A rainy Friday

It rained today. Huge volumes of water, coming down so hard that the highest windscreen wiper setting wasn't really enough, and the road was awash, not just with puddles but actual flowing currents of water. The sky was one uniform sheet of pale grey. 'Torrential downpour' would seem to be the most apt description- and that's not something you can say that often in this country. It reminded me of the rain in Japan. So hard to believe that yesterday was relentlessly hot sun.

But I got some sheets and the remaining things I needed for my bike: two tires, two inner tubes, two lights and a saddle. £71. It would almost be cheaper to buy a new bike... still, at least this should last a while. Money has been flowing through my hands like water lately (the sheets cost £44 in all)*, but then I anticipated there'd be some startup costs, what with everything I'd need to buy at the beginning, and allowed a generous £1000 for everything- though that has to include textbooks too.

Dad's been helping me get my bike in working order- by which I mean, he's been getting my bike in working order whilst I've been watching, fetching an occasional tool, and carrying out (according to his instructions) some of the simpler but more time consuming tasks like oiling the chain and working the links back and forth to get it over its rusted-togetherness**, and spinning each wheel in turn while holding a piece of sandpaper to the rim, to get off some of the rust- Dad says the rest will gradually come off from contact with the brake pads. It's not that I'm not mechanically minded- I am, it's just I haven't learned enough about bicycles over the course of my life to know how to look after them, whereas Dad knows exactly what to do***

So now it's just all the packing (in spite of those good resolutions I haven't made a start yet- but I am going to after this. And I have all tomorrow)

*though that was partly because I can't stand fitted ones (pop off halfway through every night) or synthetic ones (go all thin and bobbly in no time), and because even though it will be a single bed in halls, I got double sheets as I find single ones don't give you enough to tuck in to stop them coming off either

**that was on Wednesday and the cycle oil is still indelibly lodged in black deposits between the ridges on one finger

***I'm not quite sure when he learned, but I imagine if he didn't know anything about bikes before his trip around the world^ with Mum on a tandem a year or two after they got married he would certainly have done by the time they got back

^Well, not really round the world. They didn't visit every country and they didn't even complete a circle from east to west. But they were away for many months and did go to a lot of places.