Monday was a day of broken things and new things.

I had chores and found myself uncommonly awake in the morning so I went off to do the chores. A Threadless package was waiting for me at the depot (the postman not being aware that I have a doorbell, it being fitted soon after I moved it – I should leave him a note really) so I headed off on my bike, pausing to pay in a not insubstantial cheque and throw a not insubstantial amount of copper into the big change machine in the supermarket. Tremendous fun hearing it rattle through the sorting mechanism as the numbers add up. Almost worth the 7% commission the machine takes. Still, without that commission I wouldn’t have gotten £7.77. I’d've got £8.35 which, as a number, doesn’t warm the heart quite so much. Number of God, don’t'cha know.

Home for a cup of tea and it was off for my next round of chores. I’d noticed, while getting dressed, that there was a not insubstantial hole in what our American cousins call The Seat Of My Pants. Thankfully with my trousers being black and my propensity for black boxer shorts this wasn’t so dramatically obvious, but I was mildly put out that no-one had thought to mention it to me. Not so much because that’s what friends would do but because it meant no-one was checking out my arse. Then again, I’d imagine saying to a stranger “I was just checking out your arse and I couldn’t help notice you have a hole in your trousers – you might want to sort that out” isn’t the most comfortable of situations to put yourself in. All that said, replacement trousers were required and since I can only buy trousers from one shop and one shop only it was time for the annual-ish trip to the Army Surplus store situated on the border of Selly Oak and Harbourne on the Number 11 route. But I didn’t get the Number 11. I cycled.

First I stopped off at chez Courage to drop off a key from when I was feeding their cats last week. The key was on a keyring with a small piece of Lego. Not a Lego person. Just a piece of Lego. Julie offered me tea but I had chores so I declined. Max, the child, has shorter hair.

Eventually I made it to the Army Surplus. I picked out the usual combat trousers (black, matt, 32″ waist) and was amused to see they’re no longer called “combat trousers”. They’re called “action trousers”. This was news to me. But then I guess “seeing action” and “seeing combat” means the same thing to army types so it’s no real difference. I thought of perhaps getting another pair of trousers, maybe something in denim, but there wasn’t anything that caught my eye so I plumped for two of the same (black, matt, 32″ waist) at the not unreasonable price of £12.99 each. I also got some kind of canvas tool bag since my bike lives in the garage and I’m on the 1st floor with my tools and a bag might be useful.

On the way back I remembered I’d been meaning to get another hard drive now the 500GB ones are under £100. That’s my guide for hard drives. Once they go under £100 I’m in the market. The one in PC World on special was a Maxtor and it cost £84.99. I also picked up a pocket drive that’s a little bigger than an iPod. It has a capacity of £160GB and cost something like £65 or so. This means I now have over a terabyte of storage in my flat. In fact I think it’s 1.3TB which is kinda crazy, especially as I’ve almost filled it all up already. I was thinking back to when my then housemate James had a PC in 1997 with a 1GB drive and we thought that was kinda crazy.

And then I popped into Currys to buy a hoover. My flat has carpets but not that many and I didn’t want to get a proper big hoover with a hosepipe and long arm that’s impossible to store conveniently so I plumped for a little handgheld rechargeable one. Yes, it’ll take longer to clean but it only cost a tenner and can hide in a drawer when not being used.

And so with all this stuff packed away in my panniers and the hoover box bungied on the rack I set off home via Cannon Hill Park as I’ve figured that’s the route with the fewest hills between Selly Oak and Kings Heath.

As I emerged into Holders Lane there was an almighty crunch and my rear brakes brought my rear wheel to a stop.

Oop.

I removed the hoover box and the panniers and had a look. The metal bar which holds the rear wheel in place had snapped in half.

Bugger.

I bodged it together and started walking ever so carefully so as to keep the wheel in place. Thankfully there’s a bike shop near where I now live and eventually I got there. Turned out it wasn’t just the bar. It was the whole spindle that was broken. I suspect it might have been broken for a long time. Remember that click I had two years ago? And remember when the bearings kept falling out whenever I removed the wheel? I think that might have been the broken spindle.

Oop.

The young chap in the shop said it’d only cost £35 inc labour to fix it but it’ll take until Wednesday. That’s not too bad. I was expecting it to be much more severe than that. I was expecting it to be easier to just buy a new bike and freecycle this one, especially as it’s now three years old. But those sort of expectations are born of this disposable world we live in now and aren’t really that realistic.

And then I did my laundry in the launderette on Poplar Road which doesn’t appear to have been upgraded since 1957. I like that.