Tuesday 7th September 10

I had a late start as I was up and around doing things last night til a ridiculous time. But I had nothing planned for the morning, and in the afternoon I had three meetings one after the other, with not a lot of time between them, including a 'public appearance' for which I felt the need to be clean and well groomed!

So after breakfast/lunch I had a bath, and then read a bit more No Impact Man book. I'm just over halfway through.

At 3.30 I set off for the Environment Forum meeting at the Friends Meeting House. The attendees had received my version of the Allerton Waste Recovery Park response document, and we were also going to meet and discuss things with Kersten England, the Chief Executive of City of York Council, and also we needed to discuss our Vision Document. It was really good to meet Kersten England for the first time, and she responded to all our questions in the manner expected of a Chief Exec. The Allerton Park response is going to be reconsidered after we've heard more information next Monday, when some of us will attend a meeting which will discuss a 'Zero Waste Policy' which has not been considered by the Council. The Vision Document discussion was complicated, and over-ran, and I left at 6.10, which didn't give me enough time to get to the Planning Panel meeting. So I went home and Gill gave me pizza and broccoli, baked beans and potatoes. I had some quiet time before setting out for City Screen at about 8pm.

This was for the screening of No Impact Man. I met Guy and Ivana at the stall in the foyer, and other people started to turn up whom I knew. Dave Taylor arranged that the three speakers got complimentary tickets which was nice of him. There were about 45 people in the audience, many of them 'the usual suspects'. The film is excellent, has funny moments, some cute interludes with Colin and Michelle's daughter Isabella, and I really liked the fact that the story focuses a lot of the relationship between Colin and his wife. I missed the bit about the candles when I watched the DVD last night; they are not paraffin wax, but bees' wax, and therefore NOT of fossil origin, but renewable. For as long as we've got honeybees, that is.

The Question and Answer session seemed to go quite well afterwards... about half the people went as the credits rolled and the rest were happy to hear the discussion and a few asked questions or made comments. The most interesting observation (afterwards, in the foyer) was that when the film Super Size Me was screened here, the auditorium was packed. So what is it about a film which looked at the fast food culture by means of a guy eating nothing but McDonald's for a month which made it so popular, whereas a film about a guy giving up stuff for a year drew just a few dozen? Both films had the aim of drawing attention to an aspect of modern life... maybe it was because Morgan Spurlock's experiment was just one aspect whereas Colin Beavan's was about lots!

I enjoyed my cycle home and picked up one more plastic crate for Abundance York's fruit collections, and I realised I hadn't taken the crates round to Dave Broughton in my bike trailer like I said I would. I now have 11 to give him.

Later, at home and typing away doing my blog, playing Scrabble on facebook, a friend, Manuel Costa who's an environmentalist in Canada, I think, posted ths article about Germany getting the wobbles about 'Peak Oil' and it's well worth a read. Another challenging read, if you're interested in diet, meat and veganism, is George Monbiot's review of Simon Fairlie's book 'Meat: A Benign Extravagance. Not sure I'll be moving away from vegetarianism though.

Monday 6th September 10

A good day, partly as I had a deadline thrust upon me and I work well facing a deadline. But that was later. During the morning, I did some garden work, not much, but some. I composed a letter after lunch, to Kersten England, the Returning Officer for the City of York Council, and asked for a by election to be held in our Ward, as Roger Pierce the excellent Councillor has resigned. The other Councillor is nowhere to be seen, so effectively we have no representation in the Ward, which is a bad situation to be in and we need an election. Gill wrote a letter too, as to call an election, you need two electors to call it. I spoke to the Election Officer and he told me the date of the election and gave me nomination papers. I then popped into the Press and told them I'd just called the election. Exciting!

So, during the afternoon, the chair of the Environment Forum told me he was doing the mailout at 6 and could I have the incinerator report ready by then. This concentrated my mind and I took myself upstairs away from the distractions and wrote the report. I used the report written by Carole Green as a template, and massaged it and added to it, so now this document, about the Forum's response to the Allerton 'Waste Recovery Park' , is ready to be debated and then, probably after more alterations, adopted.

I had a Macaroni cheese tea with home grown cherry tomatoes exploding hotly in my mouth.

Then there was a LETS meeting at 7.30, and it was just me and Melody; we had a lively conversation and left the Seahorse at 8.20. I collected a pile of weeds from the Edible York public bed and then a pile of 10 plastic crates for the Abundance crew after that. The boys and mum were watching some sort of Dr. Who-based thing so I stayed outside and stacked some logs in the dark. I wanted to get these dry logs under cover before the predicted rain came, which it did.

