Bike update

The start of my ride home is always an reintroduction to city biking theory vs practice. Up Drury Lane, and then onto the turn into Theobald's Road. A left turn's illegal, and dead ahead is a cul-de-sac, so no-one bothers indicating a right turn. But one of these days... And then there's the crossroads with Kingsway/Southampton Row, where the left road is left turn only, and I've never seen anyone turn left on it, only buses/taxis/cyclists heading straight on.

You may remember those nice people at Master Lock that were going to send me a free hook and bracket so that I could stop carrying my lock in my backpack. When I got back into work on Tuesday, there was a package from Mainland China, containing... two unrelated keys. They're enquiring around as to whether the intended recipient of them might be nearby, that we might swap or something. Which is probably better than a reposting - the keys appear to have been postmarked in November, and only passed customs at Christmas!

Since my saddle was nicked last time, I've been bringing it inside at night. I was slightly worried about leaving my bike outside over Christmas, but when I got back in last week, it was still there and I celebrated with a bike ride to Edmonton IKEA and back (which is another story). Then I mostly bussed it over the weekend, and this morning, I realised that they'd taken the opportunity to nick the clamp that keeps the saddle in the frame (and more particularly stops it from going left-right). Which can't be worth very much at all, even the nice men who take your money at Evans Cycles only charge a fiver for a new one. They put my saddle back on quite high, which I didn't notice until I was heading home. It was interesting having to make sure that there was a footpath wherever I stopped, or else I'd fall over slowly.

DJing "update"*

So, I DJed at New Year's Eve Poptimism. It was largely awesome, I was on about (?) 11.00-11.30, due to everything starting at 10.15 instead of 9.15. I had an early "no-one will be dancing yet" set and a later "hits hits hits" set prepared, but the heightened schedule meant the floor was filled before I started. Lots of panic, lots of "Oh Christ I can't play that, no-one will dance, quick switch it, oh Christ there's only 20 seconds left", but it all went well, up until the enormous silence (I'd not cued up one of the CDs, and then skipped ahead two songs while it was paused, with disastrous results). But then the next song got people moving, which I followed with Beyonce's "Ring The Alarm" to general acclaim (which was the best bit). Then afterwards the main DJs played for a few hours, and Al, one of the other guest DJs, came on around 2.30, built up a decent crowd (of randoms by this stage, the Poptimism regulars that I'd played to had headed home by then, and it did look like this was the end before Al started), then devastated them by playing something otherwise excellent, so I got three strangers asking for different things, and I don't think I delighted any of them :( I lasted maybe 15 minutes before barnetape came on and got them dancing again.

It was great fun, though. I think that basically I'm a decent Poptimism DJ and a terrible proper DJ, and I'll take that. One of the things I noticed was that my CDs that I brought along were a bunch of proper ones that had a few songs on them that I might play, and a few burned ones which were made out of the one great track on a bunch of albums. The latter had great big printouts for track listings (typically I printed them in an internet cafe on the way to the venue), but it was only these that I was consulting during my panics, leaving the hit-full albums out of consideration. The only track off a 'proper' album that I played was Track 1 on the CD that barnetape thrust into my hands to get something happening after the silence. It was Yazz's "The Only Way Is Up", which bizarrely is the only one off the proper albums that I'd planned on playing going in.

All in all, though - magic!

* one in a series of one