Friday 28th August 09

A busy day... two Green Festival meetings and a funeral.

I got up just after 9 and had a quick breakfast and then got a load of potato sacks out of the garage where I put them to dry out, as a Freecycle person has requested 20 for his spuds.

Then raced down to town on the bike, trailer rattling and bouncing behind me, with me dressed in my best black long trousers and Jimi Hendrix black teeshirt, in the pouring rain to the York Green Festival meets City of York Council Environmental Health meeting.

This went reasonably well... despite us not having all the answers. Fortunately Jem from JSS Audio was there and he did have some answers... after all he is a professional! I agreed to be the person who will cycle round all the sensitive areas nearby and assess the sound levels. I will have to keep records, so that if we do have complaints, we can demonstrate that we did everything possible to reduce the likelihood of noise nuisance. We have some technical fixes too, but fortunately that's nothing to do with me.

I had to go at 11am as I had decided to go to the funeral of John Morris, a friend of my good friend Jonathan. I met John Morris about 5 times, and found him an interesting, humorous and friendly guy, more unique than the average person and with a fascinating home full of books.

The funeral was at the Crematorium, and I got there with about 5 minutes to spare and Jonathan beckoned me over. There were a few familiar faces, Debbie from over the road, John and Shirley Bibby, some other York folks. The service was really good. I was fascinated to hear more about John, his times spent at Ampleforth School, his love of botany, antiquarian books, and his unusual lifestyle. His wife, daughter and three friends spoke, and the celebrant was good too. I haven't been to many funerals but this was a good one. Sad, but good. A good send off.

Cycled home in thoughtful mood... funerals always make me realise how short life is, and remind me to continue packing as much into it as I can, as I could be dead tomorrow, next month, next year... or might last 10, 30 or even 50 years more! The moral is we rarely know when the end is nigh, so live every day as if it is your last...

I cannot remember what I did in the couple of hours between the funeral and my next meeting.. probably some compost management (I know I changed my clothes!) and I had lunch, but at 4ish I headed off to Rowntree Park to meet John the park keeper, who will be on duty on Sunday 6th. I wanted to brief him about the Festival, and find out about various power and resources issues. The news was good, and I came home via Country Fresh happy, and bought some avocados and eggs, carrots and a head of broccoli.

When I got back, I had a visitor from around the corner, a lady called Gillian which she pronounces with a hard G, not a J. She told me that they were taking down a large fir tree, and they had stacked under it a pile of logs... and did I want them? I have never knowingly said no to logs, so I happily took the wheelbarrow round to pick them up. When I got the second load, I sat and chatted with them, and had a very jolly conversation. And the logs were great too... really dry hardwood.

Spent a long time chopping apples up for drying... and used one of the new logs to get them started. And heat washing up water...

Wednesday 5th August 09

I was woken by Gill as there was a chap with a large van who was offering me some logs. It was the man from around the corner who had invited me to take the logs from the front of his house... I'd taken quite a few in the bike trailer but obviously he wanted his driveway clear. I helped him unload and thanked him, and then had breakfast.

A relatively quiet day, including washing up, nice lunch and another visit from a chap offering me logs. He too lives round the corner and told me he'd cut down an apple tree and did I want the proceeds. Well of course I did, so I went round to his house and helped him take the logs from his back garden to his front drive, and then I got my wheelbarrow and took 6 loads back to my house.

The front garden is beginning to look a little full! But it's OK, I do a bit every day, mostly. So I did about half an hour with the chainsaw... but it was a very warm day so I got decidedly sweaty.

Whilst Gill was in town with our eldest I spent some time in the back garden with our youngest, as Gill had asked him to harvest some poppy seeds and had provided him with a paper bag to put them in. I cut off the ripe seed pods and he did the seed removal, and I did a load of weeding and removal of perpetual spinach beet flower spikes, some of which are as tall as me and are flopping all over the place. They have self seeded for years now, and there are loads of new ones coming... we harvest leaves from them regularly.

So a hard-working day, but very little happened really.

Tuesday 7th July 09

I woke up later than I would have liked to, but got into town in good time.

I gave my bike in to Cycle Heaven to have new disc brake pads fitted. These are expensive, about £15 each, plus fitting, but the chap sorted my dynamo out too, which had been malfunctioning occasionally, needing a wriggle of the wires underneath the generator to make it work. I walked round town to spend an hour waiting for the bike to be done, as I didn't want to have to come down later in the day.

I got out some Euros to pay for my questionnaire to continue to be hosted til next January, need to send this off asap!

Home at midday and went round to Lynn's to deliver some beetroot to her, as she wants to make some borscht. I also disposed of a sackful of compostables in her compost bin. Glad to have another outlet for them, and she's grateful which is good!

Home for lunch, and all too soon it was 3pm and time for me to go to the Fishergate Ward meeting with my York Rotters hat on (teeshirt actually) as there was a Rotters stall and fabric compost bin giveaway. We spoke to 20 people, most of whom were already composting but wanted to compost more. Anna was there and she took two composters for the two rented houses she looks after. But as she was not able to carry them, I delivered these to Anna's house and came home.

I had borscht with some pasta and green beans in it. Gill had made a Swiss Roll and a jelly so I had some of that too... but soon after 7 I had to go to the York Green Festival meeting at St Johns. I chaired and it was a reasonably good meeting, despite several of the key people not turning up.

I popped in on Anita on the way home and met her dog Max for the first time. Anita and Bruno looked very happy together, and they'd had a good time at Glastonbury. Infact, Anita came across as an excited teenager! I'll deliver the Suma catalogue tomorrow as we've an order coming up.

I got home before 10 and collected two wheelbarrow's worth of logs from Woodlands where another two trees have been cut down. I estimate there are another 15 wheelbarrow's worth of logs there. Maybe a tonne. But, the trees which have died and been cut down are not good splitters... the rounds are very difficult to split, so I don't feel 100% enthusiastic about them as to get these into usable logs I'll have to do a lot of work.

Came in at 10.15 and settled down to do emails, blog, facebook, more emails and finally, washing up!