Tuesday 6th January '09

Quite an early start, as taking our youngest into school at 8.30ish... cycling in was really cold but no ice on the roads, fortunately.

Had a busy morning.. lots of paperwork to do and admin which hasn't got done whilst the boys have been at home over the holidays. So registered to do my tax online and a variety of other things, including jarring up dried fruit. But also played some Scrabble on Facebook! Gill went for lunch in town with Alison and Melody.

Kept the stove going all day and toasted crumpets for lunch, well, part of lunch. The day went oh so quickly... and before I knew it, 3pm and time to cycle down to school again and pick up out little 'un. The Green Thumbs assembly about the Blue Peter Mission Nutrition Bring and Buy Sale is on Friday so chatted with Julia about when this is going to be practiced. fortunately I don't need to be there... just to attend the assembly.

I did a little bit of logpile management and came in to have tea... spaghetti and tomato/broccoli topping, all done on the woodstove.

Then off out to the Tang Hall Community Centre to facilitate the Hull Road Ward Planning Panel meeting... dealt with just two applications but it was good to be with Andrew and Stephen who are both more knowledgeable than me about planning matters. Carolyn didn't turn up... I rang her when I got back and she'd fallen asleep and missed the meeting. She was glad I'd checked on her, as she's usually very reliable and knew that if she'd fallen or something, I'd be able to alert someone or do something... although thinking about it, not sure what.

This meeting took an hour and I came home via the cycle track to pick up sticks for kindling and logpiles.

Boys finished a game of Yu-Gi-Oh and went to bed. I typed up minutes from last night's LETS meeting and sent them off.

Saturday 27th December 08

A good day today... boys happy on Wii, me busy in the kitchen as well as Gill making a trifle for this afternoon's visit. I went for some bread... as no 'Yesterbake' got the full-price stuff for the first time in ages. Also found a new line in the Co-op, a nice apple juice drink in a glass bottle (easy recycling!) made with English apples, so got some of that, again for Alison's party.

I washed and blanched a job-lot of grapes and put them to dry before cycling off to Chapelfields, the other side of York, for Alison's party. Gill and the boys went on two buses... I'd been there half an hour when Gill rang (she has got a mobile phone, 21st Century Girl!) and said she had got off where Alison said, so I went to collect them, just 5 minutes walk from Alison's.

The gathering was really good. Alison's sister Cheryl from Sheffield, and Cheryl's daughter Grace, who was really good with the boys. Our friends Melody and Simon with their two offspring, one of who is great friends with our two, and Simon's Mum MaryLou from London. And really good to meet up with my Green Festival buddy Randall and his wife Annie. Rand is a garden designer and has done a lovely job on Alison's garden, making a little patio and some raised beds.

Alison had requested that people didn't bring anything which none of us had heard, understood or obeyed, so there were some excellent foody bits and lots of dwinkabuls and we all had a jolly time. Including garden tours and memories of what it used to look like with a photo collection. The boys played boisterously and had a good time too. We left soon after 6, and as Gill got a taxi home she got in first. I picked up a sack of compostables from Country Fresh and a large pile of unsold mistletoe... with loads of berries which I'll try to plant into my Bramley Apples... might work!

So, a happy evening followed with not very much washing up to do, hooray!

Wednesday 10th September 08

I took our youngest into school and asked the school secretary about hiring the hall for the forthcoming York in Transition 'Open Space event. She said she'd find out prices and availability.

Then into York to spend the morning with Ali, as she'd spent the night in a hotel... so we continued our chats and went for a wander through town towards the station, where she got the train back to Sheffield.

Home for lunch and then via a circuitous route to school to 'do' their compost bins. Emptied the oldest one onto sacks, using my 'Compostmate' corkscrew tool, removing a few uncomposted sticks for a base for the next one... These sacks of finished compost will be good for next year's gardening. I then transferred the contents of bin number two into the third bin, just with the garden fork. Then I emptied the contents of bin number one into the second bin, leaving number one empty for this year's fruit waste...

