O for over the hump

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

I find the alphabet a funny thing to be honest. I think it might be because I rote learnt it at school, and we used to recite it in class in a manner completely devoid of rhythm, sense or meaning. But for whatever reason, once I get past e, or possibly f, I find it quite difficult to place the middle letters in their order or have any sense of how far through the alphabet we're getting. I don't instinctively know whether i is before l for example or whether j comes earlier or later than g. To be fair there's no real reason to ever actually know this, and if I am asked I have to pause while desperately starting to recite the whole thing from a in my head.

Strangely once I get to o (or possibly n if I'm having a good day) I kind of find my feet again - I know that p-q-r is coming, and then you'll be into s-t-u, and once at u it's a synch to work through those v-w-x-y-z's. (Although that all said, I have just recited the whole thing from a, and then written it at the top of the blog to make sure I didn't humiliate myself to the world by forgetfully omitting a letter there!)

I say all this to explain why getting to o seems like a hopeful moment in this particular A-Z challenge I've joined in on. Last week was a struggle to keep up for various reasons, but I think partly because I was feeling like the five-year-old on the carpet at infant school, slap bang in those awkward middle letters that just keep coming, and you've just got to keep chanting until, maybe, you'll get a chance to finish and breath. And, really, why is the alphabet in any kind of order anyway? To whose advantage is it that m must come before n? Or that l should come before both? I didn't know as a five-year old, and I still don't know now.