Sod's Law

We've all heard of Sod’s Law, but what exactly is it in practice? Once unkindly known as Murphy’s Law, we can recognise that it is in full operation against us when frustrating situations such as the following occur time and again no matter what we might do to avoid them. See if any of these are familiar to you: 

As a pedestrian, you arrive at the traffic lights just as they’re turning green and have to wait the full length of time for them to change back to red so you can cross. As a driver, you arrive at the traffic lights just as they’ve turned red and have to wait out the full change-over time before you can continue on your way. And you draw the short straw every time at the same bleedin' lights whether you’re on foot or at the wheel of a car. It's as if the law on mathematical probability ceases to function at that set of traffic lights and the law that provides that you should be held up for as long as possible whether you're walking or driving kicks in.

Uuuuuuuuuuuu!!

Still, as a pedestrian you leave the house in dry sunny weather and you’ve scarcely gone more that a hundred yards or so when the sun goes in, the clouds come out and the heavens open up to disgorge their load of water which inevitably soaks you to the core. The irony of your situation is compounded when just as you arrive back home, the rain dries up, the clouds part and the sun comes out! “Now why does this not surprise me”, you think.

Still as a driver, you arrive at a petrol station when it is chock-full of cars and have to wait ages in a queue till there is a vacancy at one of the pumps. Having filled up and paid inside, you re-emerge to behold a wilderness before you, not one single car on the forecourt - it is a vehicle-free petrol forecourt! You realise the queues at the pumps were there for your benefit and now that you’ve been served and cannot be further inconvenienced they’ve vanished as if by magic!

And yet still as a driver, you come out of your house to go to your parked car. Up to now the street has been quiet and relatively free of traffic, “too quiet”, you think. But now, as you get into your car to pull out into the road, the street has suddenly become the highway from hell. Every motor vehicle within a radius of a hundred miles seems intent on passing through your street, and at breakneck speed, and you find yourself stuck there at the kerbside for what seems like ages before you’re able to pull out. But even then, as you move out into the road, another car, inevitably a mean-looking offroader, has appeared as from nowhere within a nanosecond and is bearing down on you with homicidal intent. So you instinctively hit the gas and hare down the road like a man (or woman) possessed, at a suicidal pace, terrified you might slow down the driver from hell and he might kill you with his death-dealing machine!

I can't stand it anymore!

As a shopper you join a reasonable queue at a supermarket check-out desk which seems to be the most likely to move quickly, especially as it’s shorter than the others to either side of it, and are  surprised to find that just about every other check-out queue has moved on and on and on while yours has remained almost stationary due to some hiccup ahead. Even shoppers that joined another queue well after you have checked their groceries through and left the store while you’re still waiting to be served, with smoke fumes coming out of your ears!

As a cinema-goer you sit down somewhere that looks just right and then a group of yobs turn up at the last minute and sit behind you. They then proceed to indulge in a non-stop binge of burgers, chips, crisps, popcorn, chocolate bars, all washed down by various soft drinks, whilst pushing with their legs on the back of your chair. In between mouthfuls of fast food, they can’t stop yapping and laughing, with the result that you reluctantly decide to leave and come back to see the film another day in the hope you might have more luck then. But of course, as we all know, you won’t fare any better!

As a park-goer, you decide to go for a stroll in the park, but on entering the park you find a tranquil and relaxing haven has unexpectedly turned into some sort of kindergarten and fairground rolled into one, with kids on scooters and bikes everywhere, mothers with buggies, men with giant vicious dogs the size of a wolf, joggers brushing past you, ball-players launching footballs that uncannily hit you on the back of the head or land between your legs and trip you over. The commotion and the hazards are so great that you do an about-turn and return to the peace and quiet and safety of your home!

This is it, buster!

As a television viewer, whenever you turn the tv on to a channel that has commercial breaks, it’s always in a commercial break and always at the start of it so that you have to wait the maximum time possible and then when the commercials finish and the programme is resumed you find it wasn’t worth waiting for anyway! This may be repeated any number of times but it’s no use, Sod’s Law ensures that you land every time smack-bam in a commercial break that doesn’t want to end!

As a pub-goer you line up at the bar to give your order but it seems that wherever you choose to stand, the bartender is always somewhere else, and though you might switch around to occupy more advantageous points along the bar the bartender has already moved back to where you were before and you become a nervous wreck trying to determine where the bartender will be next so you can make a bee-line for them and get yourself noticed. When you’re finally served and gingerly make your way across a crowded saloon with a perilously overfull glass, a youth in a rush accidentally brushes past you causing you to lose your balance, let go of the drink and land face down on the shocking purple carpet in a puddle of ginger-beer (or whatever)!

