menagerie silenced

it had grown a little.. as well as the birds, and the monkeys, there were now some pigs...

the pedals pigs grunting away with the occasional tweet from the pedal birds...

the gear hub monkeys screaming their little hearts out...

so i went down to cycle surgery on holloway road and they sold me a plastic bottle of sturmey archer cycle oil, the very company that made my gear hub in '76 (was it '76?) who got destroyed by some company and then bought out by an eastern company (taiwan i think), surely not in business in the UK at the moment... have their own brand of cycle oil...?

well that's what it says on the bottle and i have no reason to doubt it... glad to get the oil tailor made for my gear hub...

so i swanned home and i poured a little of this stuff into the hub, put some slightly different oil (house oil) on the chain...

and my little beauty is now a quiet little fella...

i cycled up to alexandra palace to see nippy's son R play ice hockey, the hill that hornsey road goes up and down into crouch end was hard work and then nervous fun, i freewheeled most of the very steep descent that i normally brake all the way through...

ally pally itself giving me some insane hillage to deal with...

then sat in the cold with nippy while R's team got destroyed by the opposition, lovely to see her, a long chat, R played well and it was nice to exchange a few words with him after the game,

i cycled home again, already cold, the crouch end hill harder to climb this way and easier on the nerves coming down the other side... much more gentle...

but a very cold journey, fingers and toes were barely speaking to me when i got in...

and i've beaten level 12 on the planarity game which is deeply satisfying...

my G will be home within the hour...

she is lovely...

x