Solving a problem.

I let a friend see this scene before I painted it, the response made me smile. My friend said, "This looks right up your alley." I could not get that thought out of my head for the rest of the day.

My first thought was that I do have a love of those little back alleys and the little surprises they so often hold, we just never know what we are going to find around the ben or at the end of an alley. My mind went back over many of the alleys I had painted and the many I had visited. Many hours of pleasure have been brought to me over the years visiting such places.

My next thought was more to do with the number of times in life I have found myself seemingly stuck up an alley with no seeming way out. An unsolvable problem perplexed me, and I seemed unable to find a solution.

For many such problems or dilemmas result in people abandoning the venture started before they had made any progress. For others, the problem was such that it brought the person to a point of utter despair.  I have of course more than once found myself with somebody who has felt that things were so bad that the only solution seemed to be suicide. Fortunately, on most of those occasions, we have together managed to work our way through to the light at the end of the alley. 

Often such problems can be solved by breaking down what seems like an unmanageable situation into manageable proportions. I once discovered that if you did this that most of life's problems had in fact been faced by others and that about ninety-eight per cent of the problem had already been solved by others and that only left the little two per cent to be worked at. When you get to that stage nothing seems insurmountable at all.

Let me share a true event that shows exactly what I mean. 

A man had bought a Ford car. He wrote to the chief executive telling him that his family each even voted which flavour of ice cream they would have for dessert. he then drove his car to make the days' selection purchase. Now here was the problem. Every time the choice was vanilla having made his purchase the car would not start. For every other flavour that was not the case.

The chief executive could not believe this but he did send an employee to check this out. The employee met the gentleman and decided he seemed a fairly intelligent person. So for the next few nights, he went with him to make his purchase. true enough each time vanilla was the choice the car would not in fact start. The employe was flabberghasted. 

When he thought of all the reason this was happening he broke the problem down to many possible reasons. he then visited the shop where the ice cream was sold. There he made a problem-solving discovery.  All flavours of ice cream other than vanilla were sold from one counter. Vanilla being the most popular was sold from a larger counter nearer the doorway.

This meant that the time to purchase vanilla was shorter than all other flavours. The engine of the car was being asked to start much sooner after being turned off and had not had time enough to cool so would not start. 

Nothing to do with ice cream flavour more to do with time. Problem solved. Do not let problems become mountains that cannot be scaled. Break it down to smaller pieces and most time a solution will be found.

I have a problem for the next two days I will be unable to post a blog. Solution? Have a lttle break from my tosh and enjoy an ice cream.

Have a good two days while I journey back to little Freuchie.