As a customer in a bank, you’ve had to join a ridiculously long queue which was not joined by any other person behind you. When you’ve finally transacted your business, after a punishingly long time, and re-emerge into the street, rushing off to pick up your parked car before you receive a parking fine for going over the time, you arrive at your vehicle to see a parking ticket slapped on it for having exceeded the time by ten milliseconds and you note with bitter irony that the parking fine is greater than the cheque you paid into your bank account! Suicide is naturally not far from your thoughts but you content yourself with a few swear words!

Pass me a copy of The Sun, will you?

As a diner at a cheap café-cum-restaurant, you order your food and sit back to wait for it. You’ve ordered an English breakfast for lunch and a cup of tea. When the tea comes, it’s weak, milky and lukewarm and about as tasty as a sodden dishcloth, but you make the most of it and look forward to the meal. The food eventually arrives and it is soon apparent that the bacon is all fat and underdone, the sausages are burnt on one side and raw on the other, the yoke of the fried egg has coagulated and the white is like rubber, the grilled tomatoes have scarcely seen a flame and are sour, the toast has not felt the heat of a grill and has scarcely been introduced to butter, and the mushrooms are soggy and raw. Great!

Finally, you need to use public transport to go somewhere and you decide to go into the nearby Underground to catch a train. As you near the bottom of the escalator you hear your train pulling out of the station and realise you’ve missed it by a billionth of a second! The platform is now almost deserted but it’s not long before it fills up again and, with the train being late, the throng on the platform builds up so that by the time your train arrives it’s a mad Titanic-like scramble to get aboard and inevitably you end up standing after you’ve allowed pregnant mothers, geriatric codgers, women of all ages, priests and little children, to take a seat before you. Having stood for almost an hour with all the sitting commuters glued to their seats as though they were staying put just to spite you, everyone suddenly stands up and gets off one stop away from your destination. Hardly anyone gets on and now, as you survey rows of empty seats and are spoilt for choice, you stubbornly refuse to sit down because you’re a man (or woman) who’s been transfixed to the spot by uncontrollable anger and the mother of all frustrations!

Why the two-timing s.o.b!!

And so the run of bad luck goes on and on day after day. You soon realise that Sod’s Law is at its most vicious when you’re out and about and almost inactive when you’re in your own home, unless of course you hit upon a bad patch of Sod’s Law-induced bad luck which comes home with you and wreaks havoc with your domestic life. Suicide suddenly starts to look like the lesser of two evils and you hastily grab hold of the gun you had hidden in the bread-bin and shoot yourself through the head. Goodbye, cruel world… But no, there is no sound and no brain-shattering bullet to put you out of your misery - the thing you grabbed hold of was not a firearm but a French baguette and you’re still alive. Sod’s Law has thwarted you again!

Why do they do it?

A little while ago, while jogging through my neighbourhood park, I noticed that several of newly planted saplings, measuring around 8-9 ft in height, were now just broken stumps poking out of the ground! When I got near I saw that each sapling had clearly been snapped off about 8-10 in. from the ground, leaving a thin splintered stem, and the rest of the sapling, probably more than 95% of it, was nowhere to be seen. In one case the vestigial stem or thin trunk was practically level with the soil!

It was more than clear to me that this was the handiwork of vandals, and this was confirmed by the park-keeper on a later occasion who said that the saplings had been planted by a charitable group of nature lovers at their own expense. Worse still was the fact, as he told me, that the broken-off part of the saplings had been cast into the sandpit of the nearby children's playground! Just to rub the point in and add insult to injury, as it were. He also informed me that the stem which was flush with the ground had been broken a second time to make sure it would not re-sprout, as it had started to produce new shoots.

Quite honestly, readers, I’m at a loss for words (but not quite!) at the wanton destruction represented by such an act which, I recognise, is by no means a rare event in today's society. What possible benefit to the perpetrators, probably teenage youths, could such an act of mutilation be? One can at least understand the motive behind such acts as theft, burglary and fraud, unpleasant and reprehensible as they are – we can all understand the money motive behind these – but to commit gross acts of damage to the environment for no discernible gain is just beyond me. And it is all the more worrying because it has a sinister psychological undertone to it.

