Sunday 4th December 11

Up early as I needed to be absolutely ready to start work by 10am.  The format of the days work followed yesterday's but after the balloon show I did a bit of street work, with live music to devilstick to, and people happy to make donations to the RHB Tourist Association for balloon models.

A good day, enjoyed being with the family, and making it possible for them to be there.

Saturday 3rd December 11

Well, slept well and woke at about 8, in good time for breakfast at 8.30.  Had cereal and a full veggie breakfast... hash browns, beans, scrambled egg, tomato, mushrooms and sausages. And coffee.  Then went to re-arrange the 'family room' where I thought I was due to do my show at 10.30... but I hadn't been provided with a programme, which said start at 10.  So I got down there at 10.15 to find an audience already waiting!  Whoops.

However, 2 minutes later the show was happening and it went really well, loads of interaction and fun.  At 11 I stopped and joined Father Christmas on his wander down to the Dock, where I was due to do my balloon show at midday in the Old Coastguard Station.  I went upstairs when it was vacated and blew up a unicycle wheel full of balloons.  I did just the right number for the people who turned up... amazing!

The balloon show went well and after this we just enjoyed being in Robin Hoods Bay.  

Friday 2nd December 11

Got up at 9am and got busy with phoning Equity as I found that my membership expired on November 30th and I need to be insured for this weekend.

I paid for 3 months membership by phone and card, and got a certificate of cover on the Equity website, which I was able to take a copy of and email to my client in Robin Hoods Bay.

I went to buy bread, and installed a compost bin for Eve up the road.  Then I went to St Nicks to pay for that bin, which Keely delivered a few days ago, and bought another to install at David's house.  I put it over his fence as he wasn't in.

I got home for lunch and after that, moved a few bits around in the garden, as Gill had asked me to, and then made a batch of gungo pea, carrot and tarragon pate, similar to hummus but all the ingredients (barring some rape oil, bouillon powder and soy sauce) were free, and it was all cooked for free... and took just 5 minutes of hand-held whizzer to convert it into 7 tubs of delicious spread.

It didn't take me long to get myself ready to go away for the weekend.... Gill went to pick up the boys by taxi and I cycled down to the station with all my stuff plus a cool-bag of food.  I paid in two cheques in town and got out some cash to keep us going for the weekend.  I met Gill and the boys in the ticket place and got our tickets to Scarborough, using our family railcard which halved the cost.  The train was crowded but we all got seats, but not together.  I chatted with a lovely 80 year old woman called Jean, and the journey went really quickly.

Our bus to Robin Hoods Bay came 10 minutes after we got to Scarborough, and we got a family rover ticket as it was cheaper than 2 adults and 2 children.

We arrived soon after 6pm and walked to The Victoria Hotel, where Rob, the chap who'd booked me, had arranged for us all to stay... I won't get a fee, but do get a family break for 3 nights... in a really quite posh place!  The boys had a twin room, and we got a double... but they got the sea view!

Gill had made a quiche earlier, so we had that and then went down into the bay to see if we could find some chips.. a bit of a treat.  The chip shop fries in beef dripping, so wasn't suitable for us, but a hotel did some quite expensive chips but in vegetable oil, so I got 4 take away chips and we ate them on the slipway, buffeted by a strong wind.

And back to the hotel. I went to ask to borrow an iron and ironing board, and Gill did my costume so I'm tidy tomorrow...I've a show at 10.30 in the family room of the hotel!

The hotel has free WiFi so I was able to do things on my laptop, which kept me occupied.

Just as we were settling down for the night there was a huge crash which made us both jump, and a picture had fallen off the wall.  Very odd!

Wednesday 23rd December 09

A quite lazy day... tried to get a bus to Whitby at 12.18 but it didn't come, so we went back to the house and had our sandwich picnic there, and went to wait for the 1.18. This didn't come either. We found out that the road to Hawsker is covered in snowdrifts, apparently, and the bus was dropping people off at the main road and people were walking down...

So we walked into Robin Hood's Bay and mooched around, making snowballs, playing in the kids park, watching people sledging etc etc.

Then walked back and bought some tea (pasties) and food for our journey home tomorrow, and had more lazy time in the house. I lit the stove and watched some of the iPlayer programme about Scrabble (Alan Yentob presenting Imagine, 'A Night On The Tiles') and played some on facebook, slowly as the connection speed was slow and the programme kept crashing.

