Monday 6 June 2011

Sunday 5th June 11

A really busy day... starting with going down the garden to see Ian and Lyndsay and inviting them to come to the house for a coffee...

Ian said he would be able to sort out my computer, which has been running very slowly and saying there wasn't enough space to download my cycle camera videos.  Ian is a bit of a whizz at sorting computer problems, and is a fan of (and contributor to) open source software, which is written by 'ordinary people' (and some extraordinary ones!) and is free and responds to things very quickly... so if there's a virus threat, a patch can be available in 24 hours, whereas with Windows, it might take months.  So he offered to take all my files off my laptop and store them on the external hard-drive that the children have for big Spore files, and then dump Windows and install Ubuntu.  Removing all my files might take a while, so he set it going before I went to work, and they went out to explore York, and I got my stuff together for going to Leeds and entertaining at Middleton Park.

I got the 12.18 train and on it were some of my friends from Edible York, off to Todmorden to visit the Incredible Edible Todmorden project. Bill was with them and we sorted out a date for Edible York people to visit our garden to see the composting.

Leeds soon came and we all got off, they to change trains and I to go and wait for Alan to pick me up and take me out to Middleton Park.  The gig there went very similarly to the previous ones... apart from there were 60 people turned up to see the show!  Alan and his volunteers were extremely pleased with the turnout and the show, and from where I was, the show went really well.  I did the circus show and workshop preceded by the 'warm-up acts' and followed by the free-play circus stuff, and balloon giveaways.  I managed to finish on time, at 4pm, and Alan took me back to the station and I got a train immediately.

I was back in York by 5.10 and home before half past.

Ian had got the computer ready and he showed me how to install Ubuntu and how some of it worked.  I rang David and asked about whether it would be OK to start work at 6.30 rather than 6pm, which was fine.  Gill gave me a slice of quiche, hot out of the oven.... yummy!  Then I said my goodbyes to Lyndsay and Ian and cycled down to town, arriving just before 6.30.  David had arranged to meet Carolyn down at 'Frankie and Benny's' and have a coffee.

However, we had a dessert too, I had a tiramasu. Delicious, but overpriced for what it was.  We chatted... or rather, Carolyn led the conversation, and was surprised when she realised the time was 8.15.  I took David back home and got him his tea and sorted out the bins and recycling.  I got away at 9.15. 

On the way back I picked up a bag of compostables and visited a bin which I know sometimes has 'freegan' goodies in it, and hit paydirt, several kilos of assorted beans and pulses, all in sealed packets.  Great stuff! 

I was surprised the Ian and Lyndsay were still at home, seemingly entertaining our boys!  Ian showed me a bit more stuff on the newly cleaned computer.... he'd cleaned the fan which had layers of dirt on it, and was not functioning at all well, and the vacuumed the keyboard... it's almost like having a new laptop!

Ian likes free stuff and was happy to have a couple of kilos of Gunko Peas and other beans.  We collected sleeping bags from the tent and they got off, back to Cheshire.  I really enjoyed their visit... but have one last thing to do for them; they hired bikes from Bob Trotters, which wasn't open on Sunday, so the bikes have to be back on Monday morning before 9.30am.  So that's my job, to take them back tomorrow morning.... not that easy, but I'll do it!

I spent a long time trying to work out how to do various things on the new operating system.  Some is exactly the same as before (like writing my blog) and others are more complicated, such as opening photos from an email, and playing Scrabble on facebook, neither of which I'm able to do right now.  But it won't take long to learn how to do these tasks, and I'm glad to dump Windows which was clunky and slow.  I had a lovely conversation with Serena who was on the ride on Saturday, and we agreed to go for a coffee tomorrow.  And I washed up at 2am....

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