Friday 7th January 11

A fairly quiet day, no particular highlights other than visiting Richard at Country Fresh at about midday, and picking up a load of stuff from him, and then going on to Alligator, as Gill had asked me to get some jelly, and they do a good vegetarian jelly.  I had space for 3 bags of their biodegradable resources, and will collect more on Monday I expect.

I enjoyed some sorting out down the garden... there's still a bit of a backlog, so today's stuff stayed in the wheelbarrow but I loaded up more into the Compostumbler, and filled a couple of sacks of mature compost which a rodent had excavated from the base of one of the last heaps to be sitting on the ground.  Most are now up on top of pallets, to reduce the ability of rodents to nest in the heap.  They can still get in from the top, but a quick poke with the CompostMate means any tunnels collapse and they seek refuge elsewhere.  So this heap will be bagged up and then the pallets raised up off the ground so it's slightly less rodent-friendly.

I had an early tea, at about 6pm, just a bowl of soup plus an avocado sandwich, and at 6.30 walked down to Heslington with our eldest, so he could have his computer graphics lesson with Simon.  I chatted with Melody and shelled pumpkin seeds and read Resource Magazine.  Melody told me she too had heard of a horror story about Andy S. taking advantage of a kind and generous person, and I asked her to pass on the message to this (so far) anonymous person that if she wanted to contact me, I was putting together a dossier to try to get him stopped.  If any of the readers of this blog recognise the character I refer to, and has a story of him borrowing money and not paying it back, or using someone's credit card without permission, please do contact me. 

On the way back home I learned about my son's adventures on Blender, and we talked about animations and some of the things we've enjoyed. 

A quiet evening... blanched a load of grapes and put them to dry, watched a nice programme about Tom Petty, a musician I don't know a lot about.  Liked his music though...

Saturday 13th November 10

I had a 9am start to the day, despite a late night, and caught up with some washing up, as Gill had kept the stoves going and there was hot water.  She got up at 6, as usual!

Our youngest went off to a party and eldest went to have a hair cut, and I got ready to go to Manchester for a regular social I like to attend.  I made sandwiches to have on the train and zoomed into town and got my ticket and got down to Platform 4 to get the train.  I chatted to a musician chap who had two chunky cases with him... probably guitars but I thought at first one was a cello.  We talked about being a performer and all sorts.  He was off to Cheshire to do a gig.

I had my sandwiches and read Resource magazine.  I was soon in Manchester.  I met my friends Laura and Nina, and we went to Night and Day and met another of Laura's friends Colin, and Janie and Jonathan, and Swin and Ellie, and a new attendee Simon, and Fiona and Tess, Sean turned up, and Ian, and plenty of others.  What a lovely crowd.

I had two coffees and lots of conversations and left at about 5.45, and got the 6.11 train back which was a bit late, and I spent the journey chatting to a nice retired couple who were keen to get back to Edinburgh and were slightly worried about getting their connection in York.   They'd been to a nephew's wedding at Manchester Town Hall.

And therefore I got back into the house at 9.30pm and didn't do much apart from get slaughtered at Scrabble by Gill.  She beat me by 108 points.

Monday 24th May 10

I think it was quite a good day... I did get quite a bit done and nothing terrible happened.

Although I went to bed at 3am last night, I was up just after 9 this morning and feeling fine, and soon got myself on my bike with the paperwork needed to pay our Council Tax and re-subscribe to Resource Magazine, which is always a good read.

So I got cheques out and then went to the City Treasury to pay in half of our annual Council Tax. We have the opportunity to use PayPoint in a local shop, but this would be connected to our bank account, and I don't pay the Council Tax from this... I always pay from my Fiddlesticks income, from the Fiddlesticks Building Society account, so I'll continue to pay twice a year, using a cheque from this account. I did find out though that I could get a cheque out made payable to The Post Office, and use a card (which is being sent to me) to get that paid on to the Council. I had a 20 minute wait at the Council Treasury, as they no longer have the numbers of staff that they used to, so I might use the Post Office option next time.

I visited Dylan at Millers Yard, but someone else had taken his last bag of orange halves, shock horror, for their allotment. I was delighted!

Then back through town, collecting halved lemons from the lemonade stall, and visited Rich at Country Fresh and came home.

After lunch I did some paperwork (an invoice, emails, several phone calls) and sent a reply to the US Composting Council about the Sierra Club's new proposed policy on composting and then outside, yet more foodplant stuff, getting the last tomato plant potted up, and some of the squashes and beans outside in the radiator raised beds.

At teatime I was informed that our eldest had to take 500g of cooking apple into school tomorrow for his 'food technology' so he can make apple crumble, so I cycled down to Country Fresh again and got two cooking apples (550g, allowing 10% waste for peel and core... clever, eh?) plus a large load of blood oranges which are past their best, bruising a pale powdery blue colour... They'll be absolutely fine on my compost heap, though.

So, finance, paperwork of the electronic kind, phone calls, assorted eco activism on the web, making potting mix, planting plants, riddling compost, collecting compostables, building another layer on the heap, seems like a good active day.

During the evening I told all my German friends about the forthcoming screenings of The Age of Stupid in German, had a discussion about vaccination and immunisation on facebook, stimulated by my delight that Andrew Wakefield has been struck off the Medical Register for unethical practices, and played a bit of Scrabble... and washed up, and washed and blanched grapes ready for drying into raisins.

Oh, and watched the Community Channel on Freeview to see assorted Age of Stupid stuff. Which as usual had me in tears. Wonderful, still!

Monday 19th November 07

A good day as had a relaxing morning.. well once the kids had gone to school, although we had the usual Monday morning shennanigans preparing to go. I spent some time writing an article for Primary Times, on Ethical and Green Children's Parties, and doing this gets me a discounted advert. So got that finished and sent before lunch. Gill spent the morning making bread, a pie and a cake. As it was cold, stove going so the bread was put to rise on top of one of the big cans of hot water we use for bathwater.

I got my latest copy of 'Resource' magazine, an issue devoted to composting, which is good, I can't wait to have some time to read it.

In the evening spent a lot of time on the computer and did my very first copy and paste function, putting my reply to Annabel the blog comment person onto the bottom of the comments last week! I am highly delighted that I can now do this function, might use it to do my blogs now, instead of doing it online all the time, on dialup!