Disconnected facts...
Am full of smug virtue because last night I mended two punctures and did a load of ironing. In general, I iron but once a year, when my summer clothes come out, and occasionally if I'm going to a wedding or something.
On Sunday I will be in Regent's Park, helping with a knitting workshop at the Camden Green Fair and Bikefest.
And last Monday, I visited the homestead and went for a walk through a field of jittery cows with my parents while Picul and Jim made fresh pasta:

Weekend plans all cancelled because, as of 7 this morning, we have a beautiful niece! Here she is, roughly nine hours old. More photos here.
[Edit May 29: her name is Niamh Imogen. I've just performed my first godmotherly duty by providing a written explanation of the vagaries of Irish spelling and pronunciation for her parents to use to deflect the querulous...]

A pretty uneventful week. Successful interviews for a new person at work, celebrated with colleagues and a very nice Grüner Veltliner. A less-than-epic hike to Acton pushing bike, thence to work, thence back again to cough up £110 and cycle home on a machine that feels like about 50% old bike and 50% replacement parts. (I wish my bike had a cool name like Blixa, Hol's old bike. Perhaps I should christen it The Blue Meanie or something, but it just seems too inappropriately late, like Angelina Jolie deciding to rename her three-year-old Pax instead of Pham). A weekend of cleaning the flat, eating sushi, raging cramps in the small hours, watching The Queen (meh, too much clunky exposition) after an annoying return journey to the DVD rental place because they mistakenly gave us The Quiet the first time. There's a haiku-like eloquence to the IMDB plot keywords - Teenage Girl / Swimming Pool / Molestation vs. Newspaper Headline / London England / Loss Of Loved One.

Just got back in from a brilliant march from Vauxhall across the Thames and all the way round Parliament Square with the knitted river. (Here's why.) A few more photos here.

On Sunday, a visit to the homestead and the chance to spend time with my family and see Mum's birthday arbour in situ. Then, a bank holiday Monday of lounging about, punctuated by an hour's tinkering with my bike. The tyres kept going soft, which was annoying, but I managed to make things a whole lot worse. How much worse? Well, I shall be wheeling it to the bike hospital in Acton with the transmission slung over the handlebars in a carrier bag next week, bracing myself to write a big cheque. Corollary is that I'm stuck riding the Tube to work til then, so am feeling more sluggardly than usual without my daily exercise.

A knitty post encroaches onto the main blog... Here's M's mum making a start on a rabbit for her grandchild at the I Knit London shop. We spent a couple of hours there choosing yarn while M and his dad visited Tower Bridge, then we walked respectively north and west along the Thames to meet up for lunch in Waterloo.