Then I came in and settled down to watch the promo-copy DVD of No Impact Man, so I have something to think about before the screening tomorrow, and the Q+A afterwards. It is an excellent film, a documentary about the year-long experiment. I enjoyed it, and was right, 'No Impact' is not literally true. For instance, at one point the family decides to do away with electricity in their home. So they use candles for lighting, and a cool box instead of a fridge. The cool box is kept cool using a neighbour's ice cubes (impact!) and candles are made from fossil paraffin wax (fossil CO2 emission impact). BUT, the really good thing about the project is that millions of profligate Americans (and now, Brits) are exposed to the idea of reducing/eliminating their impact, and may, just may follow suit and do something positive re our shared environment.

Later, one of my New Zealand relatives sent me a link to a load of photos of the Christchurch earthquake, and I spent an hour looking through them. Amazing stuff! Glad no-one was killed.

Sunday 29th August 10

I had a good day... it started nicely and just got better.

So, I had a bit of reading No Impact Man; it is really well written and very 'digestible'. I got up and got busy, although it was windy I did a bit in the garden and before lunch, cycled down to see Richard, minus trailer, and came back with two boxes and a sack strapped onto my luggage rack, plus a canvas bag of veggies.

After lunch I picked some beans for the boys' tea and collected more windfall fruit, as there was quite a bit as it was windy.

Then after 3 I got myself ready to go to the station to pick up Janie, as she was coming over to York for the York Flashmob's 'Night of a Thousand Lanterns' event. She came with her bike so we cycled down to the Millennium Bridge and then back to Hull Road via Walmgate Stray and the University.

After a coffee we went down the garden as Janie wanted to see the results of my composting Jeans; the only things which survives the process are the zipper, stitching and pockets, plus any rivets which go through any of this material. The pockets and stitching is nylon, which doesn't rot, but most of the trousers are cotton, which turns to compost in a year or two.

Then we picked nuts! I'd picked a hazelnut or three a few days ago to see if they were ripe. Eaten immediately, they weren't very good, but leaving them for a few days rendered them delicious. So they were ready for picking... and the trampoline was in just the right place for getting most of them, and I dangerously balanced the ladder to get the rest. Janie caught the nuts as I lobbed them down to the trampoline and put them in a bucket, which we completely filled.

Here's the result:

I was extremely happy with this... I'll have to let them dry off a bit by spreading them out either in the loft or the front room floor.

Then I had my tea... home grown beans AGAIN and potatoes and the last of the veg cobbler from yesterday. After which I took Janie to see the strip of woodland next to Windmill Lane, and we had a quick look at the new University Campus buildings before coming back. Then, after some nice chats with Gill, we cycled off to what I think is called Siwards Hill, between the Retreat and the Allotments, near the entrance to Walmgate Stray/Low Moor from Heslington Road. This hill is where I suggested Janie might want to release her lantern, as it has some protection with walls and trees but is one of the highest points in York.

Although it was windy and gusty, we managed to get the lantern lit and let go... it blew along the grass for a while and then took off and soared away. It was spectacular and a very moving experience. We then saw quite a few others floating by... maybe 15 in total, singly and in groups of two or three... it was lovely. For Janie, this was a meaningful ceremony, and signifies letting go of some things in her past and starting afresh.

So, a cycle home with the moon rising and then a very nice evening chatting and enjoying the stove, I prepared some windfalls for drying, Janie went on facebook whilst I washed up, and Gill tried to find a holiday cottage for next summer on various websites.

A memorable day. Lovely.

Saturday 28th August 10

A kind of relaxing day, except that I had an accident with the blackberry and apple fruit-leather-to-be. I was using the vacuum cleaner to remove the fruit flies which were being a bit too interested in the tray, balanced on the big saucepan on the stove. I'd lined the pan with a plastic sandwich bag, as when the leather dries, it is really easy to take the sheet of fruit pulp out and peel the plastic off it and put the damp sheet on a rack to dry further. BUT the vacuum cleaner sucked the plastic bag and dislodged the tray, which spilt all over the top and side of the stove, hearth, and carpet in front. Whoops.

I was able to pour the rest of the blackberry and apple into a receptacle, as I hadn't lost all of it, but I then had to do quite a bit of clearing up. I was very annoyed with myself, as preparing the fruit took AGES!

The rest of the day was just fine. I received two books I bought yesterday from Amazon, using a gift voucher for £20 which I got for filling in a questionnaire months ago. As I've been asked to speak at the screening of Colin Beavan's 'No Impact Man' on 7th September, I've bought the book so I can read it first. I also bought Mark Boyle's book 'The Moneyless Man, A Year of Freeconomic Living'. So I've got a lot of reading to do now... as if I hadn't already!

I did some work outside too, picked beans and a tromboncino squash, and windfall apples for drying, and I dug out a dalek bin of very mature compost into sacks which I've stored in the broken Compostumbler, and half-filled the newly emptied dalek with material from the medium sized Compostumbler. I then started to fill that Compostumbler again.

I really enjoyed an hour of weeding the pond-to-be area, another patch of ground elder, it is most satisfying.

Apart from that, I did relatively little today!