Despite having a house full of books, I’ve been suffering from the fact that for the last couple of days I’ve had absolutely nothing to read, so today meant an urgent visit to the library. After yesterday, I decided to atone for my sins by taking the bike – helped along by the fact that the other half had taken the car for the day – which gave me an opportunity to try out some of the advice from this book – stuff I all more or less knew, but had become lazy about putting into practice. It certainly helped me tackle the Bigtown traffic with confidence and on the whole, most drivers do seem to react better to (translation: actually notice) an assertive cyclist than one who’s doing their best to ride along in the gutter.
Still, there’s not much the book could do about headwinds so today I learned the hard way that when the Met office says ‘strong to gale force north westerly winds’ this translates in cycling terms as ‘you’ll be coming back into a headwind that will bring you to a standstill in places’. Not helped by the half-a-hundredweight of books I was carrying, and the steady uphill road. It took me half an hour to get into the library and more than an hour to get home. And when I did? I found the postman had been and left me a parcel. From Amazon. Containing books.
I share your pain – I cycled out at lunchtime and it was flat calm, so I barely noticed that I was 9km from home (in 20 minutes or so)… I noticed on the way back though stiff unrelenting headwind, rain & hail – took 40 minutes of constant swearing to get back.
I own around 300 books and constantly suffer that problem! I’ve read four in the last week and just can’t buy books at that rate atm, which is a pain considering atm I’ve got the time to read them…
And libraries never have what you want just shelf after shelf of the wrong books.
PaperBoy – have you got a swear-powered bike then? Mine doesn’t seem to respond to curses, always assuming I’ve got the breath to utter them
Psycho – your library should order books for you if you request them although I admit I’ve never actually tried this.
It’s a well-researched phenomenon – person swears at machine: result improved operation. Works for pretty much all machines, electronic & mechanical.
This is a typical book buff’s post!
I often find that I’ve either got nothing to read or can’t make up my mind which of several unread books to start.
Happy reading! xx
PaperBoy – what I need is a computer which treats certain swear words as a voice operated undo button
Flighty – indeed. And far better too many books than not enough
I have, by the time it arrives I’ve found it in a shop and bought it.
I like to own it so I know I’ve read it and can again if I want, and who knows what diseases library books could be carrying all them random people…