Fire Eye'd Boy

A disturbed night's sleep, not helped by the dog barking at something at two in the morning followed by some very odd dreams about reading an advert in an old newspaper for a company who would cover your garden with broken glass, like a glittery, sharp Japanese Zen garden. Weird.

When I woke up my eyes were gummy and sore too. I seem to getting stray eyelashes stuck under my eyelids on most mornings now, and it is becoming a real pain (literally). I'm due an eyetest soon, so I'll have to ask if there's anything I can do about it. It's a good thing I no longer wear contact lenses as I remember that a lash and lens sharing an eyeball is a recipe for serious discomfort - as it is, it's an irritation but one that I could do without.

Raining first thing, with a shunt on the motorway just after my junction that held me up for a while. At least I've cleared my podcast backlog of selected old editions of 'Shift Run Stop' including a couple that will be a real treat for any old school gamers out there with interviews with game designer Rainer Knizier, and Livingstone & Jackson of Games Workshop fame. This is rapidly turning into one of mah favourite podcasts with its mix of interesting interviews, games chatter and snack food reviews.

Off out at lunchtime to the retail park, and the weather changed from a shower of rain with fat, lazy drops to brilliant sunshine in the time it took me to walk around the block. I was looking for a Dymo label maker in Staples but they just seemed to have fancy, schmancy electronic ones at an inflated price rather than a good old fashioned manual one with the proper clicky, rotating dial to select the letters. Hmmm, much as it pains me to say it, sometimes old tech that does the job is best.

A couple of good comedies on telly last night. We've been enjoying 'The Inbetweeners' after starting watching the new series recently, so we've gone back to watch the first two series. Very sharply observed school based humour and absolutely excruciating in places. The nerdy central character Will, with his briefcase and buttoned up blazer, who might as well have a big target painted on his back, rather reminds me of myself at that age. Cringe.

The new Alan Davies show 'Whites' is good too - I had been half expecting it to be in a similar vein to Lenny Henry's shouty kitchen based comedy 'Chef' but it manages to find an original spin on the celebrity chef genre, by making the main character laid back and somewhat conniving rather than an overbearing megalomaniac. Worth a watch.

We also watched a bit of 'Ask Rhod Gilbert' too, but I wasn't overly impressed. How can you have a panel show without David Mitchell in this day and age? I thought that he was contractually obliged to appear in 98% of all BBC panel shows and quizzes, and the other 2% of the time be on 'Eight out of Ten Cats' on Channel 4 as well.