Tinkering preview

V's new handlebars & stem...

Tinker #1

So, there was always a risk this would happen. being a natural tinkerer tomboy, easily attached to even the most rubbish bikes, preparing myself for the theft of the next, going out with a bike geek, wanting to physically make more things, but being anything but a "crafter". it started when, trying to make Pug the bike roadworthy, the gear lever fell off. so she had designated herself singlespeed. so she may as well be converted properly. and smartened up in the process. and now... there are days like today. where my hands are covered in plasters and i don't think the oil under my nails will ever come out. and i spend more time looking at handlebars on the interweb than i thought was even possible. and someone says "you should write about what you've been learning to do" and i believe them.

So, i'll try to be as concise as i can. I have made a few purchases. not splashing the cash, everything i have is bargain basement. but i have embarked upon a new hobby, one that i am really enjoying and want to pursue as far as i can, at the moment. first, ther were the conversions to Pug. she started as a 5 speed tourer like this,

got converted to a single speed stripped back speedy little so & so like this:

She is brilliant. i will go through in more detail how this transformation happened later on, but i am a singlespeed convert. it's so simple and "connected". hills are difficult with just one (biggish) gear and drop bars, because you can't haul yourself up as easily as you can with wide flat bars- it's a bit too twitchy, but where i live is pretty flat! I don't think i could go fixed, not on the roads anyway. i like freewheeling and brakes, but i'd like to try it out one day.

I stumbled across this which became my 30th birthday present from my parents (60 quid.. i'm not that cheeky)-

it just popped up on a saved search on ebay. it's a 1970's peugeot "nouveau style" shopper. i fancied having a relaxed style bike for those idyllic summer days (which are in your memory, but don't really happen), picnics and slow potters. i'm rarely drawn to overtly girly bikes, even though i do insist on having WSD frames (i'm very short but like the saddle as high as i can get away with.. i could go into the maths & angles but basically, because of this i often have to hop off at traffic lights etc & would come a cropper if i didn't have a dropped top tube) but this one crept in to my brain and said "take me home" in a way i rarely experience. i'm going to say it's the art nouveau style curves. it's really quite a remarkable bike. the chain guard which i've cleverly disguised at the back of the photo is pure stylized chrome joy. the wheels are a very cantankerous 22". I have found one UK supplier in the entire internet that supplies this size tyres and tubes for anything but a BMX. lucky i found that, because those tyres disintegrated after i'd done about ten miles on them. she now has some lovely white walled ones. everything adjustable is a very sturdy quick release and still very much in working condition. remarkable given the age really! makes it very easy to get on a train, and, i guess, to switch between different riders.the bottom bracket is really low meaning i can ride it with the saddle low enough for my feet to touch the floor easily! basically, it's a shrimp's bike. and i am a shrimp. i've really tinkered very little with her though, because she is a lovely version of what she is. i do need to straighten out the mudguards though. for certain moods, when i want to watch the world go by, she is a lovely little soft, relaxed bike.

at a similar time, my boyfriend acquired "yaroslav", a 1970's Minsk (MMVZ) stork (Aist). these were built for use by the USSR army in Belarus, and modelled on the Raleigh town bikes of the time, visually at least. i think it's fair to say the engineering is a bit more rough and ready. I am hugely jealous that he has a bike with a badge in cyrillic script. I studied (amongst other things) Russian at school, and have always been drawn to soviet political and commercial art and design. Yaroslav will feature in my following posts, which will detail the tinkerings we have done so far.

walter went the way of so many ahem.. inexpensive modern bikes, in that his bottom bracket is already getting wobbly (characterised by lateral movement in the pedals, a bit too much play & wobbliness). so he's been packed off to the bid's house for a lighter workload. at the same time, a friend of my sister's was moving and had found two MTB's in her garage. she didn't want them, neither did the landlord, so i had one. i have called it serge because it shares so many characteristics with my old van of the same name (sturdiness over speed, to be polite). here she is:

she now has walter's wheels. yes, i am that sentimental.

