Edinburgh's latest festival is magic and Connor and I are off to see a show tonight but some other magic is not working for me at the moment.

That's the magic of the paint mixing machine. In the bad old days you had a choice of a couple of shades of whatever basic colour you wanted but now there is an infinite range. I pity the poor soul who has to dream up names for the infinitesimally different shades of yellow or whatever. You can't just say light yellow, dark yellow, very dark yellow. Names like sunburst or morning glow or forest daffodil have to be invented.

Anyway I got some colour shade cards from shop A, decided on a couple of colours and went back to get little sample pots to see how they would look in situ. The mixing machine was out of order. A day later it is in order but not quite, since my particular colours cannot be guaranteed to come out of the machine in their proper glory.

So I went to shop B. Since they stock an entirely different range I knew I would have to start with the colour cards again. I found the paint aisles taped off and a little notice expressing regret and advancing health and safety concerns as the reason. Their cards and the mixing machine were tantalizingly in sight but an assistant insisted that access was impossible.

Enquiring as to what particular health hazard I was being saved from I learnt that were I to venture into one of the aisles I might be peppered with paint pots and end up with a shirt of many colours since the racks on which they stand have been deemed to be unstable.

Months will apparently go by till it is sorted out since the decision has been taken to refit the whole store for fear this instability is infectious.

So I shall have to trudge off to shop C and hope that their magic mixer has not been hexed.