I’m no longer a big drinker so the three bottles of Carlsberg I put away last night were enough to make me drowsy enough to not bother doing any late night work. I had wanted to record The Sunday Alternative but series four of Frasier has entered our house now so I couldn’t be arsed doing any work. The early night has done me some good though as I am snowed under at the moment, so when I woke up at ten o’clock this morning I was refreshed and ready for action. Rather than recording the podcast I just sorted the music ready with a view to recording it tomorrow (working on a Sunday – I am a trooper) as I wanted to go out for lunch and shopping.

We took Jack to town and bought him a t-shirt. I have gone from not wanting a dog to buying a t-shirt for my dog. He seemed to enjoy wearing his new shirt, topped off with a brand new collar, and received quite a lot of glances and comments of admiration. To paraphrase Mike Skinner, he’s cute but he knows it.

What a lot of people don’t get straight away is behind Jack’s cuteness there is a nervousness around strangers (we have that in common, I am hilarious). As he is a rescue dog (and we don’t know his history) he finds it hard to trust people. Mandi and I love him and look after him and he knows how lucky he is to have a second chance at the happy life he deserves. The worst thing anyone can do is reach down towards him to stroke him as he sees that as a threat. I spend a lot of time telling people to back off because he isn’t good with strangers, but this afternoon I wasn’t quick enough. We were having lunch at The Bell and had taken a table outside because of the dog. Mandi went in to order while I waited with Jack, and three men walked into the outdoor seating area and immediately started to compliment Jack on his t-shirt, only for one of them to try and stroke his head. With a loud bark he went to bite the man’s hand but luckily he pulled away and Jack didn’t achieve anything more serious than a warning nip. Knowing how some people can be I immediately apologised and explained his behaviour, going into my whole he’s a rescue dog and nervous around strangers routine, but they were all fine about it. The man with the bitten hand apologised for invading Jack’s personal space saying he should have known better as a dog owner himself. Our natural instinct is to want to stroke a cute dog but you shouldn’t if you are a stranger, you wouldn’t pat a woman on the boobs in the street after all because it is an intrusion.

So, we have series four of Frasier at last, a series that is proving very difficult to get hold of. Mandi found the box set on Amazon and it arrived on Friday. On Thursday I went into That’s Entertainment to find some Robin Williams films (all of my copies of the ‘obvious films – Mrs. Doubtfire, Good Morning Vietnam etc are on video) to watch tonight. At the time I only had a fiver on me so bought three DVDs as part of their offer, and came across series six of Frasier (that we can’t watch until we find series five) and asked them to put it under the counter until today. When I went in for it I told the assistant what I was there to collect and he asked my name. I told him and he responded with “What? The radio Steve Oliver?” I didn’t care for his familiarity so I bit him.

===

My daily blog can be delivered straight to your Kindle for 99p a month (link)

Listen to The Sunday Alternative here

All donations received via the PayPal button above will be used to fund creative projects such as podcasts, short films, documentaries, comedy sketches and a whole lot more. You are under no obligation of course, but thanks in advance if you do drop something in the pot.