To blog or not to blog

I spend most of my time in the house or garden. I seldom venture out into the big scary world for fear of lions and tigers and bears, oh my! But occasionally I have no choice. A typical example would be on the occasion where you discover that the bread which was fine yesterday, and well within its sell-by date, has today grown legs, horns and a green fleece and started stampeding round the kitchen with a life of its own, necessitating a trip to th’Asda (other supermarkets are available, consult local press for details). Yesterday provided another example: I had to go see Dr Doolittle for my monthly de-louse, worming and thermometer up the bum. But in the greater scheme of things these absences from home are very rare occurrences. In fact, the trip yesterday accounts for just 1.7% of the week. So, how is it then, that in that relatively miniscule slice of time, InterLink decided to try to deliver a parcel?

And it happens every time. If I gird my loins and steel forth to the land beyond our drive I can pretty much guarantee that someone will try to deliver something! You must have had the same thing happen to you, where you wait for a parcel for weeks but then have to ‘pop out for five minutes’ and you get back to find a card through your door effectively saying:

We tried to deliver your package. How could you be out when we called? I mean, how dare you? How very dare you? What makes you think you have the right to a life? You are an evil person destined to the fiery pits of hell for all eternity. If you want this package you will now have to complete several Herculean tasks, and even then we expect you to grovel at our feet, you pathetic waste of space.

So, suitably chastised and vowing to never leave the house again, I arranged a redelivery for today. I don’t suppose I even need to tell you the rest of the tale. You already know what happened. It is what always happens in situations like this. InterLink, still demanding their pound of flesh, did deliver the package, as they are obliged to do, but they did it at the crack of dawn, when I was in the middle of a particularly enjoyable dream involving marshmallows (my dream, you can’t have it!) and when the insistent ringing of the doorbell was guaranteed to propel me from the deepest of slumbers to a state of abject panic in less time than it takes Gordon Brown to lose a fake smile! Bastards!

And then the game starts. You know, the one where they try to get back into the van and speeding off down the road in less time than it takes you to get out of bed, struggle with a dressing gown (which always has one arm inside out) and half-fall down the stairs to the front door. Oh how much fun! What jolly japes! What a joy it must be to the neighbourhood to see me standing there at the front door, semi-naked, with dressing gown somehow managing to simultaneously ensnare me and expose me (probably have ‘bits’ on display but can’t do anything about it as one arm is somehow wedged up my back and the other is caught up in the rope that SHOULD be holding it all together but undoubtedly isn’t.) Now add to this the fact that the frantic grab for my specs sent them skipping across the bedroom floor and under the bed, way out of reach, so I have about the same quality of vision as a mole with cataracts, and I’m still being sucked back into the marshmallow dream-state and I’m sure you’ll appreciate the vision of loveliness that greeted said delivery man.

Now, at this point I should note that on the very rare occasion that we are home for a delivery (like Tescos for example), we are usually sent something that resembles the love child of Ann Widdecombe and John Merrick. Today, when it is I who resembles the missing link, the person at the door is a complete Adonis, muscles, shaved head, rugged and manly (but clearly sensitive and just sufficiently in touch with his feminine side). And what does this gorgeous hunk of a man say to me, in a deep baritone that oozes sexual magnetism? “I’ve got a package for you”!  No SHIT! And what a package! That is NOT the thing to say to a gay man in the best of circumstances, let alone one in a semi-comatose state just snatched from a marshmallow fantasy!

Now if there were a God (or if this were a porn film), I’d have come up with a suitably evocative response. Something like, “Oh, what an intriguing packet. Well, you’d better come inside while I unwrap it”. But no, Murphy’s Law springs into action yet again and my somewhat less than eloquent response is to sneeze. Not a little sneeze. Projectile mucus everywhere, dripping off my nose, on my hand, probably off the door if I dare show my face in public for long enough to look. I think I missed the InterLink man. I hope I missed the InterLink man. Needless to say his departure was rapid and I suspect he’ll be putting in a request to change his round!

My existence does seem to be governed by Murphy’s law – “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong” as I pick my somewhat haphazard way through life. It IS a real law, Murphy DID exist, he was a physician and noticed the tendency for things to fail. The law has many variations, such as Finagle’s addendum to Murphy’s Law which states that: “Whatever can go wrong will go wrong, and at the worst possible time, in the worst possible way.” There is also Murphy’s Extended Law: “If a series of events can go wrong, they will do so in the worst possible sequence.”  And the Law has a number of practical applications, or if you prefer, more detailed subdivisions which give us a context to apply the Law to everyday life. My own observations concur with the consideration that: “Packages are only delivered when you are out, or otherwise unavailable”.  This variant forms a part of a larger collection of sub-rules, know as “Murphy’s ‘B’s” – and these deal with the certainty that interruptions (such as phone calls, visitors, fire alarms etc) are predetermined to happen when you are in the Bath, Bed or Bog!

