Thursday 8th April 10

Before I left Sheffield I met up with my sister in law Katie, who had found some clothing belonging to our youngest... easiest to meet up and hand it over rather than to post it.

I used the train journey back to do another bout of email deletions, so my inbox is over 200 emails lighter now.

When I got home I popped up the road to see if our youngest, who was playing with a friend, wanted to come home and play here... but he was happy there. I came back and went online and sent all the emails I wrote on the train and last night, and sorted out various things. Gill and our eldest came in, and I lit the stove to get hot water for washing up, and went outside to do a little bit of stacking.

After tea, I sorted out a potato sack full of cables I'd collected from skips over the past few months... I cut off the outer casing, revealing the two or sometimes three insulated inner wires and often a single uninsulated copper wire. Gill wound up this naked wire round her hand or fingers, depending on the gauge of the wire. When I'd stripped the whole sack of electrical flex, I started on the inner wires, pulling the wire over a blade and revealing the copper underneath. I then passed this to Gill who removed the metal from the plastic, and after an hour, we ended up with several kilos of lovely shiny wound-up copper wire, and a lot of waste plastic insulation. I now have a couple of carrier-bags of copper wire... I'll need to take them to the metal merchant soon. Far better than this stuff going to landfill.. and this method of stripping the wire gives a very clean metal, and no emissions. Some people put the cables on a fire, burning off the plastic, which obviously results in lots of nasty pollution.

Later still, I did a bit more fruit drying... more pears and a pineapple. Good to stop these going into landfill too!