Friday 9th November 07

I took the kiddies to school and then cycled on to Cycle Heaven as my new bike has a bit of a problem with the front light getting knocked when the front wheel turns right round and contacts the frame, which happens when the bike falls over. The light has got knocked several times and last night, it happened again and the fitting got broken.

Anyway, the mega chilled and multi talented Ashley fixed it by putting the light onto a lower bracket, which means when the wheel turns right back, the light misses contacting the frame.

Came back via Martin's and collected a couple of sacks of biodegradables, and came home for 10am, Gill just leaving for her art class. I kept my sacks on the trailer and cycled to St Nicks for the York Rotters research session with the Open University and the New Economics Foundation, a project funded by DEFRA.

This meeting was very interesting, as the aim was to find out about the benefits of community composting groups, the environmental, social, health and other benefits, and how to measure these. At the meeting there were several volunteers, several 'managers' and one recipient of composting advice, my friend Debbie whom I got a compost bin and she's still using it.

The session lasted til nearly 3pm, used loads of post-it notes and was good for us Rotters as a planning session too, as it helped us look at what we were doing and see where we need to go now.

Home to an empty house, Gill had gone to pick up the boys, so I spent some time putting together the new compost bin from CompostFlow... this was not particularly easy, but I did it eventually.

Had the broccoli soup I made yesterday for tea... lovely. Then went out to the GreenSpeak meeting at Miller's Yard, which was on The Future of York, and was interesting and quite complex.

Got a phone call from Out Of This World, a phone call I had not been looking forward to, that they will be closing tomorrow. I was told last week by the staff that the whols company, the Creative Consumer Co-op, was in financial difficulty, and now all the stores are closing. Such a pity. Sadness.

Came home via a skip with wood offcuts in it which I had asked about earlier, filled the trailer and brought them home.