Friday 6th April 07, A 'Good Friday!'

Today really started with a phone call from a photographer from the Press who was supposed to come at 10am but rang wanting to come earlier... so he arrived at about half past nine to get an image of me with a bin bag I took off the pavement outside Lloyds TSB in order to find out what kinds of materials they were throwing away, and if there was any personal information that people could get at... I found lots of recyclable materials and evidence of very wastful practices, so I recorded the evidence and wrote to the bank complaining. I copied the letter to the council to keep them informed, and eventually recieved a reply which thanked me for my committment to waste reduction and warned me that if I removed bin bags off the pavement again I could be prosecuted. This juxtaposition warrented more publicity so I contacted the Press.

Soon after he went, my friend Suzanne arrived, with her daughter who's in our youngest son's class on Fridays, as she goes to another school for the rest of the week. She has dyspraxia and recieves special help in the other school, but when she goes to the secondary school she'll do better if she has some friends there. Suzanne came round to see the garden and recycling, and I gave her some plants ('Poached Egg', Limnanthes) which are good at attracting beneficial insects. Had a really nice chat and cuppa, she left at midday.

I went into town after lunch, to deliver some leaflets about next Thursday's CrUST meeting about the Green Festival, and to pick up the compostables from Out Of This World. Whilst cycling round to give out the posters about the meeting I visited Miller's Yard in Gillygate, wher my friend Dylan and his partner have set up a healthy living centre. I used to work in the same buildings nearly 20 years ago, when Gillygate Wholefood Co-operative was there. I had one summer's employment and fell foul of the two feminist lesbians who ran it. One morning I greeted them with 'Hello Ladies' and they took umbridge and growled at me that they weren't ladies, they were women. I didn't understand, but this confrontation led me to discover a bit about sexual and gender politics, feminism, and from there, discovered the Green Party and 'environmentalism' (later known as sustainability)and the rest is history.

I hope Dylan's venture succeeds. He has a cafe which just sells hot drinks and juices so far, and a series of treatment rooms and a meeting room and a yoga/pilates room. He's invested everything he has into it, and he's the lovliest, gentle, kind chap. I hope to be able to have some meetings there.

So home with compostables to process, which included a large number of punnets of strawberries, each with about half the fruits inedible and going soggy, and the other half perfect for making into fruit-leather. So at midnight, after having much trouble trying to write my blog and failing to get it to publish (lost an hour's worth of typing, very annoying) I chopped up the strawberries and some apples, liquidised then, rubbed the puree through a seive and poured the slop into one of the non-stick trays we have primarily for drying fruit. This was balanced on the stove for an overnight drying. It should take just a couple of days befor it is dry enough to turn out onto another non-stick sheet and finish off the drying. Then I'll get busy with the scissors and create a jar-full of delicious strawberry snacks...