Ride a White Swan

After working from home yesterday, and finding it was the right decision after the rest of the office was sent home at lunchtime, I rode into work today, encountering only a couple of eejit drivers and one absolutely fantastic Lothian Buses driver (so much so I wrote them an email of thanks, asking it to be passed on to the driver and got a very nice response).

Yesterday saw more time spent with Isla; a bit of helping out neighbours with snow-troubled cars; and fitting new Autosocks to our own car, which I can confirm work astoundingly well in the snow.

So anyway, yes, today I rode to work, then found myself heading home at lunchtime to work out the rest of the day from my own desk, stopping en route at Earthy Food for some noms, and then Duddingston Loch where I found myself surrounded by Mute Swans and Canada Geese (the Mallard Ducks just flew by or quacked in the blizzard, and the Coots were having trouble of their own being stuck in a confined space together). The wildlife didn't stop once home, with a foxy visitor giving Isla something interesting to watch.

Then it was Autosocked car to pick up Mel and a refurbished frame from a bike shop. My 30s Sunbeam frame has been off to Mercian and given the works. Well. Not quite. The bike shop folk are REALLY nice, but not great at passing things on, and I'm 90% certain I asked for the frame to be lug-lined in gold. Ah well, I can contact Mercian and get it sent off and dealt with myself I think. Just to get it, well, just so, y'know.

Slight downer on quite a good day, but nothing I can't deal with. At least I wasn't part of the England 2018 bid... I might be English and a big football fan, but by 'eck I'm glad we didn't win it. The media hype around the bid was bad enough; the media deconstruction of the failure even worse (and bordering on utter arrogance - apparently the decision to award the competition to Russia was 'anomalous' on Radio 5); but if we'd won it the build-up would have been 10 times worse than that for London 2012. AND how much of our public money has been spent jetting Call-Me-Dave there and back twice to be pally with the future King of England... and Prince William (see what I did there? Eh?).

Anyway, tomorrow might well be another work from home, rather than ride in for half a day in the office. I have everything I need here, and I was planning on popping by our old neighbour to see if he needs anything when I pop to the shops. Just need to work out how to do it diplomatically so he isn't offended...