I’ve been spending money on bike stuff this week. Unfortunately not on my bike, but equally, it wasn’t my money.

I needed urgently to get some spares and tools for the bike workshop, and now I’d tidied up sufficiently that new items wouldn’t simply vanish in the pile, I placed a few orders.

We have half a dozen donated pumps and they’re all pretty rubbish, so these were top of the list.

I’ve used this make of pumps for over a decade and haven’t managed to break one yet so I’m pretty confident these will work well for us.

The workshop did have a compressor but I don’t like them, and it turned out the “workshop” compressor belongs to the previous mechanic, so I wanted it in storage where it couldn’t go wrong/get damaged.

We also really needed a cassette removal tool, which is this strange looking device, used to help take the rear gears off a bike axle. This was to replace a cheapo version that broke as soon as you waved it at a cassette. I’d ordered one from our regular supplier but it wasn’t turning up and we had several bikes waiting for a replacement.

On Friday morning I called to chase up said order; It turned out that the supplier hadn’t received the email containing last month’s parts and tools order, so I had to give it over the telephone and add this month’s order to it, which rather destroyed my cunning plan to order a bit each month so we don’t break the budget.

The accounts department is going to have a collective heart attack, but they did say to get what I needed…