Sunday 19th July 09

Another work day... shouldn't complain! Lucky to have it!

So, started with a shower as yesterdays hour-and-a-half cycle back from Barmby Moor against the wind had rendered me reasonably fragrant. Gill didn't mind of course, but my employers today would have done and I like to try to make a good impression.

So, got to the station for about 10.20 and bought a ticket to Hull and was on the 10.40, where I wrote out my invoice for the day's work. This was for a community event organised by Tesco Extra in the St Stephen's Centre. As it was raining, I decided not to attempt working outside where the rest of the stalls were, so after I got changed, I set up my stuff in the centre against the Tesco window, and immediately was engaged by some youngsters who wanted to see me ride the unicycle (people often assume that I can't!). About 10 minutes later a security man approached me and told me that cycling wasn't allowed in the centre, so I didn't do any more unicycling at all. So, from 11.55 til 3.50 I worked constantly, except for about 7 minutes to eat my sandwiches at about 2pm. I did mainly devilstick workshops and juggling, and had some lovely successes with this with people who said 'I can't do that' and then, with a few minutes coaching, could. At one point a chap came along who was good with the diabolo, so I let him use Derek and that was quite fun as I was able to talk to Derek with someone else making him do tricks... and misbehaving, as usual! It was an instant 'double act'. There were other entertainers around, including stilt walkers, costumed characters, another balloon modeller, facepainters and various others. So it was a fun day.

The Tesco people seemed to like what was going on and were happy to let me go shortly before my official 4pm finish, as my train was due to leave at 4.01, the next one not being til 5.25.

So I was back in York quite soon, and as I came up to my bike, there was an old chap looking intently at my bike in the station racks. He was obviously admiring it, not trying to steal it or damage it, so I explained about my asking Cycle Heaven to build the strongest bike they'd ever built, and we chatted for a while.

On the way home I picked up two sacks of stuff from Country Fresh... and when I got home and got changed, I put a load of this in the compostumbler with a sackful of the shredded material I prepared last week.

I didn't eat until after 7pm, a plate of rice and vegetables, followed by a raspberry, loganberry and gooseberry crumble. Berry tasty!

I was just finishing off my email/facebook session when there was a huge crash outside and Gill, sleeping on the couch next to me, lept up. I immediately knew it was a logpile falling over, but it was quite a spectacular noise. Gill went back to sleep and I spent 20 minutes partly re-doing it and clearing the way for our neighbours to use the shared passage between the houses. Glad it decided to collapse when I was around to sort it out. It may have not coped with several big rainstorms today... Gill says there was a violent hailstorm here today.