Tuesday 17th January 12

A late start but a productive day after that, as I went to town and got money out of one account to pay off our Council Tax, and two other accounts to pay the Steiner School spring term bill.

I put last night's beetroot in 3 jars and filled them with vinegar, and during the day did the usual tonne of washing up.

I also spent quite a bit of time online, contributing to discussions, arguments, playing Scrabble and sharing links.  Nothing new!

Tuesday 26th July 11

A busy day, got a fair amount done.  I got up fairly early and managed to get my head around the difficult email.... a compromise, I sent a simple message with hardly any detail, saying that if it was OK, I wouldn't need to send a more detailed one.

I then had a phone conversation with a Council person, re a grant I applied for to put on an energy saving event.  With my York in Transition hat on, I've been given £500 to spend on a one-day event to promote energy efficiency and domestic renewables.  I agreed to go to the Council Offices to sign the paperwork at midday.  I got wrapped up in the washing machine stuff with Gill, and then realised, at 11.43, hat I had to be at the office at 12... so i quickly got washed and dressed and on my bike and powered down to St Leonard's, getting there at 12.02. Not bad!  However, In waited another 10 minutes for the Council official to appear... so I needn't have rushed.

So I signed for this and I'll have the cheque in about a month. I need to find a venue and a date and stallholders and do publicity.....

I then went to my building society and withdrew a wad of notes to pay a good proportion of our Council Tax... and went straight back to the Council offices to pay that in.  From here I popped into Millers Yard to say hello to Dylan... and met a new resident of York, a hair-braider called Tamsin.  We talked about street entertainment and red tape.

Then home via Freshways... 2 sacks of compostables here. Came home to find Gill sorting out the conservatory, as she's convinced there's something in there, and it might have been responsible for causing the washing machine to stop working.  I helped her for a while, pulling the washing machine out and taking rubbish to the dustbin and compostables down the garden.

I then spent a bit of time organising my September visit to Basingstoke.  I'm going to travel down to near London on the Thursday and stay with a friend until Saturday, when I'll then travel to Basingstoke and do a Fiddlesticks and John the Composter gig, and come back to York after that.  When talking to the client, I'd found ticket prices which added up to about £70 for the three journeys.  However, today, I had a good poke around the East Coast website, and got the three tickets for £58... including one which was advertised at £10 but when I actually bought it, turned out to be just £9. So I was well pleased with that!

Gill couldn't see any nibbling on the electrical flex, and wondered if the damage had been done in the void between the back of the house and a freestanding wall, a gap which I'd boarded up and filled with insulation, and had been invaded by a rat or rats several years ago.  But she had a brainwave.... maybe the problem was the socket box... so she got the extension flex and plugged the washing machine into that, and Voila! It worked!  So as the wash was doing, and we were chatting about our not now needing a new washing machine, I removed the wooden shuttering and insulation.

Gill rang Justin, our electrical and plumbing angel, and by chance he was doing some tiling just down the road.  He said he'd be with us in an hour to see the problem.  He came, looked around, and said he'd bring a bricklayer to fill the void with bricks, and would see about fixing the electrics... tomorrow!  What service!  He's not cheap, but he is reliable and really nice!

I then spent ages on the phone trying to get to the Tax Credits renewal people.  I eventually got to them and told them our net earned income... which last year was the lowest ever for Professor Fiddlesticks.  The problem is partly that I still have the expensive directory advertising which now isn't bringing in as much work. 

So after this mainly sedentary day, I spent a bit of time in the garden and dealt with some compost and some weeding.

I had a small tea and at 7.30, set out for the Green Party fundraiser at City Screen.  This was very enjoyable, as loads of my friends were there. One person was there whom I've been playing Scrabble on facebook with for ages, but never met.  So I was very happy to meet Carol, who was sitting with her two friends and my friends Jane and David.  When the music started, Jane and David had a dance and some others joined in.  I particularly enjoyed the band 'BlueSaloon' which played funky blues numbers, and had a female guest singer for a couple of numbers, which was good.  My fiend Keith Jackman was the drummer for both bands.  I was very pleased to see him working... well, mainly hear him as where I was sitting I couldn't see him very well.

So, some nice music, good chats, a couple of pints of sweet cider, and I enjoyed the evening quite a bit.

Got home between 11.30 and midnight, lit the stove to get washing up water and continue drying off the fruit leather.  A late night, 3am bedtime.

Thursday 14th October 10 Hull Road Ward By-Election

I was up early and ready to go and stand in a polling station. But, I didn't actually get out til after 9, and they'd been open since 7am...  So, I went to vote, walked down with my friend Debbie, and then I stayed there and did the 'door smiler' role, not taking numbers as the Green Party isn't targeting this ward and therefore isn't trying to get every last Green supporter out.  But Labour and Lib Dem were working really hard, door knocking and there was even a leaflet saying 'today's the day, please get out and vote'. I popped in on the Tang Hall Lane polling station to thank the staff there, as it's a quite boring day and I think they do a great job... and as it's a thankless task, I like to buck the trend.

I came home for an early lunch and then loaded the trailer with a job-lot of squashed soya milk cartons and went to see Ginnie who was at the polling station at St Nicks.  They had been very quiet, apparently just 7 voters in over 2 hours.  It was obvious there would be a low turnout.

I cycled on to Hazel Court- there's a back way out of St Nicks which I use to go to and from James St occasionally, and I put my cartons in the recycling container with minimal hassle... one of the chaps there said I could use the 'pedestrians' recycling bins down at the entrance, but I told him that bikes were now allowed up at the top as Yorwaste had seen sense and realised that even car drivers walked around at the top, so cyclists weren't a special case re 'Health and Safety', and the 'no cyclists' sign had been removed.  I told him I really wanted to use the top, like any other normal person in a vehicle.

