Tuesday 27th April 10

Up earlyish and feeling bouncy.

Not sure why but I was feeling good... despite knowing that Gill and I had lots of paperwork and admin to do. So we spent a couple of hours going through a pile of paperwork, ringing people up, putting stuff in envelopes, posting them, putting envelopes into the compost pile, minus their stamps which we occasionally give to a worthy charity. Gill started on the 09/10 accounts.

I bought bread and pasties, and posted yams and pea beans to a chap in West Yorkshire and the same to my folks in Sheffield. The beans they saved from last year didn't germinate, so I hope some of mine do. The ones I've planted are erupting from their toilet roll beds. I love seeing that!

I responded to a Freecycle offer of a commode, to replace the wooden one I got all those years ago for my compost toilet, which is now falling to bits. Jo in Huntington said that I could come and get it. One of her next posts mentioned that she was making a raised bed, so I offered her some compost as a gift. I found her road on Googlemaps and memorised the shortest route, and set out. When I arrived, I realised that I'd forgotten the piece of paper with her actual address on it! Duh!

So, I started knocking on doors and found a Jo... but it was the wrong one. No-one knew the Jo I wanted to find. I had a nice chat to a little tubby man who was tending his garden bare-chested, and I told him that if I couldn't find Jo, I'd give him the compost... which I did as Jo wasn't in the 40 or so houses I tried!

I cycled into town and got two cheques out for adverts in 'Book of Green' and one other cheque for someone. Then I came back via Country Fresh, where Shirley had one box of gubbins for me. When I got back, I rang Jo and explained my stupidity, and asked if I could come at 5.30.

So, I had a bit of time to..... do some pallet butchery! I've collected half a dozen broken or unwanted pallets over the past week or so, which needed dismembering and then chopping up into bite sized pieces. Before I set back out for Huntington a second time, I had the Thomas's pastie, and got another sack of mature unriddled from down the garden to pop in the trailer.

This time, I knew which house I was going to, and Jo and her partner and child were waiting for me. The little boy was fascinated with the compost beasties in the sack, and I worked out how to put the commode into my trailer, and cycled back to my neck of the woods. I'd timed it just nicely, arriving at Tang Hall Community Centre just before 6pm when the Hull Road Ward Planning Panel was meeting. I decided to bring the commode in with me, as it looked far too interesting for the local wildlife to ignore.

I was the first there, followed shortly afterwards by a couple of young men from York University who have joined the panel. One of them is the President of the Student Union, and the other is also a SU officer... they are graduates, not students, but they've joined our group as they represent students and there is a certain amount of tension between student houses and the more permanent community. So they want to learn about the house conversions we deal with every time, enlarging homes from 3 bed to 5, 6 or more, making them 'Houses in Multiple Occupation', and possible scenes of loud parties, messy gardens and other accusations. Not all students are like this, and some non students have untidy gardens too (me, for instance!) but they are an easy target for locals to complain about.

We dealt with quite a few good applications, most of them pretty standard, and some of them house extensions, so our new members saw a good range of applications.

I got in just after 7.30 and did a bit of tidying up in the front garden before coming in and having some potato salad and other salady bits, with olives.

A very peaceful evening... enjoyed the new BBC programme 'The Story of Science', and had a good few goes on Scrabble on facebook.