I spent nearly two hours doing this and got home between 4.30 and 5pm, just in time to have some pasta and home grown green beans before my next meeting. This was Jenny from York in Transition plus Melody, who is a funding expert, and we talked through our issues surrounding funding for an hour.

Then I cycled down to Heslington to attend, hey, even participate in the Green Thumbs committee meeting in the Deramore Arms. It was a good meeting, we reviewed the past year and planned the next year's activities. Our chair got the meeting finished quite quickly and I cycled down to see David a fellow YorkLETS member, who had invited me to help produce a poster to put up, to try to get some new members. Just spent about 40 minutes there and got back home well before 10pm where one of our sons was shouting at Gill, the homework issue AGAIN. I was able to distract him and we had a cuddle, and I think he forgot he'd not completed his homework and after Gill read him a story, he went to sleep.

A fairly quiet and late night.

Tuesday 9th September 08

A reasonable morning... cycled into town via Hazel Court Recycling Centre with a load of drinks cartons, which are not collected on the doorstep, but can be put in a 'bring bank', the nearest of which is the one at the Council's skip site. I also took a few bits of scrap iron and our old phone which had stopped working, for the WEEE skip (Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment) for recycling. I was not shouted at by the staff who seem to have realised that cyclists can use this facility as safely as motorists who then get out of their vehicles and wander around putting stuff in different skips.

From there on to see Dylan at the Healthy Living Centre, Millers Yard, where we had a conversation about where the York Green Festival was going, and what might be said at the forthcoming meeting. To the Council to give in some paperwork, and to the Building Society to put in a cheque. On to Boots but they didn't have what I wanted (little brushes to get between my teeth) and to Cycle Heaven to buy Gill a D lock as hers has gone wrong...

Home for lunch... and had that before a pre-arranged visit from a journalist, Sam, who used to work for the Press and knew me from those days, who's now working independently and is doing a piece for The Ecologist. So we had an hour and a half chatting, talking about carbon footprints and motivations and some quite detailed stuff. I do enjoy this, explaining about carbon calculators and 'easy to measure carbon and much more difficult to measure carbon' and the fact that it's not actually measuring, just approximating, guessing, but also the value of doing the exercise. At 3, I went to pick up our only child who now needs picking up from primary school... the older one arrived home soon after we did.

I then went down to town again to meet Ali who's in York for a meeting. We went to El Piano and had a lovely meal together, lots of chat about a huge range of subjects and we sorted the World out! A lovely evening.

Tuesday 1st January 08

Happy New Year everybody!

Saw in the New Year with my wife, children (yes, both of them stayed up!) and our friend Alison. We spent most of the evening with Simon and Melody and their son, and we had a really lovely evening. Alison arrived later, she's also a close friend of Melody and Simon, so it was very cosy. We had some good food and a variety of drinks, games of Jenga and picture consequences, and played some tapes (Orb, Eatstatic, Deep Purple) and all in all it was a very enjoyable night. We have an excellent view over York from our loft window, so once we'd heard it was midnight we shot up to the loft to watch the fireworks.

Alison left at 1am and we did a little bit of clearing up before collapsing at 2.

Woke needing orange juice and paracetamol at 7am!

Woke again at 9, the boys had woken Gill at 7.30.. we'd hoped that their late to bed time might cause them to sleep in later... but no joy.

At midday, our first visitor of the day arrived, a bit of a suprise because I wasn't expecting Lorna to visit, but she'd been dancing the year out with her sister in Dunnington, and popped in to say hi on her way home to the Midlands. It was lovely to see her and for my family to meet her. I showed her the garden, despite the standing water and mud, and she stayed about an hour.

