The seamstress

I've just had a very domesticated afternoon putting up the hem on a new curtain - the first time I've done anything of the sort. I got rid of the door between the hall and living room of my flat back in July to open up the space, thinking a bead curtain (not a tacky 1970s sort, something decent) would go well in its place. As the temperature dropped over the last couple of weeks I realised a curtain would be needed to keep the heat in and yesterday I finally got a pair.

The initial plan was to do the sewing last night, but once I'd got back from work (at 8pm), hung the curtain (having installed the rail at lunchtime, which was something of a rush) and pinned the excess up off the floor, it was getting a bit late so I decided to put it off until today. And boy was it time-consuming - after two false starts later (I would have considered phoning my mother for advice if my parents weren't in Libya at the moment) I finally got my act together and only now is the curtain finally in place.

The next step'll be putting the heating on ...

Chirpier

The last few days have been a bit hard-going. Paul got back on Sunday evening but owing to having houseguests we've not been able to see each other.

I felt decidedly frustrated come Monday evening and attempted a post entitled "A crabby bitch and a camp old queen" (referring to a colleague and a customer respectively), only to delete it as it didn't read very well. Yesterday wasn't much better, but today Paul paid me a surprise visit to work; despite being busy putting loads of stock out, it was a joy to see him.

It's unlikely we'll have much time to ourselves until next week as he's going to be busy with another conference before the weekend, so I've arranged to work on Sunday. I'd rather be doing something constructive than have the opportunity to mope.

The effect of a new relationship on blogging

As Martyn put it in an email he's just sent me, "I guess the mildly reduced frequency of posts to your blog means that you are enjoying yourself!"

Indeed so, Martyn, indeed so. Paul's out of town this week though, so I may be posting oftener - though I've got Michael coming to stay for three nights from tomorrow and one of my regular customers (with good potential for becoming a friend) is round to play some piano duets on Wednesday, not to mention choir rehearsal on Thursday, so maybe not. Si vedrá.

Stuck up on the roof

The main storage room at work is at the very top of the building, through a door at the back of the cleaners' own storage room and across the roof. Both doors have a tendency to shut of their own accord, so it's best to prop them open with something suitably heavy.

Cue the first door to close just as I was returning across the roof from storage this afternoon. I'd suspected previously that it could only be opened from the other side and today was proved right. I was stranded.

The windows from the staff toilets give onto the roof, so after checking that there was no way down to street level - it might be possible, at a pinch, but I didn't want to risk injury - I did the only thing I could do, namely position myself under one of the open windows and wait for someone to show up. Luckily I didn't have to wait too long (maybe ten, fifteen minutes) so no-one really missed me, though I made a point of telling colleagues myself rather than let rumours fly.

Would you believe it, something very similar happened to me during my time in Switzerland, when I got stuck in the hotel's service lift late one evening. In the kitchen, its doors were blocked at nighttime but if the lift stopped there, the draught going up the shaft would blow them open just far enough to prevent it from moving. Again, I was trapped for no more than a quarter of an hour, but it was still memorably daft of me.

That said, it's just as well I'm neither an agoro- nor a claustrophobe.

Anthony, Tony, whatever

For a long time, my name was something which bothered me. Aged nine, I asked my parents if they'd mind my being known by my middle name (William) when I started at my new school; nothing came of it. Five years on, I had a maths teacher who called everyone but me by their first names on the grounds that she liked my surname, which is surely some form of discrimination.

It wasn't until university that anyone got away with calling me Tony, and even then it was in my final year that it stuck - by which time I'd started coming out of my shell and was growing more comfortable with myself. On my move to Switzerland, I reverted to being Anthony, but the stifling formality of the whole experience got to me so much I decided to introduce myself as Tony the moment I got back to Britain, reasoning I felt more approachable when not using my full name. I've since realised that psychologically, I was distancing myself from a period when I was not at my happiest.

Since then I've found that people are apt to shorten my name further still. The first person to do this was a former colleague of mine, to whom I was just T, but I let him get away with it as he was such a nice guy (besides being quite a looker). Tone still bothers me - it sounds a bit silly, regardless of the musical connotations - but by and large I'm known as Tony.

