Murphy's Law right again

Published on Saturday 13 March 2010 19:32

IT IS commonly known as Murphy's Law or, more prosaically, Sod's Law, and its premise is that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. So, to use the most commonly cited example, a slice of toast dropped on the ground will inevitably land buttered side down. Alanis Morissette wrote an entire song, Ironic, about this. (A free ride when you've already paid; a death row pardon two minutes too late; etc.)

Scottish sports fans have a particularly thorough knowledge of this phenomenon – witness the Scottish rugby team's performance against Wales this year, when an early lead was surrendered in a succession of moments of madness. See also numerous examples of our football team's misfortunes.

So it is with an air of resigned recognition that we offer you, the reader, the story of the Cairngorm ski centre's snow-making machine. As we explain on our front page today, back in the autumn the owners of the ski centre thought spending 5,000 on a snow-making machine was a prudent move, given the disappointing snowfalls of some recent years. Of course, Murphy's Law dictated that the moment Cairngorm managers made that decision, Scotland would be guaranteed the snowiest winter for decades.

And so the snow-making machine is currently sitting in a garage – buried under several metres of real, natural snow. But if it really is a way of ensuring Mother Nature sends her snow, perhaps the Cairngorm centre will consider it worth investing in another next year – just for that one to sit in the garage too.