Up early as Gill wanted me to light the stove as the children were cold and she had to get their breakfasts and do three packed lunches. She left with our youngest as he's on a school trip on and around the River Ouse, and she's going with the group.
I really wanted to go back to bed but didn't, as had to go into town to give in a cheque, visit the bank re the LETS account, to see if I've filled in the paperwork correctly, and various other places. It was a bit of a frustrating morning, as the bank doesn't 'do' anything connected with business banking or voluntary groups, yet I waited about 30 minutes to be told this, and I was unable to speak to anyone at the council re expenses connected with the Hull Road Ward Planning Panel. But whilst I was waiting to hear this, I filled in a request for permits to use my trailer at the Hazel Court James Street recycling site, where, apparently, bicycles are not allowed for 'Health and Safety reasons'. I look forward to the response; if it is 'you cannot go there as we don't allow pedestrians up at the top', I'm going to ask why, therefore, car drivers are allowed to get out of their vehicles and take materials from one skip to another, as pedestrians? I want to be allowed to use the site 'at my own risk', the same as I use roads 'at my own risk' and pedestrian crossings 'at my own risk' etc etc. I want to be treated like anybody else depositing drinks cartons or scrap iron for recycling, ie, basically ignored and left to get on with it. I would, however, accept them walking in front of my bike with a red flag to warn other people of the dangers I pose, or to protect me from being endangered. We'll see. I expect a campaign coming on!
I got home at midday and did more washing up and had lunch.
A quiet and productive afternoon, went all too quickly, but got quite a lot done, including a phone call with the Co-op Bank, revealing that I need to get signatures from the new signatories in another part of the form. SO complicated just to get some new people able to sign the cheque book!
Gill and our youngest came back; he was completely knackered as they'd walked miles, literally. Our eldest came back bearing his school report which was very good, with above average effort in most subjects. We really rubbed it in how pleased we were with his effort.
I went to the York Rotters Social at 7pm... the 'end of year celebration and thank you' party. Initially there were just 7 of us but as the evening went on, a few more came. Catherine our paid co-ordinator had provided some food and drinks, and organised a quiz, based on World Records... things like 'what was the height of the tallest costumed character to run in a marathon?' We were given a multiple choice, and the answer was apparently 4.2metres, a nurse character in 2007 I think! Some of the questions generated some comments, chat and laughter, and our team came second with 6 correct out of 20. Catherine had organised prizes for all participants, and two lucky people got a Compost Mate turning tool. I chose a Bubblehouse stacking Desk-Top Wormery which I'm pleased with, despite it being a bit twee! It will probably be a good teaching aid for me, as taking my Can O Worms (with extra tray) anywhere would be really difficult with a bike trailer! This, however, is small and compact, but demonstrates the concept of stacking wormeries which allow the worms to work up through the composting material.
So, a good event, met several new people and had some fun, and came away with new kit, which will undoubtedly come in useful. I think our Master Composter scheme is excellent... well funded and managed, a team of trained and supported volunteers who attend lots of different events, helping people start composting, helping existing composters compost more. I have found friendship and a deep satisfaction in promoting one part of a low carbon lifestyle. I am proud to be a York Rotter, the original York Rotter!
Showing posts with label James Street Civic Amenety Site. Show all posts
Showing posts with label James Street Civic Amenety Site. Show all posts
Tuesday, 24 March 2009
Saturday, 3 May 2008
Saturday 3rd May 08
Awoken at 7am by loud banging downstairs and after three episodes, went down to see what had happened. One of my sons had got a splinter in his finger and was having a paddy about this. It is absolutely incredible how much fuss such a tiny irritant causes.... amazing!
I tried to talk to him calmly but was shouted down. I told him that if it were my splinter, I'd cut the top layers of skin off with my penknife scissors and extract the splinter, and he could do this himself if he wanted, or I could do it for him as any Dad would. He wouldn't let me, loudly. I then offered to take him to casualty. He could see the ridiculousness of this and soon allowed me to carefully remove the splinter in the way I'd described. It was about two millimetres long and not deeply embedded, and afterwards I got lots of thanks from him and Gill, and cuddles from the other child who hates the huge outbursts just as much as we do.
