Igenlode Wordsmith

Yet another set of bike repairs -- a second attempt at the lighting system. It turns out that the problem was that the *last* time the lighting system was repaired (May 20th; contacts on front lamp cleaned and re-crimped), the cables to the rear lamp were somehow swapped over. The dynamo presumably provides alternating current, so it shouldn't theoretically make any difference which is current out and which is the current returning... but switching the two plugs over caused the back light duly to shine brightly instead of flickering its back-up LEDs, and restored function to the front light, which wasn't working at all unless the back light was unplugged!

( Simple Way shoes )

I also decided to 'pot up' my back-up chillies. Of course they are much too young for that (there is a lot of seed in there which turns out still to be in the process of germinating, and naturally I shall have far too many seedlings), but they really can't stay in a shallow coffee-jar lid on the window sill for much longer. The biggest ones already have an L-shaped root where it had hit the bottom of the soil at a very early stage.

I got within five or six holes of the end of sewing the front apron onto my new Simple Way shoes before I realised that I'd got the holes misaligned somewhere, and that I had one more stitch-hole left in the apron than in the upper. I spent almost an hour in laboriously unpicking the sewing so that the thread could be re-used and the pre-punched holes weren't damaged (far slower than sewing it up in the first place!), and counting and recounting the remaining numbers of holes in each piece to try to find out when I'd got past the mistake, a process which got slower and slower the more stitches I unpicked.

I eventually found the error right back at the start, when I'd skipped a hole in the leather upper (hidden under the apron) with only the fourth stitch I'd made. So I now have to sew the whole thing up again and hope I don't miss any more holes while feeling blindly about inside the shoe... It's the classic mistake, and I've done it at least once per pair of Simple Way shoes I've made :(

What a beastly day. It started off just misty, and then got colder and colder and wetter and wetter and windier and windier until it was blowing the best part of a storm. And then I had to go out in it.

I was sitting in front of a warm fire, feeling comfortably full of roast dinner, when I remembered that I had been invited to a colleague's seventieth birthday party that afternoon; and so I had very reluctantly to get up and go off to the jollifications instead of staying in and reading a nice book. Which tells you something about my relative priorities where entertainment is concerned! I managed to get lost on the way, too (due to holding my umbrella so low against the gusts that I missed the relevant signpost) and arrived with wet feet, a chilled nose and a considerable sense of annoyance.

Still, it wasn't so bad. The gentlemen stood in one corner and discussed (or, as the ladies like to say, pontificated about) computers, cars, cryptology and canal-boats, while their other halves got on with whatever it is that they do in groups; and to my relief I found that I had come late enough to miss the speeches. (I had also missed the food, but due to the aforesaid roast dinner I wasn't exactly worried about that...)

And then all the way home again to the embers of a fire, Maria Callas on the record-player (Rigoletto) and the chance to get something useful done; namely finishing off the stitching of a pair of shoes.

No, I'm not a cobbler, unfortunately. I make up shoe kits; I've done quite a few over the years, not always for myself. In fact, mostly not for myself, since I haven't had a new pair of Simple Way shoes for a long time.