Other interesting nuances include:

Murphy’s Law of Thermodynamics
Things get worse under pressure.

Quantization Revision of Murphy’s Laws
Everything goes wrong all at once.

Murphy’s Constant
Matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value

Murphy’s Law of Misestimation
Nothing is as easy as it looks or Everything takes longer than you think

Murphy’s Replacement Stratagem
After you bought a replacement for something you’ve lost and searched for everywhere, you’ll find the original.

Murphy’s Law of Diminishing Value
No matter how long or how hard you shop for an item, after you’ve bought it, it will be on sale somewhere cheaper.

Murphy’s Laws of Motion
First Law
The other line moves faster (this can be applied to any queue, be that at a checkout, in a traffic jam or any similar situation)

Second Law
Traffic speed is inversely proportional to how late you are

Murphy’s Law of Repair
When a broken appliance is demonstrated for the repairman, it will work perfectly.

Murphy’s law of Reciprocal Pairing
The washing machine will eat one of each pair of socks placed in it

Murphy’s Laws of Observation
First Law
The probability of being observed is in direct proportion to the stupidity of one’s actions

Second Law
Your best attempt at anything (such as a sporting shot, throwing a sweet in the air and catching it in your mouth, hitting the perfect note etc) will happen when nobody is about to witness it.

Third Law (the inversion of the Second Law of Observation)
Your performance is at its worst when someone is about to witness it, and the more people there, the worse your contribution will be.

Murphy’s Law of Humour
It sounded funnier when someone else told it or It was funny in my head

Weather Laws
There are too many to list in this blog, but all follow the essential premise that the weather will bollocks things up. Primary examples relate to the impact of washing a car, planning a barbecue or hanging out washing, with several grades of associated inconvenience based on pertaining factors, ie distance travelled from inception, number of guests invited or urgency of requirement to wear washed garment.  Interestingly, Murphy acknowledges that in almost all circumstances, ‘rain’ can be substituted with ‘bird poo’ and the truism of the Law is preserved.

Of course, Murphy has been plagiarised throughout history, with many of his observations being stolen, re-worked or falsely credited elsewhere. You may recognise the well-known “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence” as having its roots in Murphian philosophy and Mark Twain, no less, once used a bastardised version “No good deed goes unpunished.” Those in the IT business will immediately be reminded of “To err is human, to really screw things up takes a computer” – again, a re-hash of Murphy’s key observations. And who hasn’t heard of the buttered toast principal? This was a concept proffered by Murphy and adopted by many subsequent philosophers not least of which was Thomas Moore in his verse:

I never had a slice of toast,
Particularly large and wide,
That did not fall upon the floor,
Always on the buttered side

Perhaps the most succinct rendition comes in the popular form: “Shit happens” although this fails in many ways to illicit the subtlety of the diversity of situation in which shit can happen, the consequences of shit happening or indeed the full horrendous arc of distribution that occurs when said shit, upon happening, hits the fan.

Now the less cynical among you may be thinking that this is a very pessimistic view of the world, but I argue that accepting the inevitability of catastrophe is in and of itself a fundamentally optimistic attitude. After all, if you only ever expect things to go wrong either your fears will be realised (and you’ll be prepared) or you’ll just be pleasantly surprised! That said I must in all faith point out that Murphy also understood the dangers of over-optimism and developed what is widely believed to be his greatest contribution to human thinking of all time. Greater than any Newtonian theory, making Einstein appear a gibbering imbecile, questioning even the validity of the thoughts proffered by Stephen Hawkins. Murphy provided us with his greatest gift in his final observation, widely believed to have constituted his last words as he lay on his death bed (at the age of 23) crippled, broken and dismembered from years of testing and proving his theories. I share that thought with you today and it goes as follows: If Murphy’s Law fails to operate, it’s building up for something really big!

My favourite Murphyism though has to be that which is known as the “Stiff Upper Lip” Law, or to give it the correct title, “Murphy’s English Law of Consequential Behaviour” which draws upon both the technical genius of Murphy’s gamut of observations as well as his astute understanding of the human condition. The law in question is phrased in very complex scientific terms, drawing from physics, chemistry, biology as well as cognitive behavioural theories and indeed religious sub-texts but can be expressed in the following formula:

Or expressed in non-scientific terms: “Cheer up,” they said, “Things could get worse”. So I cheered up and, sure enough, things did get worse!

I leave you though with a final Law, and in fact one of which Murphy was very fond, yet did not develop himself.

Cole’s Law: Thinly sliced cabbage.