Monday 17th January 11

Not too bad a day on the whole.  I spent most of the morning sorting my messy piles of paperwork, basically trying to find a booking letter which has mysteriously disappeared.  However, I did sort out loads of envelopes, tearing out the plastic windows and putting the rest for composting or lighting the stove.  I got a big pile of recyclable paper which went in the recycle bin and sorted out various documents to store for my business records.  The missing letter did not materialise.

After lunch I popped round to see the local vicar, Tim Jones, who had asked me to go and see his compost bin and give him advice.  I said I'd go and see it and tell him what needed doing, with the possibility of going again to sort it out.  I get on with him, I like his sense of humour, and I expect to go and work in his garden next week and do some pruning, shredding and compost heap deconstruction and reconstruction...

Then I cycled into town to put in a cheque, pay a bill and get some cash out.  We'd got a post card form the Post Office saying there was a letter for Gill with a £1.38 bill to pay on it, so I went to pick that up.  On the way back I popped into the alterations shop on Walmgate as my bum-bag had a broken zip, and I wanted to know how much it would cost to replace it.  The guy in there took one look at it, and said he'd mend it.  10 seconds later, don't know how he did it, but it was a fully functioning zip again!  Wow.  I gave him a pound coin.

Came back via Freshways who had two huge bags of gunk for me.  One sack had split so I asked for a new bin bag and I made the two sacks into three to enable me to get them home.  However, there were a lot of slightly over-ripe tomatoes so when I got in, I set to and created a big pan of soup on the woodstove.  Four onions, thrown away as they had manky outer skins, about 20 large tomatoes and a small potato.  I brought it to the boil, simmered it and will whizz it tomorrow, and add bouillon and herbs.  Yum!

A relaxing evening with Gill, enjoyed some good telly and companionship.