Hurrah for Insurance!

I know: "What?!!" But I've got to hand it to Halifax / Sainsbury's: they've come up with the goods.

After the obligatory visit from the assessor and his lie-detector voice-analysing machine (it may just have been a dictaphone, as he said), the claim was settled and we were awarded an obscene amount of notional cash to spend in their bike shop.

To be fair, Wheelies were quite good: phoning me every 6th day to encourage me to buy a "superbike". I eventually relented - I know, the hardship - and bought a carbon road bike from them. The Felt Z6 should arrive mid January.

We cashed out the remainder of the settlement and have done pretty well. We bought 2 stumpy replacements: mine: a metallic red ex-demo, Claire's: a woman-specific Safire that fits her better than the last one. With the cash left we managed to replace the x-cal 29er.

So much to Claire's horror, we appear to have gained a bike out of this "tragedy." The bike room (no, they're not going back in the shed) will never have looked so "healthy."