I say it is “beyond me” but of course one is forced to conclude that the sheer act of destroying public amenities and environmental improvements must bring pleasure to the warped minds of individuals whose mission in life seems to be to undo the efforts of those who strive to improve and embellish our surroundings. Given the nature of the act, it is very likely to be youths, as this seems to be the speciality of young people who have gone astray and have nothing better to do than damage and destroy property and amenities.

All this of course begs the question of what family background these young miscreants come from which makes it okay in their minds to commit such acts of blatant vandalism. One wonders what kind of parents they have, what sort of family life they experience, and what values are inculcated into them at home. The sad fact is that more often than not the children are a reflection of their parents and that the latter are wholly or partly to blame for such anti-social behaviour on the part of their offspring.

Often destructive children are brought up in a household where the parents swear a lot, smoke heavily, drink alcohol in excess, and use physical violence against their partner and kids. Such parents tend to be poorly educated (if at all), constantly in and out of work (more out than in), and badly behaved themselves. So they set their children the worst of examples by their own aberrant and undisciplined conduct. The children naturally take their cue from those closest to them, from those that bring them up and figure large in their life, and then they in turn export such anti-social behaviour into the wider world around them.

Instead of such kids going into a park to play in the nromal way and generally use and enjoy the amenities and the landscape afforded them, their idea of fun is to ruin things for others by wreaking damage and destruction on the environment. They are never so happy as when they are indulging in anti-social behaviour and making life less pleasant for others. They are the ones who will break what can be broken, steal what can be stolen, deface what can be defaced, and generally get up to as much mischief as they can for the hell of it.

This kind of anti-social conduct says a lot about any society. It says that schools have failed their pupils, that parents have failed their children, and that society in general is failing to properly educate, instruct and guide its young people and to instil morals in them which would set them on the right path to being good and considerate citizens. Somewhere along the line, society as a whole is failing and many youngsters grow up without a set of moral guidelines that would prompt them to do good rather than bad. And of course a proportion of them grow up to commit more serious offences and even become hardened criminals.

This is what they
should look like

Well, there you have it. It's all very sad, and though we must be optimistic (I suppose), it rather seems that vandalism, hooliganism and anti-social behaviour in one form or another are here to stay, being the by-products of a society that promotes selfishness, self-interest and opportunism, among other things, and praises materialism to the skies. To create a society of good, honest, caring and considerate citizens, very differen ideals and goals need to be fostered and encouraged. And I'm not talking about creating 'perfect' citizens, simply 'good' citizens, because none of us is or can ever be perfect. Is this an impossible aspiration? It's getting to look like it.

Let's have a moan!

The most challenging thing about this blogging lark is to come up with a new topic each time that's worth writing about and, more to the point, that's worth reading. This is of course a subjective issue, as what is of interest to one person may be grindingly boring to another. As an example, you may have already decided this post is going to be mind-numbingly tedious and are exiting as you read this sentence!

Once, when many of us kept a paper diary, it was more of a spontaneous act and we did not much care what we wrote in it or even how we wrote. We scribbled away secure in the almost certain knowledge that it would end up in some dusty attic corner to be consumed by moths long after we had turned to dust ourselves! We never showed it to anyone, didn't think it would be of interest to anybody, and it was often so untidily written that it was doubtful if it could be deciphered by anyone who came by it even if they could be bothered to make the effort.

Well, all that changed with the advent of online blogging. Now when we keep a blog, which is I suppose a sort of electronic journal or diary, one's posts are likely to be read within minutes or hours of having been published, and many of those reading them are likely to be complete and utter strangers. And some of them will want, and will normally be able, to comment on our posts.  (In this respect, I count myself lucky as there is no danger of this happening to my blog which seems to be the best-kept secret on the Internet ... hehhe... so no-one will read this post either! But never mind, I will pretend I'm only doing it for myself.).

One thing that never ceases to amaze me is how may bloggers out there find the time to do what they do. They not only post every week and often more than once, they also tweet every day, they respond to comments from their many followers, they're on Facebook and other social networking websites, and they're into God knows how many other Internet activities! And some of these bloggers have hundreds or thousands of followers! Just as on FB where there are individuals with thousands of 'friends'! How do they do it? How do they manage to keep all these online sites of theirs updated, interact with visitors and still have some sort of a 'real' life? Beats me. Many bloggers are debating the issue of whether they should continue with an open-to-all blog or restrict it to just a few. To my mind, 'privatising' a blog in this way doesn't make much sense. The whole point of writing a journal online instead of keeping a paper diary, I venture to suggest, is to reach a wide audience, and not just in our own country, and to communicate one's ideas, opinions and convictions to such an audience. If our blog is only made accessible to a select few, it rather defeats the empowering and liberating purpose of the blogging ethos, I would have thought.

