doing things by halves

I'm halfway through my secret knitting project.

Wait...buying the yarn is half, right?

Oh.

Well, in any case, here's the secret project, which also involves graph paper, meaning the first thing I need to do is design the secret project. I begin to feel as if the "plenty of time" I've left may not, in truth, be all that plentiful.

I got my bike back from the bike shop, tuned up and newly be-tyred. Cycling gives me a split personality. It's my A to B, not really my weekend fun, and I both love and hate my bicycle. Due to it having the biggest wheel diameter I've ever seen on a bike, it bowls along at a cracking pace when you get going. But being over fifteen years old, it's made of what's essentially cast iron (note: does the above sound to you like a description of a penny farthing? must check my bike is actually not one) so it is very heavy to get going and push up hills. (Having said that, my attitude to hills has changed dramatically since my New Zealand experience, viz: "Canada, you call that a hill? Oh come on.")

Anyway, for the first half of a journey I relish the zippy freedom from footslogging or waiting for buses that don't even go exactly where you want to, and I gaily pedal along to the library with my bell and my basket like an earnest Enid Blyton-eqsue bluestocking. Then I get puffed and overheated, and cross about the hills and the wind and the weather and the effort, and this second half of the trip makes me arrive at my destination a cursing and maleficent hoyden. It's quite a transformation, but probably not one you'd want to be party to any more than, say, half of the time.