devi | (no subject)

(no subject)

My bike was stolen last weekend. Which sucks, but there's no point crying over spilt bike. At least it was cheap. And the point of this post is not to whinge, but to tell you that right now I am answering an ad in Daily Info for a "Small Female Mountain".

(What makes a mountain female? What gender is, say, Mount Fuji? Or the Matterhorn? Actually that one's easy. How small is small? The size of an Irish mountain? Is it a bonsai mountain? Otherwise, how the hell am I going to collect it?)

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how the hell am I going to collect it?

Turn it into a molehill, and get the mole removed. They freeze them off these days, I'm told.

Or else change your name by deed poll to Mohammed, and refuse to come to collect the item?

I must have implied somehow that I was Mohammed, as (having just spoken to the guy in question) he is bringing it round for me to look at.

This raises new worries. It sounds like he sells a lot of bikes. Where does he get them from? Maybe this small female mountain will turn out to be my own bike!

His phone number does turn up six times on the daily info page (a google search for it turns up a couple more occurences on the daily info pages, although nowhere else on the web (although that could be because of spaces in the number).

If it were a car, the advice would be "He's a dealer, not a private seller, so be (at least) extremely cautious". I'm not sure how much (given that the price is going to be around 40 quid, not 14000 quid...)

Hm, yes. Will you be around this evening? (He's coming over at about half five or six.) If so, I'd appreciate an extra pair of eyes to scope out both him and the bike...

Yup, will do.

The obvious thing (given the other information) is whether you want to ask him if he's a bad man, or whether you just want a bike, no questions asked :)

I fear it may be unethical bike shopping. I want a Fairtrade bike.

Ah. One of the other DailyInfo hits (http://www.dailyinfo.co.uk/unified_adboard.php?col=so) describes him as doing SMALL/MEDIUM DELIVERIES CLEARENCES

So, maybe he comes by them (reasonably) legitimately when clearing properties?

I've known people making (small) money out of buying up dead bikes and bringing them back to life. I guess if you get a rep for it then you pick them up from all sorts of places.

So, they might be on the level.

He came over a bit early in the end (I let Tommy know he didn't have to rush home!). Seemed nice enough, though I'm a poor judge of character. I asked him where he got the bikes and he said they came from house clearances and auctions. He services them and then sells them.

I went ahead and bought it. And I didn't see my own bike in the back of his car!

Maybe this small female mountain will turn out to be my own bike!

A clear-cut case of Poetic Injustice, if ever I heard one.

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