Tom Womack

I managed to break my Kindle 3G-with-keyboard (put a light rucksack on its back when it was face-down on a train seat, found the screen broken when I picked it up); Amazon sent me a replacement basic Kindle wifi for £50, which isn't unreasonable.

But on the Kindle 3G, when a book that I'd pre-ordered came out, it downloaded as soon as I connected to wifi and appeared in the home page of books currently on the device, generally right at the top of the list. On this one, when a pre-ordered book comes out it appears in 'archived items' in the appropriate position for its title, so I don't know anything's happened for ages.

I imagine there are lots of Kindle owners reading this: is this a configurable behaviour that I can configure back to the previous, desireable one?

I was always told that it was unwise to cycle with things hanging from my handlebars; but I did it anyway because I never got round to buying panniers.

Last night, on the way to ewx's house to watch the Olympic Opening Ceremony (my new house, whilst rapidly converging on awesomeness in all ways, has two TV aerials the wires from neither of which can actually reach the telly), I discovered the full extent of the problem. I had a bottle of white wine in a canvas bag; the top of a bottle of white wine, you will recall, is smoothly wedge-shaped. This wedge was pointing towards the front of the bike.

So when the bag got caught between the forks and the wheel, the bottle was drawn in; glass is solid and spokes are basically wire, so it bent a spoke of the wheel. This broke the screw-cap on the bottle enough to let some of the wine out (the glass was undamaged), and bent the wheel into a pretzel shape enough to make the bike unridable; the bike stopped abruptly. Thankfully this happened just near my house, at traffic lights so I wasn't going at any speed and I didn't fall off, and even more thankfully Ian happened to be passing and wheeled the bike back to mine while I headed off carrying the wine-bottle in its damaged bag. The ceremony was really very spectacular, but is better-covered elsewhere.

De-pretzeling the wheel fortunately didn't require a new rim, so cost £12 at the Arbury Court bike shop. But I did take the opportunity to buy some nice large panniers; £25 for ones big enough to hold one and a half Sainsbury's-bags on each side.

It's so much easier to cycle back from Sainsbury's with your shopping in panniers than with it hanging in plastic bags from the handlebars!

The fivemack is currently a gentlemen of leisure, which is like a NEET but with a healthier bank account; he has this week off and starts at ARM on Monday.

Thanks to uitlander, the meadow is strimmed and looking much more like a lawn.

Thanks to ghoti's bakfiets, the house is equipped with coffee-table books, tea and coffee.

Thanks to Panther Taxis the house is equipped with a coffee-table and six chairs.

Thanks to cambridgevanman.co.uk the house is equipped with a dining-table and a comfy chair, the outbuilding holds a large fraction of my miscellaneous mathom collection, and much of the abandoned mathom collection of the previous owners has been consigned to the tip.

And thanks to many of my friends the house is pleasantly warmed and has chocolate.

So the fivemack is generally in a quite acceptable state; and walking and cycling backwards and forwards to the house variably heavily laden is probably quite good for him.

Tomorrow should be a red-letter day: not only does the fridge arrive, but so does the man who will remove the undesirable fittings from the living room and the front bedroom.

I have tried cutting the meadow with shears.

I have determined after two hours and three attempts that it is not practical to cut the meadow with shears.

Do any of my Cambridge readers have a strimmer I could borrow for an afternoon?

Yesterday, Alison and Andrew got married at Longstowe Hall. It was a fantastic wedding: beautiful venue (a Tudor country house with an elaborate garden and some rather enthusiastic wall-freizes), fantastic company, marvellous food and a spectacular wedding cake with a spaniel, followed by a ceilidh sufficiently enthusiastic that I noticed I'd torn both sleeves off my favourite yellow silk shirt.

You can see a few more photos on Facebook; contact me if you want prints or enormous versions for making your own prints.

The meeting on Friday turned out (I was told this in an email on Thursday evening, which I didn't see until Friday lunchtime, because my email-reader thought it was spam because it had too many references to sums of money in) not to be for the exchange, but for the pre-exchange Reading Through All The Paper. To continue on the poultry theme, it was to ensure that all my ducks were in line. So I have signed documents providing me with not-very-onerous commitments in the way of paying HSBC considerable sums regularly, have admired the pink and orange shaded areas on a number of Official Maps and the little T-markings indicating which fences I will own, and have read through the series of covenants that the house acquired upon losing council-house status in 1987; none of them are terrifying.

Planned completion date is 22 June, which is about the busiest date in my work year (it's the Friday before all my employers' customers come for three days of being told how awesome we are and what wonders we plan to do with their next year's subscription fees); exchange 'sometime next week-ish', at which point I can start giving firm dates to the contractors who are needed to fix things.

This morning I went round with the estate agent, weeded the front drive, looked at the electrics (a few sockets need replacing, as well as the main fuse board), and checked through the inventory that the sellers had sent to my solicitor; the comfy sofas which are the one bit of furniture that I would have coveted have already gone, and the vendors are conveniently leaving all the curtains and carpets and other such fixtures. I've met my new next-door neighbour, who reminds me pleasantly of grandma ten years ago.

On 11 May, at St Andrew's Street Baptist Church, between 8pm and 11pm, there will be an International Ceilidh.

It will be called by the far-famed and fierce-bearded Jacob Steel, and there will be a live band including me on the bassoon. Tickets £5 for students and £6 for real people; or £4/£5 if you email dance@friendsoffreetown.org.uk first.

The hope is to raise enough money to build one well in Sierra Leone.

First CTC ride of the year: out on the Coton footpath, Madingley Road, old-A428, Knapwell, Conington, Hemingford Grey, St Ives, tea and cake. Wiggle cross-country through Huntingdon and Brampton, over the A1 and down to the top of Grafham Water. Track around Grafham Water to the visitor's centre at the south (amused by universally ignored 'cyclists dismount' signs at the top of all the interesting descents), pie and orange juice.



South to Little Staughton (I think), into St Neots at Eaton Socon, riverside paths then out of St Neots on the B1046. Abbotleys, Waresley, hot chocolate and more cake. Gamlingay, past Little Gransden airfield, back onto the B1046, Longstowe, Bourne, Toft, Hardwick, back onto the old-A428 and back home.

110km in total; I could have given two decimal places had my bike computer not totally reset itself at about the turning off to Hardwick (99.some km) and then not admitted the existence of the sensors. I made it, but I was really struggling up some of the hills between St Neots and Waresley (dropping 250 metres behind the back-marker and unable to summon up the strength to close the distance). Apparently frequently cycling distances you can just about manage is a good way to get better ...

There's an official write-up of this ride on the CTC Cambridge blog; I am visible in two of the photos, with this one placing me in an unrepresentative position in the pack.

Pied wagtails, sometimes two at a time, have been flying up to my window, landing carefully on the sill, and tapping on it with their beaks all morning.

I could think of this as attacking the wagtail in the mirror, but in that case I don't see why the wagtail appears indifferent to the real wagtail next to it while it taps away.

PS: they're long-tailed tits not pied wagtails; fluffier, a bit smaller, brown bits on the side of the neck - I had wondered whether juvenile pied wagtails had the brown bits, but they don't.

The book stall at the Rose Crescent side of Cambridge market has clearly got a new batch of used review copies from a local reviewer in. I've picked up a new Greg Egan of which I was previously unaware, Novik's sixth dragon book, the third in Durham's Acacia trilogy, and the seventh of Tchaikovsky's insect books, for a little over twenty pounds. The hoard has not been much picked over.