Twitches and Switches

My right eyelid started twitching a couple of weeks ago. This had never happened before, so I did what most guys do when their body starts acting peculiar: I ignored it and hoped it would go away. Oh, and hoped no one else would notice. I looked in the mirror when it started to see if it was noticeable. It kind of was. That knowledge, along with the fact that it's nigh impossible to ignore anything going wrong with your eye, made it hard to ignore. Nightmare images of tumors behind the eye and nesting insects popped into my head everytime my eyelid flickered. Not pleasant. So I finally asked a doctor, but not without trepidation. He said I was exhausted, stressed, and that there were no burrowing, nesting insects and no ocular tumor. This morning, my left eye started to twitch. Does that mean I'm twice as exhausted and stressed as when it was just my right eye?

I opened up the shop this morning and was nearly electrocuted when turning on the light. The occasional spark when flicking a switch is nothing to be concerned about. Crackling? Hissing? The wiff of ozone? That's scary shit man. I made the executive decision to leave that half of the shop in darkness. I've been electrocuted once in this shop (a vengeful refrigerator) and vowed never to have it happen again.

The light switch is fixed now. My light twitch is not.

A puppy is for life, not just for Thursday

I've recovered from my Sunday rant. I had Thai for lunch, to answer the cliffhanger on the last post. My nano has arrived, small and svelt. Gadget euphoria is different this time. It's an amazing bit of kit and I'm really pleased with sound quality, screen quality, size and all that guff. But there are some things that gadgets just don't stand up against. Like puppies.

My mate Pete and his dad bought a puppy today. I was chilling out up at Naughton for the day and tagged along as the better things I had to do were boring. And not better at all, in fact. The litter was up north in Aberdeenshire, just outside of Stonehaven. A long way to go for a puppy. But worth it. It was a litter of ten highly enthusiastic pups, falling all over each other as though they weren't quite sure which foot went where, or indeed, whether it was their foot or not. Puppies like this lead to a rapid age reduction in all around them. We got back to Naughton and spent a huge amount of time introducing the newly-named Lara to her new surround-ings. Which meant two guys in their late twenties leaping around with a tiny black labradour acting as though they were eleven. Maybe ten. She was a bit sad, slightly confused and wondering where she was, where her mum was, and where her nine brothers and sisters were. Belly rubs would distract her from these questions, as did the introduction to Tiny, the family cat, and some of the horses. So she leapt about, hugely curious, scared, excited, sad, eager and hungry. I know the feeling.

I have a stock take this weekend. I fucking hate stock taking. This will be the last time I ever do it.

Day of rest

Regardless of your religion or lack thereof, a day of rest during the week can only be a good thing. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to restrict driving, cooking (unless you're a chef - then it's nice to have a break) and reading, but to have a chill out day, one that's a constant, week-in and week-out, is a civilized way to live. For me, that day would be Sunday. I say would be, because at the moment I'm standing behind the counter at the shop, suffering the onslaught of Sunday shoppers. Sunday shoppers and Sunday drivers have a great deal in common. Everything thing is slow and with no direction. 3 Glaswegian grannies will hover around our whisky miniatures debating for half an hour whether to buy the Famous Grouse or White Horse as they're both the same price and both suck but of course they don't know that so they ask me when I really couldn't give less of a fuck. I should be sprawled on my couch wearing cozy clothes and slippers reading the Sunday papers, sipping tea and drifting in and out of a nap. But no, the grannies must have their miniature. Or do do they? Sure enough, they realise that they don't need it anyway as the person's birthday isn't until 2007 but they'll come back then. That's 30 minutes of my life they've ripped from me. Then there are the browsers, lurking, staring vacantly at bottles with absolutely no intention of purchasing anything, about as likely to buy the £100 whisky they're looking at as GWB is to take a public IQ test. And the ones who ask prices and don't fucking listen when you tell them. And people who bring prams into a wine shop and complain about wine boxes being everywhere. Of course there are wine boxes everywhere you yuppy scum. It's what we fucking sell. It's not our job to cater for your bloody babies: they can't buy our fucking product. Although the one in the shop looks almost big enough to buy her own fucking booze anyway - what's she doing in a pram?!

There's a titular rant for you.

On the plus side, I just found the Kaiser Chief's cover of I Heard It Through The Grapevine and it's truly awesome. I'm not generally a fan of covers, and Marvin Gaye's original is a legendary tune. But this is brilliant. Thumping bass and punky fun.

My colleague is late and I'm getting very hungry. What to do for lunch?