Gosh. Also, gearing up.

I just went outside with some recycling for the bin, and there was this strange, heavy, occasional sound that kind of stopped me in my tracks, and I gazed about me with an expression of some wonder (on the inside; from the outside, I probably looked like a gormless fool) and thought "No, no, it can't be..." - and yet, it was. Visual evidence confirmed the auditory.

People, it just rained.

Big heavy drops and not many of them and I think it may have stopped already, but still. Actual rain, that was.

In other goshworthy news, I believe we have settled terms on the bike. I haven't owned a bike for forty years. As witness, my last had three gears. This one I think has twenty-one, and I shall have no idea how to use them. But still: whee!ls.

Now I just need a helmet and lights and a pump and a repair kit and dayglo cycling shorts*, and just see my horizons lift...


*Kidding. M'wife has forbidden dayglo cycling shorts. Or any other colour. Though she is quite keen on the notion of visibility otherwise.

The good news will not be televised

Two excellent recoveries:

The mighty Leicester has come home, in what must have been an epic journey: safe if not entirely well, after quarrelling apparently with some instance of farm machinery; and

the lovely cleaning ladies have found Mac's mousie. Probably under the sofa, since they left it conspicuously there atop a cushion, where he could not possibly miss it. Much joy has been evinced at this reunion; he is carrying it everywhere. Last glimpsed playing beneath the legs of the kitchen table, he just as I typed these words jumped up onto my desk. I looked around, and yup. There's his mousie, waiting for him on the carpet.