Thursday 14th June 07

Woke at 7 and had my cereal before the boys came down, and did my blog to finish what I started yesterday. Gill took the boys to school and our eldest fell off his bike and screamed the place down, and was rescued by a stranger who helped pick him up.

Went back to bed for a bit and we got up at 11.30... where did the morning go?

I did several bits of York Green Festival work and also pinched out sideshoots on the tomato plants and even ventured out into the rain-sodden garden, and then , all too soon, 2.30 came and I had to pack up and get ready for going to school for our youngest's class assembly. The assembly was disjointed but had some good bits.

After this I went to the University where Jo had modified the York Green Festival Stall applicating form and it is now ready for distribution, a relief for me. Many thanks to Jo for being willing to sort me out! Over the past couple of weeks I have wondered about my decision not to print, or to have a printer attached to this laptop. However now with friends with computer knowhow it doesn't matter so much. Spent 45 minutes chatting about various subjects, and felt much helped and encouraged.

Came back and made a bit of tea, tried to fry some cubed silken tofu which was a bit silly... as it's meant for making into smoothies and soups, etc. With this I had some slices of one of last years pumpkins, pasta and some very ripe blue cheese sauce... tasty! All done on the woodstove.

Soon it was time to go to my CRAG meeting, at the Golden Fleece on Pavement, and there were just six of us there. However it was quality not quantity which mattered and we had a very successful meeting. We agreed about which sorts of targets we'd use, and chose three.

So our main target, the one we'll make public and invite new CRAG members to try to work to, is a 'Matching Individual Target' of 4500kg CO2/year, which is 10% below the UK national average of 5000kg per person from home heating and transport. This excludes food and other less easily measurable emissions.

The second target is a Shared Group Target, where all our measured emissions are pooled and averaged, and again we are aiming for a group average of less than 4500kg/year. This will make it feel better for the higher emitters as their emissions will be balanced by the number of keen CRAGgers who have tiny personal carbon footprints (ie our household of four has a measured footprint using the calculator York CRAG is using, of less than a tonne, 1000kg. This is divided by four for individual emissions.)

Our third target are for people like me who have small footprints, and we can voluntarily choose 'Varied Individual Targets' which could be 10% below last year's measured emissions.

We then discussed our plans for the next few months and we decided to do some publicity at the Green Festival, a 'launch' in August and a public meeting in September about transport, a member's social/planning meeting in October, a public meeting in November on home heating and a members social in December, and probably a public meeting on carbon offset in Jan when people are booking holidays.

When I got back I tried to do some writing up on the computer but got a bit waylaid by my lovely but intense friend in America, on Googletalk. As this is not such an easy medium to communicate, she invited me to ring her at about midnight our time, and I spent an hour chatting but felt a bit of the Spanish inquisition about it, and when Gill woke up she was disturbed by hearing my side of the conversation, as I was being defensive and having to explain myself, which she hasn't heard me have to do ever before. Gill and I spent another hour talking but didn't have a fall out as such, the problem is that I spend too much time on Googletalk and this has somewhat replaced our previous evening pattern of Scrabble in front of the stove. I promised my wife that I would do my best to spend more time with her and less on the computer.

Bed late.