Saturday 3rd May 08

Awoken at 7am by loud banging downstairs and after three episodes, went down to see what had happened. One of my sons had got a splinter in his finger and was having a paddy about this. It is absolutely incredible how much fuss such a tiny irritant causes.... amazing!

I tried to talk to him calmly but was shouted down. I told him that if it were my splinter, I'd cut the top layers of skin off with my penknife scissors and extract the splinter, and he could do this himself if he wanted, or I could do it for him as any Dad would. He wouldn't let me, loudly. I then offered to take him to casualty. He could see the ridiculousness of this and soon allowed me to carefully remove the splinter in the way I'd described. It was about two millimetres long and not deeply embedded, and afterwards I got lots of thanks from him and Gill, and cuddles from the other child who hates the huge outbursts just as much as we do.

The day got better! Both boys were engrossed with friends and I went down to town with some York Rotters stall stuff in my panniers... as part of the York Fiesta weekend is a performance of Anneliese Emmans-Dean's 'Compost, the mini Musical' and we have a stall to catch any passing or associated interest. I was embarrassed by Anneliese introducing me as 'The Greenest Man In Britain' or something similar, but happy with 'He can answer any of your composting questions'!
(see http://thebigbuzz.wordpress.com/2007/07/05/compost-the-mini-musical-world-premiere/ for the info about the mini-musical!)

The musucal was good, although could have been better if the children had been wearing microphones as the city centre was noisy and their voices small. Our stall got only a few visitors, perhaps a dozen or so.

Before 2 we closed it down and Jo and I took the stuff to Rowntrees Park, as she's now got a cycle trailer, and we left it in the pavillion ready for tomorrow's Worm Charming do. We had a coffee and a good chat before I went to Anna's to pick up another large load of greenery to take to James St for the green waste skip. There's far too much for me to take back home to compost, perhaps 4 cubic metres? Quite a few bike-loads anyway, even though I get a lot on each journey.

No hassles at James St, they seem to have dropped their objection to cyclists with trailers visiting the site and doing their recycling, maybe the letters to the Press struck a chord and they realised the folly of their ways...

Home by 4pm. Did some work in the garden with one of our boys' 9 yr old friends, who was very keen to work with me and riddle compost with the rotasieve. I didn't realise til Gill mentioned it, that he either doesn't have a Daddy or doesn't see him much, and that made him wanting to work with me kinda nice and a bit more understandable. His comment about boys enjoying getting dirty made a bit more sense too, as he's in a female household and they may not appreciate his mud-pie making. I took him back home at 8pm, as he'd had tea with us and then come back outside to help me with the composting! Very satisfying.....

A good evening, nowt much on the box so typed away at my keyboard, mainly chatting on Skype message thingy with Ali whom I met at a recent gig.