A distressing message.

Yesterday the Beetle thermometer read -20 (it seemed cold but VW electrics could have been built by Lucas, the Prince of Darkness, so one shouldn't put too much faith in the value displayed).

I arrived at the client's site, fifty miles west to this email:

"Did you leave the hairdryer dangling into the hydrant barrel at the barn? We have problems."

I never remember my acts of gross stupidity; if I realized I what I was doing enough to remember it I wouldn't do it. I admitted it had to have been me who didn't put the hairdryer away.

"The hairdryer is frozen to the ground because water has been dripping on it."

Later that day I purchased a new hairdryer and drove home. I started a bunch of computer stuff churning and went to the barn. I used the new hairdryer to unstick the old. I started the old and was surprised not to see my nuts hurtle across the room. I trained both hairdryers on the frozen water pipe and spent half an hour in quiet contemplation of how I could have emigrated to America or Australia or even Africa. In Africa I could have had poverty with warmth. Eventually I gave up and carried buckets of water down the hill through deep snow for an hour or so before getting back to fiddling with computers and having conference calls with India (another place with warmth though unfortunately not one where the computer business is conducted in coherent English).

This morning the Beetle thermometer read -27. I haven't opened the email.