Tuesday 26 February 2008

Tuesday 26th February 08

Gill took the kiddies into school and I got ready to go into Radio York to talk about being a part-Freegan, someone who gets some free stuff, sometimes out of bins and skips. I got there for 10am and was soon ushered into the studio.

First there was a recorded interview with a woman who goes skip-raiding at supermarkets, and she described some of the things she had found and eaten from the bins, and why she did this. Then the interviewer, Adam, chatted to me about the arangement I have with the greengrocer and my habit of collecting drinks cans from the sides of roads and then selling them when I've got several sackfulls... it was a good interview, went really quickly.

Then went to Millers Yard for a coffee and was pleased to meet Ros, who's chair of the York Community Furniture Store. She's someone I've heard of on many occasions but never met. She's a composting enthusiast too. We had a good chat and I then picked up Dylan's compostable orange skins and cycled off to see my friend Jo for lunch.

Jo has now got an allotment so we discussed how to deal with lots and lots of nettle roots, how to compost them successfully. She'd made some bread so it was a good sandwich, after which I bombed back home as we were expecting a visit from a surveyor to discuss external insulating render.

This was finished by 3pm when I went to school to pick up the boys, who came home quickly as we were expecting to have a visit from a neighbour who keeps lizards. However he didn't turn up.

I went to a meeting in town at 6 to go to the first Hull Road Ward Planning Panel, being held at the Guildhall. There were 6 of the new panel there, plus Roger Pierce, one of the Councillors and Jennifer the Neighbourhood Management Officer, and we had a training session and got organised... I said I was not willing to be the Clerk but would chair the group if they were happy with this. However no-one else wished to be Clerk so I was appointed Clerk-until-someone-else-comes-forward too. Then we discussed our first planning application, a temporary building at Woodlands MS Respite Care Centre used to store clothes etc donated for the shops, which has been there for a couple of years and they have applied to have it there for another two. We had advice from Roger who has much experience of planning matters, and our decision was to say that we had no strong opposition to it but wanted to say that we didn't want to see it become a regularly renewed consent, that the building should be temporary not permanent.

Got home at 7.20 and had a mellow evening, until....

Much later, I was in the middle of a skype conversation and the house shook quite violently... an EARTHQUAKE!!! It was the most frightening and weird thing ever..
I was very shaken up, if that's not a silly thing to say, and had adrenalin going through me for an hour afterwards.....

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Dude! How do you make money out of collecting drinks cans (i assume you do mean coke/fanta etc).

in my local authority - somewhere in london - its compulsory for them to be recycled.

Compost John said...

Hello 'Anonymous' from London!
You can collect alu cans from where they have been thrown down by litter louts (no crime in litter picking!) and squash them and take them to any metal merchant or AlCan centre, and you'll get 50 or 60 pence per kilo, approx 1p/can. You MUST only take aluminium cans, they have very silver bottoms, are light and do not get attracted to magnets. Steel cans are grey metal, heavier, and magnetic, and are worth next to nothing, cash-wise, but should be recycled so they're not wasted/landfilled.

I'm glad you have 'compulsory' recycling, I didn't know about this, and you'll be doing your bit by recycling stuff which would otherwise be landfilled, like most litter collected together is.

If I am wrong with this legal situation, please will someone let me know using this comments facility, thanks.
John

Anonymous said...

I will have to see if there is anywhere in my neck of the woods where I can take them - i dont know why more people dont do this.

in my borough we, like i say, compulsorily recycle aluminium, glass and paper, and we can also have cardboard, textiles and some plastics recycled from the doorstep as well.

what i like best is the 'brown bin', we can use that for garden clippings and also waste food products (with a few exceptions). it gets a bit pongy sometimes but overall i find that very handy - i have a small compost heap in my garden but I mainly put grass clippings onto that.

Compost John said...

Hey, don't get me talking about composting... it's my favourite garden activity!
My wife says I have 'OCD'.... Obsessive Composting Disorder.... as my 30+ compost heaps have rather taken over much of the garden........
and I spend quite a lot of time helping folks with theirs and answering queries on it... most lately on Facebook!
Wonderful! So I share your enthusiasm...