Sunday 22nd August 10

Straight back to work today, I started with a shower to wash my hair and then loaded my bike trailer up with jugglestuff and my unicycles... the first day with my big unicycle in 8 weeks.

I popped in on Country Fresh to say hi to Rich and then on to the station to park my bike, gather my belongings and get a ticket to Leeds. The 12.15 train was late and due in at 12.37. But there was an earlier train, also late, due in at 12.13, so I went to wait for that. I sat on a seat on the platform and started chatting to a nice older lady, who turned out to be involved in her Transition Town, somewhere near Oxford. She was Ros Kent, and a quick search shows that she is centrally involved in Transition Eynsham Area. We had a really good chat on the platform and then on the train all the way to Leeds.

I had my sandwiches for lunch whilst waiting for Alan to pick me up at the back of the station, and in less than half an hour we were at Middleton Park, and I got ready to perform. It was a very standard show, workshop and balloon show, two hours non-stop, and very enjoyable. The unicycling fitted in with no problems, my ankle breaking 8 weeks ago is now becoming just a bad memory. However, I will try to be more concious in the future and try not to let it happen again.

I especially enjoyed meeting Paul and Margaret, volunteers with FoMP, and my young friend with Aspergers who is doing really well with her Poi, flower sticks and diabolo skills. She's attended all four of my visits to Middleton Park.

4pm came soon and I did the last of the balloon requests, got changed back into 'civvies' and Alan took me back to the station. There was a train within 20 minutes, and I got into York at about 5.30pm. I visited a ripe skip on the way back, and found some electrical cable, which I'll remove the copper wire from, and some lead sheets, which will realise a pound or two at the metal merchant. The skip user gent was happy for me to have these bits and bobs.

Home at 6.10 and I had some quiet time running a blade along some flex and pulling the wire out whilst watching Secret Britain. Gill had created a nice rice-based tea, with home grown tomatoes and home grown beans... totally yummy!

After tea I got the big ladders and picked a big bucket full of pears from our early pear tree. I first put them up in the self-supporting shape, which gets me 6m off the ground, but then I put them into the straight configuration and leant them against the tree, and went up the full 9 metres, my head popping out into the top of the tree! Many of the pears are over-ripe but some are just right for drying, so during the evening I halved, cored and peeled a lot of them and put them on the drying racks over the stove. Dried pears are one of my favourite of all the dried fruits I make. I still have a lot to deal with, and there's more on the tree... and several more trees to deal with, none as big as this one though.