Tuesday 22nd December 09

A good day with a late start and a walk to Robin Hood's Bay, a meal at Swell and fun in the snow.

I had a sleep when we came back to the house.

Monday 21st December 09 Winter Solstice

Happy Solstice everyone!

An early start to prepare for a day when who knows what might happen?

I don't expect to write a blog for a few days. But I might surprise you!

Surprise!!!


Gill went into town on the bus first thing as she needed to get assorted presents, put a cheque in for me, post letters and I don't know what else... She got a Family Day Rover ticket as this would work out cheaper for us all when we went into town later.

I kept the stove going as it was bitterly cold outside and there are still lots of slices of pears drying, and I did absolutely loads of washing up so there's none hanging around whilst we're away.

I also got some packing done and Gill got back at 11, she packed and I made sandwiches for everybody, and we went to wait for the just-after-1pm bus... which was late as it was trapped in a huge traffic jam of mostly single occupancy cars heading into town.

But the bus came and we crawled into town and got to the station at 1.45, just after the hourly train had gone. So we waited for the 2.38, had our lunch and were soon on our way to Scarborough... a very pretty train journey. We were due to get in to Scar at 3.30 and the x93 to leave Northbound at 3.40, but that bus was late too, and we got very cold but eventually it came, and we were in Fylingthorpe by about 4.35, and easily found the house, called 'Burnside', that we've rented off our neighbour for a couple of days.

The heating was on, as our neighbours spent last night here, and the place is cosy and spacious, uncluttered and lovely. It'll be good to see it in the morning, in the daylight.

We had a simple pasta tea and I lit the 'Burnside' stove, which is a large Town and Country, I think. It had been cleaned out which makes it more difficult to light as woodstoves work best with a bed of ash under the logs. But I did get it to go, and we had a fun evening. We enjoyed the first Royal Institution Lecture, which was on how plants dealt with their animal 'opponents'. Later, when the children were in bed, I watched some of the Michael Jackson TV coverage.
I found that Robin Hood's Bay has an internet 'mesh' http://rhbmesh.net/ but I'll have to wait til tomorrow to see if I can connect...

Monday 6th August 07

Today the festival was finished and beginning to be dismantled. I got up quite early as I had the chance to go with 'Fluffy Chris' the site driver, with the first skip of food waste and paper plates/cups, to 'Eco-Composting' near Bournemouth in Dorset. This is 69 miles away from our site, but the material is able to be 'in vessel' composted which complies to the Animal By-Product Regulations, which prevent us composting on site which I did in the previous two years on this site, and at the Warminster site three times.

I mapread and got us successfully to the Eco-Sustaainable Ltd site, which accepts waste wood and green waste, food waste, soil and stone, and produces woodchip, topsoil, composts and turf.

Our batch weighed 2.6 tonnes, and we tipped it in the 'in vessel' shed, where it would be mixed with shredded wood and waste meat pies from a local factory, put through a 12mm screen, put in a 'clamp' with forced aeration and allowed to attain 70 celcius for at least an hour, steamed to ensure all the material is heat-treated, and then left to mature for several weeks before screening again, and put through a machine which removes plastics and non-composted materials. The resultant compost is spread on fields and seeded with grass seed, the turf sold all over Southern Britain.

We went the same way back and got back on site by 1.30pm. Lorna had taken her tent down and I did the same before having lunch at 2. Then we went, fully loaded, to see if the bus was heading to Weston Super Mare, but it apparently had a long time to wait before it was full, so Lorna rang my folks from the top of the bus (the only place on site with mobile reception) and we accepted their offer of a ride back to WSM. We started walking towards Burrington Coombe and within the hour my parents' Prius purred up, turned round and we went back to Weston.

We got another lift to the station for 5.30 pm and the train left for Bristol soon after that. A quick change over in Temple Meads, and Lorna left the train at Derby at 8 ish, I got back to York at 11pm, and got a taxi home.

Gill had gone to Robin Hood's Bay on Sunday with the boys to keep then occupied, and got a B and B and then come back on Monday via Whitby, Grosmont, the North Yorks Moors Railway to Pickering and a bus to York, arriving back in York today at teatime.

Really good to see her, glad she had the sense to do something to keep the kids from imploding.