Why Ceilings aren’t Clouds and Bathrooms aren’t Heaven

Today it rained in the kitchen. Not the usual course of events.

This is what happened:

I came downstairs expecting to make a fulfilling cup of coffee. It was raining in the kitchen. From the ceiling. I wondered if the ceiling might have become a cloud overnight. Indeed it had a bulbous appearance and the drops were definitely emanating from it. In a minor rainy-day sort of way. Splashing merrily onto the floor. Dripily-dropily.

At first having a cloud for a ceiling didn’t seem like a very sound idea. Most builders, architects and DIY impresarios like myself tend to eschew the whole cloud-ceiling idea as impractical, technically tricky and a little overcast. Yet, I thought, as I watched the gentle rain falling gently on the floor, dripily-dropily, maybe it’s not so bad. It might certainly further my ambitions to live with my head in the clouds especially since my house is a small cottage designed for dwarf-like Welsh minors, no, miners, and therefore the ceiling is extremely adjacent to the floor. And, after all, a cloud for a ceiling implies that upstairs, in the bathroom, there is probably a cloud for a floor. I might walk on Cloud Nine (except my house is number eight but that’s a trivial incongruity), or roll cherub-like amongst the fluffy whiteness, or discover that in fact my bathroom is heaven.

And so I went upstairs putting on my best cherubic expression, trying to look plump-of-limb and prepared for heaven. I was disappointed. The floor was much as it had been aside from a tad damper. The carpet resembled a beige quagmire and made delightful squishy-squashy noises when trod upon. There was also a similar dripily-dropily thing going on. This time not from the ceiling but from the cistern.

The gods of toilets love me not.

After removing the 22 pieces of tongue and groove panelling attached by 66 screws I wrapped the cistern in a towel. The dripily-dropily stopped. The cistern felt cosy.

I went back downstairs to inspect the kitchen ceiling. It bulged some more. The dripily-dropily had become more of a dripliy-plopily. Knowing a thing or two about how bad-tempered plasterboard can be when asked to hold up a lot of water I poked it with a screwdriver. It pissed on me.

The gods of ceilings love me not.

Now I am likely to fall through the cloud as I’ve had to lift all the floorboards to dry it out. I am also in need of some sort of gangplank to access the toilet. And more towels as the cistern has wet the ones already provided. In fact a new bathroom/kitchen/house might come in handy.

But strangely I miss the gentle dripily-dropily squishy-squashy not-heaven.

How to Tell If a Man is Single Using Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion

There’s someone in Australia that I’m a bit worried about. I don’t know who it is. A woman I highly suspect. So we’ll call her she. She is confused and bewildered, as are most of us. Or most of me. She has been trying to find out how to tell if a man is single. By reading this blog. Yet I’m yet to inform my confused public how to tell if a man is single. But I’ve been there. So in a reverse piece of Googling I feel beholden to pontificate upon this subject:

How to Tell If a Man is Single Using Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion

Kepler was a chap. So already we can infer he knew something of the matter. He married a 25 year old woman who was already widowed twice over. Already we can infer that he was a reckless chap. And married.

He invented some relevant laws about bodies moving in orbits about two focal points which we might apply here to answer our question.

Law 1: A body might move in an ellipse with two focal points. So what we need to discover is does the body in question obey a Keplerian orbit or does he adhere to the old fashioned ideas of Aristotle and Ptolemy?

How to test:
Does the body in question move elliptically? Tip: The essential difference between an ellipse and a circle is the degree of squashiness.

Law 2: The body moves faster when away from the foci.

How to test:
Measure the exact speed of entrance and exit. Next measure the staying rate. Which is greater?

Law 3: The body moves faster if the foci are further apart.

How to test:
Move yourself further away from where you suspect the other focus is. Tip: If you think the other focus is on the far side of town then you go to Antarctica, Timbuktu or Rhyl. Repeat Test 2.

Obviously there is some maths involved here. If you feel you are not good at calculations then use an observational technique:

Does the body in question come straight to you from any given point?
Does the body in question give a straight answer?
Does the body in question leave straight away?

Finally, if you find yourself asking yourself ‘Is he single?’ you probably already know the answer without reference to any sort of science.