When you think about it, one could quite easily get involved in so many online pursuits, Blogger and Facebook being just two of the best-known ones, that there are not enough hours in a day or a week to keep them going and to see to everything else that makes up one's life. It helps of course if one does not have a job and can while away the daylight hours (in addition to the night-time ones!) in all these online activities. And, judging by many people who are continually posting things on Facebook throughout the day (often announcing their progress or achivement in some FB application), there are many idle souls about.

But it's not just online applications that are taking up so much of people's time, it's also all the weird and wonderful hand-held electronic gadgets that are must-haves for everyone today, especially the young. In my case, I’m still getting the hang of the mobile phone! Yet the youth of today take to all this gadgetry so easily and so seamlessly. They have their MP4 player (or whatever version it is now) and their i-phone, and i-pad, and i-tunes, and the rest of it. Somehow it all gels together and makes sense to them, whereas to us 'older folk' it just adds to the confusion in our lives. Thus, when you're out and about and unable to use your computer, the cellphone doubles up as one! Never mind about taking photos, that's old hat now. Today's mobile phone can take you onto the Internet and you can browse around, send and receive e-mails, network, and do many other things that you would do on your desktop or laptop.

Coming back, however, to the 'original' function of the phone, it's become such a common sight nowadays to see people speaking on their mobile phone in the street, in shops, banks, on the bus and the train, and in the park, to name but a few places. Have you noticed how loudly people seem to talk when on the phone in any queue? When I’m in a bank or post office queue (which I try and avoid like the plague), anyone speaking on their mobile seems to feel the need to talk at the top of their voice, much more loudly than they would in a face-to-face conversation. Now why is that, I wonder? They don't appear to care that everyone can hear them or that they might be inconveniencing others around them and so they witter on and on about nothing in particular. You find yourself fighting off the urge to grab hold of the confounded device and throw it as far as you can until it shatters into a thousand pieces.

Still on the subject of the cellphone, the other day I was strolling in a small park near my house and saw a woman doing one of these fast walks around the park. When I spotted her she was already on the phone. She did one lap round the park and continued talking on the phone. She did another and was still yapping on her mobile. And, as I left the park, she was still with her hand raised holding the phone to her ear, prattling on as she continued fast-walking round the park. What on earth did she have to say that needed such a long phone conversation and in the middle of what was supposed to be a serious exercise session? She was seriously addicted to the damn thing!

How about when you get on the bus or in the tube and someone has earphones on as they listen to invariably ear-splittingly loud music. And of course you can hear it even though it's usually quite muted. Nevertheless it's annoying, to say the least, but you put up with it. To object would doubtless make things worse, as the culprit, almost certainly a 'yoof', will give you a mouthful and then carry on regardless. So you either put up or shut up, or ship out! That is you move to another seat. There's really no other sensible way.

I think that as a society we have become coarser in our manners, boorish and churlish in our ways. We are too ready to be rude to strangers, to use bad language in public, and to be a nuisance to others around us. We are more confrontational now, more vociferous, and more demanding. The inconsiderate way we use our mobile phone in public is just one example (but a good one) of the couldn't-care-less attitude we have adopted towards others. “I will talk loudly and endlessly on the phone even if I'm in a queue in a public place, because that's what I want to do!”  "I will wear headphones in crowded places and live in my own little world of blaring pop music as if no-one else exists, because that's what i want to do!"

For my final moan to round things off... I often see in my local park (yes, we're back in the park) an elderly person with a young person by their side (who looks to be in their late teens or early twenties).  The youth is obviously a sort of minder charged (probably by Social Services) with taking the elderly person out for a walk and looking after them in general. But what do I often see? I see the young minder with a mobile phone glued to their ear, busy nattering away. Just the other day I saw a flagrant example of this. Whilst I was doing several rounds of the park, the minder spent the whole time chatting on his mobile, totally oblivious to his charge who, poor old dear, just sat there looking around and looking lost. There was no attempt by the minder to engage her in conversation or to give her the slightest bit of attention. He was much too absorbed in his phone call. And this is not an isolated instance, as I have witnessed this sort of thing on a number of occasions - a clear example of where a praiseworthy act is done but in a half-hearted manner.

