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Overview
To every explorer with his map upside down, to every air-traffic controller suddenly receiving Magic FM through his headphones, to every astronomer whose new planet turns out to be a bit of bran-flake on the eyepiece of his telescope, Sod's Law says: you are not alone.
Sam Leith tells the hilarious - and painful - stories of the unsinkable boat that sunk, the unbeatable horse that lost, and the fireproof theatre that burned to the ground. Sod's Law demonstrates that the entire universe is actually set up to ensure that your toast always lands butter side down and, what's more, that it lands precisely where the cat has shed hair all over the carpet.
In this age of doubt, fewer and fewer of us are able to believe that a higher power takes an interest in our fate. This book reassures us that indeed it does - and that that higher power is hell bent on buggering things up. Only by laughing heartlessly at the misfortunes of others can we make ourselves feel better. Sod's Law enables us to do just that.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781848874398 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Atlantic Books |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2009 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 166 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Sod's Law
Why Life Always Lands Butter Side Down
By Sam Leith
Grove Atlantic Ltd
Copyright © 2009 Sam LeithAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84887-439-8
CHAPTER 1
THE PROFESSIONALS
In April 1995, the janitor of Carroll Fowler Elementary School in Ceres, California was presented with a gopher that had been captured in the school grounds. Gophers being regarded, in California, not as cute children's television presenters but verminous nuisances, he set about trying to find a way to kill it humanely.
When he couldn't think of one, he and two colleagues hauled the beast into a small store cupboard, and started spraying it in the face with an aerosol cleaner designed to freeze chewing gum off pavements.
The gopher placidly blinked its way through three full cans of this stuff before they gave up. It seemed quite unharmed. The janitor lit a cigarette while he figured out what to do next, and the fume- filled cupboard did what any fume-filled cupboard will do when you light a cigarette in it.
The explosion hospitalized all three men and injured sixteen children who were passing through its blast radius on their way to morning assembly. The gopher was found, again quite unharmed, blinking placidly from a nearby wall.
It was released into the wild.
* * *
A crew of soldiers – filling in during the UK firefighters' strike of 1978 – was called out by an old lady in suburban south London to rescue her cat from a tree. This they did with complete success, earning the lady's undying gratitude. As they reversed their fire engine out of her drive, they ran the cat over.
* * *
Along with the usual collection of rusty bicycles, vandalized scooters and fugitive shopping trolleys, workers dredging the rubbish out of a murky stretch of the Chesterfield–Stockwith canal in 1978 pulled out what appeared to be a giant plug of ancient design. It was only a couple of hours until – following reports of a mysterious 'whirlpool' – the canal vanished altogether.
* * *
The following is a fragment from an Internet chat room, archived at www.bash.org.
*** Ben174 (BenWright@TeraPro33-41.LowerMyBills.com) Quit (Leaving)
* * *
The laws of nature can often bring their victims into conflict with the laws of man. A prime example is that of 67-year-old Ronald Moore, arraigned in a Hastings magistrate's court for parking his car on a zebra crossing.
He was released after he explained that he would never have committed the offence 'if I hadn't run myself over in my own car the previous day'. After his automatic garage door had failed to open, he explained, he got out of his car to open them manually, in the course of which expedition he got his artificial leg wedged in a grating.
The car, whose handbrake he had failed to engage, rolled back and ran him over, crushing his artificial leg into what he later described as 'a U-shape' and severely bruising his real one. Wedged under the car, Mr Moore was not rescued for several hours and could barely walk after his ordeal.
'The leg repair shop is in the centre of town,' he explained, 'and that's why I parked on the zebra crossing.' The beak let him off.
* * *
The newsreader and cat lover Martyn Lewis (b. Swansea, 1945) claimed in 1993 that the media should make more of an effort to report good news, rather than the depressing alternative. This is not the policy of this book, evidently, but we salute Mr Lewis for trying.
