Wednesday 4th June 08

Both went down to school with the boys and had a meeting with the head. This was regarding an incident at school yesterday. The teachers and head were very sympathetic and understanding and have come up with some possible solutions.

The rest of the day was quite quiet, and I picked the boys up at hometime.

After school went to Huddersfield to meet up with a group of people all members of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (of which I'm a member too) to do a talk on 'my version of green', or selected topics re climate change, ethical lifestyles etc etc.

I started by telling them why I did an Environmental Health degree and about finding out about Agenda 21 in the last term, and putting on a talk about LA21 in the last week I was at Leeds Met, and then helping to get York LA21 going and us successfully lobbying City of York Council to employ an LA21 officer. I then told them why I didn't become an EHO... discovering circus skills and going self employed, and my involvement with LETS which led to me getting York Credit Union going.

I then very enthusiastically explained about my involvement with composting and my starting York Rotters, and how my compost toilet led to me working with BBC Newsnight's 'Ethical Man' and how this led to my getting a column and blog in a magazine. Then I said about last year's start-up of CRAG, the Green Festival, and this spring's Oxfam low-carbon-footprint competition with subsequent visit to Hilary Benn and other MPs.

Of course I was able to put lots of extra facts and lifestyle info into this framework, and in the Q and A session afterwards I talked about compost toilets (again!), Energy Performance Certificates, greening your building and a bit more about successful composting and Master Compost groups. The whole thing took nearly an hour. I enjoyed it very much.

I was given a cheque to cover my travelling expenses plus a bit extra, and taken back to the railway station. I got into the house at about 9.30, just in time to see the latest chunk of 'Ideal' on BBC3 which was very funny. After this I prepared a load of cherry tomatoes and red onions (both thrown out by the wholesaler... the onions are sprouting - for me this shows they are alive but it means that some people won't buy them because they're not quite as firm as dormant onions... the tomatoes were in 9 punnets, each punnet having one or two mouldy tomatoes but 7 or 8 good ones!) and made soup on the woodstove, whilst half watching something on the telly with Gill and doing emails and chatting on the computer with two of my friends all at once. I like this kind of productive evening, I find it very difficult to concentrate on just one thing at once, and much prefer to be bobbing around, doing this and that, shifting my concentration from one thing to another. However it can be difficult for some of the people I know who have a different way of 'working best' and are able (or prefer) to concentrate on one thing at a time. But hey, this makes for a diverse world and this is how I like it!