Huh. I knew that wearing my bike helmet had a horrible effect on my hair, but I didn't know that it actually encouraged car drivers to reduce the amount of road space they give me!

I think I will stick with the helmet anyway, though - since drivers tend to give women a wider berth, presumably a woman in a bike helmet is the safest possible cyclist.

I must say, I am quite surprised by just how much I am enjoying cycling to work; I think (weather permitting) it may be a habit that sticks. I should take some photos of my route one morning; parts of it are quite beautiful.

Work itself continues (oddly) to be quite enjoyable, Bobby's happy, and all three kids are in good phases. The house thing though ... Not good. According to the estate agent, it is looking increasingly likely that the whole deal is simply going to fall apart. Which means that we will either have to beg our landlord to extend our lease (unlikely, as he has other tenants lined up), or look for somewhere else to rent as of the end of this month.

I feel rather disbelieving and numb about this latest development. I keep thinking that because we've invested so much time and money in this deal - it's been dragging on since June, we've paid solicitor's fees, we've paid survey fees, we've lost the interest on our downpayment because it's been sitting in our solicitor's bank account for the past month - it simply can't fall through now.

But it might.

Our options should become clear in the next few days; wish us luck!

Meanwhile, since we need to eat regardless of where we live, our grocery order arrived from Sainsbury's as scheduled this evening. Only, when we started unpacking it, we realised that someone else's stuff had got mixed up with ours, so we had to call the driver back. It took us a few minutes to realise that there'd been a mix-up, because a lot of the stuff that they'd ordered was almost - but not quite - exactly what we'd ordered. For instance, we'd both ordered kids' size pots of fromage frais, but different brands. (They chose Ne$tle; we chose Mullers). We ordered quorn pieces; they ordered quorn sausages. They had organic whole milk, we had organic skim. We had baby carrots, they had big ones. We both had salmon. And so on. I'm thinking that the online delivery crowd at Sainsbury's must all come from a rather similar demographic. Or maybe it's just this neighbourhood.