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Carrots...in Aarau (top) and Creances

In this blogposting...
*Murphy's Law and Peter's Awful Truths
*AGM XXVIII
*Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know
*Yet Another Numbers Trick
Avanti!

MURPHY’S LAW AND PETER’S AWFUL TRUTHS
I’ve had a smashing email from Peter, in South Shields. He tells me that, due to a recent personal experience (about which he remains tantalisingly silent), he was reminded of the truth of Murphy’s Law; namely, that if something can go wrong, it will go wrong.

But he doesn’t leave it there - that would be so uncharacteristic of him, after all. Instead, he says he has researched the subject of ‘Murphydom’ (as he calls it) amongst his friends and family, as well as in books and on the internet, and has come up with a subsidiary list of Awful Truths - the ‘unavoidable and deeply regrettable facts of life for which we generally only have ourselves to blame’, as Peter succinctly puts it in his email.

I therefore proudly present to you Peter’s Awful Truths...

* Nothing is as easy as it looks.
* Everything takes longer than you think.
* If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most
damage will be the one to go wrong.
* Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done first.
* Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
* When things just can't get any worse, they will.
* Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes it worse.
* A shortcut is the longest distance between two points.
* Once you open a can of worms, the only way to re-can them is to use a larger can.
* Negative expectations yield negative results. Positive expectations also yield negative results.
* You never find something until you’ve replaced it.
* When your cat has fallen asleep on your lap and looks utterly content and adorable you will suddenly have to go to the toilet.
* Anything that begins well, ends badly and anything that begins badly, ends worse.
* When all else fails, read the instructions.
* It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
* No matter how much you do, you'll never do enough.
* What you don't do is always more important than what you do do.
* You can't tell how deep a puddle is until you step in it.
* The cream rises to the top. So does the scum.
* There are two types of people: those who divide people into two types, and those who don't.
* You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can NEVER fool your mother.
* No matter what goes wrong, there is always somebody who knew it would.
* The first place to look for anything is the last place you would expect to find it.
* You can always find what you're not looking for.
* If you don't care where you are, you aren’t lost.
* In order for something to become clean, something else must become dirty.

I love this list of Awful Truths so much that I’ve taken the liberty of adding two of my own:
* It’s always further than you think.
* The earlier you set out, the later you arrive.

Thanks very much for the list, Peter. They really are all true; and they really are all awful.

If anyone would like to add to Peter’s list, feel free. Just send me your Awful Truths in the usual way - see below.

AGM XXVIII
Our next AGM will be the Summer Special - and once again, we will be gracing the Tanfield Railway with our presence. Please try to get there if you possibly can - at 1100 on Wednesday 24 August.

After all, you’ve had plenty of notice!

THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW YOU DIDN’T KNOW
* A lake called Llyn Maelog, on the Isle of Anglesey (Ynys Mon), has been given ‘village green’ status.
* Women who want the best chance of conceiving have been advised to floss their teeth regularly.
* The maternal ancestors of polar bears were originally from Ireland, according to recent DNA research.
* The State of California has just passed a law defining what a hot-dog is, namely: 'a whole, cured, cooked sausage that is skinless or stuffed in a casing, and which may be served on a bun or roll.' It has also decreed that a hot-dog may also be known as bologna, frank, frankfurter, garlic bologna, knockwurst, red hot, Vienna or wiener.
* There are 46 types of ladybird in Britain and gardeners can now order them by post.
* Cows have best friends within a herd and get stressed when parted from them.
* Turkey has by far the highest murder rate in the world.
* The Creances Carrot Festival (in France) will take place on Saturday 13 August. There will also be a Carrot Festival in Aarau, Switzerland, on Wednesday 2 November (see pictures above, from last year).
* Forty is the only number whose letters appear in alphabetical order.
* UNNOTICEABLY has all five vowels in reverse order.

YET ANOTHER NUMBERS PUZZLE…
Write down any number; for example...
886328712442992

Count up the number of even and odd digits, and the total number of digits:
10 5 15

String those together to make a new number, and perform the same operation on that:
10515
1 4 5

And keep iterating:
145
1 2 3

You’ll always arrive at 123.

CONTACT ME
Post comments on this blog or email me: truckshunters@googlemail.com