Thursday 30th September 10

Woke at 8 and was told that I'd gone to bed at 9 last night and although I said I'd like to be woken at 10.30 to come and watch Newsnight and get on with housework, I'd grunted at 10.30 and turned over and slept right the way through.  11 hours sleep is rare for me, I usually get 6 or 7.  But I woke feeling refreshed and much bouncier.

It was a good day, the boys went to school and Gill went to physio, and I used the sunny dry day to do some chainsawing and work in the garden.  I also did some fruit drying... pineapple, banana, pear.  I did some paperworky/admin stuff, preparing for the weekend's work. I got a phone call from BBC Radio York who wanted to interview me in Pickering on Saturday, for their Transition event, and they wanted to do a sort of 'my top year and three songs', and we had quite a good conversation.  Right at the end I asked him whether he knew I was standing in an election.  He didn't know there was an election.  I told him about it and he said he'd get back to me about whether it would have any bearing on the interview.  Much later in the day, he rang back and said that it was borderline whether my being interviewed about green issues and standing as a Green Party candidate in an election was a problem, but to be on the safe side, they'd decided not to use me this time.  I think they've got to be careful not to be accused of bias.

At about 7pm I set out to go to the York in Transition meeting, via my agent's house as I've not been able to contact him.  I left a message through his letterbox.  Then over to Andreas's house, and I was pleased to see his wife Catherine before she went out to work.  Edward and Peter were at the meeting too, and we had a productive meeting and all of us have things to do to take York in Transition forward.  I cycled back via an almond tree I'd discovered and picked a bag of almonds.

Back at 11pm and settled down to the usual mix of computer and washing up... and then there were screams upstairs.  One of our boys was being sick.... poor him.  It took ages to clear up.