Sod’s Law is a good thing. It means that we all maintain a healthy perspective on life. So when we make the mistake of blithely assuming all our traffic lights will turn to green, suddenly Sod dishes up a swift hefty dose of realism. It stops us becoming too complacent and blasé.
Here are some of the more obvious examples of the law of Sod, and their corollaries.
1) No switch of domestic energy supplier ever happens “without a hitch”. I may have touched on this before. I am the Queen of Switching, so believe me, I know. Every energy supplier will tell you that it is not possible for you to purchase the same electricity from 2 different suppliers at the same time and be charged twice for it. Of course it’s possible. All it takes is for a not-particularly-monumental computer screw-up with dates and times, and Bob’s your uncle. It’s not like they’re selling individually bar-coded widgets, let’s face it.
· Corollary: The process will NEVER fail in your favour. Ever.
2) Money can be removed from your bank account in a few seconds, whether or not you actually owe it. If it turns out you didn’t owe it, money cannot be repaid into your account in anything less than a fortnight.
· Corollary: Unless of course you happen to either personally know the Managing Director of whichever company it is that owes you money, or are persistent enough on your way up the escalation chain to get his / her direct phone number or email address. At this point magical things will happen (or alternatively the company will do exactly what you do to pay someone electronically in a few seconds, and pay you electronically in a few seconds) and – KAZAM! - all will be rectified. It will always have been your fault, and the repayment will always be given as a “gesture of goodwill”, with the repayer adopting a slightly injured air, as if you, the repayee, have somehow made it all personal (and there was no need for that).
3) Whenever any business entity uses the words “as a gesture of goodwill”, goodwill is in fact the very last emotion they are actually feeling towards you. It’s the corporate equivalent of starting a sentence with the words “No disrespect to you, but…” which basically means that the second half of the sentence will contain some serious disrespect.
4) The day after you have bought something really expensive, which you have been researching for months and have even taken out a Which? subscription in order to do the job properly, you will see the exact same item cheaper somewhere else. It will almost certainly pop into your email inbox as a Groupon deal offering the item at less than half price.
· Corollary: There is absolutely no point in paying for a Which? subscription or indeed wasting any time shopping around. Impulse buying! That’s the ticket.
5) When it snows, your snow shovel, snow boots and the bag of salt and grit (which you stashed carefully in a handy place so you wouldn’t be caught out like last year’s fiasco) will be nowhere to be seen. (In your defence, last year it snowed on St Andrew’s Night which is one of your really big drinking nights of the year, and after you had laughed until your ribs hurt at Engineer slipping and falling face first into 2 feet of new snow like some sort of pissed up, dishevelled snow angel, you really couldn’t be expected to be anything less than a bit stuck the next day, operating as you were under such monumental hangover conditions, with the added affliction of sore ribs too).
· Corollary: It will always snow when it is least convenient for it to do so, and when you are least prepared for it.
6) It will never snow when you really want it to, ie when you are completely prepared and you really want your flight to be cancelled because you would rather dance barefoot in the snow than have to rise out of your lovely warm bed before the birds are up in order to catch the first flight to London for a business meeting.
· Corollary: Whenever your flight is cancelled, it will only ever be cancelled 3 hours after they optimistically roll the plane out on to the runway hoping that the anti-freeze which they keep pumping over the engines will actually melt the ice that is encrusting them and they won’t refreeze 75 seconds after each application, or that Air Traffic Control will select a window within that frost-free 75 seconds in which to allow the plane to take off. It never works. You will not be fed. You will not be allowed to use the loo. You will not get a cup of tea. And you will eventually be off-loaded from the plane. At which point, it will be too late to go home and get back into your bed. You will be offered a full refund by the airline, but of course it will only be “as a gesture of goodwill”, since bad weather is an Act of God.
· Second corollary: If you spend time and expense preparing for snow, it will not snow.
7) It is completely acceptable for businesses to blame God. Can you imagine how fast you would be fired if you told your boss that you were sorry but the circumstances of you punching the Managing Director in the nose were completely out of your control, God made you do it, and thus you cannot be held responsible for your actions - it was all to do with how God makes your body respond to someone being an annoying twat? Businesses use this excuse all the time, although granted theirs is usually a financially-oriented punch in the nose rather than actual physical violence. “I am sorry, but money for your cancelled train journey cannot be refunded because the earthquake that ripped all the rails out of the ground was not our fault - it was an Act of God.”. Similarly, you will find you are uninsured and uninsurable for these losses.
Life isn’t fair. So Sod it, let's all seek revenge by mailing junk mail back to the mailer and putting cold calling businesses on hold for an hour. That will at least provide a few moments of quiet, satisfied amusement.
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