Bubbles and Sods

If I'm prepared to show how I cope with domestic bliss then Seb and the LOWLIFE Committee et al can own up to their neo Whitehall Farce they are putting us through only to turn our dreams into the Pipe Variety as we somehow knew would be the case.

Learning a lesson from yesterday's disappointment I adjusted my strategy. Dead on 11am I searched the London 2012 website for Events. Equestrian Jumping at Greenwich Park was the target. They said it would take 15 minutes to check if the tickets that were available at 11am were available. They told me at 11.15am that the tickets I'd applied for were not available. I tried again for a different day upping my price ceiling. 12 minutes to wait this time before I was told that these were not available either. I tried a couple more variations, but the reduced searching times and the disappearance of all but the most expensive tickets told me not to bother any more.

It wasn't unlike the way in which the film 'Jason and the Argonauts' depicted how the Cruel LOWLIFE Greek Gods played Olympus games with the mere mortals. In this game you have to hold on to a soap bubble for 15 minutes without it bursting. Only then will the bubble reveal its prize - Olympic Tickets. Like all good scams there isn't actually a prize i.e. there are no tickets available, or only such a small proportion compared to 'corporates' as to be negligible.

Seb and the LOWLIFE Ticket Masters need to watch out that their Fat Cat Bubble doesn't blow up in their faces. In my student days I was trying to upgrade a time honoured hydrogen experiment from suds to bubbles in the deep recesses of a laboratory prep room. Similar to the time wasting in the photo but with a bit more excitement and daring that goes hand in hand with younger years.

I made the hydrogen in a large conical flask with zinc and dilute hydochloric acid. A delivery tube from the flask dipped in and out of a beaker containing soap solution producing sizeable hydrogen filled soap bubbles that rose vertically into the air. Using a wooden splint you could set light to the bubbles which 'popped' with a yellow flash.

Like the LOWLIFE Committee I got too greedy. I produced a huge bubble; one that quivered and squirmed at the end of the tube but stubbornly held on. It became bigger and bigger but still refused to budge despite the pressure. In the end I put the lighted touch-paper to the bloated bubble. It was the flask that blew up sending glass shards to all corners of the room. I made a mental note that I only had eight lives left and would leave this particular demonstration to the history rather than the chemistry lessons.

Unpleasant sight as it will be I so hope that Seb and the LOWLIFE Committee get caught with their trousers down.