Balance

I'm a great believer in the natural balance of life. Similar to a commercial that was on TV a few years back, I believe that for everything good that happens, something equally bad will happen; for every high in life, there will be a low of equal proportion.

My life is full of fantastic experiences and exquisite moments of fun and happiness, there's never a dull moment. But it did take me a while to figure out that every time I was having loads of fun, at some point this would come crashing down and plummet to some very low places; 'heading for a fall' is a phrase I often hear. Still, you can't have the highs without the lows, so I wouldn't change it for all the world.

Anyway, I've digressed slightly and this philosophy stuff can all get a bit heavy. But the theory is also carried over to intelligence - for every moment of genius, there follows one of equal stupidity: my boiler broke down during the week and I didn't have any hot water. I called some plumbers and heating engineers and after 2 days none of them had returned my call. So I looked up the problem on the internet and within 15 minutes I'd saved myself a call-out charge and fixed the boiler. I also bled the radiators and balanced the system. Oooh, look at me! I was very pleased with my new found plumbing skills and carried a rather smug grin for the rest of the week.

Fast forward a couple of days to the morning of Saturday the 19th of July (i.e. today) and I jump in my car early this morning to drive to work. Turning out of my road I can't quite remember whether I normally take the main route or the windy back route to the A41 when I drive to work. As I drive down the road and join the A41 dual carriageway, the reason why I can't remember which route I normally take suddenly dawns on me: I don't actually take the A41 to work. I take the M1, which is on the other side of Hemel Hempstead. I was going the wrong way!

All local road knowledge abandoned me and it took a good twenty minutes to find the M1 and get on my way to work. I smiled to myself with the calm realisation of what had happened; my moment of boiler genius had been equalled by getting lost half a mile from my house and going the wrong way to work.

Balance has been restored.