Friday on my mind

The end of another week- I still can't hear properly but plenty's happening...

Monday was a busy day in the shop with plenty of things sold; Tuesday started quietly but took a rather interesting turn when 3 pallets containing a total of 25 boxes were delivered from EMD music around lunchtime. This plunged the day into almost total chaos, particularly when 4 guitars arrived from Yamaha which made the one from Jackson that arrived while I was unloading the EMD stuff look almost pathetic. By the time everything was in the shop there was just about room for me and definately no room for any customers- who obviously then began arriving in what felt like hundreds but was actually 2's and 3's. By the end of the day I'd almost cleared a path from the door to the counter, though the word 'almost' is very significant here. I phoned Karn the manager to warn him of his impending doom when he arrived the next morning, and then went home to mentally prepare for Wednesday...

...which was my dad's 75th birthday. Any of you who have met him will no doubt agree with me when I say that he can politely be described as 'a character'; any of you who haven't will either have to take my word for it or brave a meeting with him for yourself. Myself and Shirley took him and Jenny to Duxford Air Museum for the day- we'd managed to keep our destination secret from him which just meant he spent the entire journey there reading out every road sign and wondering if that was where we were going. Once there he spent most of the day screaming on about British engineers being the best in the World, how America did nothing in the war, how we should have flattened Germany and much much more besides. I think he enjoyed himself though I'm not sure which one of us felt older by the end of the day.

Thurday it was back up to 'We Will Rock You' with Stuart who began by presenting me with a set of tools and then put on his hat and coat and disappeared off to Denmark Street to buy some spares. Fortunately I think I remembered everything that I needed to remember and by the time Stuart returned (carrying 2 cups of takeaway coffee and with the comment 'by the way, the first rule of theatre is no drinks on stage.') I was well into my fourth re-string. After a quick visit to the pub opposite it was back to the shop to give Karn a hand with unpacking the aforementioned deliveries before returning home to Shirley for something to eat and then stumbling down the pub to meet East to discuss The Price's 2007 campaign. A busy day.

I spent most of this morning in the shop filing a top nut down so that it would fit onto a Yamaha electro-acoustic that had come in for repair- a time consuming, fiddly job which I eventually finished around 2pm. Several customers later I was just thinking that I'd got away with it when, you've guessed it, a delivery of 10 Fender acoustic guitars arrived, followed by 10 boxes of Alesis monitor speakers.

Where are we going to put them? And- maybe more importantly- didn't I used to play the guitar for a living?