Scientific breakthroughs

Do you keep putting off doing odd jobs around the home? Well, now you may have a scientific justification for waiting to do some of your DIY. Scientists, working in conjunction with British Foghorn and Reilly’s Paints & Creosotes, have come up with an equation which shows the best day of the year to repaint your fence.

Dr. Cleft Holdall, occasional visiting professor of Psychology at the University Of Bristol Temple Meads (Platform 3), came up with the equation after studying a number of reasons and different factors.

“In my study I looked at a number of varied psychological and physical factors that might affect when a person would be likely to get the most benefit from repainting the fence. That turned out to be quite difficult, so I had a chat with my next door neighbour about it, and from that discussion I derived the formula:

R = E + (I x L) + L / Y^S

“In my formula “R”, or the “Repainting Optimal Chronological Instant”, is affected by a number of factors. Namely:

“E” is equal to the extended length of the arms of the person painting the fence
“I” represents a factor called the coefficient of fence painting inclination
“L” equals the length of the fence
“L” represents the last time you painted the fence
“Y” represents how likely you would be to answer “Yes, I feel like painting the fence” when asked the question “Do you want to paint the fence?” Actually, I’ve just spotted the Y is on the bottom line so that wouldn’t work, would it? On second thoughts, change that description to how likely you would be to answer “Yes” when asked the question “Would you rather do something other than paint the fence?”
and finally “S” which equals sale price of paint.

From this we can see that one of the key factors in the equation is how cheap the paint is, and with Reilly’s current discount sale offering low, low prices on a wide range of quality paints and creosotes my equation shows that the best time to nip down to the shops, buy some Reilly’s paints and repaint the fence is AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. Thank you and good night.”

British Foghorn would like to apologise for the low standard of its science journalism. We’ve all been very tired recently.