The day got better! Both boys were engrossed with friends and I went down to town with some York Rotters stall stuff in my panniers... as part of the York Fiesta weekend is a performance of Anneliese Emmans-Dean's 'Compost, the mini Musical' and we have a stall to catch any passing or associated interest. I was embarrassed by Anneliese introducing me as 'The Greenest Man In Britain' or something similar, but happy with 'He can answer any of your composting questions'!
(see http://thebigbuzz.wordpress.com/2007/07/05/compost-the-mini-musical-world-premiere/ for the info about the mini-musical!)
The musucal was good, although could have been better if the children had been wearing microphones as the city centre was noisy and their voices small. Our stall got only a few visitors, perhaps a dozen or so.
Before 2 we closed it down and Jo and I took the stuff to Rowntrees Park, as she's now got a cycle trailer, and we left it in the pavillion ready for tomorrow's Worm Charming do. We had a coffee and a good chat before I went to Anna's to pick up another large load of greenery to take to James St for the green waste skip. There's far too much for me to take back home to compost, perhaps 4 cubic metres? Quite a few bike-loads anyway, even though I get a lot on each journey.
No hassles at James St, they seem to have dropped their objection to cyclists with trailers visiting the site and doing their recycling, maybe the letters to the Press struck a chord and they realised the folly of their ways...
Home by 4pm. Did some work in the garden with one of our boys' 9 yr old friends, who was very keen to work with me and riddle compost with the rotasieve. I didn't realise til Gill mentioned it, that he either doesn't have a Daddy or doesn't see him much, and that made him wanting to work with me kinda nice and a bit more understandable. His comment about boys enjoying getting dirty made a bit more sense too, as he's in a female household and they may not appreciate his mud-pie making. I took him back home at 8pm, as he'd had tea with us and then come back outside to help me with the composting! Very satisfying.....
A good evening, nowt much on the box so typed away at my keyboard, mainly chatting on Skype message thingy with Ali whom I met at a recent gig.
I tried to talk to him calmly but was shouted down. I told him that if it were my splinter, I'd cut the top layers of skin off with my penknife scissors and extract the splinter, and he could do this himself if he wanted, or I could do it for him as any Dad would. He wouldn't let me, loudly. I then offered to take him to casualty. He could see the ridiculousness of this and soon allowed me to carefully remove the splinter in the way I'd described. It was about two millimetres long and not deeply embedded, and afterwards I got lots of thanks from him and Gill, and cuddles from the other child who hates the huge outbursts just as much as we do.
The day got better! Both boys were engrossed with friends and I went down to town with some York Rotters stall stuff in my panniers... as part of the York Fiesta weekend is a performance of Anneliese Emmans-Dean's 'Compost, the mini Musical' and we have a stall to catch any passing or associated interest. I was embarrassed by Anneliese introducing me as 'The Greenest Man In Britain' or something similar, but happy with 'He can answer any of your composting questions'!
(see http://thebigbuzz.wordpress.com/2007/07/05/compost-the-mini-musical-world-premiere/ for the info about the mini-musical!)
The musucal was good, although could have been better if the children had been wearing microphones as the city centre was noisy and their voices small. Our stall got only a few visitors, perhaps a dozen or so.
Before 2 we closed it down and Jo and I took the stuff to Rowntrees Park, as she's now got a cycle trailer, and we left it in the pavillion ready for tomorrow's Worm Charming do. We had a coffee and a good chat before I went to Anna's to pick up another large load of greenery to take to James St for the green waste skip. There's far too much for me to take back home to compost, perhaps 4 cubic metres? Quite a few bike-loads anyway, even though I get a lot on each journey.
No hassles at James St, they seem to have dropped their objection to cyclists with trailers visiting the site and doing their recycling, maybe the letters to the Press struck a chord and they realised the folly of their ways...
Home by 4pm. Did some work in the garden with one of our boys' 9 yr old friends, who was very keen to work with me and riddle compost with the rotasieve. I didn't realise til Gill mentioned it, that he either doesn't have a Daddy or doesn't see him much, and that made him wanting to work with me kinda nice and a bit more understandable. His comment about boys enjoying getting dirty made a bit more sense too, as he's in a female household and they may not appreciate his mud-pie making. I took him back home at 8pm, as he'd had tea with us and then come back outside to help me with the composting! Very satisfying.....
