Recycling an old friend

Thank you to for all the kind comments and good wishes. We are still here and after a difficult few months, life seems to be - at  last - starting to move in the right direction. A small piece of administration held Joe's new job up for three months, so as you can imagine, it has been a particularly stressful time. I have been in the cottage for nearly six years and in all that time I have lived with an uncertain future here. Much of that time has been used recovering from losing Andy so suddenly and suffice to say that gardening and home improvement have not been high on my priority list. And it is hard to make a house a home or start to establish a garden with no idea of whether one will be here in a year's time to enjoy it. This is not a plea for pity, but my roundabout way of explaining why blogging has been sparse and sporadic.

However, now there seems to be a point to it all and so last week I tackled the nasty little shed at the top of the garden. It is part of the complex of rotten old dog kennels left behind by the previous owners and quoted as an 'asset' in the estate agent's blurb when Andy and I were viewing the cottage. When we moved in, this shed became the dumping ground for anything useless and it's been lurking there ever since. Time to clear it out.

In the end, nearly everything went. The front yard began to resemble a junkyard. Brian-next-door gave me a lift to the recycling centre, several miles away near town; I had not realised that this space age looking development takes practically anything from rubble to old timber to the usual metal, electrical appliances, clothes and anything that can be re-used.

I was very happy to see the back of most of my bits, with the exception of what remained of my old bike, Hercules. Hercules and I spent many happy hours pottering about at a placid pace around my old home in the Cotswolds and he was a regular character in some of my early blog posts. Until  he was stolen one night and eventually found beaten up and wrecked in a hedge by the village green. Andy bought me a new bike in secret ('the Best Surprise Ever') and so everything was lovely in the end. But I hung on Hercules for years out of silly sentiment. Now, with what is hopefully a new and more certain future, I felt it was time for him to be put to good use. Although I could not resist one last photo.

The best surprise ever

A few weeks ago I noticed that Hercules, my faithful rust bucket bike, was missing from his home outside the rubbish bin. He really was on his last wheels; nonetheless, he was my freedom ticket out of the village, not being a car driver or owner. And now someone had pinched him. I don't know what goes through a thief's head at the best of times, but surely it's obvious that a bike like this is owned by someone who can't afford a better one? Apparently not. A week later I found him dumped by the bike rack outside the village Post Office, wrecked. I gave a strangled shout of 'Hercules' and rushed home to cry in Andy's arms. To some people it may seem silly to get worked up over *just a bike*. But he was more than that - he was 12 years of happy memories. A kind of diary on wheels.

Happier days

Andy collected the poor old boy and after taking him apart announced that it would be too expensive to repair him, considering his age and condition. Apart from still feeling rubbish from my prolonged cold and exhaustion, this was the last straw - but I didn't realise just how miserable I was without a bike. Life went on and last Thursday we took a little picnic out to nearby Farmington, on a glorious sunny day.

On the way home, we picked up a carton of local/freerange/Fairtrade/allroundgoodstuff ice cream from the Cotswold Ice cream Company. I felt a lot better and we tootled home, me clutching the tub of rapidly melting ice cream. When we arrived, there was a large, flattish box waiting in the outhouse. I wondered what it was. "It's your surprise bike" answered Andy, grinning. He had noticed how miserable I was without one.

To say I was lost for words would not even touch the tip of the iceberg of my surprise. I cried again - for different reasons. I've never had a new bike before and this was not just any old bike, this was a Dawes. In a slight stage of shock I remembered the liquifying nicebutveryexpensive ice cream and dolloped it out into suitably posh bowls.




The cappuccino ice cream was gorgeous and my swanky new bike - in British Racing Green - was assembled in our untidy back garden. (Excuse the washing).

And there she was, a shiny green Goddess of a bicycle; I could barely believe that she was mine. The observant will notice that she's a man's bike - I always ride a man's bike, just another one of my many unfeminine traits, along with the tattoos and army boots. (Sorry if that has destroyed my dainty image for anyone).

Being a Dawes bike, she had to be called Marjorie, after the nursery rhyme. She is the first bike that fits my 6ft properly and she is a tall girl: I can just about scramble up on her. We sailed off - wobbling slightly - on our maiden voyage round the lanes, my heart bursting with joy at having pedals again. And freedom.

Unlike dear old Hercules, she lives in the backyard under a cover, where nasty bike thieves will have to trample through the cottage over my cold, dead body before they get their grubby paws on her. As for Hercules - we have stored his frame and he is having a well earned rest. One day - we will rebuild him.