Sod's Law, of course, ensured that all subsequent coverage of Mr Lewis's personal trials would be couched in tones of startlingly heartless jocularity ('Martyn Lewis, the television presenter most famous for his campaign to give viewers only good news, has been privately suffering an agonizing family tragedy.' Daily Mail, 13 April 2004).
The question is: was Mr Lewis on to something?
'196,459,483 Citizens Were Not Killed in Auto Accidents this Year,' was one of the headlines in the closing issue of Good News, an avant-la-lettre experiment in putting into practice thhe principles Mr Lewis was to make famous.
Good News was a bi-weekly newspaper that, from its headquarters in Sacramento, published cheering stories ('Fantastic Drop in Suicide Rate'; 'No War Declared in Sixteen Weeks'; 'Triple Rapist Enters Monastery') to the inhabitants of all fifty American states.
It ceased trading after sixteen months. Its final issue carried no report of its closure, said its founder, as 'such an item would have been against our policy'.
* * *
More Internet chat, archived at www.bash.org:
* * *
Eleanor Barry, a Broadway actress, took immense pride in the newspaper clippings she collected throughout her career. In 1977 she was found dead in her New York apartment at the age of 70, having been crushed to death by a pile of her scrapbooks.
* * *
Around the middle of the last century, so the story goes, the managing editor of one of Britain's national newspapers was trawling through the ledgers when he noticed that the newspaper was, every month, paying a substantial retainer to a correspondent in a part of the world the late Alan Clark would have referred to as Bongo-Bongo Land. He had never heard of this correspondent. A trawl through the cuttings library established that nor had anybody else: the last time this man's byline had appeared on a dispatch was in the previous decade.
The foreign editor was instructed to find out what was up.
He sent a telegram: 'WHY UNFILE'
With surprising promptness, the reply came back: 'UNFILE UNSTORY'
He sent another telegram: 'UNSTORY UNJOB'
The reply came: 'UPSTICK JOB ARSEWISE'
* * *
Erratum slip from Wines and Spirits by L. W. Marrison: 'Coates & Co. (Plymouth) Ltd, the sole makers of Plymouth Gin, point out that the special flavour is in no way due to the use of sulphuric acid. The author and publishers regret the inaccurate statements to the contrary which appear on page 252.'
* * *
In the autumn of 2008, Swansea Council set out to discourage big lorries from using a narrow road near the Morriston branch of Asda.
In order to do their duty by the Welsh-speaking community, the council emailed their translation service to ask what 'No Entry For Heavy Goods Vehicles. Residential Site Only' is in Welsh.
Back came the reply and in due course, on the junction between Clase and Pant-y-Blawd roads, they erected a large metal sign. Underneaath the English text were the words: 'Nid wyf yn y swyddfa ar hyn o bryd. Anfonwch unrhyw waith i'w gyfieithu,' which is Welsh for 'I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated.'
This isn't the first Anglo-Welsh municipal translation failure, and nor will it be the last. In 2006 signage on a cycle path outside Cardiff warned cyclists of the dangers of an 'inflamed bladder', and – in a life-imperilling riposte to the signpost-twisting antics of the Welsh nationalists – a pedestrian crossing in Cardiff invited English speakers to 'look right' and Welsh speakers to 'look left'.
* * *
Unemployed plumber Fred Brooks, 46, sought to do a good deed when on his own initiative he prised up a Georgia manhole cover and jumped down it to see if he could clear a blocked sewer. He did the job, and headed back to the surface, poking his head out of the manhole just in time to be fatally beaned by a passing car.
* * *
It is through the Memoirs of the pocket-sized Anglo-Irish poetess Laetitia Pilkington that we know much of what we know about the personal habits of the satirist Jonathan Swift. A friend and disciple forty years his junior, her obedient attendance on him is an object demonstration of the maxim that no good deed goes unpunished.
Mrs Pilkington and her husband Matthew were described by Dean Swift as 'a little young poetical parson who has a little young poetical wife'. On making their acquaintance the great man of letters lost no time securing Matthew a post hundreds of miles away in London, and being ungallant to his wife.
