You know the feeling.
You reach for a pencil to start the Sudoku puzzle from today’s newspaper. For
reasons which cannot be explained by modern science, the pencil moves of its
own accord, rolls across the desk and falls towards the floor.
All is not lost. From
the great experience that you have gained from playing table tennis, you are
confident of your ability to catch it, as it plunges earthwards – but no – the
pencil slips past you and lands with a click on the floor, probably shattering
the leads internally thoughout its length.
Before you can reach
down to pick it up, it continues its journey to escape your clutches and proceeds
to roll gently underneath the sofa. Yes – I have a sofa, next to my desk, so I
can have a sleep, when studying German vocabulary becomes too hard for me.
Now it’s a question of
getting down on your knees in your best jeans. You reach right to the back of
the sofa and at the same time, collect up a handful of dust which has assembled
since you lost the last pencil.
There you have it with
pencils. They’re slow, don’t go far, but are cunning.
But what about pills? You
drop one of those and you are really in trouble and I should know. These little
swine, they not only slip through your fingers, then gripped by gravity, they always
fall to the ground pointing sideways. This works on the same cosmic and logic
defying principle that causes a cat to land on its feet and bread to land face
downwards, leaving a nasty mark on the carpet.
Back to the pills. Landing
on their side, they proceed to roll purposefully at about the same speed as you
can chase and then disappear……You took your eye off it, didn’t you. The chances
of this ever being found by anything other than the vacuum cleaner are receding
by the second.
Writing that off to
experience, you take more care with the next pill, still looking around the
room, in deadly combat with the little pill that has decided to humiliate you.
Yes – It’s personal.
To summarise: Pills –
small distance, but fast and ruthless, with an invisibility cloak, straight out
of Harry Potter.
How do toe-nails
figure in this league table? Clipping toe-nails is a personal business, not to
be lightly discussed in public. However, there are important questions to be
asked.
You do your best to
make sure that the clippings remain in a space where they can be tidied and
collected up – I hope that this not too personal or embarrassing.
Then suddenly, the toe
nail shoots across the bath room at the speed of light, diagonally from the
basin to the corner by the shower. The cursed thing disappears from view. Do
this a few times and you would expect to have a little pile of shavings, lodged
in the corner – but no. They have gone forever.
At least you are not
trying to do something useful with them, like complete a Sudoku puzzle or
swallow them to increase the iron in your blood. (I think that they must have a
great deal of protein and calcium in them, but I will leave that thought where
it is).
So there you have it for
Toe nails – theory of relativity defying speeds and general pain in the
whatsits.
Pencils, Pills and
Toenails – they are all out to get you. So who’s paranoid?