A couple of questions arose at work yesterday regarding my name. First off, a blind customer asked me if my family was Italian, leading me to ponder the whys and wherefores of cultural stereotyping through names. Then one of the security guards asked me why, when signing in, I always used Anthony rather than Tony; I pedantically pointed out that the form required full names. There was a time when I signed myself in as Tony, until I realised that it made a nonsense of my initials (AWM), which I use in other parts of the shop.

If you're wondering where this neurotic post stems from, look no further than my parents' admission that they couldn't decide, when I was born, whether I should be Anthony or Antony. In the end, they decided they'd see how the doctor spelt it when he came round to note my name and go along with that.

On the plus side, I do rather like signing my initials with little more than a zigzag.

Vegetarianism according to St Paul

An extract from today's readings which prompted a few amused looks in my direction at the morning service:

As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. (Romans 14:1-3)

Tolerance is a gospel I am always keen to preach, but this condemnation of vegetarians has to join those verses of the Bible cited in defence of homosexuality, for being equally out of date. I'm not having my faith criticised on account of my diet!

Site of the day

One for the musicians (hey, I'm biased): everything you could possibly want to know about the hurdy-gurdy.

If you're wondering how I came across it, it's because Paul has lent me a CD of The four seasons arranged for recorder, violin, viola da gamba, guitar, harpsichord, musette (a sort of gentrified bagpipe) and yes, hurdy-gurdy - to say it sounds peculiar doesn't even begin to describe it. Anyhow, there's a bit during the first movement of Spring when the music goes into the minor, but there was still an unflattened third from the hurdy-gurdy which, as I've discovered, uses a drone and thus harmonics, ergo the clash.

Don't say my blog ain't educational ...

Two worlds collide

There are times when I wonder how some of my customers can get so muddled about the music they are looking for. I daresay we've all been there - in my case, I got confused between Handel and Haydn as a child - but there are some pieces you just couldn't mistake for each other.

A customer came in today looking for what he thought was Handel's Messiah, only it turned out to be Orff's Carmina burana. One's about Christian redemption, the other depicts medieval monks drinking and fornicating. Besides their both being large-scale works for voices and orchestra, I'm struggling to find anything they have in common.

Over to you.

Substitute pets

Lying across the top of my piano is one of the few things I requested from my grandmother's estate, a draught excluder in the form of a (very elongated) cat. Wilfred - yes, he has a name - sits there, like any real cat, completely oblivious to his surroundings.

There was a new addition to the flat on Friday. I was out with Paul when something caught my eye in a shop window: a dog made of bronzed metal, its body a flattened cone with the tip cut off, with thick wire coiled around each end for its legs. Best of all, its head and tail are on springs ...

That said, having a metallic dog is frankly ludicrous so he had to have an equally ludicrous name: Fred.

Random Festival memories

The Edinburgh Festival season comes to an end with an impressive fireworks display over the castle. Last year I joined Peter on Princes St where we provided a running commentary and were asked (politely) to shut up by the man standing next to us, who found us entertaining but very distracting.

Paul and I had spent most of Sunday at Kris' birthday party over in Paisley and despite being a bit on the tired side, headed out to Inverleith Park to join a small party of friends (including a, shall we say, very tipsy Rob) for this year's festivities. It was much less crowded than Princes St had been last year and had the benefit of a large screen relaying the SCO's performance of Beethoven's Symphony no. 7. The orchestra managed to get ahead in all four movements but it was still great fun, complete with fatuous commentary between the movements on how well co-ordinated music and fireworks were.

So, time to reflect on things with didn't make it into my entries of the last month. Pride of place has to go to Eric's text message re:the barbershop concert. This, you may recall, was the mystery event I'd chosen for Peter, Rob and myself, only for Peter's ticket to end up spare as he was in London at the time. On the morning of the concert, I sent off a text message to three friends, telling them the first to respond would get the last ticket. Eric told us later that my message had woken him up, which only made his reply all the more delicious. Within two minutes, I received the following: "Me me me!"

The campness of Carissimi's Lament of Mary Queen of Scots had Paul and me in stitches. The opening section was full of pretentious twaddle such as "take my love, the one gift I can give you, and share it out amongst yourselves", all making the Queen out to be incredibly noble and poised. Trouble was, towards the end she turned into a raging fury: the sentiments of the concluding part could be summed up as "ooh, that Elizabeth is such a bitch!"

Let's not forget meeting Paul on the evening of the Monteverdi concert. The meal itself was a delight, but I had the added benefit of having him directly in my eyeline later in the Usher Hall.