At Christmas dinner one year, Swift put the wine bottle by the fire so the pitch that was used to seal the cork melted, then smeared the black sticky goo all over her face. Mrs Pilkington said something gracious about how honoured she was that he 'sealed her for his own'. Determined to get a rise, Swift asked volubly whether anyone had ever seen 'such a dwarf' as Pilkington, before demanding she take off her shoes so he could measure her up against the wainscot.
This he did by pushing down on her head – she was pregnant at the time, his biographer Victoria Glendinning tells us – so hard she crumpled in half. 'Making a mark with a pencil,' Laetitia tells posterity, 'he affirmed that I was but three feet two inches high.' She was in such pain she couldn't eat her meal.
On another occasion, she was summoned to the Deanery first thing in the morning. Swift, feeling like a spot of breakfast, demanded she open the bottom drawer in his cabinet and get out a bottle of rum.
Laetitia bent down to try and open the drawer, and couldn't do so. Immediately, the man of God started setting about her with his fists.
'I once again made an effort,' she recalled, 'and still he beat me, crying "Pox take you! Open the drawer!" I once more tried, and he struck me so hard that I burst into tears, and said, "Lord, sir, what must I do?" "Pox take you for a slut!" said he. "Would you spoil my lock and break my key?"'
Laetitia at last managed to explain that the drawer was locked.
'Oh!' said Swift. 'I beg your pardon.'
* * *
In the autumn of 2008, the editors of MaxPlanckForschung, the journal of the Max Planck Institute, one of Germany's most prestigious research bodies, published a special issue dedicated to China. They asked one of their journalists to find 'an elegant Chinese poem' to adorn the cover, and he duly came up with five columns of pretty-looking pictograms, which they printed in elegant white on red.
Only when the issue fell into the hands of native Chinese speakers did it become clear that something had gone wrong. The literal translation of the 'poem' was as follows:
With high salaries, we have cordially invited for an extended series of matinees K. K. and Jiamei as directors, who will personally lead jade-like girls in the spring of youth, Beauties from the north who have a distinguished air of elegance and allure, Young housewives having figures that will turn you on; Their enchanting and coquettish performance will begin within the next few days.
'It is not my intention to provide a complete explication de texte,' wrote linguistics blogger Victor Mair in a thoughtful post-mortem. He was prepared to venture, though, that it appeared to be an advertisement for some form of adult entertainment.
'Regardless of how we interpret the quadripartite character,' Mair mused, 'we can tell from the context that it indicates the two individuals who are in charge of the girls in the show. Clearly this is an advertisement for some kind of burlesque business. I did find quite a few references on the web to a "K. K. Juggy" from a group called "Machine Gun Fellatio", and apparently the K. K. in her name stands for "Knickers" and "Knockers". Perhaps K. K. in the sense of "Knickers and Knockers" is an Australian expression, since K. K. Juggy (Christa Hughes) is from Sydney.'
And there, perhaps, the mystery is best left.
* * *
When it opened in 1904, the London Coliseum was the grandest playhouse of its day – costing £300,000, it was the apple of the impresario Oswald Stoll's eye.
It was designed with a giant revolving stage, so that scene changes could be effected in the very blinking of an eye. And – to impress the King and Queen – they installed a sort of horizontal elevator, sybaritically outfitted, which would carry the royal party on rails from the theatre entrance to the Royal Box without taxing the fat King's legs.
Immediately on entering the Theatre, the Royal party will step into a richly furnished lounge, which, at a signal, will move softly along a track formed in the floor, through a salon into a large foyer, which contains the entrance to the Royal Box. The Lounge-Car remains in position at the entrance to the Box and serves as an ante-room during the performance.
