We moved back into our house. We’re sleeping on a mattress on the floor in the second bedroom (my once and future office) while we wait for the wardrobes to be installed in the bedroom, and there’s no sink in the kitchen, so we have to do the washing up in a bowl under the garden tap, and neither microwave nor oven is wired up, but it’s good to be back.

It feels a bit like camping, but we do at least have a working bathroom, with hot water, and a toilet, and a roof to keep the rain off.

The end is in sight, and it’s an immense relief.

I moved our stuff to our house by bike. My bicycle trailer continues to be extremely useful, and a reasonable replacement for a car when trying to move bulky items around the city.

I’ll still need to hire a van and driver to bring all the things in the storage locker, but I’d have to do that even if I did have a car.

My hayfever has been bad this week, making my eyes especially itchy. I don’t know exactly which type of pollen I’m allergic to, but it must be one of the ones that peak around this time. Grass? Weeds?

I’ve been looking into adding more gears to my single-speed Brompton. I find myself cycling up more inclines these days, and my knees are 14 years older than when I bought it. It seems reasonably straightforward to add an extra sprocket and to replace the tensioner with the derailleur version, but then I need a shifter, and the separate ones are no longer available.

I can replace the brake levers with ones with an integrated shifter, but if I’m going to replace parts it seems that I can also replace the bottom bracket (which is probably worn anyway) and cranks (I currently have the old ones with a permanently swaged ring), fit three 11-speed sprockets, add a standalone shifter, and get an extra gear out of it. At least, that’s what (the still human-authored parts of) the internet tells me.

Pages I’ve bookmarked this week: