Tuesday 2nd December 08

Woke to find excited children because of snow on the ground, and Gill walked in with our youngest as cycling on ice is not fun.

She got in and went out to get her hair cut as she claims to feel like a haystack, despite my telling her I find her beautiful! She'll be just as pretty with a trim.

I was just getting ready to go to my lunchtime meeting in town when she came in, having slipped over on ice and feeling a bit bruised physically... but mentally much more embarrassed as she'd taken the tumble in full view of all the passengers on the Number 28 bus...

My meeting was a York Green Festival meets City of York Council, to review this year's event and look ahead to any future event. The meeting was with Dave Meigh, the licencee of Rowntree Park, Liz Topi, in charge of events/festivals, and Helen didntcatchhername from Environmental Protection. She'd been doing sound levels around the site on the day, and the meeting was mainly about that. After the event in 2007, the Council received a few noise complaints, so this year they had a duty to have someone on duty to measure the noise. There were just 3 complaints, but one complainant, in a living room in the first floor of a flat the other side of the river facing the main stage, was getting the full works. The complainant, watching a footy match on telly with windows closed and double glazing, could still easily hear every word from the songs... and the EHO decided it was a 'statutory nuisance' which they have a duty to prevent.

So the event next year must not repeat the same offence, or the EHO can order the music to stop and they can 'pull the plug' to stop the nuisance. We discussed possible solutions, which I see as three alternatives. First is to have much quieter music on that stage... the acoustic stuff which isn't nearly as amplified. Second is to have a new sort of speaker system which the Council bods call a 'sprinkler system' with the speakers surrounding the audience, and pointing down at them, so preventing the noise escaping, and the third is to have the event in another venue, and we discussed several. YGF will have to have a meeting to discuss this and other aspects of YGF08 and plan 09.

I got back home at 2.45... I met my friend Isobel inside Nationwide and we chatted outside for about half an hour... Gill went to collect our snow-bound child (she cycled down and walked back with him) and I split a pile of birch logs I chopped up a few weeks ago. Both stoves lit as it was bitter, making the whole house livable in. Gill made pizza dough and we had a good tea all together. A peaceful evening... a smattering of phone calls and the usual activities, washing up, doing my emails, watching a bit of telly, nothing too out of the ordinary.