Making room to begin again.

The key catches unless I lift the door with my knee. The landlord demonstrated this as though it were a feature.

There are five boxes in the bedroom and one in the kitchen marked BOOKS, which contains the kettle. Tom packed that one. I recognised his handwriting before I recognised what was inside and stood looking at it for a stupidly long time.

We were very civil about the packing. That is what I keep telling people when they ask. Nobody asks what civil sounds like: the tape dispenser, mostly. One of us saying, "Do you want this?" about an object neither of us wants to decide about.

I have the yellow bowl. He has the good vacuum cleaner. This seems fair until I need to vacuum.

The workshop starts Thursday. Until then I need a shower curtain, a place for the bicycle and something to eat that involves a plate. Sat on the floor with my tea because the chair is under the boxes. A tram went past and the teaspoon rattled against the cup.

First thing I know about this flat: I can hear when people are going somewhere.

First customer: a woman who needed the bike for her cleaning shift, not a conversation about bikes. I gave her the conversation anyway because I was nervous.

Cut the brake cable too short. Did it again. Katja didn't pretend not to notice, which I appreciated after I stopped wanting her to pretend not to notice. She handed me another cable and said, "Leave yourself somewhere to put your hand."

Lunch was at the workbench. Apparently everyone here brings lunch in a jar except me. Mine was a squashed cheese roll wrapped in the receipt for a shower curtain.

Wrong bridge. Extra twenty minutes.

Found a garden with a gate that looks private but isn't. There was a man watering something already wet from the rain. Neither of us explained ourselves.

Soup inventory:

• one portion now
• two in the freezer
• one for the neighbour if I learn her name before it goes off

Too much cumin. Write that down before I make the exact same soup again.

A quieter kind of progress

Blue touring bike, rear wheel. I spent most of the morning chasing the buckle round the rim. Tighten here, loosen there, look again. For a while every correction made a different part worse.

Katja asked whether I was listening to the spokes or just looking at the dial. I had forgotten you could listen. We stood on either side of the wheel and plucked them like a very poor instrument.

My father used to do this in the shed. I can remember his hands clearly and almost nothing he said while he worked. When I phone him I ask about the weather, and when he phones me he asks whether the car is running, although I sold the car in April.

I nearly called him at lunch to tell him about the wheel. Then I imagined having to explain why the new job, why Leipzig, why no Tom in the background. Sent a photograph instead.

He replied: "Spoke at about four o'clock looks a bit loose."

It was.

Neighbour is Doro, not Dora. Soup exchange successful.

She invited me upstairs to play a game with little wooden sheep. Her friend Ben explained the rules while moving the pieces so fast I couldn't connect the explanation to anything happening on the table. Lost magnificently. Doro lost too and accused Ben of having practised.

I stayed until the last tram noise changed to the first bin-lorry noise. No, not that late. It felt that late because I hadn't looked at my phone.

She gave me my soup container back full of cherries.

Laundry, groceries, phone call with Jonas. He has bought an absurdly large lamp and wants my opinion after buying it.

Said it was lovely. It looks like a dentist is about to examine his sofa.

Rain loud enough on the workshop roof to stop conversation. Katja turned the radio off. We carried on working.

There is a difference between silence with someone who is angry with you and silence with someone who is replacing a bottom bracket. My body seems to need this pointed out.

Walked without the phone. Came home for it because I needed the shopping list.

Bought everything except the thing I went for.

Basil on the windowsill. The supermarket kind with thirty plants crammed into one pot. Doro says I should separate them; I haven't.

No entries for a while. Work was busy, then I had three evenings of doing nothing much and being annoyed that doing nothing much didn't feel restorative. Tom sent a photo of the cat asleep in my old drawer. I typed "my drawer" and deleted it. Asked whether the cat's ear was better.

It is.

That is the whole conversation, for now.

Said I couldn't cover Saturday. Katja said okay and went back to the rota.

I had prepared a reason involving a delivery slot. There is no delivery. I just wanted a Saturday that didn't belong to the workshop. Spent the evening rehearsing the explanation nobody requested.

