Wednesday 24th February 10

I woke at 8.30 feeling awful. I was sneezing and coughing and had blocked sinuses. I wondered if it was the pollution I'd inhaled yesterday putting out the St Nicks bin fire, or whether it was just a virus.

I didn't feel like breakfast, which is more or less unheard of for me. But also, I'd run out of muesli, so I made some up with the 10kg bag of Suma organic muesli base plus chopped-up home made dried bananas, apples, pears, homegrown pumpkin seeds and some assorted nuts which were in their shells, so I spent the best part of an hour shelling local almonds (thank you Melody!), hazelnuts and I think the walnuts might be local too. Then I had breakfast.

So I had a quiet day. Gill went to town by bus to meet up with Melody, Natalie and Alison for the Ladies Who Lunch meeting... and also Melody's birthday.

When Gill came back I got dressed and did some housework, although still feeling very grotty.

At about 5pm, freecycler Fraser, who posted a message saying he wanted some topsoil or compost came round. I had offered him a free sack of compost, but told him that I could also let him have some more for a donation. He was really pleased, as he is making raised beds for vegetables. He was fascinated to see my composting set up. I took the wheelbarrow down the garden and loaded up 5 sacks for him. He gave me £10 for the four sacks and also found out he is living in Katharina and Ulrich's old house!

I decided not to attend the York in Transition meeting... I'd already done several emails and facebook messages with regard to some of the content for tonight's meeting, so it wasn't that important for me to go.

I tried to fix our vacuum cleaner which has the spinning brushes not working. We need the motor fixing. What a nuisance. I successfully repaired the indoor clothes airer, which has a pair of plastic clips which hold it up... or held it up until it broke. Some while ago, I fixed it with a length of wood with two grooves cut out of it, which did work. However, the metal bars the wood went around had bent with the weight of the damp towels and other clothes, so I suggested to Gill that I affix some string between the bars, using hooks to hold them in place. Gill got a packet of hooks from the fix it shop round the corner and I used four of them with the strong but thin string that I take out of the potato sacks. It seems to work.

During the evening the whole family watched a remarkable documentary on BBC2 (Natural World) called 'A Killer Whale Called Luna' which had us all enthralled. A young male Orca had become separated from its pod in the waters off Vancouver, and had become used to the company of humans in boats and had seemingly been friendly and enjoyed the company of humans. I strongly recommend watching this programme... despite the commentary being just a bit schmaltzy, it is a brilliant story, very moving.

Still felt poorly and hope to go to bed relatively early... but will the decongestant keep me awake?