We had a bit o lunch and then another suprise, the always busy Jim Semlyen, with his 8 yr old daughter and his partner's two children. He was giving his partner some space, and it was really good to catch up. Our boys played really nicely with the visitors, even though they'd only met Jim's daughter before. We fed them, even though they hadn't come for food! Spent a couple of hours chatting, it was a really good New Year visit.

I did an hour of clearing up in the cold and wet before it got dark, then came in and did an enormous wash up and food prep... had earlier picked some 'Winter Mushrooms' off a productive log (also known as Velvet Shank due to their black stem, 'enokitake' in Japan and in Latin, 'Flamulina velupites') and had these with some onion and sweetcorn with a breadroll and potato salad.

Sunday 11th November 07

A very pleasant day, as had a reasonably good lie-in, and the children just got on with their thing and didn't disturb or pester. Can't remember what I did in the morning, but it was out in the garden, came in for 11.30 to watch Countryfile and have lunch. However I do remember I did wash and blanch a lot of grapes, and set them to dry on top of the big stove to make raisins. I also popped round to Ben and Jill as they had offered me some wood for the stove, so I came home with that and chopped it up in less than 5 mins.

Sometime after lunch, our friend Alison rang and said that she'd like to donate a chair to us, she doesn't want it anymore, and her ex-boyfriend Jonathan was coming to pick up either one of us to go and decide if we wanted this armchair. Gill opted to stay in, and sent me, which was good as I was able to have a rare conversation with Jonathan, one of my best friends, and when we got to Alison's, and I'd said an enthusiastic YES to the armchair, I helped her sort out her compost bin (which I installed last year) by carefully scraping out the bottom layer from under all the younger stuff, removing the few twigs for recomposting, removing the few non-compostables for the bin, and fluffing up the good composted stuff for overwintering in a couple of black plastic bin bags, which I had brought with me as I knew they were doing some hedge trimming as well. Once I had done with the compost bin, I helped with the hedge trimming, firstly by gathering up the long woody twigs, some over 1 metre long, and bagging them up so they'll go through my shredder, and then wielding the electric hedgetrimmer as both Jonathan and Alison had done quite a bit. We did 3 hedges, two privet and one leylandii. I only brought the privet home with me, as leylandii composts too slowly and is a bit of a nuisance, so that was stuffed in the council green bin for them to process. Jonathan then drove me home with the armchair and 5 sacks of privet cuttings. Gill was delighted with the chair, it will replace a very old falling-to-bits one which I now have to remove and dispose of. Later this week, I expect.

It was dark when I got in, so did some washing up and ate the tea which Gill had invented, a cottage pie using a load of sweet potatoes from Out Of This World yesterday and the tomato and leek sauce I made yesterday. Plus assorted vegetables.

Lit the small stove in the front room as it is a very cold day, it's only the second time this Autumn I've done this.

I watched a good drama with Gill, about learner drivers, and I shelled loads of pumpkin seeds at the same time, then went online and did blog and emails.

Sunday 28th October 07

A good day as had a bit of a lie-in, perhaps helped by the clocks changing, and spent some of the day managing the collection of compost heaps.

We had a visit from our friend Alison who has recently come back from a visit to Zanzibar, where she has a friend. She had an interesting time, as it's one of the first times she's travelled abroad, so the culture shock was quite tangible. However she has had more of a shock since coming home, as she became friendly with a little girl who was living in her friend's house, this little girl had lost her parents somehow and was distantly connected with her host family. She treated this girl equally to the friend's offspring, infact this girl was easier to be with than the friend's children who were quite difficult to be with, their behavoiur was 'challenging'. So she connected with the little girl, and when she left, gave all of the children a present. Since coming back, her friend has been quite distant and offhand, and Alison thinks it may be because she showed friendship to the girl who was not really part of the family. This situation has made her very unhappy, it has coloured her memories of her trip.

In the evening I researched white poppies for my paid blog, as I have often worn one at this time of year to make my opposition to war known. They are made and sold by the Peace Pledge Union, and have a long and interesting history. I wrote and submitted my blog.