Sunday 16th November 08

A relatively peaceful morning but boys full of energy and aggression. I wasn't feeling up to much, tired and a bit headachey, so just sat and watched Countryfile and after lunch did a bit in the garden and then at about 2.30, to the allotment to dig up the last row of potatoes and remove some more brambles and lay a bit of mulch material... cardboard and a split bamboo window blind.

Came back to find Simon and his son visiting, after going to the York in Transition Eco-Freecycle-Swap event at the Friends' Meeting House, organised by Anna Semlyen. Apparently it was very successful and Simon was able to offload some spare keyboard stuff and a huge pile of butterknives found in a skip, and come back with a Christmas present for our friend Dexter plus a few other bits and bobs.

I wasn't my usual chatty self and as soon as they'd gone I went to bed and slept, coming down sometine about 8, and had a bowl of soup and the pastie Gill got yesterday. A quiet evening, although frustrating as something is going intermittently wrong with my email and internet... it keeps going off. Perhaps it's caught my bug and needs more sleep!

Later though, I was able to access the net and get emails and do this blog (but not my paid blog!) and I found a bug in my fairly new 'Feedjit' live stats tool. Previously, when I've accessed my blog and then left to see the live stats, the tool tells me that I've come onto Feedjit from my blog and has correctly identified that I'm in York. However, now it thinks I'm from Leighton Buzzard! I can tell this as when I hit the button 'remove my details' the Leighton Buzzard stuff goes. I emailed Feedjit to ask why they thought this was happening.

Saturday 15th November 08

A very quiet and nothingy day in many ways. Slept til after 9, and came down to find Gill was putting together a potato and leek soup, so I lit the stove so that could simmer for a couple of hours. The boys were generally well behaved and enjoying the weekend. Gill took the bus into town, failing to persuade either of them to go with her. As our eldest is going on a fieldtrip next week, he needs assorted clothes, such as a coat and shoes, and she came back with various goodies.

I did a little bit of stick chopping and more stacking, and then came in as I was strangely tired. I organised a fun game of 'picture consequences' with the boys but that left me even more exhausted, and when Gill came in I excused myself and went to bed, initially to read NewScientist but fell asleep. Came down for tea, and we all chuckled through 'You've been Framed' and giggled through 'Harry Hill's TV Burp'. And then went up to bed again. But felt the need to come and do some of the washing up and help manage the kids who were now kicking off following a relatively boring day with little activity. Gill doesn't deserve that kind of treatment and with the two of us they don't mess her around as much.

Friday 14th November 08

Got up early and took our youngest to school... and as he was performing in the assembly at 9.15, I'd taken my 'Compost Mate' tool in and I turned the contents of the two dalek bins with the most mature compost in, taking sticks out and making a layer of them on the growing heap, and taking out the inevitable plastic contraries... sweet wrappers, cling film. bits of toy off the playground...

The assembly was lovely, with a time travelling boy (my son!) arriving at the Greeks and then several Greek God stories, all with great costumes and props.... and I took Gill's little camera in and filmed the parts with our boyo in. I would have liked to film the whole thing, but this camera can only do about 5 minutes of moving stuff, so I got the beginning and end. I just hope I've done it right and Gill and the boys have something to watch!

Gill got back from the hospital just after lunchtime with news that she needs to have her gall bladder removed, pretty urgently. This is quite frightening when looking at the long list of possible side effects and things which might go wrong.

I cycled down to school to get our little un and came back in time to go down to Freshways and Country Fresh. I also did a bit of chainsawing today, and splitting some huge rounds which I couldn't split earlier in the year, but today I did an initial chainsaw cut which got the splitting started, and I was able to use the log grenade to split chunks off. Hard work, got very hot.

A quiet evening, boys had a good session on the computer with their new game, which was a prize on Wednesday at the quiz, and we busyed around the house.

Later in the evening Gill and I had a game of Scrabble and I thrashed her. She doesn't mind, it's the playing that counts, and she does win sometimes. I had a rare defeat on Facebook Scrabble tonight, Jennifer (a Scrabble friend found by chance through the application) beat me, reducing my stats to just 88% won. Dreadful!

Thursday 13th November 08

Gill took our youngest to school and then went to town on the bus to get a requested green tee shirt for our eldest (I've no idea why he needs this, but his school has lots of material needs...) and I had a fairly lazy morning... took a few phone calls, dealt with emails and did some letter writing.

Gill came back for lunch which we ate together and after this, I had a short session in the garden putting another load of watermelons and about 20 200g packs of 'Chinese morning glory' in the Compostumbler.

We both went down to school, as I was volunteering with Green Thumbs. Gill came in and reminded me about BBC's Blue Peter Appeal, called 'Mission Nutrition', so I decided to ask the children about Blue Peter and whether they wanted to help raise some money for their appeal. We eventually got round to the (preferred) 'Bring and Buy' fundraising technique, and agreed on that. Three older children wrote a letter to Mrs P the head teacher, and took it to her, and came back with a decision... Friday 23rd January 2009, 3.15pm, in the 'pack-up bags' area if wet; in the playground if fine. Wonderful! Next week we'll do some posters for this event.


The tasks today were all inside, as it was raining, and some children made Christmas Cards, others made Christmas Tree Star decorations out of twigs, paint and glitter, and still others made stuffed fabric decorations. Busy, messy and fun!

I came home and collected three sacks of wet autumn leaves on Windmill Lane in my usual fashion... cycling fast, sticking out my welly-booted foot into the kerb which scrapes up a big pile of leaves slowing me down, so that when I stop, there's several armfuls of leaves for me to put into the trailer or a sack, and take home for the leafmold enclosure.

