Sunday 15th July 07

Today is my last chance to modify the documentation for York Green Festival to allow it to go ahead. However in the morning I had a phone chat with Green Party Councillor Andy D'Agorne, who has offered his support for the event and has offered to email the Council official who is being less than helpful, and then a Freecycling couple came to pick up some potato sacks to store their spuds in. Good to get 20 of these re-used!

Then a friend Robin whom I met through CRAG rand and offered me a load of old floorboards for the stove.... so I helped him unload his trailer and showed him around the garden, THEN got on with my work.

After lunch went to town to attend the open day at Millers Yard Healthy Living Centre off Gillygate, as Dylan had asked me to go down for 3pm to do a talk on home composting, as I compost his orange halves and coffee grounds, voluntarily. However the wet weather had reduced the numbers of people present and no-one wanted to have a home composting talk. However as I was standing around with a coffee waiting to see if there were any latecomers to the talk, my ex partner of 10 years turned up, as she is moving back to York and for a while we have both known that we needed to have a chat to put our split behind us, so I could apologise for behaviour I now know was unacceptable, and give her the chance to tell me how she felt about it, all these years later. I hadn't expected to see her here, but we had the neccessary conversation, and she was very mature about it and not bitter, which moved me to tears. I explained as much as I could about my situation/condition and how I saw things now, and was able to make my sorrow and regret known. Felt like quite a relief, a weight off my mind.

After 4pm went to Fishergate to pick up some Freecycled audio-cassette tapes dumped unused in a skip by students, and rescued by a Freecycler.

Then to Heslington to pick up my eldest son who's been to Rowntree Park with a friend and needed bringing home for tea. We all had tea together, it is supposed to be good for families to do this but I find it stressful as my boys are difficult to be with, kicking me under the table, being messy and getting upset when I ask them to eat with their face over the plate to stop stuff falling on the floor, etc. I much prefer them to eat first and then we eat later, in peace.

Spent lots of time on the computer, on dialup, trying to deal with various projects including YGF.

Frustrating that when sending large files, the dialup has short timeouts which mean the process starts all over again, so frustrating.