Tuesday 7th December 10

A late start but quite a good day.

Probably the highlight of the day was unblocking a waste water pipe which runs from the downstairs toilet to the toilet downpipe... but the pipe goes through the wall and then goes nearly horizontally towards the sewer down pipe.  There is a little bend in it before it enters the sewer pipe, but the shallow gradient means that water flows slowly along it...and our guest must have left the tap dripping, so the very low temperatures froze the trickle within the pipe.  So I removed the U bend and emptied as much of the water out of the system as possible, and then put it back together and filled the sink with very hot water off the top of the woodstove.  I then slowly poured a kettle full of boiling water over the external pipe.... and this worked, and the sink full of hot water disappeared, hopefully washing away some gunge too.  To stop this happening again I'll have to replace the kink at the end with a straight bit, and then plug it straight into the sewer pipe, which will make a steeper gradient.  Also, the tap must not drip when it's way below freezing outside!

I did a quick cycle to Thomas The Baker for a bag full of Yesterbake bread before lunch, but the next time I went out was to go to the Guildhall for 4pm, for the Environment Forum, the first meeting with our new chair, Kate Lock.  Before the meeting I asked her if she thought we'd have time to have AOB, and if so, whether the balloon launch issue was something she'd be happy for me to discuss briefly.  But luckily, a new member of the Forum, Councillor Dave Merrett, who's a Labour Party member, had obviously had some sort of discussion with Cllr. James Alexander, and he indicated that there were possibly plans to do something different with the balloons... perhaps the release is being re-thought?  I'd like to think that Cllr. Alexander has had a think about how this stunt might look to the majority of the population who don't like the idea of killing wildlife with litter.  I am very hopeful.

The Forum meeting went well... we spent most time discussing the future of the Forum, and I didn't say anything about the balloons, as Cllr. Merrett's hint was enough to make it less of an issue.

Gill phoned me during the meeting and told me the Planning Panel meeting had been called off due to the treacherously icy pavements.  So I cycled home, found two pallets on the way, and arrived hungry for the pastie I bought from Thomas The Baker earlier.  There were some cold vegetables left which I had too.

And a quiet evening, trying to get on top of some assorted admin stuff, writing up minutes, etc.  But at 9pm I watched a BBC4 programme called The Joy of Stats about statistics with our eldest, who is very into science and maths subjects.  A good programme. I sent a link to my son's email address for a fab website called Information is Beautiful, which has some of the images used on the programme.