Then I went on into town.  I put in a Fiddlesticks cheque and had one made out for the  City of York Council for Council Tax.  Went to the bank and got cash out, to make up the balance for the Council.  I was able to pay it all in at 9 St Leonard's and I met my old friend Trish who was doing something similar.  We're now paid up til next spring.  From here I went to the station to buy some train tickets for a gig in Bristol I've been invited to do, in November.

And then home, via the Abundance raised bed, where there were three black sacks of annual plants which had been weeded out.  Unfortunately, some of the perennials and biennial plants had been moved, not sure why, and were looking very sorry for themselves.  Biennials should be left where they have grown in their first year, as disturbing the roots at this time of year means they won't thrive next year, and there's a good chance they will die over winter.  I picked up a box of compostables at Country Fresh and two sacks at Freshways.

I than had an hour or so at home before I was due to go to Vanbrugh College and speak at the 'Activist Cafe' event.  York Rotters had been invited but said they couldn't go, so I said I'd do it instead.  I was due on at 5pm.  I explained about the situation of my having been instrumental in starting York Rotters but currently unable to represent them in front of groups of people, so I was talking to them as just John the Composter, but that this gave me more freedom to mention compost toilets and how to compost cooked food on an ordinary compost heap, subjects completely banned as a York Rotter.  So the talk went well and there were some good questions at the end.  I overshot my 30 minute slot by nearly 10 minutes, but they were fired up to start a campaign to persuade the University to start composting the food waste from the canteens and residential blocks.

I came home via a new logpile and had tea, a baked sweet potato and a thin nutloaf thing Gill had created.  I'd found two Parasol musrooms in the woods on Windmill Lane, and I fried these in olive oil on the woodstove, and they were a good flavoured garnish on the nutloaf...  At 9pm I set out for the count at Archbishop Holgates School, popping in to say thank you to the bored polling station staff there.  Soon after 10pm the ballot boxes arrived and my agent Andy Chase, and two election buddies (not sure that this is their official title!) Ginnie and Andy D'Agorne arrived, and the count got underway.

It was in three sections.  First the number of ballots cast were counted.  1468 out of a total possible of 7992, meaning a rubbish turnout of 18.3%.  Shame on the voters of Hull Road Ward for so much apathy.

Then the ballot papers were sorted into the different candidates voted for.  It was absolutely clear that the Labour chap, Mick Hoban, was going to win.  I went to chat with him and it turned out he works for the Forestry Commission and seemed like a really nice guy.  He said he had admired my logpiles and we chatted about assorted wildlife, and pollarding and coppicing, and a potential project he had thought about quite near here.  My guess is that we'll meet again and talk trees some more. 

Finally, the ballots for each candidate were counted into piles of 50.  I was relieved to see I'd got more than the racist BNP.  There were 3 spoilt ballots which all candidates had to agree were not filled in properly.  The results were as follows:

BNP 42 votes, 2.9%
Green 84 votes 5.7%
Dim Leb 183 votes 12.5%
Tory 296 votes 20.1%
Labour 860 votes 58.6%

So, as expected, the Greens were behind the 3 main parties and ahead of the fascists.  I was pleased with this.

I came home at 11.30 and had a bottle of perry as a little celebration.  I sent out an email to the Green Party to thank those who had helped, and documeted the day.

Monday 24th May 10

I think it was quite a good day... I did get quite a bit done and nothing terrible happened.

Although I went to bed at 3am last night, I was up just after 9 this morning and feeling fine, and soon got myself on my bike with the paperwork needed to pay our Council Tax and re-subscribe to Resource Magazine, which is always a good read.

So I got cheques out and then went to the City Treasury to pay in half of our annual Council Tax. We have the opportunity to use PayPoint in a local shop, but this would be connected to our bank account, and I don't pay the Council Tax from this... I always pay from my Fiddlesticks income, from the Fiddlesticks Building Society account, so I'll continue to pay twice a year, using a cheque from this account. I did find out though that I could get a cheque out made payable to The Post Office, and use a card (which is being sent to me) to get that paid on to the Council. I had a 20 minute wait at the Council Treasury, as they no longer have the numbers of staff that they used to, so I might use the Post Office option next time.

I visited Dylan at Millers Yard, but someone else had taken his last bag of orange halves, shock horror, for their allotment. I was delighted!

Then back through town, collecting halved lemons from the lemonade stall, and visited Rich at Country Fresh and came home.

After lunch I did some paperwork (an invoice, emails, several phone calls) and sent a reply to the US Composting Council about the Sierra Club's new proposed policy on composting and then outside, yet more foodplant stuff, getting the last tomato plant potted up, and some of the squashes and beans outside in the radiator raised beds.

At teatime I was informed that our eldest had to take 500g of cooking apple into school tomorrow for his 'food technology' so he can make apple crumble, so I cycled down to Country Fresh again and got two cooking apples (550g, allowing 10% waste for peel and core... clever, eh?) plus a large load of blood oranges which are past their best, bruising a pale powdery blue colour... They'll be absolutely fine on my compost heap, though.

So, finance, paperwork of the electronic kind, phone calls, assorted eco activism on the web, making potting mix, planting plants, riddling compost, collecting compostables, building another layer on the heap, seems like a good active day.

During the evening I told all my German friends about the forthcoming screenings of The Age of Stupid in German, had a discussion about vaccination and immunisation on facebook, stimulated by my delight that Andrew Wakefield has been struck off the Medical Register for unethical practices, and played a bit of Scrabble... and washed up, and washed and blanched grapes ready for drying into raisins.

Oh, and watched the Community Channel on Freeview to see assorted Age of Stupid stuff. Which as usual had me in tears. Wonderful, still!