Like Pulling Teeth

Tuesday 29 December 2009

The hardest part of today's trip to work was getting out of my own drive. A cacophony of crunch-op sounds had me worrying for the tyres, especially as K thought that one of them looked a bit flat. It seemed okay this morning.

A busy morning culminated in my first appearance in the gym since Monday 14 December. I did a resistance workout but omitted the sit-ups between each circuit. For such a small gym it was busy with one girl taking instruction from Chris, the Sports Physiologist who had put me back on the straight and narrow and another regular pounding away on the step trainer. Someone I hadn't seen previously came in and impatient at having to wait for Chris to finish his training decided to turn the radio off and put his own CD on! This is considered bad form. The unwritten etiquette is that whoever is in the gym first has control over the music and today, as usual, it was me. I used to bring my own CDs and mp3 player but I was always a bit concerned about imposing my tastes on other people. The mp3 player also had a habit of getting tangled or falling out and wasn't worth the hassle. In the end I decided it was easier and less stressful to just put the radio on, make sure it was on a station with reasonable reception (not guaranteed) and get on with my workout.

If he'd asked around if anyone would mind if he put on a CD then I would have raised no objections, especially as I was about to finish and Step Woman had her own tunes. Chris doesn't seem to like the music too loud while he's working with someone, which is fair enough, but a simple ask around and it would have been okay. And the fact that he chose to put on the Foo Fighters Greatest Hits, which I like and purchased for K's Christmas, is neither here nor there. You ask first.

After I got back to the office and ate my lunch the weather started to turn. The snow was lying and quickly covered the area as far as I could see from my second floor office window. The boss told those who were travelling to Fife and the Borders to go home. You don't need to tell me twice. The snow was very powdery to touch but the volume soon built up. I cleared the snow from the car and headed off into the wilderness and another Narnia-like journey. Normally I go straight over the Comely Bank roundabout but a small roadwork meant the traffic tailed back to the roundabout. Plan B: I decided to take the opening before my normal exit. Other drivers had the same thought and we trundled, convoy-style, along our sneaky detour. I wondered why drivers didn't use this road more often and then it soon became clear why. The upward slope at the end is bad enough without having to then get across one lane of traffic into the busy flow on the other side of the road but when it's covered in snow and ice it's impassable (cue for a song?). Sir Edmund Hillary in a 4x4 would struggle to get up that hill and I made the smart decision to turn back. After performing a manoeuvre last seen on Dancing on Ice I turned back, took a more successful sneaky detour and got back on track only to find myself in nose-to-tail traffic on Craigleith Road. After what seemed like an eternity I got through the lights. As usual someone in the left lane cut across me without indicating as we went through the chicane that is the junction from Craigleith Road to Queensferry Road. There are two lanes going into the chicane and two lanes coming out so why so many in the left feel they need to cut across to the left is beyond me. Actually it isn't beyond me; they're dickheads. The rest of the journey was pain free.

Our street, if anything, has got worse with more crunching and popping as I gingerly put the car back in the drive. After the girls finished their lunch we out Home Alone 4 on. Now most franchises of this sort start to flag but the fourth instalment was in need of a crash car and defibrillator. It was woeful. I tolerated, nay enjoyed, the first 3 - especially the sound of Felicity laughing her head off - but 4 was terrible. After dinner we played The Magic Tooth Fairy Game, one of Flick's Christmas presents. You collect teeth, put them under the pillow on the Magic Bed and get a gold coin and the first to four gold coins is the winner. The game doesn't take too long and is ideal for families. My own complaint is that the gold coins don't always come out. The tooth is placed under the pillow; a "Magic Wand" is then used to trigger the disappearance of the tooth and in its place should appear a Gold Coin. K opined that this could make it the new Mousetrap, which, as everyone knows, never worked like it did on the telly adverts. As it turned out Felicity won.

K and I watched "In The Loop", one of my Christmas presents. Once you get over the fact that most of the actors from The Thick of It are playing completely different characters in what is essentially a spin-off from said series, it's an enjoyable political farce. Sure it's foul-mouthed but it's also hilarious.