Tuesday 5th August 08

A busy day, lots of visitors and calls.

I had a provisional booking from a stately home for Christmas entertainment through my agent, and a visit from a chap from Listers electrical to size-up our gaff to give us a quote for solar hot water. The company started 30 years ago doing solar systems but they were only getting 15 orders a year so they switched to doing electricals. But recently they've decided to get back into solar hot water, and have got quite a few orders. In the current 'climate' with rising fuel bills, solar hot water systems make a lot of sense. So we look forward to a quote.

I had a visit from Martin the York Green Festival treasurer, for me to sign 5 cheques. Two he took with him to send to their recipients, two were collected by Bob.. one was for him as he'd spent on posters and the other was for Baz for various small items. There was one for me to refund the insurance I paid for weeks ago.

Then the SUMA order arrived, most of it for Phil B who is taking it to France where he goes to visit a community. Later, Phil came to pick it up.

I cycled fast into town in the rain to pay in my cheque, and came back via Country Fresh to do a last pick up before my little break. I am justabout out of space here so I took it to St Nicks to use their composting systems, and layered it with some woody cuttings left by a local resident.

One of my friends rang last night in a distressed state and asked me to visit so I did, but the issues had sorted themselves out so I came away as was very busy.

We had pizza for tea... we rarely have 'ready meals' but we got a coupon from our membership of the Co-op which had to be spent on ready meals, so got that as a treat. It wasn't as good as Gill's pizzas though.

Before 7 I cycled to St Nicks to unload the compostables and prepare for the York in Transition meeting, where we planned to show the film 'The Power of Community' which shows how Cuba coped with 'Peak Oil' in the 90's when the Soviet Union broke up and exports/imports dropped considerably... including oil. It's an excellent film... but the disc we were using stopped playing halfway but that left plenty of time to have some discussions. Was pleased to meet my friend Shan again... but failed to persuade her to buy a compost bin!

Home to pack to go to the Northern Green Gathering tomorrow, where I'm doing the composting as usual! I'm going with my eldest son, which should be good as when we're together without the other family members we get on really well.

Had a reasonably short chat on Skype, but did my blog at the same time.