There are two kinds of people in this world and I'm one of them.

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Mixed bag of ZOOg

Unless SpecSavers know something I don’t (lots about optometry and how the high street optical retail market works, but that goes without saying), I wasn’t beknighted in the New Year’s Honours List. I’d ordered some prescription sunglasses from them, and the store texted me to say they had arrived, only the text was addressed to ‘Lord Oswell’. Although it gave me five solid minutes of vicarious thrills, knocking the title around in my head and thinking of ways I could exploit people, I realised there’s nothing in this world that I have done to deserve any such honour, unless they’re dishing out gongs for Services to Work Displacement Activities, my long and varied napping career or my kindness to animals.

That last one is the least likely of all, as I am not kind to animals (at least, not since the death of my three fish of eleven years standing, Freeman, Hardy and Willis.) I’m not UNkind to animals, it’s just I don’t really know them on the whole. Not even to say hello to.

Hence my satisfaction at having successfully looked after the neighbour’s cat for seven whole days without a medical incident or some kind of comedy misplacement scenario which entails me hooning round pet stores with a photo, trying to find an exact replica before she got back. My allergy-riddled system meant I couldn’t dispense much in the way of actual affection, but I did let him brush up against my calves, or more specifically the thick denim around my calves, as I spooned his food out and tried not to breath in.

The cat’s survival formed one of the plus points to the mixed bag of a beginning to 2009, or ZOOg, as the kids aren’t calling it. The others include the aforementioned hilarious Lord incident, the Portuguese guy at the coffee shop I go to on the way to work giving me a free tub of hot porridge (I saw him make it by mistake for someone else and them palm it off on me as a “Happy New Year gift”, but I was still pleased) and my visiting friend Shannon buying a whole camembert to take back to the States with her and then leaving it behind in my fridge by mistake. I offered to post it, but in the end we just agreed it was best all round for me to look after it.

These rays of sunshine were of course counterbalanced with the news of ongoing violent war in the Middle East, the Current Economic Whatnot meaning I’ll probably only get about four day’s work this year and the general lack of enthusiasm for calling 2009 “ZOOg”.

So a finely balanced start, all told, and the next few weeks look to hold that pattern: I do get two weeks off work, but I do have to spend them on a boat with 300 pensioners. I sense a year of breaking even at best. Which I'll take, obviously.

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