Monday 21 June 2010

Monday 21st June - Summer Solstice 2010

A lovely day... not only the turning of the year but really sunny and I enjoyed myself. Got up just in time to wish the boys a happy solstice before they rushed off to school.

I had a morning doing a report for the York World Naked bike Ride, as we had issues with the police on the ride, who said they were only there to observe, but they prevented some of our marshalls from keeping the ride safe by 'corking' a junction where it would have been dangerous for a motor vehicle to split the group... but later they did some traffic management themselves. Ideally we need a situation like in Manchester where we had police outriders keeping the riders safe.

Gill and I spent some time together over lunch and after lunch I hopped on my bike and cycled over to Kutters/Shannons to get my new chainsaw chain, which cost me £21, but rejuvenates my chainsaw.

On the way back I went to Nationwide, which is the Building Society where I have two accounts, my Fiddlesticks/Composter account, and my savings. Last week I saw a poster which said that my savings account, a 'cashbuilder' was changing, and that any cheque I had made out to a third party would cost me an extra £10, which is ridiculous. So today I asked what the options were to make this situation better, and I had a meeting with a nice guy called Ross who worked out that the account I needed was a Bonus 30. This allows me to make one withdrawal per month, and if I don't make any withdrawals for a year I get some kind of bonus payment... but as I'm not that bothered about a bonus, this doesn't really matter. I might use this purely for savings and see if the Credit Union has a better deal for the occasional withdrawals I make to get magazine subscriptions and the various other things I use this account for.

Anyway, Ross was nice and we got the paperwork sorted, and I came home. I wanted to see if my chainsaw was any good so I got the electrics sorted out and chopped up quite a lot of logs, and split some, and stacked too. A good session... very hot and sweaty but good honest hard work. The chainsaw is working well.

Gill made a quiche for tea. She is the best quiche maker in the World.

Later I sorted out some compostables and found that for some reason one of the shops had thrown out more or less a whole sack of new potatoes, possibly because some fruit or veg had leaked onto them and some of them were damp. So we'll be eating new potatoes for quite a while!

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