soft hard blurred clear

last night at around 10pm i finished the milk, i'd better get some more before the shops shut or i'll have to go out in the morning before i have my tea... being something like what i thought...

i'd been out with felinity @ eat & 2 veg and i was very well fed... i didn't go out again last night, i settled in front of the tv and watched six feet under on more4 intending to watch the larry sanders show on itv4 after...

so this morning when i woke up after not enough sleep i knew that i had to go out to the shops or forego my morning cup of tea... i put on my big coat and went to the shops before my shower, before anything, it was wierd...

before i set off for work i tried to pump up my bicycle tires but failed to... i've been failing to pump up my tires for weeks now, i just don't get how that pump works and spski's out of the country, he'll be back on sunday to answer my questions...

they were getting too soft...

near the end of my bicycle journey to work this morning i could see that something was stuck to my front tire, making a sound with each revolution, i thought it was a piece of paper but it turned out to be a drawing pin, stuck all the way in... so i took it out and was thankful that it was the end of the journey, got to work before the tire deflated...

then after work i cycled to a bike shop to have it changed, only it didn't seem to be deflating... the drawing pin had been sticking right into the tire... it didn't make sense...

so the man in the shop checked the innertube and it wasn't punctured... he said as my tires had been so soft the pin hadn't had enough resistance from the inner tube to pierce it... so he pumped up both front and back tires for me and i went out onto the street again...

cycled over to the bookstall under waterloo bridge and played G the bookseller at chess, he was playing someone else when i arrived so i cycled all the way to vauxhall bridge and back to kill time... really hard tires... no bounce... i felt every imperfection in the path... my bike rattled and my fingers holding the handlebars had to cling on really hard...

anyway he beat me and then i beat him, i've been meaning to play him at chess for a few weeks now, i'll be returning for a rematch in the near future, i cycled home to get a couple of things then went out again to the opticians, a sight/contact lens test with someone there i hadn't met before, P, very nice...

he gave me some daily lens's to keep me going until a trial pair comes for me next week, some new kind that allows my eyes to breathe more... these ones he gave me are stronger and i had that wierd attention to detail/almost too much precision thing going on... he told me that one of his customers doesn't like to have a properly clear prescription, he asks for it to be blurred a little,

i got on my bike with my too hard tires and my almost too precise eyes and i cycled up to manolis's where i read a ted hughes short story over my lunch, the rain horse was very good, it's in a collection of short stories he has in his cafe, edited by malcolm bradbury,

then since i've been home i've done almost nothing, just lain on my bed amongst the curtains and read and dozed, the not enough sleep catching up with me, dinah waking me up just before she went to work, a little love & affection perfectly suited to my just woken self...

strange day all round then for me, i still can't believe i went out to the shops before i had a tea this morning...?

x