The Meaning of Life and Other Big Questions

Dahlings, how are you all?  I do hope you don't think I have just been sitting around reading detective novels and eating salt and vinegar crisps, pausing now and again to shout at Boys 1 and 2 to do their homework...

No, I have been pondering Life's Big Questions:

Why is there a man in our street who wears shorts all the time, all through the winter, even in this Arctic, Beast from the East, weather?

Does washing one's hair in water-softened water cause terrible damage to one's highlights?

And finally,  why can't I remember the other Big Question?

This is a sort of visual of Mysterious Shorts Wearing Man.  This is of course not him, it's just some pics from the internetz  but I wanted to give you something to work with.


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His shorts are smart casual and he pairs them with a smart jacket but they are not warm enough for this weather, and he also has leather deck shoes without socks.

I see him every morning walking along our street, in the direction of town. Is he off to London by train?  And why the shorts?   I am dying to stop and ask him but Boys 1 and 2 have very wisely forbidden it, their theory is that he wears shorts as he is a Serial Killer and does not want to get blood on the bottom of long trousers.

My theory is he has HOT PARTS and needs to get the air to them, otherwise they will spontaneously combust.  Or maybe he has read those newspaper articles about modern man's sperm count falling due to too tight underpants and central heating and so is on a mission single-handedly (?) to  re-populate the world. If anyone local reads this and a) knows the answer, please put me out of my misery; and/or b) is married to, or a friend of, or otherwise related or connected to, this chap, may I just say what a splendid idea the shorts wearing is and I really did not mean it about the serial killing, the hot parts, the spontaneous combustion or the sperm production/repopulation....


As regards the hair issue, every now and then I go to the hairdressers and get a mini-science lecture on how water softeners make the water bad for hair with highlights (at this point the colourist usually gloomily says she can smell the water softener chemicals on my hair and describes the terrible fizzing noise of the chemicals stopping the highlights taking properly).  The colourist then proceeds to advise me to stick my head under the kitchen cold tap (the only tap where unsoftened water available) and buy some special ££££ shampoo to de-tox my hair. It is quite frankly exhausting, I want to read Hello! mag and chat about my hols, I do not want to grapple with cutting edge scientific conundrums like black holes and highlight maintenance.  Does anyone out there have a view on this?  ( Please back up your view with a doctoral thesis or at least the Ladybird book of chemistry).



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As for the third Big Question, it was really good, but for the life of me....