Wednesday 27th January 10

I had real difficulty getting to sleep last night... must have lain awake til 4am but eventually I dropped off. Next thing I knew was Gilly awakening me at 10.30. Breakfast and a bit of housework, including preparing a home-grown Chinese Yam for tonight's meal. It needed as many of the hair-like roots removing as possible, which I did by scraping it with a knife in a stream of water, and then I sliced it into rounds about a centimetre thick, for shallow frying on the woodstove.

I didn't get dressed til after lunch, and then went out to deal with last year's brambles and loganberries; the fruited canes need cutting back and then feeding through the shredder to make a woody layer in the latest compost heap.

As it was getting dark I cycled down to Country Fresh and bought mushrooms and bananas, and picked up 4 sacks full of compostable stuff. On the way back I had another root around in the skip, and found a red plastic tray, a glass chopping board, an unopened in-date box of Kellogs bran flakes, a cycle helmet in its box and an orange reflective jacket with Royal Mail on the back. Also a load of wine bottles which I brought back for my kerbside recycling box. There were loads of bundles of leaflets and flyers too, presumably meant for delivering, but I had no space for them. The curtain twitching neighbour did a lot of twitching. I waved at her.

As I cycled away, the twitcher's husband overtook me in his car and was aggressive towards me, accusing me of making an obscene gesture to his wife. I'm glad he didn't bop me one... he certainly had enough testosterone flying around. Some people obviously think skip-raiding is wrong.

Anyway, I was so pissed off with this show of stupidity that a bit later, when Gill asked me to go and buy soya milk, I got that and revisited the skip, and got all the leaflets and flyers and completely filled my trailer with them... all for recycling not landfill. I might have only taken 30 or 40kgs worth out of a one tonne skip, but in my book, every bit counts. I don't know if the nosey neighbours saw me or not, and I don't really care.

Tea was good; Gill did a rice stir fry thing, topped with Chinese Yam 'chips' and it was very satisfying.

Enjoyed a quiet evening with Gill once the boys had settled, and we watched a bit of 'Celebrity Big Brother' which we're half-watching, and enjoyed it when Davina went into the house.

I did quite a bit of research on the computer tonight, about a new business opportunity I'm working on. Exciting!