Wednesday 2nd November 11

What a wonderful day.  Although I was woken by teenage shouting, and I came downstairs at 8, the day got better.  Gill took the boys to school on the bus and I had breakfast and my usual diet of facebook and emails.  Gill came back and I spent some time with Gill before she went out to the Dentist.

I had to stay in as I was expecting the Yellow Pages chap; I'd said to him last week that I needed to spend less on advertising as I was earning less as during a recession, people spend less on entertainment than when there's more spare cash around.  So he came and sorted out a package with me which he said would double the amount of work I was getting, but would cost more.  He said it would more than pay for itself.  I said I needed to check it over with Gill, and was unable to sign for that package there and then, and I wasn't happy that although I said I needed to spend less, he'd actually given me a more expensive package.

Anyway, he came back today and spent some time re-doing my advertising so it was reduced in size and cost less, and I signed for it.  The chap was interested to see the garden so I quickly took him down... I think he was a bit mithered about his posh shoes getting a bit of mud on them!  Nice enough guy though.

Anyway, I then could think about planning the rest of my day.  I needed to take my bike into Cycle Heaven again, as the dynamo stopped working, or rather didn't work when I got on it at Ginnie's yesterday night.  I needed to be at CVS for 3pm as Melody had asked me to be there to accept an award for YorkLETS.  And then I needed to be at the Scoop Shop at Wentworth College at 6pm.  I decided to have lunch and take my bike into Cycle Heaven and leave it there whilst I was at Priory Street.

Over lunch I got 3 phone calls, all Fiddlesticks bookings.  One was from a woman at a Mosque in Batley, wanting to book me for a show this Sunday for Eid.  She also invited me for lunch.  Then I got a December booking for a nursery party in Meltham, near Huddersfield.  Finally, a chap whom I'd met on a train rang me and said he wanted to book me for a private workshop with him and his girlfriend, learning basic balloon modelling.  He too was in Huddersfield.  Oh, and Rob from Robin Hood's Bay rang and I confirmed that I was able to go up with the family for their Victorian Christmas event, in exchange for 3 nights B+B in a hotel. So a flurry of pre-Christmas bookings which is good.

I went out at about 2.15 to take my bike to Cycle Heaven, so Ash could try to solve the 'spooky dynamo' problem.  I walked up to Priory St and waited for Melody at CVS, and at 3 went to find her in the big room, which was hosting the Annual General Meeting.  One of the items on the Agenda was the Colin Stroud Award.  Colin was the Chief Executive at CVS for 23 years until last year when he stepped down, and the staff wanted to do something to acknowledge his input and dedication.  So they decided to have a weekly or monthly collection of a few coins from all the staff, and then present this money to a worthy cause at the AGM.  YorkLETS had been suggested as a worthy recipient and it was chosen to receive £500 to spend on anything it wanted to! Amazing!  The chair introduced the award and Colin said a bit about YorkLETS, and then handed me the cheque and shook my hand. I thanked the meeting, and said I was especially moved by this as the money didn't come from a big donor giving out £500 here, £10,000 there, but was from the staff and others connected with CVS, and in my eyes, was all the more valuable because of this.

I walked back to Cycle Heaven after this, picking up several aluminium cans to take to the metal merchants when I eventually go.  Ash had found the source of the problem: a wire had worked itself free of some insulation and was shorting on the frame.  The dynamo was fixed!

And I needed it as my next trip out was to the University at 5.45, to be at the Scoop (Student Co-op) meeting at 6, with a sample tray of pears and dried apple and dried pears. The meeting was to decide how best to sell this produce, and the price.  After quite a bit of discussion, a price of £1.70/kg of fresh pears was agreed, and 70p/100g for the dried fruit, and Scoop will add 5p to that to help them cover breakages, leakages and food that they're unable to sell (for instance if it goes out of date).  These prices were based on a bit of research I'd done in Country Fresh and Alligator, and my desire to give the students the best price possible. At the end of the meeting, all the remaining pears and dried fruit was sold, and I'll take a load in next Wednesday morning.  I'm really pleased with this as there's no way I can eat all the pears myself... even if family members join in!

Which for tea, they did!  I had some soup, garlic bread and veggie sausages followed by a fruit art explosion made by our eldest.  We all had a bowl of carved orange slices, pear, ginger biscuit and chocolate drops.  Nice!

I had a nice evening after this doing more fruit, watching telly and chatting.

