon or 5 times around the earth or 6 round trip flights London to Sydney.
2. Assuming a sock weighs aboug 4 ounces (I relied on weight watchers for this little fact), it means that the socks lost each year in the world adds up to about 166,666,666 pounds.    Given a London double decker bus weighs in at 15,900 pounds (Source), then we lose roughly 10,482 double decker buses worth of socks a year.

Now, I’m the first one to admit I lose socks, and definitely more than one sock every 3 years, but goodness people.  Can you imagine how much better our little world would be if we didn’t have 10,000 buses worth of socks floatin’ around our streets, our drawers, our children’s educational fascilities, our national parks?

And the problem may be worse.  Another study, which seems to fit my experience in our family of five, is that an average family of four might lose as much as sixty socks a year, costing them £240.   That is more than a sock a week, but it is a sock a month per person.   I won’t take you through all the math, because I can’t be bothered to do it, but it does say you’re better off alone.   By yourself you lose a sock every three years.  But somehow when you bond together in a family you lose a sock a month, or 36 times more socks in a family.  I guess when you’re alone you need all the friends you can get – even socks – and you look after them better.  Who knows.  But this whole math route would add a whole lot more buses o’ socks onto our streets.

Luckily, I’m not the first to do the math here.  The web is filled with folks determined to save the planet from these 126K miles of lost socks.    There’s a ‘seven steps’ to addressing the lost sock problem (look here) with such tips as keep your socks together and look carefully in your washing machine!  It is worth noting that this problem requires 60% of the steps demanded at AA, which seems slightly high.  I agree that the sock problem is a near crisis, but does it take 60% of the number of steps to find one sock every three years as it does to solve a problem with alcohol?   Please ponder.

May 9th is apparently Lost Sock Memorial Day.    An inventor has created ‘Sock Mate’:

There’s a vlogger that gets over 200,000 views talking about his lost socks:

There are a boat load of Missing Socks Restaurants:  one in Cambridge.  There is a Missing Socks Bureau, dedicated to help you find the socks.   There’s an organisation called ‘LOSS’, which stands for Loss and Orphaned Sock Society (it is actually a ‘front society’ selling GE washing machines).

Now, what does this have to do with Music you ask?  Well, my favourite Llyod Cole song is ‘Lost Weekend’, which like lost socks has the word lost in it:

One good thing about all this, is that the socks themselves appear not overly concerned by their loss.  They, of course, escape a life covering your smelly feet and being crammed between your heals and a shoe.   They live well lost:

There’s even a poem  called the Island of Lost Socks that makes it clear these socks are very happy.  Nice.

That’s all I will ever say on this topic.

You’re welcome

Jimmy