Bikes. Music. Luxury accommodation for nesting birds.

Our kitchen is beginning to look like a bike shop. First of all there are the two bikes that Phil and I occasionally use. Far too occasionally at present! Then there is a bike that Phil bought because he was impressed by my hybrid (on-road/off-road) bike but which turned out to be not quite what he wanted. It was going to be bought by a friend of ours. He took it on trial to see if it suited him and then seems to have put it away while he got on with other things and forget about it. When we remembered to remind him, he returned it. So now we need to find another possible buyer. And over the weekend we acquired our grandson's bike. This was brought to our house for a kind of MOT. Grandfathers have their uses. 

The child has not ridden it for a good while and it has simply sat in the basement of their house doing nothing. Quite why he has not ridden it is unclear. He learnt to ride in the new modern way, starting off on a tiny little bike without pedals. The idea is to propel it along with your feet, rather like some of the very first bikes that were around before someone invented chains and pedals. In this way children learn to balance and can progress to a bike with pedals but without needing stabilisers, which can actually slow down progress in learning to ride properly. So at four years old he was whizzing around cycling all over the place. Maybe other activities just took over and left him no time for cycling. 

Now, however, his school is doing "Bikability". I assume this has taken over from what used to be called "Cycling Proficiency". They are going to be instructed safe cycling, cycling etiquette, road sense and all those sorts of things. Presumably a new trendy name makes it sound more appealing! 

His bike, more of a mountain bike than a classic road cycle, is extremely heavy. I certainly would not like to have to cycle that up any hills! 

The school has contracted in an expert to run this course for the youngsters. Our daughter has expressed her surprise at how many in the class are unable to cycle. Every year when they run this activity there are a few who opt out because they don't cycle but this year it amounts to about one third of the class: a high percentage of non-cyclists.! Does this say something about modern children, indeed modern society as a whole? 

Last night we accidentally watched a television programme where Alan Yentob interviewed Rod Stewart. I say accidentally because the TV just happened to be left on that channel after we had watched something else and suddenly it caught our attention. We are normally much more organised and discriminating in our television watching. This was in the "Imagine" series, which are often very interesting, as this one proved to be, reminding us of music we have not listened to in years and years. This prompted Phil to go and root through our collection of vinyl, hunting for our old Rod Stewart LPs and finding albums by various other artists at the same time. We shall have a great nostalgia fest later. 

Some of the vinyl collection has been replaced by CDs but not all and their are still a couple of shelves of LPs. We have been given instructions by our son that we are not to get rid of any of without consulting him; he wants, as they say, first dibs on our music collection. 

Out and about, running here and there, I often run down our local bridle path, the Donkey Line. Several times recently I have come across a horse tethered at the spot where the used to be a stopping place, not an actual station, for trains, back in the day when this was a branch line, connecting the mills of Delph to the larger conurbation of Uppermill. It seems that the owner of the horse brings a bucket of horse food, special treats instead of just grass and hay in his field, and parks parallel to the bridle path, then, instead of carrying the bucket up to his field, she collects the horse and walks him down to the donkey line where he receives his treat. Occasionally she grooms him there. It is very odd to come across your path blocked a person brushing a large horse. Today there was evidence that someone had been trimming a horse's main and tail. It was clearly not the same horse I have seen there before because he is dark brown while all the horse hair on the path was a nice honey-blonde colour. And the path was liberally strewn with the clippings. 

The local birds are going to have luxury link for their nests!