Defying the Laws of Physics
Although only early days for November the competition for the Jasmine Mansion prize idiot of the month has already been decided. Yes, this month the crown of biggest idiot working at the hotel is bestowed by me….upon me! I was, as mentioned previously, taking care of redecorating the bathroom doors and re-grouting the tiles as part of this years annual redecoration programme. Nothing too stressful and a task I can potter on with and be in and out of a room in a few hours.
I was merrily getting on with painting a bathroom door in one room. I had finished the outside and moved to do the inside of the door. Instead of moving the small table I had for the paint pot to stand on into the bathroom I decided a much better plan would be to stand the two and a half gallon tin of paint in the bathroom wash hand basin. I realised that it was balanced precariously and, obviously, under normal circumstances the pot was going to topple over. These, however, were not normal circumstances, it was ME doing this and, as such, the laws of physics were naturally going to be suspended.
The laws of physics duly suspended themselves for ten seconds before two and a half gallons of gloss enamel paint was to be seen gurgling its way down the wash hand basin plug hole! Several hours and several litres of white spirit later the complete mess I had made of the bathroom floor, the wash hand basin and, resultantly, myself, was finally cleared up. What an excellent time saving move that had been.
This incident, however, threw up a question that is now puzzling me. Why is it, when the entire planet appears to have adopted the metric system, that paint is still sold in ‘gallons’ and fractions thereof? What is it about paint that makes it different from all other liquids? Apart, that is, from its inability to flow quite as freely through our plumbing system as most other known liquids.