then, the bug had well and truly bitten me. pug, whist brilliant, is slightly too big for me, and i was getting it into my head that i wanted a bigger project (again, details to follow), and a mixte frame road bike to well & truly customise and make my own. i wanted to try building a bike up from a freshly refurbished frame, and so veronique (v. jejeune-velo) was purchased, for the princely sum of £26. frame, forks & bottom bracket & that's all. knackered, dirty paintwork, brilliant but ripped up decals.i have to get everything else and really get to grips with how a bike fits together. this is how she looked when i first got her:

she looks very, very different now. but, this is a story for another day. strap in kids, my next posts on the subject will be about as detailed and technical as an utter buffoon like me can be.

fast forward

I was prompted the other day to blog about some tinkering i have been doing, and realised that it has been a good old while. then looked here.. and it's like my life has been on fast forward. little pug the bike has been transformed, began to feel like a faithful friend, and is now being tinkered with again. it's been nearly a year since the ferret attacked boom, work has changed beyond all recognition, i've learned new things and been to more places and gained more hobbies and i really need to start writing them down if only because it's been such a lovely thing to read through my deserted posts and remember things as i saw them at the time. so will do. ramblings will expand to lasers, workshops, building, projects. i'll probably get quite nerdy & in-depth about some of the things i've been working on. i just need to figure out where to start.

Walter and pug

walter and pug are my two bikes. i am by no means a serious cyclist however i really do enjoy pottering around on them and ride to work most days. when i have had bikes stolen in the past (too many times) i have felt utterly lost. i'm a nervous soul and often find walking alone intimidating, but on my bike i feel great.

stolen bikes are:

vix: my purple raleigh vixen which i had for years, bought for my 20th birthday by my family and my only mode of transport for nearly four years, before my sister got a car and the one we had shared came with me to cardiff. stolen on the same night i had to be rescued from the side of the M50 when the wheel fell off my car and i missed adam green at barfly. i learned to ride no-handed on vix.

fruity bike: my sister's old bike, actually a kid's bike which my dad restored for me when vix was stolen. my old bike, a shocking orange raleigh racer was deemed too knackered. i could JUST get away with it as a stop-gap because i am 5'1". fruity bike is named after the game i invented with her help.

giant:

a lovely blue giant mountain bike, 24th birthday pressie from my parents and grandad. survived two theft attempts before finally being nicked from outside buffalo on a night i was already pretty miserable. police found footage of the theft but couldn't identify anyone from it. giant was lovely, even if she did make my little fingers numb.

(unnamed):

i didn't have my next bike long enough to give it a proper name, other than pinkbike. it was an apollo zodiac, loud late 90's design at its best. shocking pink, purchased from ebay for the princely sum of £30 to replace giant. the loudest bike in cardiff- visually and literally; the brakes did not stop the bike but emitted a good warning squeal when applied, i purchased bright orange floral pannier bags. if you're going to be seen, you may as well do it properly. it had two working gears, 20 and 21, and once, forgetting that it did not have suspension, i fell off it in humiliating fashion (ie people could see) when trying to hop up onto a kerb. nicked from outside the romilly pub when i was doing a quiz there.

intermission:  the poshbike. i acquired a dutch style town bike, free of charge, from my friend. it was too big for me really, and taught me that even though i think dutch bikes look cool, they do not suit my riding style (fast, erratic, standy-uppy). scrapped after the pedal fell off and i couldn't be arsed to fix it.

so, then i got walter (raleigh) for my 29th birthday. walter is ok, but a bit heavy and cumbersome. great for my short ride to work over the potholes etc but a bit frustrating on long rides. and so with this in mind, and also that it is likely to get stolen at some point, i decided to buy a spare. so i got pug from ebay. pug is  a 1993 peugeot racer, fulfilling my needs for a spare bike and a faster one. i have  a peugeot car from 1993 with nearly 200k on the clock and going strong, so i reasoned this to be a good  sign. pug need new tyres but after i have sorted that i am massively looking forward to being able to choose a bike every morning based on weather and where i have to go.

here are pug and walter getting a good scrub:

and just pug:
(i like her black and whiteness)

so getting pug is either the beginning of a collection of bikes, or of 1993 peugeots. i genuinely don't know which.

