I think that I have the wrong type
of bum for my bike. Either that, or I am
jinxed. [One should never give the
opportunity to use a work like ‘jinxed’ is looks so exotic] And yet, ironically, the pronunciation is
excruciatingly difficult for an ‘exotic’ person to say! Try saying it out loud and then think about a
foreigner trying to come to terms with the way that you have said the ‘ed’ part
of the word! Take it from me, that sort
of pronunciation (together with ‘phrasal verbs’) are part of the reason for the
strained expressions on faces of non-natives trying to get to grips with the language!
Before this bike, my Mate – and
that is its trade name, I am not so desperate that I have to claim friendship
with inanimate objects, though, come to think of it, I have had on-going, very
personal animosities with other things: cars, printers, computers, programs,
tools, pencils – and I had better stop there as the list is becoming somewhat
disturbing! Anyway, in all of my
previous bike-oid experience, I have never (repeat, NEVER!) had a wheel spoke
break [and I rather like the rhythm of
those three words, “wheel spoke break”
it sounds almost like a chorus if you go on saying them] but now it happens
every couple of weeks.
My bike repair person, with whom
I am now on terms of incredulous intimacy due to my repeated returns with
exactly the same problem, is mystified by the fractures and he has tried
various remedies (one of which was quite costly) to no real avail. I now take the breakages are part and parcel
of having a bike and it will have to do until I get a new one. Which should be in a couple of months
time. Or not.
This is because I have ordered it from
Kickstarter and the proposed schedules are always rather flexible when it comes
to reality. The new bike is going to
small wheels, but the tyres are ‘fat’ and I am trusting this to lessen the
forces that create the problems with the present bike.
I have ordered, you will be
totally unsurprised to hear, all available upgrades from a full-colour bike
computer screen to posh hydraulic brakes.
And it is of course electric.
Which brings me back to the
present bike. As the spokes break, I
fold up the bike (it is collapsible as well) and put it in the back of the
car. The bike is solid and it takes a
certain amount of manipulation to get it in place and the ‘cantilevered’ stage
of putting it in the boot is a taxing one, and the frame sometimes lands on the
floor of the boot with a bit of a bump.
I freely admit that what happened
is (partly) my fault. To cut a short
story even more shortly, I have broken the ‘ignition’ key in the battery. The battery is enclosed in the frame of the
bike, and in the ‘on’ position it is locked inside the frame. And, therefore, I cannot get the battery
out. To be recharged for example. True, it is possible to recharge the battery
while it is still in the bike, and true again, we do have power downstairs
outside – but the idea of putting a charger on in the open is not one I relish
or think safe – for all sorts of reasons.
Looking on the bright side, at
least the thing is locked ‘on’ so that it can be charged on the bike and used
in the normal way. Unfortunately, the
battery in the bike at the moment is slowly losing its ability to recharge; it
is coming to the end of its useful life and soon I am going to be using a heavier
than usual bike without the delight of easy power to get up those hills. Well, hill.
Well, road bridge over the motorway.
I have no idea where to take the
bike to see if anything can be done, as the manufacturer is in China
(surprise!) and the company that produces the bikes is in Denmark. I live in hope that something good will happen,
though too much has to occur for that to be reasonable!
Meanwhile my second Catalan
lesson of the week is looming and we have been expected to learn the numbers up
to 100 – at the moment just being able to say them, not actually write them
down. Our accents are abysmal and,
frankly, we all sound exactly like our nationalities when we speak in ‘Catalan’
– I’ve put in in inverted commas because it doesn’t (yet) bear any resemblance
to the language that we hear around us everyday.
Not only is there the stress of
having to articulate words with combinations of letters that are simply too
foreign to allow ease of acceptance, but also, I have to go, immediately the
class finishes, to a doctor’s appointment in Viladecans. It’s all go!
Later.
