Accomplished!

Garden’s free of scrap metal, and managed to jam in some food shopping while out. The claws got sanded down and shipped, the test of the new fleece got started, silicone was ordered, rawl plugs were found, the wall-table at the Hackspace has been fitted to the wall, and I’ve brought home the things I was storing in my box.

Bonus; Billy showed me where the bits he’d been removing from all his salvaged bike frames had gone, so I now have a nice selection of handlebars to choose from. One’s an alloy one, which should be perfect for the roadbike, and there’s a few other heavier ones in different styles that may be better options for the half-horse-trike.

Now to settle with my tea, throw out a few quick replies to people and do some doodling.

Tired and bruised from yesterday. Took 4 hours to get that chunk of ebay I-beam from across town on public transport. Going out via Victoria I didn’t want to come back that way lugging it, even with my fleece cap covering the pointy end. I’m not going to fuck up my ankle yet again for the sake of conveniently shaped metal.

On the way back I got the mental taste of something; something coming apart. Little things, the only one of which I can explicitly express is trying to find a damn train map at London Bridge. The information booth is out, the ticket office is out, and the best they can do is point me at some signage over the other side of the station where the sole solitary map this side of the barriers is stuck on the rear of the timetable boards. Yes, the rear, the 1ft wide semi-crawlspace between them and the surround for the escalators. Damn near tipped the handcart over on the curved-up rim that presumably stops little bits of shit raining down over the edge. Just another thing in this city that makes you look like a crazy person. “Hey look, that guy’s carting a tiny I-beam around on a cart trussed up like Hannibal Lector, and it’s wearing a hat.. why’s he squeezing in behind the timetable boards? Shit, maybe I should tell a police officer or something.”

I am never getting a bluetooth headset.

It all made me a bit late to the London Hackerspace, but biking it from Bethnal Green saved a bit, and jumping on the thing without an hours advance prep suddenly undoes a lot of the damage from when I was hit by that moronic driver a few years back, or nearly castrated myself falling down a slope on it.

Suddenly it feels convenient again. Trustworthy even; there to pull my shit out of the fire when I needed it.

The London Hackerspace was a good time for the couple of hours I was there. I’m sorry to say I don’t remember names yet, but the place felt comfortable. A lot like the workshop here except ten times the size and a lot tidier. Felt easy to slip into conversations, throw up some ideas and geek over the number of projects and junk.

It felt right to be there.

Today I’m sore. Muscles and feets from walking a too circuitous route home or biking on pot-holed roads, wrists from where the I-beam pressed through the padding, my gloves and jacket as I towed it on the battered little hand-cart.

Today I woke late. I’ve spent the whole day in my dressing gown, slumming it, eating whatever’s to hand and binging on editions of Transmetropolitan that have actually been returned to me.

The only thing I’m worried about right now is that I’m taking a day off to process this and I shouldn’t.

I’ve started forward. I should be carrying on.