A good evening, nowt much on the box so typed away at my keyboard, mainly chatting on Skype message thingy with Ali whom I met at a recent gig.
Monday, 14 April 2008
Monday 14th April 08
A tough start to the day as neither child wanted to go to school, but as Gill had a meeting first thing (she's on a disability working group, working on a School Disability Equality Scheme) she wanted to take them in. However I got up incase they refused and she had to go in by herself or with just one of them. But with a softly softly and gentle approach, we managed to get them both on their bikes and going with Gill towards school, only 5 minutes later than we usually like to set off.
So I got on with some paperwork... sent a cheque to Positive News (http://www.positivenews.org.uk/cgi-bin/Positive_News/welcome.cgi ) for my next two-year subscription, to Kitchen Garden for a one-year sub, a cheque to Cozmic Balloons for the £70 worth of modelling balloons they sent me, and a £100 cheque to Artur of Art Roofing for mending the garage roof.
I lit the stove as last night I made some leek soup using thrown-away leek tops, a carrot with some carrot root fly damage (easy to cut this out, but leaves the carrot looking less than carrot-shaped, but fine for soup!) and a free onion (again, some slight damage on 10% means that it is unsaleable, but the rest is fine!) and some bought celery. So that was chopped up all together, fried gently and then water added to simmer for a while, before either having like that, a stew, or whizzing up and making into a smooth soup.
A day of housework mostly. I did go to the skip site (Hazel Court) on James Street with a load of drinks cartons which are now able to be put in a collection skip, although they are not collected in our doorstep recycling box. I also put about 50 batteries I've collected over the past few years in the battery recycling container. I was delighted that there is now no attempt to prevent bicycles going into the civic amenity site and offloading trailer-loads of recyclables or skippable items. Common sense prevails!
The boys LOVED the soup, hurrah!
During the evening, I chopped up a huge load of waste plums (lovely mild-tasting yellow ones, thrown as some of them have a dark area near the stone and it looks like it's going bad, but it tastes fine!) and whizzed them up and patiently pushed as much of it through a fine sieve to make a puree. This was poured into two non-stick trays, made even non-stickier by a wipe of olive oil, and put on the big pans of water on the stove to dry off. It'll make an excellent fruit leather!
So I got on with some paperwork... sent a cheque to Positive News (http://www.positivenews.org.uk/cgi-bin/Positive_News/welcome.cgi ) for my next two-year subscription, to Kitchen Garden for a one-year sub, a cheque to Cozmic Balloons for the £70 worth of modelling balloons they sent me, and a £100 cheque to Artur of Art Roofing for mending the garage roof.
I lit the stove as last night I made some leek soup using thrown-away leek tops, a carrot with some carrot root fly damage (easy to cut this out, but leaves the carrot looking less than carrot-shaped, but fine for soup!) and a free onion (again, some slight damage on 10% means that it is unsaleable, but the rest is fine!) and some bought celery. So that was chopped up all together, fried gently and then water added to simmer for a while, before either having like that, a stew, or whizzing up and making into a smooth soup.
A day of housework mostly. I did go to the skip site (Hazel Court) on James Street with a load of drinks cartons which are now able to be put in a collection skip, although they are not collected in our doorstep recycling box. I also put about 50 batteries I've collected over the past few years in the battery recycling container. I was delighted that there is now no attempt to prevent bicycles going into the civic amenity site and offloading trailer-loads of recyclables or skippable items. Common sense prevails!
The boys LOVED the soup, hurrah!
During the evening, I chopped up a huge load of waste plums (lovely mild-tasting yellow ones, thrown as some of them have a dark area near the stone and it looks like it's going bad, but it tastes fine!) and whizzed them up and patiently pushed as much of it through a fine sieve to make a puree. This was poured into two non-stick trays, made even non-stickier by a wipe of olive oil, and put on the big pans of water on the stove to dry off. It'll make an excellent fruit leather!
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