Monday 4th April 11

I got up at 9; Gill had taken our youngest to school in a taxi and we were expecting Will to come and do maths with our home-schooler. 

Gill came back and I got busy in the garden, doing more mechanical riddling and filling sacks with mature compost for Edible York.

I came in for lunch and went out for another short time, to load my trailer... 2 big sacks in the trailer plus the little one's bike, and a sack on my pannier rack.

I cycled down to the Building Society to get out a cheque for Jim Semlyen, to renew http://www.novaterium.com/ and delivered that cheque.  Then on to Cycle Heaven to get a new cycle helmet for our youngest, who's grown out of his old one.  He wanted a green coloured one, so I picked the only green one.  However, this was £54, and I'd wanted to pay only half of this!  So he got a red one for £30.  I then delivered the compost to St Clements, and headed off to the Millennium Bridge to go to the Steiner School.  I did 15 minutes of compost heap management there... the new bin is now ready for some fruity stuff from the daleks next to the playground.  So that's my next job.

My son liked the new skid lid, and we cycled home together... but he did the last bit on his own as I wanted to pop in to Freshways to collect compostables.

I did more work in the garden until just after 6 when I came in (with a good crop of Shiitake!) and Gill told me I could do my own tea... so I did.  Rice based, with Shiitake mushrooms, home grown and fresh off the log!

Then it was the LETS meeting.  I took notes, and wrote them up afterwards.  I seem to have a lot to do.  Not an early night.

Monday 13th October 08

Got downstairs at 8ish and our eldest was growling his way through his homework.
I took our youngest to school, and when I got home Gill was getting ready to go and have her tooth extracted, to prevent the re-occurrence of the abscess. I lit the stove so I could dry a load of fruit...

I spent quite a bit of time looking through information about cycle helmets, following the comment (last Friday) from Richard Keatinge about why he and his children don't wear them. I have learned a lot about this contentious subject, and hope that more research is undertaken.

We had a good afternoon talking to Paul, another new contact, and then at 3 went to pick up our little one.... coming back via the logpile and arriving at home with another 60 or 80 kilos...

As all was well after school, I popped down to St Nicks to help clear up some mess made over the weekend when someone threw a load of sticks around which I'd piled up to slowly take home bit by bit. I took one load home and put the rest into the St Nicks compound so that some of their volunteers can chop it all up for their stove...

Then came home and a very peaceful evening progressed, although Gill was feeling ill she boiled some home grown potatoes and broccoli, and created a nutloaf. I chatted with the boys, and as was finding some music to become a soundtrack to Ali's film, they took an interest in that.
These are some of my favourite tracks/bands:

Orbital: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEVBTKrs97I and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvuiXb--Lu8 (Gill and I were at this gig!)
Ozric Tentacles, for instance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXAaDqPl7oY
Spacemen 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxgrxD674IY&feature=related
Ultramarine, (not my fave track/album which I cannot find on Youtube) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCZ7cshAkWY
Eatstatic http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8BOUtKe2dg and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-_NneB5fmY&feature=related
The Orb see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvavCIRKJrw&feature=related and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8xqMEOjtlA&feature=related
KLF see, for instance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_64V5he-bk&feature=related and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLUTDhdlJs4&feature=related
Peter Tosh http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OZQ1vFCmoI and my favourite PT song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sX7zvcW8eaU
and Tosh soundalike Lucky Dube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewRzSOCDApc and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFVjtBkfyDo
Pink Floyd, my fave album is Obscured by Clouds, which is soundtrack to a film called La Valee: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5R-_Go5C2A
Deep Purple: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFDvvQ5wi1w

and that's just a start... I have a vast music collection and this only just scratches the surface.
I haven't had time to find Human League, Kraftwerk, Bonzo Dog Doodah Band, Small Faces, Beatles, Black Uhuru, Yello, Frank Chickens, Big Audio Dynamite, Blondie, Gong, Steve Hillage, Steve Miller, Gary Numan, Donna Summer, Chaka Khan, Brian Eno, Talking Heads, Rolling Stones, Roxy Music, all sorts of Break Dance/Hip Hop stuff, a smattering of classical such as Carl Orf's Carmina Burana and Mussorgsky's Pictures At An Exhibition (best version by Tomita) and thousands more, literally. I used to LOVE music and it still means a heck of a lot.... although when I listen now, the shivers don't go up and down my spine as they used to...

So the boys were fascinated to see/hear some of my favourite 'retro' life, which they know nothing of, as ever since we moved here, I've never got my turntable plugged into the amp, and then a couple of years after moving here, one child dropped a pot of paint onto the amp so that it no longer works. I really ought to get it all wired up again. So for 7 years, I've only listened to my tape collection and a few CDs, and the radio. The hundreds of vinyl records have just sat there.... which is a pity really as it's a varied and eclectic couple of bookshelf's full...

A very pleasant evening! Included a good phone chat with my parents and two Scrabble games on Facebook with two of my friends..

Friday 10th October 08

I took my youngest into school, not without incident though. He's been wearing a cycle helmet since he was put on a bike, at less than a year old and the whole family wear them as a normal thing to do. So why was it this morning that our little darling started to have an issue with the straps? They are not tight but he pulled them too loose, so that the helmet might come off his cranium if he were to fall off his bike or be knocked off. I tightened them, not overly so, just so they stopped the helmet slipping, and a huge paddy ensued! Oh the joys of parenthood! I just love it!

Gill is still unwell with toothache and yesterday fell down the stairs so she spent some of the morning in bed.

However, during the afternoon she got up and made some pastry for a pie for tea, I did a small amount of leafmould removal from last year's pile, digging it up and crumbling the lumps into garden refuse sacks where it will reside for another year before riddling and adding to potting media. All I have to do to know it's worth it is to eat a tomato from the vines in the conservatory... so tasty and delicious, and the only financial cost is the seeds, and they come cheap due to my having an allotment and the lottie holders can make an order for seeds, onion sets and potatoes.

I picked up our little one who had forgotten his weird ten minutes of hating the straps on his cycle helmet and came home via the logpile. I did some chainsawing whilst the kids played 'Spore' on the computer, making creatures and engaging in online battles with other Spore users... However they fell out for some reason, probably as they are sharing an account and disagreed over whether or not to spend or save some 'Sporebucks'. Gill and I threatened to prevent them using the computer over the weekend if the fighting didn't stop... and predictably they started to get on!

Gill made a veg pie for tea with home grown potatoes and tinned sweetcorn. We all watched Mastermind and Gardener's World, and then I went to get a bag of electrical flex which I'd pulled out of a skip a few days ago, as I wanted to strip the insulation off to retrieve the copper wire for recycling. I do this with a craft-knife blade which can be carefully run down the length of the wire, which enables the metal to be pulled out. Both boys were intrigued by the growing pile of copper wire and asked if they could play with it and make sculptures... so the rest of the evening til nearly 10pm was spent with copper wire sculpture making. Gill made a dragonfly and the boys made glasses, funny animals, an umbrella and several others. It was lovely! Even after the sculptures were made there was still lots of wire left for recycling, and I hope the boys will keep one creation each as a memento.

A busy evening followed.