Seeing Isabelle again after three years was a definite highlight of the month. She was up for a wedding and had had all sorts of things go wrong on the trip, which made giving her a memorable time all the more pleasant. The text message I received from the director of music at the church when I went to collect Isabelle, thus missing out of leading the responses in mattins, is equally worthy of mention: "Dear Tony, you'd find it a lot easier singing the Rose responses from INSIDE the church!"

Work getting in the way of my taking part in Dido - let's not go there. At least it means I've woken up to the deficiencies of a career in retail.

Lastly, to end on a high note, the joy of hearing the very rude French lyrics to Monty Python's Sit on my face. All together now: Come in my mouth and tell me that you love me ...

Spring is in the air (a few months late)

Paul and I are an item, Rob's got his eye on someone and two of my other friends (who shall remain nameless for now) could be getting better acquainted.

Who would have thought it was September?

Catching up, part II

My Fridays tend to be either jam-packed or spent lying around doing not very much and as I had a visitor last week, it could only be the former.

First up was a shopping trip to Tesco, taking a vast number of empty bottles (accumulated since my birthday party back in May!) to the bottle bank on the way and returning later with rather a lot of bits and pieces, ready to get going with preparations for the evening's party. The one thing we were unable to find at Tesco was a Pyrex dish suitable for the dessert I had planned, so I accompanied Marcus into town and pointed him in the right direction for the Queen's Hall (he went to the lunchtime string quartet recital in my place) while I went to John Lewis and got said Pyrex dish.

Thence I dashed home and hurriedly made what I term a non-trifle - starting from the bottom, a layer of torn-up chocolate chip muffins, loads of raspberries and very rich (home-made) chocolate mousse, left to set in the fridge before spreading whipped cream over the top - before meeting Paul for a coffee down the road. (He's the new man I've been warbling on about, in case you'd not guessed.)

In due course Marcus rang to say the concert was over and we met back at the Balmoral Hotel before heading to the Blue Moon for a late (and filling) lunch. A change of scene was in order, so next on our list was seeing his fellow students of St George's in their revue show - where I rather confounded Marcus' expectations by throughly enjoying the darkness of the humour - after which we headed home for an hour or two.

Marcus had one more show to see, this time Hair, starring one of his housemates, so I carried on with the food preparation until Paul arrived, knowing he'd prove a bit of a distraction ... I'd expected Peter and Rob to show up next but Marcus returned first, which was probably a good thing as he and Paul got a chance to get acquainted before the old hands arrived. Definitely a good idea to have introduced Paul to my two closest Edinburgh friends at the same times as they met Marcus, as it meant less individual pressure on the newcomers.

It all went swimmingly. The highlight of the evening, for me, came in Peter's parting words to Paul as the latter left, something to the effect of "we'll likely see each other again soon", a seal of approval if there ever was one.

More workplace ethics

My colleagues and I are in the throes of learning all about the digital revolution of the recorded music industry, part of which involves going through a training workbook, at the end of which are various scenarii to consider.

No. 1 involves making a recommendation for a fitness fanatic, nothing too difficult there. The second concerns someone wanting to buy a replacement iPod and trying to convince her to get one of our digital players, a concept I'm uncomfortable with as it implies a lack of respect for the customer's wishes. (The floor manager suggested was a matter of putting forward possibilities the customer may not have considered, to which I responded that the information given was so lacking in detail as to be very open-ended.) I made a point of noting, in my answer, that trying to influence a customer in this way could result in their not returning subsequently.

Unfortunately it got worse. Case no. 3 is centred around someone who has never downloaded any music nor bought any such equipment before, with only a limited budget at hand. I forget what the fourth and final situation was (encouraging someone to buy a superior model may have come into it), but by this stage I was too disillusioned with the pushy attitude which appears to be required of us. A novice such as that portrayed in case no. 3 struck me as someone jumping on the band-wagon; I think I would query their reasons for wanting to purchase one of these things in the first place and suggest they spend their money on something they really wanted.

I've got to change what I've written about my occupation in my profile on this site - my job is much less about sales than providing a service. To my mind, anyone can sell CDs; what I bring to it is the ability to recommend and guide customers towards an informed decision about the recordings they buy, a luxury I can afford as my department is not driven by profit. It goes against my principles to be pushy.

I've deliberately left questions 3 and 4 unanswered. Let's see what the bosses have to say ...