Wednesday 19th November 08

Slept right through til nearly 8 and got up to get ready for work, essentially a replay of yesterday's gig at Leeds Metropolitan University. Felt quite a bit better than the previous few days. This morning our eldest is off to Bewerley Park on a school fieldtrip, just two nights this time, back on Friday night.

So, well loaded up, he got away at the usual 8.30 and Gill cycled down to the primary school with his little brother. I got ready for a second day in Leeds... the only difference being that I didn't need to get my ticket as I'd got today's yesterday morning.

So the gig was much the same... apart from the judges this time included a senior executive from Thomas Cook (see what they say about responsible tourism here) and several other industry insiders, fresh from (probably) this event in London. Over lunch I was able to ask the gents assembled how they thought that the tourism industry was reacting to estimates that to achieve a sustainable situation, we would have to reduce fossil fuel use and consumption of other non-renewables by 80%? I asked them if they believed in growth of the market, too. The answer about growth was that they weren't aiming to sell more holidays, but 'better quality holidays'. (not sure what this means, actually) and that the main growth area at the moment, even during the Credit Crunch, was short breaks, weekend breaks and business trips. We could have talked for much longer, but we only had about 20 mins max for lunch, so (most unfortunately!) we couldn't talk more about this. Perhaps a bit of a missed opportunity, although I was able to speak to the 11 year-olds about the same subject for a short while, using language like 'huge challenge' and 'opportunity' rather than a more emotional approach which I felt might not go down too well. I also got quite a bit of one-to-one chat with the children, when judging the posters, so I think some will be wanting to explore carbon calculators..... and Eurostar!

The show went well, as did the prize-giving and presentations... and I was released, with my cheque, by just after 2pm. I got the same train home as yesterday and visited several places in town on the way through, including Country Fresh for a couple of sacks of assorted compostables and given-away tiny bananas, just perfect for drying...

A relatively peaceful evening... hooray!!!