Week 97

Good evening. What happened this week? I can’t really remember.

Touched a bicycle again. I’ve ordered a new saddle from, inexplicably, Spain, which will, explicably, take some time to arrive, which might be the second ramification of breakfast to directly affect me.

Still on the Pedometer++ streak. It takes some amount of cycling – not as much as I’d misremembered, especially on a bumpy surface – to convince the stupid machine that you’ve done some amount of walking, so maybe I’ll do that. (I think I might’ve hurt my foot again.)

Walking around, I’ve a few times suddenly needed to wee, as a result of poor planning. I’ve availed myself of a few secluded grassy knolls, copses, etc. The best stroke of luck, apart from the occasional actual open public loo, was a well flooded footpath which meant I could take my personal needs break without keeping glancing over a shoulder, because there was no chance of someone appearing from behind – hurray for climate change.

Replaced the oven hood extractor fan grease filter. It’s a floppy cloth thing. Who knows how old the old one, greasy with grease, was – years? The recommendation of the grease filter industry is to replace every six months, which seems wild, almost like they’ve an interest in people buying more of their products. I don’t think I evaporate much grease, but I suppose it all builds up. The replacement is dotted with dots that will allegedly change colour when it’s time. After scissoring it to the correct size, I’ve enough offcuts for one or two more replacement cycles.

Anyway, I also rubbed a soapy cloth around the other bits of the oven hood, and the overall delight equals the time, a few weeks ago, when I bathed the rusty shower hose in some malt vinegar to sparkling effect. (The malt doesn’t do anything, feels a bit wasteful, but there were no non-brewed non-condiment alternatives available.)

This week’s (sourdough) bread. A bit dense, which was OK, and, more egregiously, too awkward a shape to fit in the toaster. I’d awoken in the night and decided prematurely to pop it in the oven (off-peak electricity). Meanwhile I did some work, which was slightly disastrous; everything would have been better left until the morning.

The Toblerone ice cream has disappeared again from the freezer section of the shop, almost as soon as it had appeared. It was, after all, a seasonal thing, just as I’d idly speculated. And, needless to say, that’s fine.