Wednesday 22nd April 09

Ahhh, a lie-in! how nice! I got up at 10 and Gill was already at Art, so I finished off my column on cosmetics and sent it in. This took til lunchtime, mainly because I got distracted by Scrabble on Facebook and chat, and interesting links... but by late lunch, was finished.

Gill came in and got a picnic together and went on the bus down to town to meet her 'Ladies who Lunch' friends, Melody and Alison, and had a picnic with them in Museum Gardens.

I just mooched around, dealt with a couple of phone calls, did some housework and planted some broccoli, calabrese and curly kale seeds.

My friend Robin had made contact with someone who lives near him who has just taken down a holly tree and passed my her details to me, so I rang her and she said it would be OK to go within the next hour. So I refilled my chainsaw with lube oil and got the loppers, and cycled over to near the Hospital along the Route 66 cycle track.

She'd taken down one holly, and I cut up the two trunks which she'd denuded of side branches. But a sizable one metre stump remained and I eventually removed that, leaving a 30cm stump. There was one other job she wanted doing, removing an overhanging branch of a sycamore. This was more difficult as my chainsaw, or perhaps the electric supply to it was malfunctioning. But I did manage to get some of it down.. but after an hour and a half working there, I'd had enough so I loaded up my trailer with some of the holy logs and went. I'll go back in the next week or so and finish the job.

Home to a happy house, nice tea and pleasant evening. I was disappointed that Newsnight focussed on the budget and didn't have Ethical Man on.