Wednesday 15th August 07

Quite a relaxed day, infact slept til 9am, a lie-in!

Spent some of the morning with the children, got them dressed and took them to the shops to get groceries. Now the Co-ops have merged, I thought my Co-operative membership card would allow me to register my purchases, but it wasn't able to be scanned. I hope the new Co-operative group sends out new cards soon.

Gill went to town to get some stuff for our eldest's birthday in a couple of weeks time, and some other bits and bobs. When she came back at 2.30, I zoomed in on the bike and went to Out Of This World for a recycling collection, the Credit Union to pay in my July composting money, the building society to pay in Fiddlesticks cheques and my Community Care column cheque then to the Monk Bar Model Shop to get more rail connectors which are the solution to the poor electrical connectivity we experienced. Then to Sainsbury's for marge, sugar and vinegar, and then Martin's Country Fresh to pick up a couple of boxes of compostables plus 4 dozen slightly out of date eggs, which when I get these, I hard-boil and put in pickling vinegar, for pickled eggs yummy! Good in sandwiches, and although I'm not extremely fond of eggs, I'd rather use them than see them thrown away or composted. So the pickled eggs I eat over the next months will replace stuff I would have had to purchase, like cheese, peanut butter, hommous etc so its a good thing, keeps my cost of living down and reduces waste. However I'm the only person in the house who eats pickled eggs, so they're all mine... unless I have a visitor who comes for lunch and fancies a sliced pickled egg sandwich...

Got a phone call from Lucy at BBC Inside Out, the programme I'm going to be in is to be broadcast on 3rd October.

Did a load of compost heap building. Gill made a nutloaf and I came in with courgettes and climbing beans, which made a good side dish. Lit the stove even though it's not cold, as need boiling water for eggs, bathwater and hot surfaces so I can dry a load of grapes which I've pulled out of the compostables... make good raisins, for my muesli.

So a busy evening in the kitchen.

Thursday 9th August 07

A fairly relaxing day, although did bomb into town to sort out my youngest child's present, it's his birthday tomorrow.

Several years ago we got a second hand OO guage train set on the LETSystem and we decided that he's now old enough to use it and enjoy it, so we tried it out yesterday night and found that the engine didn't work very well, so went to the Monk Bar Model Shop where they repair model engines, so left it with them and bought a small engine so he has motive power tomorrow, not just trucks and track!

So not much to report, until the evening when I researched 'ethical death' and 'green funerals' and found a reference to 'promession' in one of Justin Rowlatt's blogs so Googled it and found out lots!

Basically promession is a kind of composting of dead bodies invented by Susanne Wiigh Masak, a Swedish biologist who's into composting and recycling in a big way. The corpse is frozen with liquid nitrogen, broken up into tiny pieces by a vibrating belt or table and the water extracted in a vaccuum chamber, freeze drying. Any metals are removed (fillings, hip replacements) and the dry dust is then placed in the top layers of soil, where oxygen and soil organisms can get to it, and within a year it has gone, 'back to nature'! I like the sound of this, apart from the liquid nitrogen and freeze-drying, as this is probably quite energy intensive. I found out that Crewe and Nantwich local authority is offering the method, and there's lots of interest in the UK, and laws don't have to be changed to do this. I'm waiting for various email replies to take my interest further.

So because of this, didn't get my column written, nor my blog, but hey, it was an interesting hour or so!