yes, today is eid, the end of ramadan, and the most exciting day in the muslim calendar, akin to christmas day. all around my shop, which, i hasten to add i am not working in today, there will be people dressed up in their friday best, shaking hands, wishing each other well, celebrating and, hopefully stuffing their muslim mouths for the first time during daylight for a month with pasties and cakes that they have bought in my shop. it is actually quite a nice day to work, if you happen to be round the corner from a mosque, and the traditional greeting on this day of happiness is 'eid mubarak'. happy eid. how ironic then that the fat, ugly and tyrannic ex-dictator of eygpt, lauguishing in some prison hospital should be called mubarak! im sure there is a future fringe comedy show in there somewhere.

anyway, im also pretty happy, though i will be even more blissful come tomorrow at 5.15pm as then i will officially be on holiday! being me, of course, i have not done a single thing so far to prepare for my turkish trip, though i did get my new passport, and have bought some euros to pay for the apartment, and the taxi. the girls at work cant understand why i have not packed already...how long ahead do you have to throw  several pieces of lycra, some flip flops and a host of chargers into a bag i wonder.

so here are a few of the things i will not miss while living it up in kas.

1. having to get up in the dark. yes it is so, so depressing, as i now have 9 months of this ahead, but it is already dark when i drag myself kicking and screaming out of the arms of morpheus in the morning. everyone has started to sleep in at work, as we are used to waking in light, and ones body clock is just not geared to that blackness yet. by the time i get back, it will also be dark when i go to bed at night at the so rock-and-roll time of 9pm.

2. working in the tropics. hey, i may live in scotland, but let me tells ya, it is equatorial in my back shop. yesterday the temperature near the ovens was 35.7 degrees.  (thats about 95 degrees for those imperialists amongst you). receipe for disaster..take fridges that food safety says have to be at 5 (for closed) and 8 (for open..ie, dont have doors), add in a healthy dose of humidity so that they vary between 15 and (one morning) 30 degrees, fold in fucking cream cakes, and bloody sandwiches and move them constantly so they are at the right temperature. add in a heady mix of tetchy 50 something women, who have to wear baseball caps, polythene aprons and oven gloves up to their elbows, and then bake in a greggs shop. record all your actions in a food safety log book for future reference!

3. the tattoo. as if its not bad enough that the tattoo has fireworks blasting off at 10.30 pm every night...this year they also have fucking fighter jets doing a fly over at 9.30, and holy hell, are they loud. to be honest, its not even the noise that is irritating..though it is, its the whole principle of fighter jets flying over the castle as some sort of exciting show for tourists. im mean, correct me if im wrong, but dont fighter jets only have one purpose...apparently ability to bomb has become something to celebrate!

4. the new (i suspect, australian), way of asking for what you want to purchase in a shop if you happen to be called rupert, jasper, india or sophie...'can i grab a... (insert desired item here)..to which the answer, in a sarcastic scottish way is 'no, i will put it in a bag for you'..(meaning, fuck off you pretentious wanker, and while you are at it, stick that fringe pass hanging round your neck up your pink, downy, never-sits-on-a-public-toliet-seat arse!)

5. the media still harping on about the olympics and their 'legacy'. for christs sake can we get over the 'best games ever' shite! lets face it, the only thing that happened more at this games than ever before was atheletes crying...because they didnt win, or they did win, or they only won a bronze when they should have got gold, or they let the relay team down, or they tried to lose games to get a better draw in the next round...blah, blah blah....lets give them a games so they will all forget how shite everything is, banks have screwed the whole financial system in the world, and top executives get pay rises of 9% while everyone else takes cuts to pay them their, on average £3million a year. and lets not even mention what is happening in syria!

6. sorry, i shouldnt have written that last paragraph as its made me angry. so i will move on to a thing i will miss when im in turkey, maybe, and that is 'lost'...jeez ive become obsessed with lost! its the most interesting thing  ive watched since twin peaks...and full of enigmatic questions...my favourite kind! what can i say...blame netflix!

so im bored with this now..im sure you are too!

roger that!