Simon Butcher

Chumby!
He was once a little green slab of clay. Chumby!
You should see what Chumby can do today. Chumby!
He can walk into any book, with his pony pal Pokey, too.
If you've got a heart then Chumby's a part of you.

In the wee hours of the morning, I was privileged to receive an invitation to purchase a Chumby — not a Gumby — through their “Chumby Insider” product launch. Needless to say, I was excited!

Alas, it wasn't meant to be…

Lately I've been doing an awful lot of cycling. At least that is to say: an awful lot relative to the amount of cycling I've done over the past decade. While I'm not cycling as much as I should, I am managing to do at least a couple of bicycle commutes a week, which in itself is a fairly short ≈18km round-trip.

To pick this new habit up properly, I read a lot of blogs, forums and other sites about commuting by bike in order to glean some tips and pointers. Unfortunately these sites only contained information from people who have been commuting to work for so many years they could do it in even the most bitter of weather conditions, half-asleep.

While I'm not a psycho, I have already managed to clock-up over 500km of riding with the new bike. Because of this milestone, I thought I should share some of my experiences.

Recently I mentioned that an Ex of mine was to arrive for a short visit. These plans didn't come together when I put my foot down last night, effectively cancelling them.

Ordinarily I wouldn't air such things out here, but in this instance I felt I really needed to let it out into the open and allow the funk to dissipate.

One week ago I was awoken earlier than usual by the sound of what I initially thought was a chainsaw. This being somewhat odd and inexplicable, I made the effort to get out of bed and take a peek. It seemed workers had arrived to shut down the fountain and, from what I could tell at the time, they were starting to encase it in wood.

Being a little too weird and therefore difficult to comprehend at the extremely unsociable hour of 7:30am, I went to vegetate under the shower and wake up. Once outside, I still failed to comprehend what exactly was going on here.

Death seems to be a common theme lately. I seem to know or at least know of several people who are currently going through their grieving process right now, as if it's some sort of organised or seasonal event. Indeed, death has come to my family, with distant relative Geoff Echberg, who could be considered my Great Uncle, passing away last Saturday at the age of 92.