reasoNED

It should be a relatively simple operation to lock up a bicycle, go into a shop, buy the things, emerge, pack up, unlock and return. Slightly less so when some neddy-looking urchin-oiks arrive on little toy bicycles and start making stupid comments along the lines of "eh nice bike eh", "how much did that cost eh?" and "d'ye need that pump aye?" and similar. I initially attempted to converse rather than jumping straight in and asking them to kindly bugger off but eventually gave up (after learning little more than that they wouldn't want to nick mine anyway as they both had BMXs of some particular model whose name escapes me), unlocked again and went round to the other door as they had failed to follow through their pretend-to-leave-bikes-on-the-rack-and-go-into-the-shop act. Rather predictably they turned up at the other doors shortly after me, continued making stupid comments and were generally undeterred by such actions as putting my seat in my bag and removing anything not securely bolted to the frame. Despite their offhand little threats of vandalism they were too small to have been able to do much more than flatten my tyres or scrape the paint but I'd preferred them to have not done so and thus watched through a gap in some posters from inside the shop after entering and walking a bit of the way in. After a couple of minutes one of them started edging towards the rack so I ended up wheeling my bike around the shop. One of them insisted that he wasn't a ned as I unlocked and reattached everything to which I felt compelled to reply that he should perhaps try not acting like one.

It was getting dark by the time I got home but the crappy stairwell lights were just bright enough to illuminate the various bits of my replacement mudguard, now fitted to replace the previous one which used to fit, went into a cupboard for a bit then didn't fit when it came out due to the disappearance of a tiny little bit of plastic which was far too small and weak to be sensible.