Saturday 2nd April 11

Woke with a headache again.  But I wasn't going to let that stop me doing what I needed to do, so I got on with stuff, including sorting out the large piles of old magazines from our bedroom, as Gill and the boys are going to a car boot sale tomorrow and I wondered if a few bundles of NewScientists might sell.  I also went in the loft to find a few bits and bobs.  I did quite a bit of hoovering as the dust was impressive, and I had to empty the cylinder twice (well, once before I started, but filled it with stuff from our room!)

I wanted to go to the LETS seed swap and plant share at Simon and Melody's, so did a round trip.  I went first to Country Fresh and bought some veggies, and picked up about 75kg of compostables.  Then on to the lottie, to visit the People and Planet Allotment, which has a compost heap in need of some material, so I spent over half an hour chopping up twigs and woody stuff to layer the fruit and veg I piled on.  From here I went to Heslington, and was the LETS event's second visitor.  It was good to chat with Melody and Simon, we always have a joke and a laugh.  I bought a Yorky's worth of seeds from them, some Butternut squash and purple curly kale.

Although I was feeling grotty, still with a headache and bit of a cough, I decided I wanted to support the York in Transition and St Nicks 'Knees Up' fundraiser, so at 8 cycled over to Dalton Terrace and paid my £5 to go and watch the Ceilidh band and dancers, and have some snacky food.

I was really glad I went, as I had an interesting conversation with an unusual woman called Helen, who popped her head round the door to see the inside of the church hall, as she went there with her granny as a little girl.  There were lots of friends there, Edward, JZ and Maggie in the kitchen, Laura Potts and friends dancing, Kate Lock and her daughter, Rich Lane who as usual gave me some sensible feedback on an idea I'm working out at present, Ivana, the main organiser of this event, and John Brierley of course.  I was really please to meet one of Kate's friends, Pauline, who makes costumes, and she provisionally agreed to consider helping York in Transition with a Clothes Repair workshop, as part of our basic skills series of courses. I chatted to lots of other folks too, and enjoyed the buzz of it.

My headache disappeared completely during this event and by the end of it I was feeling back to about 95% of normal.  I really enjoyed the cycle home; the new brakes work really well... which is lucky as a woman was crossing the road in front of me and I aimed to go behind her, thinking she'd continue crossing, but she froze... meaning that I nearly hit her... but for my brakes and good cycling skills!

Home at about 11pm.  Had a bit of a late night......

Saturday 17th April 10

Woke feeling a small amount of joy and slightly more anticipation... I'm helping with some research to see if there's any correlation between waking and dream emotions, in fact I'm not sure what it's about, but it's a student from University of York and I have to fill in an emotions thing when I wake up and just before I go to sleep. I found out about it through a facebook friend and I messaged the person and she sent me the forms in yesterday's post.

So my anticipation levels are quite high.

I got a phone call in the morning from Rich at Country Fresh, as all but one of the bags of compost have gone, so he requested some more.

I went down to town after an early lunch (via Country Fresh, to deliver compost and met 2 delightful young ladies, called Chloe and Gita) to try to find the beer that Pugwash Convention have requested for this evening, but couldn't find it. I did get coffee from Oxfam and some nice bread at Sainsbury's, and the wine the band wanted.


A lovely day, warm and sunny. Wish I wasn't rushing around!

I went on the net to find the York Beer Shop's contact details, as they might have had Cropton Real Ale. They didn't. I went on the Cropton Brewery website and rang them to ask where the nearest place was that I could buy some of their bottled goodies. Apparently it is on sale in Tesco. My heart sank... Tesco is a place I don't really want to go to (here's why) and it's the other side of town. But I really wanted to get the beer the band wanted, so I found the Tesco website and rang them... they said yes, Tesco at Askham Bar had it in. I then rang Tesco at Askham Bar to check that they did have it in and I asked them if I'd be able to collect 8 bottles from somewhere easy to get in the store... and they helpfully said yes, come to Customer Services and it's £2.08 a bottle.

The time soon arrived when I had to pack everything up and zoom off to the other side of town to pick up this expensive beer. I got to Tesco at 5.35 and back to Priory St at 5.55... and I didn't have to open up as John the Caretaker, who's quite a character, was already there and sorting the place out.

The next hour was quite hectic... moving tables, setting out chairs, welcoming the band, welcoming stallholders... and quite soon, people started arriving so I was on the door, checking names against a long list who pre booked (£3) and those who just turned up (£4, £3 concessions), and telling people about where the film was and inviting them to buy a raffle ticket or a strip of tickets, or to leave their contact details if they wanted to get our newsletter online....

I was surprised by the numbers of people who came, and not 'the usual suspects' but ordinary people here for a dance. The band got started and yet more people came to get in. If anything, we had too many people... a far better problem than too few! I took a break and had some of the food that the Steiner School had brought.. a nice couscous salad with a bread roll and a veggie sausage, for £2.50. Reasonable, and what I needed. I had a piece of cake afterwards and then went back to my 'organiser' duties.

At one stage, when the band were taking a break, I did a little bit of balloon modelling as there were a handful of children there, and some older folks had one too, including a nice lass called Rachel who I keep bumping into and she is very friendly with me... well she seems to laugh at me a lot. That's OK... far better to laugh at me than to growl and frown....

Towards the end of the break we did the raffle and that seemed to go down well... there were loads of prizes so lots of people happy.

I kept busy during the second half, clearing up bottles and cans and cups and paper plates... everything recyclable I collected to take home. This ended up as two sacks of cans and bottles, a large box of the same, a bag of paper plates, serviettes and food, and a few other things too.

Id taken some compost down for sale on the LETS stall but it didn't sell so i gave it away at the end as I didn't have space in the trailer to bring it back.

Right at the end, when we had cleared up, and after we'd left the building, I had a discussion with a woman called Vicky who seemed to not like 'labels', and I got a bit annoyed trying to explain that I was comfortable with the sciency way of describing things, but I just think she was trying to antagonise me. She succeeded. I cycled home hoping that my bedtime filling-in of my mood forms wouldn't include the negative emotions I was having about the conversation I'd just had... and seeing Gill again did put that all behind me. She'd had a quiet and peaceful evening thank goodness, and was happy to see me.

I was happy that we'd had such a successful event and that everybody had enjoyed themselves so much, and that we raised awareness about Transition and quite a bit of money. I think we ought to do that sort of thing more often.