No body ever told me that working shifts would be so complicated. Hmm, that is a lie they did when I was a printer but back then I had not discovered the magical thing of “Day of the week” socks. It was only a few years ago when my Dad introduced me to this strange thing. He had socks with Monday to Friday on them, one pair per day. Except they had forgotten to make a Saturday or a Sunday pair - idiots. So when I saw a pair of week day socks in Marks and Spencers I had to make them mine. I did I bloody well bought them and all. £7! That is a pound a day and you even know which fucking day of the week it is.

My bliss was soon broken, there was no warning label no EU regulation telling me the dangers of wearing day of the week or dow socks. Firstly you spend half your life looking for the correct pair in the dark only to find out that the colour red is used twice and now your wearing Friday instead of Sunday. That single mistake means that next week you have no Friday socks so you have to do a special wash to make sure you have a Friday pair and fuck me you’ve gone and put Sunday’s pair on instead. I have no concept of the environmental damage these socks have caused but I could estimate the water and power consumption. We’ve even bought a class A+ (A was last years result and this year the machines had done even better on their exams, whilst other thought the exams were easier) washing machine with 50 Kg loading to try to offset the damage.

So you’d being thinking I’d learnt my lesson and by now the dow would be tucked to the back of my sock draw hidden away from their master? No I bought more, like a junky mother fucker  another pair another fix will sort out all my problems. No it did not. It just made the problem far worse. Now I have two set of dow. Both full weeks and different designs. The bastards even changed the colour coding so now my Monday is cyan or erm green - I don’t know. Yes I bought them from the same Mark’s and Spencers and yes they cost £7 - bastards. Hence my need to spell their name wrong as many times as possible and NOT revert to Mark’s N Sparks or their new MnS (does that involve whips, if not what am I thinking of?).

So now it takes me three times longer to put my socks on in the morning. I have to thanks to my stupid OCD get them out the night before and put them in the bathroom just to make sure. But still I end up with the wrong days. But this is nothing just the tip of the iceberg when we get to shift work.

Shift work - which is may I point out one letter away  from spelling “shit work” is the death of dow socks. You put on your Monday socks at 08:00 then go to bed at 16:00 and get up at 23:00 - now what do you do? Tell me I do not know. I have tried putting back on the Monday socks as it is Monday but then it is Tuesday arrrrrrrrrrrrrgh. Then you think it is ok I will put on Sunday, at 00:00 and be late to start my shift. That works your feet are less smelly but then your shift is over at 08:00 and it is 16:00 start again and bang bloody socks!

So when I packed for this beamtime holiday of fun - sarcasm is assumed read-in, I did not fully comprehend the mistake I made by measuring out the days with dow socks. What a total fuck-up. Now I am wearing Friday socks - clean and not Sundays - today is Friday isn’t it? But I know I’ve made a fatal mistake as later we are going to end our shift work, sleep and then it will be 12:00 and I will have no Friday socks and perhaps I will have to wear shorts so that I can justify to myself the need not to put back on 8 hour smelly black socks. Which would be fine if it was sunny or melting temperature but of course San Fransico has seen fit to take it apon itself to become somewhere close to the artic circle for the rest of my time here! Great.

Be warned you wear the day of the week with caution -  I am now waiting for some smart arse to make day of the week T-shirts to fully ruin my life.