Tuesday 12th May 09

Got up late and spent time on the computer during the rest of the morning.
Through my 'Feedjit' widgit (which still thinks I'm in Leighton Buzzard!) I found http://cabalamat.wordpress.com/ 'Amused Cynisism' and http://www.charlescrawford.biz/ which have links to my 'How I Compost' photo post. Both these blogs have a lot of stuff worth looking through. I enjoyed some self-indulgent Facebook stuff, playing Scrabble whilst cooking the carrot soup on the woodstove for tonight's tea. I have over 20 games going on...

Also had a lot of emails to answer and various other things to do... research for my next column, which has a deadline next week.

A quiet inside afternoon... I went to school to pick up our youngest and was approached by a teacher who knows I'm somewhat keen on recycling, offering me a huge sack of envelopes to compost (at home) so I cycled back with about 20Kg of assorted envelopes and about 20Kg of fruit waste... since I've stopped composting at school they've been throwing away about 7Kg/day of fruit and veg material, this was a completely full plastic rubbish bin which I've been using to collect compostables in. By now, the school head teacher will have had a meeting with the Council waste people so I'm hoping to hear from either of them soon with a way forward. Only then will my anger, despair and disgust subside. If a school cannot recycle, what chance do we have for the future, when children see all the recyclable materials being thrown away.

I've another gripe with the school... there is a pre-school group based within Lord Deramore's, and they have milk in small drinks cartons. They would like to recycle these cartons, and the Council DOES have facilities... at the main civic amenity sites, such as Hazel Court. So, the pre school group asked me if I could collect these and take them for recycling. I said yes, could they be placed in a receptacle in the bins area? The pre school people asked the school if this could happen... and guess what? Apparently, someone from Health and Safety says they cannot! Can you believe it? I would happily deck the Health and Safety person at the school I'm so angry. So I will have to collect the sack of milk cartons as and when I can, the pre-school doesn't want them in the classroom as they might smell, and I think the obvious place to collect them is in the bins area which already has a bin for paper recycling (although it often has other things dumped in it, their quality control is so poor). What a shambles!

Anyway, came home and washed up, helped Gill get tea ready. Ben came round to dispense advice about the childrens' 'dongle' which has stopped working, and the reason my ADSL usage is so high... blame it in the BBC iPlayer which has been doing 'Peer to Peer' stuff and using my computer to send stuff on, apparently. Ben showed me how to turn off that function. At 6.15 I headed off to Tang Hall Community Centre for the Hull Road Ward Planning Panel. Four of us turned up, and had a really good discussion about the different planning applications, mainly house extensions to make (we assume!) student houses.

Then cycled over to the Groves to pick up a Freecycled clip-frame, and cycled slowly down my old street, Emerald St, where I lived for 13 years. Memories!

Back via Freshways where I had an accident with the clip frame. Damn. I did clear up the mess though... what a waste. Silly me.

Back home, all was peaceful and tea had gone down well... the boys got off to bed pretty easily and I stayed up working til after midnight, as usual with Gill snoozing beside me... lovely!