So, at least, boasted the programme for the opening night. What it should more accurately have said was:
Immediately on entering the Theatre, the Royal party will step into a richly furnished lounge, which, at a signal, will shudder a few feet forward, emit an anguished groan as from the bowels of hell, and grind to a complete halt, stranding their Gracious Majesties halfway between St Martin's Lane and the Crush Bar.
'Tum-Tum' – as Edward VII was known behind his broad back – had to complete the short waddle to the Royal Box on foot.
Flushed with the success of this, Stoll thought further to please the King with an even more ambitious entertainment. He would stage an indoor re-enactment of the King's favourite sporting event, the Epsom Derby, live at the Coliseum with the horses galloping on the spot, hamster-wheel-style, against the direction of his revolving stage.
It takes a particular sort of genius to hit on a scheme like this, and what any normal person can see would happen happened. One of the horses promptly went flying off the stage and crashed into the orchestra pit, squashing its unfortunate jockey flat and severely injuring the string section.
CHAPTER 2SOD ON THE ROAD
In summer 2008, a Syrian truck driver named Necdet Bakimci set out to drive his 32-ton car transporter from Antakya, near the Syrian border in Turkey, to Gibraltar off southern Spain.
Trusting to satnav, he stopped to ask directions only when his truck finally got stuck in a narrow country lane. He had arrived at the Gibraltar Point nature reserve near Skegness, Lincolnshire, 1,600 miles away from his intended destination.
* * *
During the Iran-Contra affair in 1986, Oliver North – a bumbler among bumblers – organized a diplomatic mission to Tehran. The idea was that relations with the regime would be improved by his delivery in person of a shipment of spare parts for Hawk missiles, in exchange for which the regime would arrange for Hezbollah to release American hostages held in Beirut.
Ollie and his companion, National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, brought with them a couple of gifts designed to oil the wheels of diplomacy. They duly presented this devout Islamic regime with a Bible signed by Ronald Reagan, and an enormous chocolate cake. The cake might have been delicious, but since their visit came in the middle of Ramadan, their hosts could only stare at it and drool. Written on the bottom of the chocolate cake wwas 'a present from Tel Aviv'.
* * *
No book on misfortune could be complete without a tip of the hat to Larry Walters, the American truck driver who embodied all the most go-ahead characteristics of that proud body of men.
On 2 July 1982, on the roof of his girlfriend's house in San Pedro, California, 33-year-old Mr Walters strapped himself into a parachute, and tested out for the first time the invention he called 'Inspiration I' – an invention that would help him fulfil his lifelong dream of flight.
'Inspiration I' was an ordinary garden chair, to which Mr Walters had tied forty-five helium-filled weather balloons. He further equipped himself with a large bottle of fizzy drink, a pellet gun, thirty-five milk jugs full of water (for 'ballast'), a CB radio, an altimeter and a camera.
His notion was – once his friends had cut the chair's tethers – to ascend at a gentle rate, and then drift with the wind across the Mojave desert towards the Rocky Mountains at a height of 300 feet or so. When he wanted to descend, he would use his pellet gun to pop a couple of balloons and bring him drifting back to earth.
Unfortunately, the house's sharp roof abruptly severed one of the tethers, and before Larry and his friends had the chance to adjust the ballast/helium ratio, he was shooting directly upwards at more than a thousand feet per minute.
He was at 16,000 feet when the pilot of a TWA jetliner radioed the control tower to report a man in a garden chair floating through the main approach corridor to Los Angeles International Airport.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Sod's Law by Sam Leith. Copyright © 2009 Sam Leith. Excerpted by permission of Grove Atlantic Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Cover,SOD'S LAW,
Copyright,
Introduction,
A Note on Sources,
THE PROFESSIONALS,
SOD ON THE ROAD,
THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE,
SOD'S WAR,
OUT FOR A DUCK,
SOD AND GOD,
SOD AND PLOD,
THE ART OF LOSING,
SODDING POLITICS, SODDING POLITICIANS,,
AND SODDING PUBLIC LIFE,
THE QUEST FOR KNOWLEDGE,
ODDS AND SODS,