Lose lose situation

F****** W** C***s crop up in all walks of life. Depending on the situation F****** W** C***s can take on a human form, be animals - especially obstinate animals, or they can be inanimate. When inanimate the F****** W** C*** is most often associated with machinery of some kind - however simple. Whatever manifestation it chooses, the F****** W** C*** delights in springing surprises, and revealing itself unexpectedly and turning a simple job into a trial, a quest of mythological proportions.

When confronted with a F****** W** C***, a good tactic is to scream "F****** W** C***" at the top of your voice, repeatedly and with abandon. The act of screaming in this way has the effect of encouraging blood flow to the region of the head and will, eventually, induce a state of calm (or, I guess, a lethal brain haemorrhage) and one can then take stock and seek to overcome the F****** W** C***.

If the F****** W** C*** is worth it's salt it will hide for a few moments before revealing itself in a slightly, oh so slightly, different form, and scuppering one once more. If this happens one should revert to screaming "F****** W** C***", it must surely be that the F****** W** C*** has returned because one didn't shout it with sufficient feeling and venom in the first place.

If this still doesn't seem to be scaring the F****** W** C*** away, try varying the emphasis, for example:

"F****** W** C***" or

F****** W** C***" or

"F****** W** C***" or even putting multiple stresses in the sentence:

"F****** W** C***".

If still thwarted one can add a musical element by varying the pitch of the screams. This is most effective when the pitch is raised, and can also be combined with the use of multiple stresses for advanced F****** W** C*** combat. For example

"F****** W** C***".

Caution should be exercised if considering expanding the sentence being screamed. So for example, it may be tempting to progress to something along the lines of:

"You F****** W** C***y Sh***", but such progressions risk exhausting one, and once one is exhausted the F****** W** C*** has most definitely won.

Yesterday I was confronted by a F****** W** C*** manifesting itself as a wheelbarrow wheel. Verily it was a cunning wee blighter.

1. It began by making it impossible to fit the new tyre I'd bought over the wheel.
2. Then it shifted to making it impossible to feed the valve of the inner tube through the wheel rim.
3. Once this was achieved it was impossible to attach a pump to the valve to inflate the tyre.
4. When this was eventually achieved the tyre deflated most rapidly, thus indicating a puncture.
5. Cleverly (we are talking advanced F****** W** C*** here), it was then impossible to remove the tyre and inner to locate the puncture and fix it.

Unusually at this point F****** W** C*** took a break and decided to have all the tools required to progress readily available. But it was a ploy to lull me further into the cunning F****** W** C***'s trap.

6. Once located and fixed and tested to ensure that the repair was sound, one must return to step one above. So to aid understanding and in the name of brevity I will adopt a notation whereby 1 is the step and in brackets will be the number of times the step has been executed. So we've fixed the puncture and must now reassemble the wheel:

1(2), 2(2), 3(2), 4(2), "Steady on" I hear you cry "You've gone back to having a puncture again". How astute of you. But I was not to be defeated:

5(2), 6(2), 1(3), 2(3), 3(3). Not finished yet!

4(3), 5(3).

The problem was that the puncture was beside the seam of the inner tube and at a point where for some reason the manufacturer had decided it would be really cool to give the inner tube some texture, in this case ribbing. This ribbing made it very difficult to create a smooth enough surface to get the whole patch to stick down. As for testing the repair, well I guess I was just too much of a Jessie to inflate the inner enough to really test the repair. I found it kinda scary inflating the inner outside the protection of its tyre.

So so far I've patched the puncture, and then over-patched the repair with a bigger patch. But those pesky little ribs in the inner tube are doing a superb job.

7 So next I rip off the repairs to date and try again. 6 (3) This time I use a super new-fangled glueless plastic patch.

1(4), 2(4), 3(4). PHEW!

4(4). Shite.

5(4), 7(2), 6(4) returning to the good old rubber patches. 8 - give the whole area a really good sand down so that this patch will really stick man.

1(5), 2(5), 3(5)............................................

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............................................seems OK huh?

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Yay! I won. Hah! Take that ya F****** W** C***!!

So then, at last, it was a simple matter of fixing the wheel back onto the wheelbarrow, tidy up and put away all the tools and get on with the things to be done. The whole small matter of fitting a new tyre to the wheelbarrow had taken over 2 and 1/2 hours. First job was to use the newly serviceable wheel barrow to

4 (5)

F****** W** C*** !!!!!!!