Monday 16th November 09

Up early, not sure why, had a lot going through my mind.

Immediately after breakfast I rang CVS to discuss whether a volunteer has any protection when it comes to disability discrimination. They don't, not in the same way as an employee. But organisations do often have equal opportunities statements and this might be a way to ask them to acknowledge the unusual and possibly challenging behaviour that people on the autism spectrum might display. And not to just acknowledge it, but to make what they do as accessible as possible.

And whilst on the subject of disability awareness, I'd like to invite readers to take a few more minutes to watch parts one and two of this film, 'Talk', from the Disability Rights Commission.



and

I find these very moving and educational, and I'm grateful to my friend Mark Hallam for alerting me to this.

Today I had no appointments or meetings (well I could have gone to two in the evening but I chose not to) so I had a good day doing things in the garden, including some runner bean picking, compost heap piling, log splitting and stacking.

When I was looking for somewhere to put a sack full of greengrocers waste, sorry, resources, I had a look into my fabric compost bin, which was pretty well rotted down. On the top surface, to one side, there were three brown hand-sized spongy blobs... they really did look like bathroom sponges. I've never seen anything like them before. I took one of them off the surface of the compost and took it inside to take some photos.

This is the sponge sitting on a potato sack, the top side.

This is the underside... note a partially rotted tomato skin and grape twigs.

This is the same organism in my hand, to show scale.

So, what is it? Well I believe this is a 'slime mold' which is fairly closely related to fungi, but it's different. It has a really interesting life cycle. It starts as a spore, which germinates and becomes a single celled organism, maybe similar to a bacterium or amoeba. It is motile, ie it can move around. Then, due to some environmental cue, these single celled organisms club together in groups, and start to behave like a multicellular organism, somewhat like a slug. Some cells become the foot, some the front end, etc. They don't develop a mouth or gut though. What happens next is that it settles and starts to grow into what looks more like a fungus, with surfaces or specific parts where sexual reproduction takes place, releasing spores like a fungus. These disperse and become the next generation. So, unless I'm told something different, this is what I think this thing is. Apologies for the poor quality of the photos, Gill's camera isn't designed for close-ups.

I had a quiet evening, watched some TV with the children and prepared a load of bananas and melon for drying. Enjoyed the 3D films on Channel 4.

Monday 2nd June 08

Woke with not much time to spare, as due at CVS Priory St Centre at 9.30.... to attend a conference, the first meeting of the Local Infrastructure Organisations Facilities and Buildings Managers Network, all of whom are involved in looking after CVS-type buildings or similar. My talk was directly after lunch and I had been invited to talk about the new Energy Performance Certificates which will have to be displayed on all public access buildings over a certain size (1000m2) from this October. This will mean that there is an 'efficiency rating' for visitors/staff to see on a wall visible to all, such as in an entrance lobby. I had found out about accredited assessors who will work out the efficiency, and then talked a bit about the best ways to make a building more energy efficient, and potential funding for this. I was pleased that many of the people had not heard of EPCs and were interested in how to make their buildings perform better.

I left at about 3pm, didn't attend the last talk, and came home via Millers Yard, picked up 2 sacks of compostables and took them to the lottie.

Gill told me that one of our children had experienced some bullying type behaviour today, we don't know exactly what went on but it is a bit worrying. And difficult to know how to deal with it. The joys of parenting, hey!

After tea, shot down to the LETS meeting at the Seahorse Hotel and enjoyed that, much prepararion for next month's AGM which I'm chairing.

Monday 19th May 08

Oh bliss, I slept through the early morning stuff, Gill took the lads to school without any problems at all, and then came back to bed, waking me up in the process, which was just the best way to be woken up!

Got up at 10 and breakfasted and disappeared into the garden, coming back in for lunch.

A quiet afternoon, doing jobs around the house and in ther conservatory, seedlings needing management etc.

I went to the lottie just before going to school and picked some leeks for tea, and then picked the boys up.

Had tired nutloaf for tea with a leek sauce, then zoomed into town for a meeting with the organisers of the York Freeze which is happening next Tuesday, May 27th, in Parliament Street. Several groups of people, and individuals, will be randomly near the fountain at middayish, and will all at the same time become still for 3 minutes.... a sort of art installation thingy. It is to raise awareness of volunteering. We watched the youtube vid of the New York Feeeze in a railway station, very effective, and then the much smaller Bristol Freeze, filmed partly by my friend Chevvy. We discussed tactics and how we would know when to freeze and to unfreeze, got this all worked out.

