Call me a bike thief

Yesterday my replacement bicycle lock got so stuck before class that I gave up on it and (with Alex, who kindly forsook her own working bicycle to be with me) ran down castle hill and along by all the shops to Kings' college, dodging the late afternoon shoppers and clutching my books, boots heels stomping along the pavement, listening to Alex's plans to direct a Shakespeare play transposed to the context of gang rivalry.

We arrived on time, had our lesson and then walked back with considerably less haste then we had taken to get there. In the evening, I went to the plodge to try and get those big scissors you use to break through bike locks, but they hadn't any.

They did have a hacksaw though, so I borrowed that, and knelt beside my bike and sawed away at the lock.

'Srzzzchshhh'

It was rather noisy, and also I looked quite suspect, there in the dark trying to break open a bike lock. A man looked through the gate to the bike shed and called out, 'Is everything alright in there?'

'I'm just trying to get my bike. My bike lock's stuck so I'm trying to cut through it.'

With that rational explanation and also probably as a result of his realisation that I am a scrawny girl and not your typical bike thief, he asked if I needed help and proceeded to saw through the last bit of the bike lock. 'Now that was your bike, wasn't it?'

To rest a little after all that exertion (who needs push ups when you just hacked through rubber and metal) I made valentine's day cards for next week, while listening to Punks and Poets by Elliot Root, and got into such a groove of cutting, pasting, writing and good music that I only stopped at 12.30 am. (Possibly why I missed my lecture this morning)