May Sisters’ Challenge; maximum

Bling bling bling bling

I have an official day off today. I posted a request last week, in triplicate, as set out in our marriage vows. We’ve been working hard in the garden for the past few weeks, shifting tons of gravel, dirt, making raised beds, painting said beds, filling same beds with compost and planting out seeds and seedlings. So when the weather forecast last week suggested today would be rainy I thought - I’ll have a day off and make a start assembling Mayflower. It was my good fortune that as of teatime rain has yet to appear. Leave was not cancelled … although to reduce the smug feeling inside, I bought a bag of Postcrete from B&Q on the way home from the GP’s surgery this morning.

I bought a new bike frame a few weeks ago and the components required to complete it come from another bike and various spares in my various spares box. An aside; I’m currently using Pages as my word processor and I’m not that impressed. When I typed various spares box just now, the spell checker helpfully suggested various sparrows box which is weird in the extreme. I mean, how many sorts of sparrows does Apple expect us to keep?

Most of the morning was taken up with dismantling the old bike and cleaning the frame prior to putting it on Fleabay and cleaning and sorting the various bits required for the new build.

A couple of hours after lunch I was riding the new bike up the road. It needs a bit of fettling before it’s completely good to go. In the meantime, to comply with the law, I fitted a bicycle bell that Anniemay bought as a present for the new bike. It’s not just any old bell; none of that muffled drin, drin rubbish that you get from the cheap and nasty bike shops. This is an English Bell - loud and proud - hand crafted by artisans who are clearly getting more than the minimum wage judging by the presentation box and dinky canvas bag it came in. And it is loud; DRING, DRING. Or - given the fact that it is very shiny BLING,BLING. I realise it’s upside down; that’s on my fettling list.

This is the bell that Captain Kirk would have if he had a bike rather than the Enterprise; “phasors set to stun. Bells set to maximum”.