Wednesday 12th October 11 Treemendous York launch

I felt really happy today, although spent more time inside than I really prefer.

I was rung up by James Houston, who organises the Galtres Festival, shortly before I went to the launch of Treemendous York at 3pm.  He had been invited to the launch, but a childcare issue had cropped up and he was unable to go.  So he asked me to represent Galtres Festival if needed.  The reason he'd been invited was that at this year's festival, when people bought their tickets, they'd been invited to give a little extra to be spent on offsetting their carbon emissions travelling to and attending the event.  And therefore James was in a position to give a substantial donation to Treemendous York to be spent planting trees in areas of York with less tree coverage than average.

I got to the central library, 'Explore', in good time to meet the Council officer who was setting up the room, and to tell her that I was here instead of James Houston, and to help her put the Treemendous York leaflets out on chairs.

Kate Lock, who chairs the York Environment Forum, introduced the new project... which had been thought up following the York New City Beautiful report by Professor Alan Simpson, which included the vision of York with an extra 50,000 trees, and Hull Road being a tree-lined boulevard... so that figure had been lifted and the vision of a tree-filled city is hopefully going to be achieved by Treemendous York.  It's a partnership between the Environment Forum and the City of York Council, BTCV and The Woodland Trust, Wheatlands Community Woodland, Edible York and the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, and other partners will surely come on board in due course.

The aim is to record and monitor tree planting for 3 seasons, until April 2014, and to facilitate the planting of appropriately placed trees, including ones with fruit and nuts, and in public places, sides of roads, private land and gardens.

Councillor James Alexander then did a short speech after which the group walked through Museum Gardens, crossed Scarborough Bridge and ended up on the far side of the bridge where the grassy banks of the Ouse widen out and a hole had been dug for a ceremonial tree planting.  I cycled down, getting there first, and chatted to the contractors who had dug the hole.  After the ceremony, I took the two B+Q donated spades back to the library, and chatted with Steve who was there with his lovely child-carrying tricycle.

I came home via the health centre where I ordered a repeat prescription, and got in shortly before our eldest son came hurtling home on his bike, followed soon after by Gill and our youngest.

I attended Green Drinks in the evening, and tried to work out how to make it better, with help from Randall. Wrote some notes which will be published on facebook, to hopefully get some feedback from the members of the group.

Sunday 28th August 11, Galtres Festival

I did a 10 til 1 shift with Graham, Mel and their daughter Alyssa. This was a more difficult day as there was a huge amount of rubbish to sort through... but we did, and started filling our third cubic metre of compost bin.  The weather was kinder, with a breeze drying off the mud... but the rutted surface was still difficult to wheel the green bins to and fro, so more help was given by the big tractor with the bucket loader.  Made the job a bit easier... and more fun, as we rode in the bucket too!

Got then their rewards and I had a bit of free time to float around, sorry, trudge through the caking mud, before my show.  I didn't want to do my circus show again, wanted to do the balloons so I took my unicycle, in my costume, and a full bag of 100 balloons, and at about 4pm started to blow up as many as I could fit into the spokes of my wheel whilst sitting on the stage. 

I had a lot of fun with the awaiting audience, inviting them to have a go inflating a balloon.  One girl had the ability... I'd say about 1 in 200 people can do it, and randomly, sometimes it's a child.  This time it was a 10 year old girl. No-one else could do it, including grown-ups, whilst I blew up and tied one after another to prepare for the show and workshop. 

My balloon show works well with a finite number of people there at the beginning, who see how to twist the balloon into a dog shape (and a few other more complicated shapes) and then are invited to have a go.  However, with people arriving all the time, there is always the chance that a balloon will be given to someone who hasn't seen the beginning and hasn't a clue what to do!  This is what happened but I think I dealt with it reasonably well.

At the end there were a long line of kids who for one reason or another hadn't got a balloon, so I had another half hour of inflating and making models, until I'd done the full 100 balloons.  It was a successful entertainment session.

I had a dilemma for the evening.  I really wanted to see The Falling Spikes, in the Little Top venue.  However, they were on at 11pm. And I had a gig the next day, in Spofforth, which is 18 miles West of York, and not easy to get to by public transport.  To cycle there would take 2 hours, and if I was to get there to start at midday, and go by train and taxi, I'd need to be on the 10.11 train to Harrogate.

My dilemma was that my bike was not in good order.  I might have to walk back to York, which at 15 miles away, would be about 5 hours walk.  So, if I left after the Spikes, and had to walk, I'd get back at maybe 6am.  Not a good start for a busy day in Spofforth.  However, if I left at, say 9pm, and had to walk, I'd be back at 2am, much more manageable for a 10am lift-off.

So as I took down my tent, I deliberated over this dilemma, and began to err on the earlier return.  So I spent my last vouchers, and gave several away, and as The Levellers took to the main stage, I got my payment for the weekend's work and then cycled gently off into the darkness.  I like cycling in the dark.  My dynamo is easy to take off the front wheel and I had several long stretches with no other traffic... of course, when something else approached, I flicked it on, but off again as it passed me.  As I approached Sutton on Forest, I needed to do something to tighten up the wheel, but after that, I cycled steadily all the way back to York, taking about 1 hour 45 minutes to get home, getting in at the same time that the Spikes were due to take to the stage.

I spent some time getting things clean... Gill too helped with this, and got to bed at 2am.

