I collected a new spare cycle from a bike shop yesterday. 
Mainly it will be my son riding it when he’s over from Nottingham. We can then
go for some all-day touring together. I’ve a Dawes Super Galaxy at home – great
but pricey to have a clone so I ordered its younger sister, a Dawes Vantage.
The man in the bike shop said, “I can swap the default saddle for a Brookes
quite cheaply.”
I said, “No thanks, the Brookes is made of leather and I’m a
veggie.”
“No problem,” he said, “but what about other stuff on the
bike that is made from animals?”
“There isn’t anything,” I said, wondering if maybe there was
some lanolin in a lubricant.
“Ah,” he said, pointing at the handlebars. “The tape.”
“But… but they’re cork.”
“Yes,” he said, with a smile showing he’d scored.
I waited a minute to see if the penny would drop by itself,
but when it didn’t I had to say, “Cork is tree.”
How do you refrain from smiling in such circumstances?
I rode the new bike home. Marvelous, it goes much faster than my 4-year-old and twice-as-expensive Super Galaxy. I’ll have to go back to that bike shop and ask him to make my older bike faster – even if the bike is a vegan!
***Update*** apparently the stearic acid in tyres aren’t always vegetarian. However, all Michelin tyres are totaly vegan whether they are for cars or bikes. Well done, Michelin!
I’m looking forward to Brighton at the end of September. FantasyCon in on and I’m there for the weekend. I’ll be selling a few books – the Escape Velocity anthology, and Exit, Pursued by a Bee. Mainly I am there to meet so many writer friends such as Stephen Upham, and Sam Stone. I am hoping to arrive in time for the launch of Full Fathom Forty – an anniversary collection of off-beat fantasy stories that includes my own In Absentia. There is an information and PayPal link to buy the book here: http://www.britishfantasysociety.co.uk/news/full-fathom-forty/
The Amazon.co.uk page is here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Full-Fathom-Forty-David-Howe/dp/0953868133/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1316592067&sr=8-1
And the Book Depository page is here: http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Full-Fathom-Forty-David-Howe/9780953868131
Book Depository currently have it for £11.99, saving £4 on the cover price, plus FREE worldwide delivery
A handy way to display all my kindle books is here http://kindlegraph.com/authors/geoffnelder
Shame my Escaping Reality humorous thriller isn’t listed there but it available as a Kindle and other ebook formats at Smashwords here.
At FantasyCon (this coming weekend in Brighton, Uk) is the lunch launch of Full Fathom Forty, a collection of forty short speculative fiction stories selected from thousands of entries this year. It is to celebrate the BFS 40th anniversary. Below is a list of contributors. Somehow, a story of mine was chosen. But look at the luminaries in whose light I bask!…
