The fly. Useful though it is, it can be very embarrassing when forgotten. Just why is it that selective amnesia can so often cause one to forget to do up one’s fly? This is a question that has vexed scientists ever since it was invented. There’s meant to be a routine that we all do as we walk out the door. You know the one. The mental checklist: "Keys?… wallet?… handkerchief?… watch?…" and of course the one that every few of weeks falls off the mental check- list: "fly done up?"
So I’ve come up with an alternative strategy. If the fly beats the Primary Zipper Status Check, a secondary check is carried out in a quiet street on the way to the station. God forbid if anyone regularly looks out of their window at about that time of morning. Every day they’d see a reasonably neatly dressed young man on his way to work, who appears to have an unhealthy obsession with the upper section of his trousers…
But any of that is better than last week’s effort, when I was beaten by the Secondary Zipper Status Check, and got all the way into work, and sat through a Christmas breakfast and a meeting before I noticed the rogue zip at half-mast.
Things could be worse. About a week ago, I was walking through one of the city’s busiest streets, Elizabeth Street… and there, in a parked car, was a man doing one of the most elaborate nose-pickings I have ever laid eyes on. This wasn’t just the casual "pick, yep, nothing there, just checking there was nothing hanging out…" No. This was a fully-fledged seek-out and destroy mission, obviously done in the hope that absolutely anything in there would be scooped out. The sort of probing that picks up individual snot molecules. For anyone else contemplating it: Don’t. Don’t pick your nose in the car. Why? Because the windows are SEE-THROUGH, that’s why. (That’s why they’re windows, in fact…)
