Wednesday 1st December 10

I was lucky to get a lie-in til about 10, Gill woke me up saying my 11.30 appointment with Colin, to discuss AVP employment issues, had rung to cancel.  He'd been snowed in.

So I didn't need to do anything today, apart from housework, keeping the house warm, and preparing for this evening's talk.  Both boys were at home, Gill set them some work which they did quietly. 

Gill made a 'cobbler' for tea, basically a hot-pot veg stew with potato, sweet potato, parsnip, tomato, peas and onions, with blobs of scone mix on the top and then baked in the oven. Really delicious.

At about 6.30 I set out for the Physics building at the University of York.  I was due to do the talk titled: "Compost John : Britain's Most Sustainable Man. How does he do it?" in room P/L/005, but yesterday, a group of students, following the huge anti-cuts demo in town, decided to hold an occupation in the Physics building, to protest at the proposed increases in fees.  So I was contacted by the organiser and asked if I'd do my talk to 'The Great York Sit-In' participants.

So that's what I did: as a guest of the newly-formed University Green Party, I did a talk mainly about carbon footprinting, and how I organise my life to have one considerably smaller than average.  First I dispelled the myth that I'm 'Britain's Most Sustainable Man', and explained that this may have come from the Oxfam Carbon Footprint Competition in 2008.  So, this led to info about ActOnCO2 and my favourite Carbon Calculator, The Carbon Account, and what makes up someone's footprint.  I went through what I do to keep my footprint small, and with a goodly number of tangents, arrived at the other aspects of 'being sustainable' which in my opinion are Fair Trade and Organic consumption, and teaching others about your ethical choices.  I also admitted the un-green things I'm responsible for, including my children, and my extensive use of the railways, which isn't recordable in The Carbon Account.

There were some really good questions afterwards, as one would expect from a bunch of intelligent and motivated young people.  I feel very lucky to have these connections.  I had a cuppa and more chats, and then cycled home, picking up a trailer full of sticks and branches on the way home.  The snow wasn't too difficult to get through.

Played lots of Scrabble on facebook, read, watched telly and wrote blog til 3am.

Tuesday 1st December 09

A very busy day in the loft. Moved all my bottles. Decanted another 3 demijohns into bottles, including an amazing blackberry and elderberry 1994 (!), a grape and apple 1999 and an unknown red from an unknown date which also tasted great. So who's inviting me to a Christmas party this year?

I sorted out a big pile of paperwork into keep, recyclable, compostable and 'used on one side only so reusable'...

I collected a cheque owed to me from St Nicks for Apple Day and saw Helen, and agreed to meet with her at 6pm and have a bit of a social. She came back here and had my home-made soup and a roll which was made by our son at school. Good chats.

In the evening I worked out my ActOnCO2 carbon footprint, updated to give our exact electricity usage (1674kwh/year, renewable tariff) and gas use (132 cubic metres/year) which gave a household footprint of 1.04 tonnes/year, or an individual footprint of 0.27 tonnes/year. Obviously this isn't the total as it doesn't take into account my public transport use, food and goods purchases, and the things that national and local Government does on my behalf.

I also took advantage of a fallen and logged tree to stock up on my woodpile...