This meeting lasted an hour, and I then came home via Anna's where there are still twigs and stuff to pick up, so brought a load home and put them through the shredder when I got back.

Monday 12th May 08

I got up at 8 to take the children to school, it is SATs for my eldest and he's quite stressed, although the grumpy behaviour this morning was mainly from the other one! But they both got to school on time and I got back to a relieved Gill.

Got a phone call from CVS who are putting on a conference about building (http://www.priorystreetcentre.org.uk/foundations.html) and I've been asked to present a 20 minute chunk on energy performance certificates, carbon audits and environmental standards. This will require quite a bit of research, but it will be good for me as it's not my specialism but of course, it is very interesting.

Gill went out to town and I spent quite a bit of time at the computer... but also lit the stove, much to Gill's annoyance when she got back... but I had a load of grapes to get dried and if they sit there moist, they'll go mouldy. I also had a load of washing up to do so I needed the hot water. Enjoyed lunch and then prepared to go to Brunswick Organic Nursery in Bishopthorpe to spend my £10 reward which I got for doing such a lot of voluntary work for one of the organisations I help out. I rang them up to find out if they had vegetable plants, and their opening times. So I cycled through to them, passing the place where Ruby was knocked off her bike and killed... there were lots of flowers and a 'graffiti board' with messages. Very sad. I got to BON and found several greenhouses with various plants, rows of perennials, and quite a few veg plants.. so I got some assorted squash, courgette, cucumber, tomato and broccoli plants, worth £16.50, but I only had to pay cash for some of it, thanks to my voucher.

(Hey, did you see what I did in this paragraph, for I think the first time in this blog? I highlighted Brunswick and made it into a link.... something I've learned about through my paid blog. On their website, the icon looks a little bit like a paperclip, and I'm guessing that on Blogger too, the icon is to look like a paperclip... it doesn't much!)

I met a pleasant woman at Brunswick, called Anna, who was waiting for her husband to come back from a job interview with Dr. Sentamu, as her hubby is a minister and is hoping to work for Dr. John. We had a chat about soil firstly, then composting, then credit unions, then autism... she was very chatty and nice.

Careful cycle ride back, not as fast as I usually go, as had the trailer full of delicate plants, so got to school just on time to pick up the kiddies.

When I came home I did a load more riddling, this time some pretty dry compost, very mature from a dalek which I'd topped with turf, and used the flat chicken-wire riddle where I rub the lumps through by hand... resulting in a large pile of ready to use potting compost, a mix of compost and loam, lovely!

A late tea. Watched a programme on a dinosaur being excavated and examined, as it had been preserved with skin and some tissue still in place, kind of mummified prior to fossilisation.

Enjoyed a very frank exchange with K on Skype, well over an hour of chat, very deep and satisfying conversation.

Thursday 10th April 08

A good day, Gill went out and I got a lot done on the computer ... did a lot of deleting from my inbox of over 1000 messages whilst offline and then, when online, dealt with some more composting enquiries through Facebook and looked at the first results for my questionnaire... so far just 12 answers, but some good quality answers with some really interesting info. I feel very pleased with the way the results are presented.

I got a phone call from my friend Pippa whom I've known for well over a decade but only get to see every two years on average... and she's coming up to visit us, which will be really good. She'll stay in a B+B for a night towards the end of the month.

I had lunch and then Gill came in and she had hers, we chatted and it was 2pm very soon... I had planned to go and plant some onion sets but there wasn't time as I also had to do some more digging at the Green Thumbs plot at school. As I arrived, the head-teacher came out and asked me into her room as she had something to tell me. The news is that the plot we have prepared may not be where the garden ends up, as the two mobile classrooms nearby are due to be demolished, and the new classroom may be built where the garden now is! So there's to be no more work on the plot until the surveyors tell the school where the classrooms are to be. Therefore she asked me to dig over an area next to the playground, where we might plant some stuff. I cut away some dead twiggy bits and removed lots of litter which had accumulated, mainly the dreaded assorted plastic. That didn't take long so I did some compost management of the school compost bins.