Old timey me and chickens in a hole

so i've been a right old lady recently and have been doing all sorts of pottering around the house and garden, stuff that i never thought i would have enjoyed in my youth but really have. oh well, people change. anyway, what i did always know was that miserable settings make me miserable. and returning to my house and having to look at the front garden would often make me so as it was a drab, grey, broken, dirty hinterland of nothingness and frogs (so many frogs. evil splatty things. wallworms too- those ones that emerge from walls in straight lines when it rains). it was mainly occupied by a triffid, frogs, crisp packets (not mine) 2 wheelie bins and loads of recycling bags. i'm ashamed at the quantity of recycling produced by this household.

after slaying the triffid (and hurting my arm in the process), it looked like this:

yuk yuk yuk.

so i spent way too long researching pebbles on the internet (went for a mix of plum & green slate in the end, if anyone's wondering) and way too much money in a well known home and garden store, and me and my housemate then made it look like this:

it has a hidey place for the recycling and pretty pots and plants! i did unearth one frog during the works. noticing that i had jumped onto the garden wall and had started barking "frog frog frog frog frog frog frog frog frog!!", housemate valiantly picked the little blighter up and deposited him at the foot of a tree down the road.

these three plants are cuttings from my grandad's garden. my lovely grandad died in january and his house has been sold, so last time i went home i got these. they are forget-me-nots (my favourites), and purple and white heathers. wish them luck!

in other news, i want these things:

a duckling. well, several.

a water pump. there was one of these at my great aunt's house in kent. she died when i was very little and we only visited a couple of times a year, but i do have a memory of grandad showing me how to use the water pump in the garden- it was a huge novelty as the house and garden seemed to be from another time. it was a lovely place.

the chickens have kept themselves busy lately by digging an enormous hole in their run, and in turn i have been busy trying to capture a photo of one of them in it.  so here it is- and a treat too i hope you agree!

 tata!

Boom (and kahn)

Ha! it's been a while hasn't it? I am rubbish at this. but a big long academic holiday looms, so i'll probably get my rant on soon.

Anyway, it's time i told you about Boom. or Boomhauer the chicken (no other names, although they give her my surname at the vet), named after the blond indecipherable ladies' man in king of the hill, to which i was a bit addicted at the time of her purchase.

here she is:

she is an old cotswold legbar. (old cotswold legbars) she was purchased, along with her original sidekick kahn (also from king of the hill) in summer 2008 after the passing of Elvis (just because) & CJ (reginald perrin) in worryingly quick succession. so worrying that CJ, another black rock bought to keep reg company who died very young, was post-mortemmed. poor thing had blood cancer. very sad, but luckily, nothing environmental, which had been the fear.

they were the most expensive chickens we bought- about £15 each if memory serves, and were chosen because they lay those beautiful blue and green eggs which cost a fortune from the supermarket but are really rather nice. they are spectacular looking things too, with huge, floppy red combs, a fluffy crest (hairdo) and prettily patterened feathers. they are not known for being friendly. quite the opposite- they are reputed to be skittish, loud and a bit of a bully and quite a fan of escaping.

here she is as a whippersnapper:

that's before her comb developed and when she still had pink & purple feathers. the run is a temporary one-
so they could get used to the surroundings & the sight of the 2 old chickens (reg & arn, at the time) gradually. kahn is in the backround. she had the best hairdo of all.

boom's first act upon arrival was to try to escape. she did this by scaling the 6ft fence. one prompt catch-and-wing-clip later (wing clipping sounds horrible but it's actually just the feathers that get clipped) and she made it quite abundantly clear that she didn't like people and was going to hide in the coal shed until it was dark, at which point she could be caught & put in her run. kahn was only slightly more brave, occasionally poking her head out of the coal shed but swiftly thinking better of it.

