Sunday 2nd August 09

Quite a late start, but got up quickly as the boys were bubbling over with energy and needed to do something, so I took them (my eldest and two of his friends) to the nearest park with a frisbee, a football and some fruit juice, and left them to it.

I popped in to Freshways to see Raj and he gave me loads of compostables, and then went to collect some logs from the house on Millfield Lane which has had it's garden cleared, and in a skip found an unopened packet of underlay sheets, so I took them to put on Freecycle. A neighbour round the corner asked me if I wanted a large dining table, so after seeing it and measuring it, I put this on Freecycle too. Good to keep stuff out of landfill and get it reused. A very enjoyable hobby.

So, a happy day dealing with my logpiles, visiting skips, chatting to neighbours, replying to Freecycle messages wanting the underlay, preparing more nectarines for another fruity-tea-pudding.

Gill took four boys to the newly refurbished cinema 'Reel' to see 'G Force' and I got the chainsaw out and did a substantial amount of cutting up the chunky logs from Woodlands. I'm cutting them quite short as the type of wood is really difficult to split, so short logs will be easier to split. I'd love to know what sort of trees they were, but they died standing up so the timber is dry. Different timber has different properties... so beech splits well when green but when dry is really difficult to split. But this tree isn't a beech, it has rough bark (which is falling off) and a very dense grain.

Watched 'Man on Wire' on telly with both my boys and our visitor, we all enjoyed this, although Gill gets vertigo and couldn't watch some bits!