Well, I suppose I should count
myself lucky. Not about the broken key,
I have done nothing about that except worry, no, my luck held in the car
park. I found a space and was able to
(almost) cover the time that I would be in class with the money that I put in
the machine to get my ticket. I reasoned
that an extra 10 minutes or so would not be unreasonable to chance. And so it proved, as my windscreen was
little-plastic-bag-less when I returned from my lesson and set off for my next
appointment in the hospital in the next town but one along the motorway.
As with everywhere else at the
present time, construction work is going on in the hospital car park and a
first glance showed it to be worryingly full.
I eventually found a space with very little wriggle room which made
shimmying out of the car a painful experience.
I was half an hour or so early
for my appointment, but the hospital has a system that uses your health card to
log yourself in via some optical readers dotted around the corridors.
I settled down to wait with my
mobile phone, but was actually seen in a few minutes and dealt with
expeditiously in the company of bevy of medical students one of whom was picked
on to explain what was going to happen to me in English. She did not look particularly happy with this
task, but started gamefully enough with an attempt at that condescending
bedside manner that doctors sometimes adopt, you know the sort of thing, “ . .
.we will have a little look at your leg . .” except she said “to your leg” and
when I corrected here there was raucous laughter from all concerned.
After one particularly long
monologue from the doctor, who then turned to the girl to continue her
translation, I did take pity on her and say, “I understood that” and she smiled
her relief.
The end result is that he wants
me to restart wearing the bloody pressure stocking again and he has booked me
in for another ultra sound investigation to see if the thrombosis is still
there.
But the really important fact was
that I was squeezing myself back into the car, five minutes before my scheduled
appointment was to take place. Now that,
I call a real result.
To celebrate I called into the
shops to do a little light shopping for Toni’s knees (his present job is
somewhat physical and calls for me to be on said joints for long periods of
time) with the result that I have now bought a sort of square padded prayer mat
that can only be of help.
Oddly, talking of new
possessions, books have come for the two of us!
Toni’s volumes for the next part of his course and a ‘Teach Yourself’
book of Catalan for me. Unusually for
me, I have sampled this book on the internet and found it congenial and, since
my taught course is being delivered in Catalan and Spanish is it somewhat
comforting for me to have a book where the language of instruction is
English.
The new book itself urges its
use as an adjunct to to other forms of and from a cursory look through it
appears to be a good buy. It is a sign
of the times that the usual CD accompanying such sorts of books is missing from
this volume because the audio files are all available free on line and I have
already (I think) downloaded them to my phone.
I progress in this course in a much more realistic way than I ever did
in Spanish! But these are early days and
I will have to see how far my patience and dedication go!
-oOo-
The robot cleaner has been
hoovering around the house and I wait for the silences that tell me that
something has happened before I go and investigate. Sometimes the machine has been trying and
failing to devour something that will not go into its innards; sometimes it
decides that it has cleaned enough, and sometimes it simply gets stuck. I have to pick the thing up, get it back in
to working order and set it down somewhere else, rather like a very elderly
relative being wheeled into a new space and left to his own devices!
Its last location was in the
kitchen where there are various worrying things that it can discover and fail
to get around.
Its most worrying predilection is
for the gently curved bases of floor mounted fans: these the little machine mounts
with relentless orgiastic energy! But
enough of domestic chores.
-oOo-
Today is Toni’s half day at his
new job and we are going to celebrate by going to the shopping centre over the
other side of the road from his works to try another menu del dia in the
restaurant we used on the when we checked out to to get there, and where
exactly ‘there’ was before he started.
-oOo-
Now I have to find the spare key
to the battery of my bike and attempt the grisly job of trying to extract the
remains of the broken key from the ‘ignition’.
I am looking forward to neither of these tasks, but they have to be
done. The trouble is that I do have a ‘key
box’ in which, unsurprisingly, I have put most of the keys that I have
accumulated. For many of these objects,
I have little idea what they might unlock, but I know that, given time, I am
going to be frantic in trying all of them when I find a locked thing that I
want to use. It is the fear of going to
the box and not finding the key there that is making me carry on typing rather than
taking action. But, no, enough, have the
courage of your ‘key box’ being comprehensive and get going on part one of the
restoration of the bike to full working order.
To be continued . . .
