Ceiling

I’m 5500 miles from my home in London, where my family and friends are. I don’t have access to a telephone or internet except when I wander down to the local coffee shop. So an email that’s guaranteed to shock me has the subject: “The living room ceiling has fallen in!”

Alas, this is what I came across yesterday morning. And it brings to light the utter powerlessness of being so far away from home. Thankfully, in this case there were no injuries, except for a bit of shock at having to call the fire brigade at 5am. And it turns out things were not as bad as all that, there was just a small hole in the ceiling and some water dripping through.

But for about 3 hours all I knew was that, in my absence, there must have been one hell of a party at our flat. Talk about bringing the house down.

I spoke with a colleague today about this and there was a look of familiarity in her eyes.

“Yes, this always happens.”

“Really? Ceilings collapsing when you go away?”

“No, having stuff happen back home over which you’re completely powerless.”

“Sod’s law, I suppose,” I suggested miserably.

Of course, that’s exactly what it is. There was a crack in the ceiling for some time, since we moved in 5 years ago. That crack has been smiling down at us throughout a whole 1/6 of my existence on this planet. And then, 3 weeks after I leave, it finally breaks open. It’s a bit like waiting for a Royal Mail delivery at home, but you really need the toilet so you hold it in in case you miss the delivery. Then, finally, you give in – you really really need the toilet – and BAM! The door-bell goes just as you start. And of course you miss the delivery.

I say I feel powerless being so far away, but truthfully I should have known it would happen. So many times I’ve been told what can go wrong will go wrong, but how little I’ve sat back and considered the many assumptions I hold about my life. One of them was “the ceiling will not collapse”.  It’s not a coincidence the ceiling incident happened when it did, it’s actually statistics – bloody statistics – happening in real time. A quick trawl through a generic search engine tells me some clever people created this formula: ((U+C+I) x (10-S))/20 x A x 1/(1-sin(F/10)), where the letters represent, respectively: Urgency, Complexity, Importance, Skill, and Frequency, which basically means “what can go wrong will go wrong, and it will go wrong at the most annoying time”. If something is going to happen between 2 given points of time along an x axis, as we move along that x axis, the likelihood of that something happening increases as we approach the final time because, eventually, it has to happen (unless you are waiting for a Royal Mail delivery, in which case it will arrive two days later).

So, the longer a period of time left for something to happen, the more likely it is that it will occur. Pretty obvious stuff. This is apparently why hesitating at the pedestrian traffic lights will always means cars are more likely to start moving just as you walk across, and why ceilings are more likely to break open just as you leave the country.

And it leads me to reiterate this oft-heard cry:

Sod it.