Well, that's enough griping from me - for the time-being. It seems I’m getting to be a right moaning minnie, or, in my case (for reasons of gender), a moaning manny! But what can I do? It's an age thing... I think.

Encounters of a Jogger in the Park 1

When I’m out jogging in the neighbouring park I come across all sorts and sizes of people and... dogs. Some are regulars and some I only see from time to time and yet others I see once and I never see them again. And of course over a period of time some regulars do not show up again and I can’t help wondering why. Have they moved house, changed their daily routine, or simply passed on to that great park in the sky? The folk I see there are of course just a tiny slice of the number who visit the park every day, since my jogging time window is narrow and normally around the same time in my lunch hour.

There’s the very elderly couple who used to come regularly, the woman using a walking-stick and looking much frailer than the man. Probably because of this I often used to see the old man on his own. He was a small thin and wispy figure and he had a prim little shuffle of a walk, always looking ahead, never to the side, and never gave me a glance as I ran past him. I speak of them in the past tense because it’s now been some time since I last saw either of them and I rather fear the worst for the old woman who looked very infirm and was uncertain on her legs. Though the old codger might re-appear some time, I fear it will never again be with his partner. But we shall see.

There used to be a short bald chubby chap with one of the biggest dogs I have ever seen. I think he said it was an American Bulldog, and it was a massive beast, with a jaw that looked like it could chew its way through steel bars. Just the sight of it, with its gaping mouth, bristling teeth and tongue hanging down in panting mode, scared the shit out of me, and I ended up christening its owner the “Scary Dog Man”. I think he rather liked his new nickname because he once told me he could make me run faster by setting the dog after me. I couldn’t really disagree with that, though I rather suspect the brute – that’s the dog not its owner – would easily catch up with me and have me for lunch. Well that was the Scary Dog Man whom I haven’t seen for about a year now and hopefully won’t see again, not because of him but because of the monster pet that accompanied him and gave me the shivers.

Talking of dogs in the park, I had a very unpleasant clash with one such beast a couple of years back. It seems its owner threw a stick for it to retrieve and it set off after it in hot pursuit. Unfortunately the stick had been hurled in my general direction and as I came round a curve I saw this black missile hurtling towards me at breakneck speed. It was all so quick that I had no time to take evasive action and it seems the dog wasn’t too bothered either. The inevitable happened of course. We ran into each other head on and the shock of the impact sent me reeling to the ground whilst it appeared to have little effect on the creature which ran on to retrieve the stick. As I lay on my back on the turf, trying to get my breath back and recover from the impact and the shock, its owner walked up to me and asked, in a rather offhand manner: “Are you alright, mate?” He made no attempt to help me up or anything and when I weakly replied something to the effect that I would be alright, he just wandered off again. He obviously cared not a jot and was quite happy to leave me lying there. It was some minutes later that I recovered sufficiently to get back up on my feet.

This puts me in mind of another incident with a big pooch. Not as big as the Scary Man’s Dog, but big enough. I had gone for my jog at a much later time than usual, which meant that a different crowd was frequenting the park, a much younger one which earlier in the day would have been at school or college. Anyway, there was a group of young lads with a couple of large dogs in their midst. As I ran along a stretch of the park near to the group, one of the dogs pulled away from it and started bounding in my direction. This made me a little nervous but I decided to keep my cool and keep running. The next moment I heard the rapid patter of paws behind me and before I knew what was happening the dog overtook me and swerved round to stop right in front of me. How I managed to avoid running into the animal, I don’t know, it must have been some sort of reflex action, but manage it I did and, although I came close to falling over it, I stopped just short of the creature. For its part, it did not seem to flinch in the least, as it stood its ground, its tongue lolling outside its jaw. The next moment, its teenage owner turned towards us and called the dog over, but I got no word of apology from him or anything approaching it (that’s kids for you!) and I resumed my run, muttering my discontent under my breath. I had come off relatively lightly from this encounter, unlike the one with the stick-retrieving dog.

Well, dear reader, if you have stuck with me so far, I will spare you any more... for the moment..., as my encounters and experiences during my jogging in the park are many and manifold... oh yes, there are many more... and I will come back to this subject in another post or posts and further delight you with my reminiscences. Hence the ‘1’ in the title! You can’t wait for the sequel, can you?