One thing I'm kind of not happy with about my current job is the bike parking. Or rather the lack of bike parking. The building has a car park and a tiny amount of bike parking, but apparently that's for the law firm that own the building rather than those that rent space in it. That leaves me using public bike parking on a fairly major road, which is secure enough (lots of people passing constantly) provided you lock it properly with a decent lock.

I do. I lock it through my front wheel, through the frame and around the bike rack. It's not unusual to end up with another bike the other side, and yesterday come home time I toddled cheerfully out of the office to find this:

Click to read more ...

I think we've got more lovely hot weather so far this year than we have had in the previous two years. It's brilliant!

Busy weekend. It started on Friday with a work bonding day thing. Lots of discussion about where the company is going and so on. Finished off with the pub and pizza. The food was nice, but not drinking meant I probably didn't appreciate some of the humour so much. Heh.

Then on Saturday we decided we had to get haircuts, so we cycled into town and managed to get them in a cheap place run by Polish (I think) guys. Gone pretty short again, but it is summer. We also managed to get a rack on the back of my Gorgeous Girlfriend's bike, thanks to the guys in Sydney Street Bikes. GG's bike doesn't have the necessary braze ons, so it needed p-clips and all sorts. They actually fitted it for free, on the condition we used them as our main bikeshop. Done deal! Anyone needs any bike stuff in Brighton, go there! We stopped off to watch some cricket on the way home, with pasties for lunch, then headed off for a wedding reception in North London in the evening.

That was a bit of a trek, to be honest. It took 3 hours, thanks to the North Circular being fubared. Not unusual, but nasty. Still, we made it, and the bride looked lovely and the groom sounded good on the kareoke. (He ought to, he sings for a living.)

Sunday was a family gathering in Haywards Heath. Half my dad's family have emigrated to Australia, so when they come home for a visit we all make an effort to meet up. GG was playing cricket, so it was Brompton and train for me. Lovely to catch up with everyone, even with the amazing combination of hangovers and jetlag sitting around the table! And I was very impressed that I've apparently managed to get strong enough to get up the hills on the way home even on the Brompton, although it was harder work than the Trek.

Today I'm on the way to Leeds again. Got to love a train with free wifi... Not got to love the early starts. Felt like more of an effort than last time, to be honest. We'll see how the day goes... GG gets major brownie points for getting up with me and driving me to the station again.

Right. At Peterborough. Time to review a document or two - or maybe the inside of my eyelids for a bit!!

Hmmm... I am not finding life particularly conducive to blogging right now apparently. I tried to blog on the train on the way home from a day trip to Leeds on Friday. Because I was on the train, and it had free wireless, and dammit, I think that's a glimpse of the future, but unfortunately the future kept crashing down around me and losing connection just as I clicked save.

<Sigh>

Click to read more ...

To continue the food and gardening theme, this weekend I turfed the new potatoes (variety Rocket) out of one of the three containers I've been growing them in on the concrete out back. I got a reasonable haul!

This photo also shows off my lovely little harvesting basket, as bought by my Gorgeous Girlfriend. So far it has been extremely useful for lettuce and other greens, peas and broad beans, and now potatoes! I'm looking forward to using it with a lot more crops yet...

Click to read more ...

Not eating, not yet. But time to get them planted out, finally.

The quarter that I've been saving for them has been growing green manure for the last few months, and looked like this:

Click to read more ...