bookshop visit all arranged for me

i took the £10 bike and spent £10 on it... whole new inner tube for the back wheel, which apparently might have gears inside it (in the drum in the middle) - possible route towards gears therefore...?

they fitted the inner tube, i cycled off with glee...

how different the world looks when i have a working bike, strange to so depend on something else for this confidence... more on this later...

so i decide to go to the RFH to meet S & bo, just briefly before they go to a xenakis concert, i set off on my bike and it starts to rain almost immediately... undaunted i cycle on... although thinking fondly of the cycle rain poncho thing i saw today in the bike shop... i cycle through camdem, through somerstown, as i'm getting to euston i can feel my back tire deflating... i can't believe it - and in fact don't believe it for a little while but it becomes unmistakable... i get to within spitting distance of great almond st hospital and i give up, the tire too low now, i phone bo and there's no time now to see them, i phone D, who i was going to try and see after bo & S (the pigs)... i see another bike locked to the railings so i lock mine there too...

and now my bike is not fixed my confidence leaves me, i don't want to see anyone...

i calm down a little bit, all hot and bothered, i wonder what i'm going to do, get a bus home? the number 19 goes from there to mine, walk the bike home? i start to want to find a bicycle pump, to get me part of the way home with the bike...

i find a bookshop, that is open, at 7pm...

piles of books everywhere, 2nd hand, a few new ones that he's published, he being M who chats to me, about everything, he lives above the shop, we talk about london, about how in the mid19th century the city planners decided to stop london being a residential city, evicted huge numbers of people, artisans, shopkeepers, who had been trading from and living in the same space, turfed them out to just beyond the city boundary (the london wall i guess)... talk about africa, childrens books, consciousness, a very interesting looking book that he's published that i might go back for - a lexicon of writings on consciousness - particularly in relation to computers - artificial consciousness, some writer called tallin i think...

he really reminded me of SJ whose book i still have in my room, yijing user and source of information for... bookish - the notion of following a papertrail as SJ put it, tracing an idea back through documents... M and SJ definately cut from the same cloth...

he recomended i try in the pub for a bicycle pump - which he didn't have - i did try the pub to no avail, i walked back to my bike much cheered by the surprise bookshop and conversation, still hoping i'll meet someone and borrow a pump...

van morrison's astral weeks playing on my shuffle, beside you as i walk up to the childrens hospital and notice to my delight that the bike beside mine has a bicycle pump on it..

look, i know that you think you're seeing the pigs tonight but actually i want you to find this bookshop and meet this guy, so you're going to have a puncture right by his shop, he'll be there, you'll talk to him, then to get back i'm going to make sure there's a bicycle pump right where you left your bike, don't worry...

(he made me do it)

x