boom got brave with the other chickens quite quickly. she was still skittish around people for a long time, long after she was all moved in and grown up and laying. in the meantime, kahn had become quite attached to me, however had stopped growing and was still petrified of the other chickens. it was very sweet having a tiny pigeon sized chicken that was really soppy, but we suspected that it wasn't right, so called the breeder, who asked us to return her and exchange her for another. (they were under guarantee, bizarrely, and she was not fulfiling her terms) so, kahn got exchanged for bobby, more on her another time.

over time boom got braver and friendlier, and moved up the pecking order. she is now quite firmly at the top. and she does things like this:

(excuse dire pyjama face picture)

in both pictures she is pursuing food. she is a legend. she tries to get into the house via a closed window a little too often. she has also made her way onto a dinner plate, and oven and a barbecue.
she no longer tries to escape, but is very feisty. when reg recently moulted, she picked on her quite mercilessly until all of her feathers had grown back. but she does lovely things too. being boss, she always puts herself between the other two & any predators- usually cats which have no intention of doing anything, but more recently a ferret, which burrowed into their run at 5 in the morning and attacked them. i was woken up by boom's loud squawking and all i could see when i looked out of my window was her flapping about the run in a very panicked fashion. it was horrible. she actually managed to break out, so by the time we'd legged it downstairs to find out what was going on, all of the chickens had scattered, boom being last. (bob made it into the house somehow, reg was nowhere to be seen for about 10 minutes, horrible hecause i thought she might have been eaten or killed or stolen) the ferret was still after boom when i caught her & put her on top of the guinea hutch. she kind of collapsed then- so i was worried she'd been hurt, but luckily i think she was just stunned and exhausted. reg had been hiding behind the bin, we discovered when the ferret found her. ferrets are horrible creatures. really vicious. or at least they are when they've broken into a chicken run at first light.

anyway, i've realised i can gibber waaay too long about a chicken that not many people care about. so, one last picture or two, & i'll be off.

Boom!!

seasons greetings

Hello there blog. it's been a while. no apologies, i've had stuff to do isn't it. stuff like work shenanigans, having fun with brilliant people, minding warring chickens, visiting family and more work shenanigans. i've also lost my camera just too late to request a new one for xmas, so apologies if the quality of photos takes a wee dive.

i've had quite a good xmas, got a real tree with my housemates which we decorated with my favourite mistletoe lights and homemade gingerbread baubles and this year's new decoration, a ceramic snowman acquired in cornwall where we went for my friend's 30th birthday. i buy a new decoration every year, preferably from a visit somewhere.

it is not officially xmas in the nay household however, without this fellow:

it has belonged to my dad since he was a child, and i believe it belonged to someone else before him, making it probably about 70 years old. i obtained it when i left home at 18. it lives in a glenfiddich bottle case. once, i lost it for a few years and i genuinely felt a bit wrong when it was missing from the xmas decorations.

here is how arnie looked this year:

smashing, as you can see.

i've had many lovely evenings in in front of the fire, which is one of my most favourite things about my house, even though i'm always a little nervous when it's first lit. i'm just a wuss really.

cosy!

for actual xmas, i went home to wolves. nearly didn't make it though because of the mega snow, which induced my housemates to build new friends in the garden, such as monsieur table here:

this was before we had a few more dousings of the white stuff. my brilliant sister named monsieur table. she's good like that. chickens aren't really keen on snow. they don't really realise that the ground is still underneath it, although after a few days they got bored of of being cooped up and so tentatively braved it:

there is plenty of chicken news; a visitor, a moult, a war, i shall go into this another time. right now i'm busy planning tomorrow night's entertainment, a 70's dinner party with my housemates as a sort-of xmas present to each other. i've been given a load of 70's cookery books from my mum, including one which previously belonged to my great aunt which still has her handwritten and typed additions. it's absolutely lovely. we have devised a full 70's menu, including retro drinks and we will all be in costume too. off charity shopping tomorrow for some 70's crockery!

will post pics and a review!