Saturday 7th March 09

I woke as Gill was doing something in the bedroom, and she said she was going to the garage to get our eldest child's bike out, but I knew it was kinda tangled up with other bikes, or at least mine would have to come out first, so I said I'd do it. He'd been invited to go to the Yorkshire Museum by Simon and his son, as there was a 'Portable Antiquities Open Day' event there, and Simon's son has been doing some field walking near where the new sewer has been put in between the new University Campus ('Heslington East') and Elvington... and has found lots of pottery and one enormous iron nail.

So our lad set off with just one item.... a clear glass bottle with a marble stopper and the original rubber seal ring which I found near where the University had trashed a stretch of woodland.

I got a delivery of a HUGE poster from The Age Of Stupid. I'd like to find somewhere sensible to put it up...

So, a peaceful day ensued... I did some paperwork... an invoice (on reused paper, as usual) and a couple of other bits and bobs, including watching a 50 minute film about the making of The Age of Stupid. This was fascinating... the concept was born in 2002, as 'Crude' and used a novel approach to funding, called 'crowd funding' with 'shares' being sold (the first batch were £500 each), and then the subsequent evolution of the film, with Pete Postlethwaite being invited to be the crux of the film right at the last minute. Really worth watching... I am so looking forward to seeing the film on the 15th... next weekend.

I got a phone call from a chap round the corner who had got some waste wood outside his house I was interested in, and I'd left a note saying if they didn't want it, I would be happy to recycle it for them. He rang as he was clearing out a house in Tang Hall/Heworth area where a relative had died last year, and there was some wood in the garden he was wanting rid of. So I said I would come round within half an hour and see what there was. He admitted he'd already disposed of some stuff on a bonfire. Anyway, I easily found the house as the whole of Heworth was full of the smoke from his bonfire... There was quite a bit of wood left, and I sorted out the stuff I wanted from the non-burnable wood, and advised him to get the rest of it recycled at Hazel Court. There was also a couple of rolls of chicken wire which they wanted rid of, and I was glad to have this! As I was leaving, he offered me a pair of unused wellington boots with steel toe caps... my size too!

So I cycled into town with a trailer full of wood and wire netting and the wellies too, and went in search of a beard trimmer. My research had not found a wind-up model although there are a couple of wind-up shavers available, just not beard trimmers. So I went to Boots and got a model by Remington with rechargeable batteries, costing £25.

Came home via Country Fresh, and once I got home and unloaded, I popped back down to Freshways to pick up their 'resources'. After a coffee I did an hour's worth of filling the Compostubler with a mix of fruit and veg, shredded Christmas tree, sawdust stuff which was too big to go through the riddle and unwanted bokashi bran which St Nicks didn't want, as it had got damp and partly gone mouldy.

Spent quite a bit of time preparing pears... I have absolutely loads from the collections over the past few days. I wash each one and let it drip dry on the plate drying rack, then cut it in half from the stalk to the flower remnant, take out the core, flower, strings up to the stalk and the stalk, then peel it, taking out any bruises or damage. Then I cut each half into three, lengthways, resulting in 6 slices per pair, put on the cake racks for drying. Dried pears are one of my favourites!

Our eldest son came in having had a good time cycling and playing. We had tea... home made tomato soup and a Thomas' Vegetable Pastie. Not too bad an evening, although there was noisy resistance from the children to being asked to go to bed at 10.20.

I stayed up late whilst Gill slept on the sofa next to me as usual, until the early hours when I go to bed and she comes up too.