We had pasta for tea and I got ready for the York in Transition meeting. This meeting was again at the Stables Project, but this time the meeting was far more complicated... we continued what we did last week, building on it, and looked at the different jobs/roles/tasks etc which were possible in a York in Transition process, and tried to prioritise them and group them together. It seemed very theoretical and I found it a tough meeting to get my head around. But hats off to Jennie and Edward for helping us through it and for bringing this planning process towards an end. Just one more of these types of meeting before we do something a little more vibrant... However I did find out that allegedly, the Stables Project does have a ramp to make their downstairs room accessible, although their toilet definitely isn't...

I got home at 10pm and our eldest was still doing homework, writing an excellent story about a mythical Roman scenario mixed with a bit of SciFi and computer game imagery. Gill read me the story when she came down at 11pm, which is when he finished.

Wednesday 12th November 08

Up reasonably early and got kit together as I've a gig in Sheffield, at Ali's daughter's school, so that Ali can get some film of 'Professor Fiddlesticks' for her University project.

I cycled down to the station for about 9.15 and Ali met me at Sheffield station at 10.30, and took me back to her house in the car... a quick stop for a coffee and to pack her filming stuff, and off to the primary school where her little girl is a pupil. I did a 30 minute show with juggling, devilsticks (show only, no workshop), lots of feather balancing as the children watching were quite young, so I chose the easiest skill which got the maximum number of children out to have a go (and that Ali's daughter can do, as one of her arms doesn't function properly/at all, due to Cerebral Palsy)... followed by 'Derek the Naughty Diabolo' and a unicycle/devilstick finale... fast, fun and a well received show, hopefully with some good images for Ali's project!

Had a nice lunch with Ali back at her house and a shore interview using a digital dictaphone to do some voice-over material for masking some of the noisy stuff filmed at the front of our house (next to a busy road)... and then back to school to pick up her little one, and down to the station so I could get the 15.46 back to York... a pretty non stop day, but enjoyable, and glad to help out Ali with this final part of filming, I think...

Gill went out in the evening to a school quiz, with our eldest. I stayed in with our youngest and we watched the BBC2 'Oceans' programme together. I had a nice Skype chat with Lorna and the 'quiz two' came back at 10pm, having won some sort of computer equipment.

Tuesday 11th November 08

Woke feeling substantially better than yesterday, got up and got busy, lit the stove and put hot water on the washing up, and got a phone call from my CRAGger buddy Robin... St Nicks had offered me a big sack of sticks last week but I'd been unable to collect them, so they'd offered them to Robin, who also didn't want them (lack of space for storing) so he brought them round to me in his trailer on his way back from B and Q, where he was looking for a way to make his woodstove-fired central heating system 'Building Regs compliant' ie, gravity driven, not pump driven. He said he'd worked out how to do it, using 'only' £200 worth of copper pipe! But having a Dunsley Yorkshire woodstove, which burns smoke free and is therefore allowed in smoke control areas, AND which heats radiators, is such a beneficial thing, that it's worth getting the plumbing right.

Robin stayed for nearly an hour, chatting and drinking tea and admiring our Clearview Vision 500 working well. Just before lunch the SUMA order came, just stuff for us and one other family (sorry, 'member of the Cossham Food Co-op'!) such as laundry liquid, soya milk, muesli base, olive oil and Bulgar wheat.

Enjoyed having lunch with Gill, she then went out to take some grown-out-of shoes to the charity shop and I did emails and blog in front of the hot stove, looking out at the cold and windy weather.

I took a cycle trailer load of flour, Fentimans Cola and assorted nuts down to our friends and came back with our youngest, who'd had a good day.

I sorted out the big sack of sticks delivered by Robin, and our eldest came home. He'd forgotten to go to a meeting of invitees to a University-based computer game try-out, based on identifying plants I think, and when he realised, he was absolutely mortified, and spent at least an hour beating himself up about it. We really need to get him a mobile phone, so he can let us know when he's going to be late, and so we can remind him to attend things he needs to go to which are outside of his routine, which is how he forgot this event. We were really sad for him, he was looking forward to it SO much. I'm going to try to see if it can be re-arranged in some way for him, not through the school, but direct with the University.

I had an early tea (Bulgar wheat etc) and got ready for work. My gig this evening was with the Dunnington Brownies, a lovely group of 20 or so 7 to 10 year old girls (and one boy!) plus 5 adults... I did a shortened version of my show, then a throwing/catching/memory game, and then a one hour free-play workshop. A second one next week, when some of them will earn their 'Circus Performer Badge'.

Home soon after 8.30, quite exhausted, so had a pint of perry and sank into the sofa and watched an interesting Horizon programme on mental illness. A quiet evening.

Monday 10th November 08

Woke still feeling poorly with cold, so had a lemsip with my cereal (not together!) and had a fairly lazy morning.

And had a similar afternoon, infact one of the most boring days I've had for ages.

The only highlight really was the arrival of 'The Calendar of Climate Change' from Flipside Vision. This is lovely, and I'm going to get some more for assorted family members for Xmas. (sorry if a family member has just had their wonderful suprise wrecked!)

I was still feeling rubbish (not in my usual way head down in a bin hahahahahaha) when Gill came home and went to get our youngest, and when our eldest came back, I wished I'd been in bed as his testosterone levels are obviously painfully high at the moment.

But the outbursts don't last long and are followed by apologies, and a peaceful evening, mostly.