A Snickety Start

A Lemony Snicket start to the day.

But let me start two days earlier.

The boy has had a relapse with the street drugs, the street drugs I didn't refer to earlier, but maybe now I can.
I have.
It took him a week to tell me, but fortunately, he told my friend R straight away and she said he must talk to us about it.
But as things sometimes do, several things have fallen into place over this. He has finally rung a support service we get as part of a benefits package from Kev's work, the anti-depressants the doctor has given him are starting to work, and we have found a support group for him. BUT....I didn't feel as though I could leave him this weekend. So Kev went to the Static on his own. Well, on his own with Whisky.

So, all I had to do this morning was to cycle to church, which, considering I used to cycle four miles to Mayhem every day, should not have been a challenge. I would take Alex's bike, and Kevin had pumped up the tyres.
HOWEVER....and typing this I feel foolish. I couldn't get the kick stand to go down. I even sat on the floor and tried to wrench it manually, but sans result. SO I undid the bolt and took it off.
Ok, result.
Nope. Then, the mudguard was loose and scraping against the tyre. So I tied it back. But however tightly I tied the thing, it kept coming back down.
Nil desperandum, there was a back-up plan. I would take Kev's bike. I needed to lower the seat, because I couldn't sit on it and still reach the peddles, but it has a quick-release catch, so no problemo. Yeah, right, no problemo if you had the strength of Thor. So that wasn't working for me.
But there are back-up bikes! Neither are in working order...except that Kevin has fixed one, and I hoiked it down from the rack. Seat too high again, but this time easily lowered with some WD40 and a spanner.
It was by no means a comfortable ride, and the gears are semi-stuck in a really high gear, but I got there in time to grubbily shake hands with a few people.

While I was doing all this, I was thinking, 'a few years back, (quite a few), I might have thought, "now this is a situation where I do need a man",' but the truth is, it was simply a situation where I needed someone more competent than me and in the end, I got there anyway.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

So, unrelated to that, The Brompton Mix, Ben's band, have had a great review in an online magazine, Apple Juice.
Nice one.

And, although I've posted this on Facebook, it's so good, I'm going to put the link up here too. Nineteen percent calling Beyonce out on 'Run the World'.

This is a long video, 50 minutes I think, but it is a fascinating review of new research on how negative stereotypes affect career choice. It is amazing how subtle some of the factors are.