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When I woke up this morning, my body may have been functioning, but my mind was not. It took me twenty minutes to work out what was wrong as I was working to work this morning. The world looked blurry and even after that personal epiphany it still took me a few second longer to work out why - I didn’t have my glasses on.

There is a very simple reason why I wear glasses, my eyesight is crap. I may only have two eyes, but I manage to be both long and short-sighted, as well as astigmatic. That is not the reason however, I can cope with a blurry looking world for the most part and it does have some advantages, such as making some people appear more attractive than they actually are.

The reason I wear them is without them I suffer headaches, like the one I have had all day at work. Where to see the computer screen clearly I have almost had to have my nose touching the screen*. Even worse it has meant that I have not been able to spend my day at work as I normally do, reading books and browsing at articles online. It’s surprising how long 8 hours is when you try and spend most of it sat with your eyes closed, you may not be clock watching but it certainly seems to have the same effect.

*And that isn’t too much of an exaggeration unfortunately.

The above picture is about the limit of my skill with a pen or pencil and shows why I stick to using a camera when doing portraits. I might only be an average photographer, but I am certainly a sub-par illustrator.

The graffitti itself isn’t really that offensive really. The most impolite thing about it really, is the fact it’s on the wall of someones private property.

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As a wise person once said, “Everyone looks the same in the dark”. It’s true though, darkness - or rather judicious lighting - hides a multitude of sins. Another thing that helps make things look more attractive to the viewer is alcohol and that’s how this photo came about. Yes I know it is a car and thus a blight on a landscape visually and environmentally, but I was I was drunk and not thinking of this. I was just thinking how pretty the lights looked.

I was at a houseparty last night and having imbibed a respectable amount of alcohol. I decided at 4am that I would walk home and go to bed.  A sensible thought you might think, except for one small thing. Sober for me the walk takes 90 minutes or so taking the straightest line home, as you might have already guessed I wasn’t exactly in the mood to be walking in straight lines and so it took a bit longer. The length of time it took me to walk home however is incidental, although for the record I got into bed 2 hrs later.

I haven’t walked through Bristol city centre at 5am for a long time, not  that I ever made a habit of it to be fair and whilst drunk I couldn’t help but enjoy how peaceful it was without anyone else around. It reminded me of when I used to do a paper round when I was at school. Once a week I would deliver about 80 copies of the local gazette across the town and when I say across the town I mean exactly that. To get around in time I used to start at about 2am, so that by 7am I had finished and had time to get ready for school.

The stillness about 4am or so is amazing, too early for postmen and other newspaper boys and too late for anyone else to be about. Of course the catch to this was if you did see someone else about at 4am walking about, they were obviously a nutter and it was probably best to cross over the street to avoid them.

Now I may not deliver newspapers at ungodly hours any more, nor am I yet a fully paid up member of the nutter club, but I have to admit that 4am is still a good time to walk around a place - At least it is as long as the only shopping you want to do is window shopping.

Recently I have been trying to go against the natural order of things and go about upon two wheels rather than two legs and the non-existent powers that be have been showing their displeasure by blessing me with punctures, brakes not working and most recently causing me to lose the keys to my bike - Of course I didn’t lose my keys when the lock wasn’t in use, that would have been too easy. I had to misplace them after I had locked my bike up.

How I lost the keys I don’t know, they wer in my pocket attached to my other keys and when I pulled my key ring out of my pocket the bike lock keys were missing. I say keys not because I am particularly security concious and use multiple locks, but because I had two keys for the lock and rather cleverly had neglected to remove the duplicate key from my keyring to store safely somewhere else for just such an occasion as I found myself “celebrating” today.

Luckily for me I was able to buy a replacement key for the lock - Although when I say key, I actually mean a hacksaw!

Even more fortuitous for me is the fact that my bike wasn’t locked up on the street. After all, attacking a bike lock with a hacksaw is hardly the least suspicious of activities to be engaged in and I’d love to see what face a policeman might pull when you try the following conversation occurs:

PC: Allo, allo, allo. What do we ‘av ‘ere then?*
Me: What does it look like? A man with a hacksaw cutting through a bike lock.
PC: Indeed it does rather look like that and why might you be doing this?
Me: Because I don’t happen to have the keys for the lock, that’s why!
PC: Is that so? And this bike, does it belong to you, sir?
Me: Nope, it’s my housemates.
PC: Really, perhaps you’d like to come with me?
Me: Only if you give me a lift home, after I ain’t cycling anywhere with the bike chained up like this.

Believe me, if someone had stopped me to ask me questions about what I was doing it’s highly likely I’d have given answers like this - To say I was not in the best of moods whilst liberating the bike is an understatement.

*Because of course, all policemen speak like this.

Today being Thursday I have a day off work and I was considering going for a cycle ride, but as I procrastinated about it a little too much, when I finally got around to it the rain had begun to fall. Whilst I don’t mind the rain if I have a choice between curl up in the dry with a book and go for a bike ride for the sake of it in the rain, as far as i am concerned the choice is a bit of a no-brainer.

I did leave the house today and the picture above shows why I had to brave the rain. Due to a lack of foresight in the kitchen department I had no bread and consequently had no toast to accompany my book reading. I didn’t just buy bread whilst I was out though as the picture shows, I also bought a little cider so I could have a choice of toasts with my book.