Then the children came out and Gill came down from home to pick up our boys and a friend's son... and I gathered the children who are part of the Gardening Club and took them to see the plot, along with Nigel who has offered to survey the area and make a computer-aided-plan of it. At about 4pm Kate from CVS who I'd invited to give us advice on making a Child Protection Policy arrived and three of us met with her and she talked us through what we should do, our obligations, the training we can get etc etc. But I had to rush off as soon as she was done, as I had my second meeting to get to.

I had a brief tea and went into the garden to collect samples of various types of compost, leafmould etc for my third meeting later, plus the rotaseive which I'll need.

I cycled down to Fulford Road where a Rotters enquiry has come from. A couple who moved in over a year ago and have a single dalek bin in their garden, which had been well used by the prevoius occupants and was full and pretty solid at the base. They'd watered it and added more stuff at the top, but hadn't managed to get it to go down at all. This I found was because it was almost full of mature compost... so I used my Compost Mate corkscrew thing to extract a huge amount of really good compost, the whole of the base of the heap, whilst they watched and picked out contraries (bits of plastic!) from the mature and fibrous mass. I think I must have pulled out about 100 litres of compost... they were well pleased, and will top-dress their borders with it. They were even more pleased when the bin contents settled down and I broke up the rest of it so there was plenty of space to add more stuff. That all took about 40 minutes and I then shot off to my third meeting, at the Scout Hut on Lorne St in Southbank.

My friend Jo was there, getting the two big old compost bins ready for the 'Panthers' (A type of cub/scout person) to have an 'activity' with. She'd brought her wormery and I'd brought a selection of composts and leafmould, also some very well rotted humanure/sawdust compost. I took half of the group and did a short talk on composting, then got them to have a go with the riddles (Jo had got her rotaseive too) but the job was difficult as firstly the heaps were mainly grass mowings and some layers were not rotted down at all, they were anaerobic and smelly and looked like sileage, and the rotted stuff was a little too moist to riddle well. The groups swapped over and I did it all again. That all came to a stop just before 8, I got packed up and shot off into town for my fourth meeting.

Which was at the Black Swan where I met my friend Chinky, propping up the bar and being jovial, as usual. The meeting was a group of five other earnest chaps, members of York Eco Action, three were from the student group 'People and Planet'. We had an agenda writing session and then spent a couple of hours going through, discussing various things including climate camp, the Fairtrade movement, the Royal Bank of Scotland, Kingsnorth Power Station, Heathrow, the Northern Green Gathering and quite a few more things. A good meeting, always lovely to be with Graham and Richard, and I think I've made another friend from P+P.

But glad when it finished as I was whacked! Knackeronied! Virtually shagged even... and when I got back I wanted to relax and watch Johnny Vegas in 'Ideal', my favourite current TV series, but also had got a Skype chat booked with K, who likes to be regular, every other day, to keep up with what's happening. I only just lasted the hour we have negotiated we have... and fell into bed so willingly afterwards!

Friday 28th September 07

A very busy day... got downstairs at 9am, Gill had taken the boys to school so I lit the stove and did a big wash-up as I didn't last night as I was on the computer til late. I went to town via a guest house on Heslington Road, to book a room for my friend from the States who's coming to visit York on the 9th October, and then on to Cycle Heaven where I was shown my new bike, still being built. Then onto the station to get train tickets for my trip next week, and had a chat with a friendly chap at the British Transport Police about a notice which was put into my pannier about leaving it empty and open for inspection... I was advised to meet with the Station Manager. So I went to that office and was given his name to write to. Then onto Out Of This World to do my usual pick-up, and got my monthly honorarium, so took it to the Credit Union to put it in my savings. Said Hi to Kenny at CVS and had a humourous discussion about the room hire last week which failed as I didn't know to pick up the key. We also chatted about CVS's desire to recycle more, and a couple of ways in which they could deal with the food waste left over from conferences.

Then onto my building society to shuffle some cheques in and out, and back via Martin's to pick up a box and a bag of compostables and a handful of locally grown 'mucky carrots' which taste divine. Back for a late lunch and then went into the garden to deal with the stuff brought back for composting.

Gill went to school early as it was 'meet the teacher' but I've met them all and didn't feel the need to do it officially, so I spent some time emailing and then went back into the garden, and cut hedge, shredded, composted.

In the evening had a laugh with the boys who have been given a joke book from a charity shop (30 pence from Woodland's MS Respite Care Shop) and watched some gardening programmes.

In the evening I got an invite to attend a gig on the 10th of October, via Graham Martin in Facebook, so I accepted and updated my info, and uploaded a photo!