40 Bicycles

My little brother is showing off... It is somewhat annoying that Peter has a better grasp of HTML than I do. It is also somewhat annoying that he finished his school term yesterday. He will now be plaguing me for the use of my computer for the rest of the summer. This morning I cycled into Hanley (the city centre of Stoke-on-Trent) with Peter. As usual (this is at least the fourth time this 'summer') the heavens opened and we were both drenched to the bone. I am beginning to think that my bicycle has some sort of occult rain-summoning power. In other news we have someone else moving into our house this evening, a guy from India (I couldn't spell his name even if I tried). Mark is in France at the moment, Jonathan in the West Indies. Richard is down south and will not be staying with us next term (though I expect that we will still see quite a bit of him). I have been quite exhausted this last week and am hoping to regain some energy over the next few days, although I have quite a few things that I need to do. This last week I heard an example of the extremes that the parochialism that exists within Stoke-on-Trent will extend to. I thought that I would share it with you all. Apparently a 70 year old man who had lived in Abbey Hulton for the whole of his life visited Hanley for the first time. He had never ridden an escalator in his life before. Abbey Hulton is only about 2 miles away from Hanley.