Some mania drives me to walk to the sports centre for a swim while it's raining hard. I find it isn't laned swimming yet; go to the steam room, and the gym, but then go to the pool. That's three times this week.
Meanwhile the lodger isn't home yet although she's been more in evidence than recently. And if the worst thing you can say about a lodger is that you don't see them as much as you'd like, well that is no bad thing. She is away at weekends also as she goes back home to her house in a small town which sounds nice also. This house meanwhile is less full of clutter than of late; three trips to the dump with a hand cart, an emptied wheelie bin of rubbish and a recycling box full of paper plus some shreddings in the compost bin have made sure of that.
I don't know how the blackberries at the bottom of the garden will fare with all this rain, but the apples are becoming red and ripe, and the pears ripening along the gnarled branches of the pear tree. The garden is becoming like my grandma's old garden in Lancing, with its fruit trees. The house was called 'Treetops' which makes it sound more exotic than it was, but this house was called 'Sunrise' by its previous occupant who presumably occupied the back bedroom as I do, even though the front bedroom is larger - back bedroom faces east over the gardens, which are small enough, but together make a tidy passel of lawns, bushes and trees. Well, an untidy one really, and all the better for it. Foxes, I expect, skulk beneath the wildlife hedge I planted. I do not give them names, as they are wild animals, but becoming bolder. A while back one stood on the path to the back door and gazed levelly at me, as though it really was the totem animal of John Michell who had died recently. On balance, the fox kills rats and perhaps keeps the cats from thinking they have all the gardens to themselves.
We shall have a lot of apples. She or I will know how to do things with apples. The last year but one it was apple cake, apple pies, apple crumble, bags of apples given away to anyone who would listen. Last year, no apples at all.
This rain will fill the pond up again, I hope. The frogs which were so keen the first year didn't survive the depredations of the cat population, though they lurk where it's damp and come out again. The tall green spikes of pond plants still stand, and in tiny niches under another length of wildlife hedge there are things I planted (woodruff?). It's like that here; spots of colour struggle up through the green.

Tags: house, rain
Current Location: back bedroom
Current Music: rain

The delivery of two new mattresses and the rebuilding of the three-quarter bed into a double goes off fine though getting a kingsize mattress down the stairs in this house was a fraught exercise. The stairs are narrow and steep and there is not a lot of airspace above them at the foot. This house is now a proper two-bedroom one again then.

Talking, over the garden fence, with next door neighbour. He gives me some runner bean plants, which are now planted.

Bought a new front light for the Brompton. The old one broke when I was taking the front bag off (the B. has a neat luggage system where a bag sits on a mounting block at the front. It is attached to the frame not the handlebars so doesn't turn with them). The new front light is a Knog Toad which I am not sure about - think I need a more serious light for riding when it's properly dark rather than just when the sun's gone down and I'm in lit streets. But I haven't tried it yet.

Eurosportage: Watched some of the Giro d'Italia which I had totally ignored until Tuesday when it was on the telly in a pub I was in.

Writing class: for some reason I'm tireder going in than I am if it had been a working day, and barely recognise one of my classmates (though I suspect she'd had a day off as well and so was in jeans and t-shirt etc, rather than her smart work clothes). My contribution goes down well though it's only half way through the discussion that I realise its title should be 'Passing Strangers'. Of course!

This is another sunny day and there are more things to be done.

Tags: bikes, house, writing
Current Location: downstairs
Current Music: Ultravox: Passing Strangers

I've been reading 'Ghostwritten' by David Mitchell and 'Jitterbug Perfume' by Tom Robbins. Years apart, both roam over a wide range of sets and both have an Irish scientist (not the same one) as a main character. Robbins picks up on the undemocratic nature of Hinduism which links with von Ungarn-Sternberg's distinctly un-touchy-feely approach to Buddhism - if your deeds in one life affect your next, then those born in high places must be better people by definition?

Apart from that, it is snowing, as everyone else based around London has said. I suspect the work to build the new summerhouse, which was due to start tomorrow morning, won't. As it is I have practically got the front bedroom in shape as a bedroom apart from the delivery of a new bed (scheduled for the 9th). These two projects are separate but after living here for three years and a bit I've moved on from the original confguration which was very much a first attempt.
Last night, went to the Fighting Cocks to hear a Red Hot Chili Peppers tribute band called imaginatively the Fred Hot Chili Peppers. Good music and a nice audience, even if one did apparently run off with my pullover as she was collecting her and her friends' bags. I asked her if she'd found it but although polite she was clearly the worse for wear. That's the difference, in some pubs she wouldn't have been polite either. The HC I hardly bother with as the locals seem to have an issue with people who aren't in clearly definable couples.

The FC is quite a gothy pub which makes it a find, and now that they have real ale (Hobgoblin) there is less excuse not to go in, not that I tend to except for gigs.
This morning, woke up at 1015, had a very quiet day, which would make one suspect I'd had too much of the Hobgoblin (I had one pint, which added to a half of Old Speckled Hen in another pub earlier in the day adds up to not very much). Took some clothes I hadn't worn for a while to the charity. Wrote my Pubs Officer's Report for the AGM, which is on Thursday. I am bound to get rechosen as Pubs Officer. The Pubs Officer can report that tomorrow the Marlborough will have been closed for a year, and is still boarded up.

Tags: house, pubs
Current Location: study
Current Music: The Hush Sound: Magnolia