Soap!

The ability to take delight in the contemplation of seemingly insignificant things is, I am forced to conclude by reason of personal guilt in this respect, one of the attributes of a great mind.

This conclusion came to me, as is not infrequent, in the bathroom – and all because of a Christmas present.

One of my tasteful gifts was a set of various semi-liquids for the cleansing and softening of the external person.  The hand cream I must admit I used once and then promptly poured into the toilet and used the excellent empty container to put real after-sun cream in. 

The first of the other two items was a supposed shower gel which was astonishingly inefficient at its stated job, but which I thought would make an excellent hand wash especially as the supplies in the dispenser on the wash basin was getting low.  The original contents of the dispenser was a white liquid soap to which I now added the blue shower gel and gave them a jolly good shake up.  The resulting pale blue soap was pleasingly aesthetic and I thought that I had struck a blow for economy.

In the morning, of course, the liquids had separated into their distinct layers with the white being the heavier – it still looked aesthetically pleasing and gradually, as the white layer was used up the resultant soap began to the light blue of the original shaken mixture.

Use, however created space at the top of the dispenser and thus the third bottle from the Christmas gift came into operation.  This bottle looks as though it contains mashed up moss and purports to be some sort of facial scrub.  This means that the soap is augmented by a quantity of grit; the theory being that rubbing grit into one’s face removes dead skin cells.  I would have though that it would also remove living ones but, on the Euthymol Toothpaste Test (if it hurts or revolts you it must be doing you good) such cleansing masochism is quite popular.  I therefore decided to add it to the mix.

I think I know that there is a difference between “denser” and “heavier” with ice being a denser but lighter form of water than liquid water.  This facial scrub is much more macho than the white or blue cleaner.

Having squirted some of it from the bottle it looks like the sort of stuff that you could feed to babies if mashed moss and algae (with added grit) was the sort of thing that parents thought would do their sprogs good.  Alternatively, one could say that it also looks like the sort of stuff which may have come out of the other end of the neophyte humans.

Notwithstanding some initial misgivings I forced some of the stuff into the dispenser and now I have a thin opaque white layer on which a luminously transparent blue layer rests which is topped by a convoluted bulbous mass of the facial scrub looking like some revoltingly bumpy iceberg with the greater part submerged in the blue.  The facial scrub has a greater integrity than either of the other liquids and I am fascinated to see what will happen over time as gravity and physics force them into some sort of uneasy co-existence.

As you can clearly tell by the foregoing, I even more clearly need the holiday which will allow me to recharge the program in my mind which deal with priorities and be able to tell me that watching liquids separate is not conducive to academic advancement!

In a more outgoing way I went to Barcelona yesterday to meet Irene so that we could bewail our situations and set the world to rights.

We frightened ourselves with our lack of knowledge of French given the impending holiday to deepest darkest Northern France that is going to mark the beginning of the summer holiday for us.  I suspect that Irene’s “I know nothing” is not quite at the same level of truth as my assertion that the tattered remnants of my O Level in French have long since been swept away by the winds of time.  But I am still amazed that I can sometimes remember the French word for something when the Spanish equivalent remains firmly locked outside my memory.  We shall see.

Lunch was a Lebanese or Turkish concoction and made a welcome change from the food that I usually eat.

Unsurprisingly I did not adjust my clock and so I was an hour late for lunch in Terrassa.  This is made even more inexcusable when I tell you that Toni phoned up earlier in the morning and pointed out that I was probably an hour out in my calculations.  I thanked him for the information and then it left my mind as completely as the reason for having to learn how to do quadratic equations has left my brain.  Though not, interestingly, the formula for solving said equations, all of it right down to the “all over 2a” at the end, with the emphasis on “all” is sharp and clear, ready to be used if anyone could tell me how and why.

The visit to Terrassa was short and sharp (and a hour less) and I was able to go back into my car and strive for the ultimate accolade that the machine gives which is a flashing “EXCELLENT” for the quality of the “eco” drive that you have had.

As far as possible I now rely on the “cruise control” to drive the car, as the on-board computer seems to manage a more economical drive than I do with my foot on the accelerator.

I am also getting close to the first 1,000 kilometres when the car has its first check to see that everything is working properly.

Again my only complaint is with the information that the car displays when a CD is playing.  I am convinced that this is something which should be working better but we have not managed to come to terms with the detail of the instruction booklet for the TomTom which is the display heart of the system.  I will get to grips with this in the holiday because this is the only thing about the car which is not satisfactory at the moment.

Oh, and the boot which is smaller than on my previous car.  But there is something I might be able to do as there is a “floor” to the boot which can be removed revealing a sort of well and it is only underneath that well (so I am informed) that the spare tyre lurks, so it must be possible to dispense with the “floor” and make use of the increased space.  In fact I will go and do that now!

Done!  Bigger at a stroke.  If only the rest of life was that easy!

Let us not forget that next week is the last week of term.  Just to take away the pleasure from that sentence the powers that be have ordained that there will be two monster meetings on Monday and Tuesday after school.  Given the time that I get into school in the mornings this means that by the end of Wednesday I will have been in school for something over thirty-two hours!  An awful prospect!

My ever-excellent friend in the Union has sent me information for distribution to colleagues about their duties if a colleague goes on strike.  Not that I think that it will have very much effect.  Still, one should take every opportunity to encourage people to do the right thing!

And still the thrust towards project-based learning is going on, leading up to a climax when the kids make their presentations – on the day of the General Strike. 

Hey ho! such things happen.