House still standing, cats not yet dead

After getting myself ready this morning, I went downstairs to find that the cats had taken the food that I'd generously given them and liberally regurgitated it all around the kitchen. Cleaning that up isn't the best of jobs, but you have to think of it as just a combination of proteins and acids and get on with it, really. That's the last time that I let them stay in the house overnight - now they're going to be let in for food in the mornings and evenings, and kept out the rest of the time.

On to something else. Maybe it's just me, but I find buses an immensely stressful way to travel. Part of the problem is that your presence decides whether the bus will stop or not, and it's often guesswork trying to arrive on time for them if you're between main stops. Usefully, there is a bus stop literally next to my front gate, but if I'm not there when the bus decides to leave the town square up the road it will just go sailing past. And if I'm slightly later than normal getting out the house I get paranoid that I've already missed it.

When travelling on an unfamiliar bus, it's difficult to tell where to get off. When I went to the hospital in Kirkcaldy, for example, I wasn't sure if waiting for the next stop would bring me closer to my destination or to the next town. Finding stops while on foot can be difficult as well - I rushed to get a slightly early bus from the station after work yesterday, only to find once I'd made it on that it made a stop five metres round the corner from the place I work.

Every other method of transport has definite times to be in definite places. I would have used the train this week, in fact, but I've had a fear of them ever since I had to watch a rail safety video called Robbie in primary school, which severely traumatised me for life. And the events in recent weeks haven't helped.

However, once I'm at work the stress just disappears. It's rather nice to be able to say that.

By the way, I got my hair cut yesterday during lunchtime. I had looked up "barbers in Aberdeen" on Google Maps, and it had pinpointed a "Sports Cut" place down the road from work. I went along there to find that it was in fact an immensely effeminate salon. I went in anyway and asked if they did men's hair, and they said they could fit me in - my jacket was taken and replaced with the traditional Darth Vader style cloak, then I was left for about twenty minutes reading a newspaper while the staff wandered around rearranging vague bottles and swatting bees.

Someone eventually got round to seeing me, and the haircut took all of two minutes, but she was interrupted by another customer in the middle of it and left me with a humiliatingly bizarre lopsided hair beret on my head for a few minutes. Afterwards I was charged seven pounds for the privelege. Overall I'd prefer to stick with John the barber in St Andrews, even if he is criminally insane, but hopefully we'll get a hair trimmer in the flat next year and Whitney can do it for me.

I can't take a photo because my family have the camera at the moment, but it's very similar to the icon you see up there.