Saturday 27th August 11, Galtres Festival

I did a 10 til 1 shift working with Graham and Mel.  Our role was to take the biodegradable waste and recycle it by stacking it in static pallet bins, lined with cardboard.  Most of the biodegradable stuff was in fact paper plates, soiled with food, and a small amount of other stuff like donuts and pizza crusts. I'm sure that each cubic metre of material will heat up well and compost down pretty well. We didn't take the paper cups as most of them were not compostable; only one outlet had bought proper compostable cups with the compostable symbol on them.

So, we went through the green bins which had been provided for caterers to put waste food in... but unfortunately, most of them had been available for the public to use and had a mix of compostable plates and food, cans and plastics, and assorted other materials.  So we spent quite a bit of time sorting, but we reduced the amount of stuff heading for landfill, and we also sorted out a lot of other recyclables.  We also got extremely muddy.  Moving the green bins through the mud was very difficult, so at times we got lifts in the big tractor shovel which was being used to move bands equipment from backstage to the various performance areas.  This was fun, and speeded up the job.

I got my co-workers their £15 worth of vouchers for their shift, and started planning for my first Fiddlesticks appearance.  I had to get cleaned up, into costume, and then up to the Pash tent to do my show for 4.30pm. I had a shower... bliss.... and then walked with a little trolley borrowed from another camper which was able to carry my box of goodies plus unicycles, and went out of gate 4 (backstage) and up the road (mud-free) and into gate 2 which was nearer the Pash tent arena, so I didn't get TOO muddied up.

My show was tough to pull off.  There was intrusion from the nearby big stage, and the audience weren't all in the Pash tent for my show... many were just sheltering from the rain.  So there was a lot of extraneous noise.  I'm more used to an audience enraptured by my show, and relatively quiet, so my non-amplified voice is easily audible. However, it was a good show, seemed to be well received and there were loads of people wanting to join in... no shortage of volunteers.

So then I was free to have an evening of proper festival, and I ended up in the Arts Barge Marquee with quite a few good conversations, including my friend Sam, and Alison and her daughter Daniella, and music from the Dub Barn Collective, which got me up and dancing.... unusual these days in my mid 40s sobriety.

So, a good and hard-working day at the Galtres Festival.  Well worth being there, despite the awful ground conditions.

Friday 26th August 11, Galtres Festival

The day started off well, with pasties for breakfast!  Soon I got going and got more pallets and started to build the second bin.  I got some cardboard and lined the first one and started to fill it with a few paper plates and assorted biodegradables.  The site got progressively busier and busier, and officially opened to the public at 4pm.

I got my assorted wristbands... one saying I was over 18, so I could buy alcoholic drinks, one saying I had a weekend ticket, the other saying I was a performer and could therefore go to the backstage area where I was camping, and of course, making the compost bins.  I was given 5x £15 beer and food tokens, two for the two days I was working as Professor Fiddlesticks, and three for the three days I was working as a waste management person.  The books of tickets are a good idea, I think.  Each £15 book has 10x £1.50 tokens, which can be exchanged for drinks and food.  So a pint of beer or cider is two tokens, most meals are 2 or 3 tokens, apart from the pizzas which are 4. When the retailer has collected a big pile of these tokens, they can cash them in with the festival organiser, who gives them 80% of their value... with the remaining 20% going to charity.  There are little cabins where the books of tokens can be bought.  I met one caterer who didn't like the 'multiples of £1.50' idea, and about 5 who did.  One caterer had produced their own 50p token to give as change for one meal which they had worked out was worth £2, with the 50p token spendable at their stall. 

It rained and rained.  The site got very muddy. But it was good to be at a festival again.

Today's highlight was the cider and perry tasting.  I can't remember what happened after that.

Thursday 25th August 11, Galtres Festival

I spent most of the morning getting ready for going to the Galtres Festival, where I've been asked to do the composting and two Professor Fiddlesticks shows.

I decided to cycle up to the festival, as it's only 15 miles, ie about 90 minutes gentle cycling, even with a trailer full of gear.  Also, the festival bus service doesn't start til Friday when the event starts.  But I wanted to go early as I needed to construct compost bins, using pallets that James said he'd make sure were available and wire and pliers I said I'd take with me.

I set off at about 3.30pm and got to Huby when my bike suddenly started making an odd noise so I stopped and found the nut on the back axle had fallen off!  I walked the bike on to a safe place to lean it up, and walked back along the road to try to find it.  Which I did.... but when I tried to put it back on, I found the nut had lost its thread and it didn't stay on, and the trailer hitch came off and axle slid out of the other side.  Nightmare!

However, I used some wire to hold things together which meant that I could wheel the bike easily, so I walked the last mile or so to the festival site.  I found James Houston, the 'main man' of the event, a friend of mine whom I've known since the early 1990s when he published an independent newspaper called The Journal.  He explained where the composting was due to happen and told me there were various pallets around on site which I could use.  The composting area was in the backstage area, the performers camping.

So I put my tent up and found my first few pallets, wiring together four vertical sides sitting on a single horizontal base.

Later, a bunch of set-up volunteers and organisers had a communal curry plus slices of fried giant puff ball mushroom.  Gill had provided me with a veg pastie and a cheese and onion pastie, which because of this unexpected meal, I didn't need, so I kept those for breakfast tomorrow.