The good, the bad and the bizarre

Thank you so much for all the kindness yesterday. I hadn't realised how well those colours would fit among the sunrises and sunsets in popular.

The good: suddenly my motorbike is in demand - two people who sounded serious were due to come to look at it today, with another travelling from South Wales to Cornwall prepared to do a detour via Oxford in the late afternoon if I hadn't sold it to one of the others. In fact the first, also from South Wales, liked it, left a cash deposit and plans to collect it next week. Finally. Hurrah!

The bad: yesterday I had a very long chat with a heritage apple specialist - the contact of a friend - who told me that the chances of my apple tree being true and ungrafted were very slight indeed. He told me to dig down around the trunk and see if I could see a join below soil level. Today I dug down and I think that what's in extras is indeed a join. I've sent him a photo to check. If so I have 60 bits of carefully nurtured useless root stock in pots. Ah well, no matter - he runs a grafting course in the winter (the right time for grafting) and I can take some twigs from the tree to graft onto good root stock that he will supply. Meanwhile the five apples I mailed him yesterday have arrived and his professional verdict is 'yummy'! 

The bizarre - I'm not sure which is more bizarre - the continued existence of this quarter-century-old 2D tube of glue or the fact that I have never blipped it, despite crossing the road over it many, many times.