slug-gate

I have been in complete agony over the last week. For some reason I have a debilitating pain which begins at the bottom of my neck and stretches right across to my left shoulder. It doesn't help when you are lugging boxes of books, cds, vinyl and all manner of crap which makes up the story of your life from my old flat in Cardiff to the new house in God's Own country.
Having tried pain killers, pain-relieving cream and all manner of other treatments - none of them having worked - there was only one thing for it. A trip to the guru.
Now I hadn't seen the guru for a few months and he has since moved to a new house in Canton, but I must say he was delighted to see me. When I explained my problem he looked at me knowledgeably and muttered something like "nerve-trap". I gather that means something like a trapped nerve but I am never really sure, partly because I rarely understand more than three words in every guru sentence. Still, the man is a genius when it comes to sorting out aches and pains.
Mind you, he does take you to the pain threshold before things get better. He proceeded to tug me, pull me, poke me, stab me and make me perform feats an Olympic gymnast might find a bit out of their league. Despite my screams he assured me it would help, and two days later I think it is starting to work.
So why the pain anyway? What is the cause? This time, unlike my last injury which was caused by doing too much Pete Townshend air guitar, I haven't really been throwing my 49-year-old body around in reckless abandonment. What I have been doing is driving a great deal, and I reckon it may be the fact that Bas - my extremely reliable but rather long-in-the-tooth Corsa - has no power steering. Just turning a corner involves a wrestling match with the steering wheel more akin to some kind of manouevre associated with John Cena (for the uninitiated, he is a WWF wrestling star whom my grandsons seem to treat like a deity).

I had a fab week on the Screws last week. Lots of pages to work on and design, loads of good stories from my correspondents and some willing helpers in the office. I was really looking forward to seeing the paper on Sunday. And that's where it all went wrong.
Over the last three weeks there have been some problems at the press and while hurtling back to God's country from the smoke on Sunday night I received a call on the mobile. It was Bobby Bowden, our deputy sports ed. "Sorry mate, but it looks like there are production problems again, and the Welsh edition may not get printed." B***ocks.
True to his word, there was no sign of a Welsh edition on Sunday, making my trip across the bridge to buy one - on the pretence I was moving more gear from the flat - a wasted journey. It is so frustrating to do a week's hard but rewarding work, only to have nothing to show at the end of it. I thought this only happened on the regionals, not at one of the biggest newspapers in the world. Oh well, let's hope the problem is soon rectified.

Meanwhile, Mrs R sent me a rather alarming text last week. "Eww! Just walked into the kitchen and there is a big brown slug on the tiled floor," she reported. Bravely, Mrs R gave the offending animal its notice, plonking it back out into the garden via a piece of paper.
The problem needed investigating. Lo and behold, last night when I went out to make a lovely cup of tea there, by the back door, was a smaller version of the offending beast. As I watched, intrigued, it turned around post haste (well, as post haste as a creature without legs can go) and slipped back under the little brushes at the bottom of the back door.
Now, I don't know about you but I don't really want slugs coming in and out of the house by their version of a cat flap (slug flag, I suppose you would call it) so a solution needs to be found pronto. I thought, briefly, about putting salt down at the back door but that would probably cause more mess than necessary and is tantamount to mass murder.