Monday 1 March 2010

Monday 1st March 10

A good day, got a lot done. I had a slow start, with emails and stuff, but at 11 went to buy bread from Thomas' 'Yesterbake' (actually Saturday's bake) and got (fresh) veggie pasties too, to make tea easier.

I did quite a bit of work in the garden... pruned back all the fruited loganberries and chopped them down to thin bits for composting and the thicker straight lengths all went into a wooden fruit-box to dry off and become kindling for the stove next winter.

Then I tied-in the loganberry shoots which grew last year and will fruit this year. It looks really tidy now, a good job done.

The large sack of smaller twiggy bits made a good thick layer on the new compost heap which I started yesterday. I added another huge load of greengrocer stuff on top of it, surrounded by flattened cardboard boxes to keep the material from falling out of the pallet-sided cube.

At about half five Gill came down and reminded me that I had taken her bike to Cycle Heaven yesterday to have the back wheel repaired. I'd said to them that if the wheel was not repairable, they could replace it, so we rang to find out what they had done and the cost. They had replaced the wheel and the tyre and done some other work... costing £56... sharp intake of breath!

We hadn't actually got that amount of cash between us, so one of our sons offered to go and look in his piggy bank equivalent, and found £40 to lend us, mainly in coins. I took this and hopped on my bike and scooted off down to Bishopthorpe Road. Very soon I was cycling back towards town with Gill's bike wheeling along next to me, and I decided to pick up a film ticket for the weekend, and then onto Millers Yard to pick up orange halves. Dylan gave me two nice pine chairs which he said were surplus to requirement, so I loaded these onto the trailer too. If we don't need them, I'll put them on Freecycle.

Home with the two bikes, two chairs and about 60kg of compostable oranges. Slowly.

Gill was glad to see me, and her bike, and I came in to help.

She had made some leek and potato and cheese sauce thing to go with the pasties, which was good. I had to head off to the other side of the Racecourse then for a York in Transition Directors meeting. Four of us attended, and we have just about finished the structure we need before we can ask for a volunteer Treasurer. We need quite a few policies in place, but when these are sorted, we'll be in a much better place to get funding for projects. It was a good meeting, and our host had worked really hard getting the different policies written. Some changes were suggested, these will be incorporated and then the documents sent round for comments and then adopting.

When I got in, Gill was once again very glad to see me. I assisted in getting the children off to bed.

Later, had my first googletalk conversation with my Canadian colleague about the website we are doing. And after that, whilst on facebook, Gill's nephew Jonny who is in Australia was on the chat function, and Gill had a nice conversation with him. I wonder if Gill will consider joining facebook?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

sounds like a sweet day John .I was involved in the early days of Transition Town Forres a wee bit -the graft putting the policies together will The Climate challenge fund awarded the town 180,000 to be getting on with allotments , farmers markets etc - I think a lot more money is needed for the town to be self reliant - think we can do it if people choose to though - Trish x

Compost John said...

Good to hear of a project connected to a Transition Initiative, Trish. Here in York we held an Open Space on Food, and some of the participants have started Edible York, which I think is planning on something inspired by Edible Todmorden, or the Sheffield Abundance project, or another Community Supported Agriculture project. I'm not involved with Edible York, although I'm a supporter of what they are doing.
Keep working on your local Transition... I know you are playing your part!
Yours, John