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!