Read twenty pages, none of which I could now describe.

The coffee seller said, "Same?" before I ordered.

Unfortunately the same is the drink I chose once because I couldn't read the menu from that distance. I have accidentally become a regular for a coffee I don't particularly like.

Next week: a small act of correction.

Doro walks quickly until there is a dog. Then everything stops.

We went towards the canal and ended up at a hardware shop because she remembered she needed hooks. I bought hooks too. Social influence, apparently.

On the way back she asked whether I missed Hamburg. I said I missed knowing how everything worked. Which tram door to stand beside. Which cupboard had the batteries. Whether a person saying "fine" meant fine.

She said she'd lived here nine years and still didn't know where to get her boots repaired. I had been waiting for her to say it would get easier. Instead we spent ten minutes looking at her boot.

I liked her for that.

Scratched the customer's fork while moving the bike off the stand. A small bright line right through the paint. I tried rubbing it with my thumb, as if perhaps it was only the idea of a scratch.

The customer had chosen that colour himself. He told me so when he brought it in. I remembered him telling me while I considered not mentioning it.

I told Katja first. She asked what I wanted to do. Horrible question. I wanted her to tell me the shop had a procedure and the procedure would remove me from the situation. Instead we rang him together.

He was annoyed. Not secretly grateful for my honesty. Not a character placed in my day to teach me that mistakes are fine. Annoyed, and entitled to be. We agreed to arrange the touch-up and pay for it.

After he hung up, I started explaining how careful I usually am. Katja said, "I know. Put the kettle on."

I cried briefly in the stockroom, between the tyres. Then I made tea and repaired three punctures. Both parts of the afternoon happened.

Need to move that stand. There is barely enough room to turn a bike with the delivery boxes there. I'll ask tomorrow, when it doesn't sound like an excuse.

On the tram home I remembered breaking the wing mirror on Dad's car when I was nineteen. I told him someone must have caught it in the car park. He looked at the blue paint on the gatepost and let me keep talking. We never discussed it again. I have sometimes taken that as kindness and sometimes as evidence that he decided something about me and didn't say what.

Perhaps he was just tired. It is remarkable how many meanings I have stored in other people's tiredness.

I rang him tonight. Not to confess to a wing mirror from fourteen years ago. Asked what he'd done today. He'd been sorting screws into little boxes, which sounds invented for this particular phone call but is exactly what he does. Told him about the fork. He asked whether the customer was coming back. I said yes, to collect it after the paint repair. He said, "Well, there you are."

I'm not certain where there is. I was glad to hear him moving the boxes around while we talked.

Tram empty except for a man protecting a birthday cake with both arms.

The customer with the repaired fork left a note. No grand forgiveness speech. Just thanks for sorting it.

Lunch outside with Katja. She has worked here eleven years and still calls the broken stool temporary.

Peaches bruised by the time I got home. Cut them straight into the yellow bowl.

Bolt moved. Knuckles hit the frame. Won, technically.

Hooks finally up. One holds my jacket. One holds the bag I keep forgetting to take shopping. The third is empty because I measured badly and the door hits it.

Doro came down to see the result and stayed for dinner. We ate the last of the too-much-cumin soup. She said it was good. I told her she was eating June.

Basil still alive, despite me. Texted Jonas a picture of the hooks. He sent one of the lamp. It has not improved.

Doro left at ten. Dishes tomorrow. One of the hooks has already come loose.

Read the first page sitting on an actual chair.

The key still catches. I haven't become the sort of person who gets the landlord to fix that promptly. But the kettle lives beside the socket now, and I know which floorboard wakes the woman downstairs. Katja has started leaving the difficult wheel jobs for me. The customer collected his repaired fork and said the colour match was good.

Tom asked whether I wanted the drawer unit shipped over. I said no. Then I worried he would take that as a statement about us, when mostly it was a statement about the cost of shipping a cheap drawer unit.

Maybe it was a little about us.

Next month I want to invite Dad. Not for a project. He will find a project anyway; there is the door. I want him to see where I live before every conversation becomes an update about somewhere he has never been.