Monday 6th October 08

I took our youngest into school and came back collecting loads of cans from a verge on Windmill Lane which had been strimmed but the strimming had revealed all the litter that had been lobbed during the summer... I collected just the cans, plastic bottles and glass, mostly to put in the council recycling box but the aluminium cans I collect up, flatten and sell when I have enough.

Then spent the morning with Gilly doing various catch-up stuff, paperwork, phone calls, washing up, finally whizzed the dried red pepper that I've been drying for ages and put the powder through a seive to give me a large jar of sweet red pepper paprika plus another jar of tiny shards of dried red pepper... too large to go through the seive but small enough to go in soups and stews..... a lovely addition, really tasty, and made entirely from thrown-out peppers which were unsaleable as they had a blemish or rotten bit. This is easily removed for composting, the rest is cut into strips and dried on the woodstove.

During the afternoon I made some carrot soup, did a little logsplitting and collected our son from school.

LETS meeting in the evening, Ben chaired and we got a lot done, including discussing the LETSLINK UK offer of software and our new advertising poster. Good social afterwards. I took minutes and when I got home typed them up and sent them out.