The Brick, Phyllis and Ducks

[ffutures]

A busyish sort of day.

Started out by doing a job that I singularly failed at yesterday, adding a battery recharge cable and lighter socket (for the satnav) to my new bike. Yesterday I couldn't figure out how the hell to get at the battery, not even with the help of the bike's instruction manual and a Haynes manual - a brief description of the procedure is as follows:

1 Open seat then
2 remove side panel to left of seat then
3 remove the tools from the tool box and
4 poke a screwdriver down a hole in its base which
5 levers out a plastic cover below which
6 lets you try to pull out a giant plug which goes into the engine control computer (a metal box that lives under the tool box) so that you can
7 slide out the engine control computer (and probably drop it in a puddle) and then
8 remove the tool box so that you can
9 get at the top of the battery

Today I realised I needed a longer screwdriver and three or four hands, but eventually got it done and added everything. Here are pictures of the bike as it is now, with luggage and my old crap satnav - for the moment this will sit in a holder I've jury-rigged on the handlebars, but I'd like to get it a bit further forward, not sure how yet.





Next I went to get some photos of the first of the Crossrail tunnelling machines, which turns out to be called Phyllis (after the creator of the London AZ maps). I took five or six pictures but they all looked much the same, so I just went with two from slightly different viewpoints, on the footbridge where I've taken most of my Crossrail pictures.






I went on from there to take my favourite canal-side walk to Camden Town, and saw an amazingly cute duck which I really can't identify - anyone know what it is?





Using spoiler cuts here which I hope will be good for multi-photo entries like this.

Yes - it works!

Comments

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Thanks - that's the one, and there were also some females around judging by some of the other pictures I've found on line. For some reason I'd never seen them before, although there are apparently lots in the UK.

[uk-sef.livejournal.com]

They are very common in the places where they were deliberately imported and released (being a non-native species) and not at all elsewhere! They apparently don't get out and about that much for flighted fowl.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

WEll, the Regents Canal at this point runs through Regents Park and the London Zoo, so not exactly surprising there should be some around.