When priapic songster Sting, in his pretentious post-Police lite-jazz phase, sang that love is the seventh wave, he was of course referencing the myth that in the sea, waves travel in groups of seven, with the seventh being the largest.

This idea comes up quite a lot in our culture. Henri Charriere, otherwise known as Papillon, claimed not only to have verified this theory through careful observations from the cliffs of Devil’s Island, but to have relied on it to make his escape, clinging to a bag of coconuts, by leaping from said cliffs.

I’m sure a lot of the surfer dudes down the road on the South Coast will have some input on this notion. Apparently there is some evidence that waves do hang out in groups, but perhaps aren’t that committed to forming teams of seven. Come to think of it, where this does happen – in Rugby Sevens – every member of the team is likely to be huge, not just one.  

And it doesn’t stop there. According to the scientific literature (as summarised by Wikipedia), there are no less than – yes, seven kinds of electromagnetic waves: radio, micro, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, X, and gamma. But there’s no point surfing any of these with a sack of coconuts of course – although they number seven, “all are manifestations of the same phenomenon” (which is just what I was going to say).

In fact, seven is a particularly significant number in all number of cultures, not least our own Judaeo-Christian one, where, you know, having created everything in the universe over the course of six pretty packed days, God rested on the seventh. Of the same ilk, how many deadly sins are there? Exactly.

And according to my man Will Shakespeare, how many are the ages of man? Count them: “the infant, mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms”; “the whining school-boy, with his satchel and shining morning face, creeping like snail unwillingly to school”; “the lover, sighing like a furnace”; “the soldier, full of strange oaths”; the justice, in fair round belly.”

Then, “the sixth age shifts into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon” (an old and skinny man); and then comes “second childishness and mere oblivion,” as we descend into our twilight years. Cheery stuff, but the point is — seven ages for us chaps.

And while we’re on great literature: those dwarves who loved Snow White so chastely and platonically? Seven of the little people right there.

Anyway, the thing about waves is, perhaps their greatest power is as a metaphor for things that rise and fall in due succession. It comes up all over the place in art and literature: the more you look into it, the more you find, from The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, by Hokusai – see the title image of this post – to ‘The Waves’ by Virginia Woolf.

Now get this: in her novel, Ginny has all the text spoken by six characters named Bernard, Jinny (with a J), Louis, Neville, Rhoda, and Susan – and there’s a seventh, Percival, who doesn’t speak. It sends the brain into overdrive, doesn’t it? Modernist incomprehensibility at its very best – give it a read, but don’t blame me if its beauties elude you.

Now I don’t know how many waves Covid-19 is going to inflict on us, or of what particular design, but I’m sure you’ll be with me when I say I profoundly, deeply, fervently hope there won’t be seven. Especially if the seventh is the biggest. The one and a half we’re dealing with right now are perfectly voluminous enough, thank you very much.

It could be that the whole wave scenario will fall down if and when an effective vaccine is created. But if there continue to be breakouts like we’re seeing right now in the Aussie state of Victoria, where the scale and speed of infections is frightening, there’s no knowing just how much we’ll see of what this dread virus can do.

For now, it really behooves us all to stay at home and avoid these waves: don’t even venture into the shallows, and hope the tide goes out way before we have anything close to a seventh.