Wednesday 7th March 07

Another very full day. Got up at 8.30 as I heard the kids getting ready to go, and said goodbye to them and Gill, and thanked her for taking them as she'll be picking them up too. Got a phone call from Keely at York Rotters advising me that at 10ish this morning she was expecting a delegation from Hull (a visit I'd organised, because of my attending a Recycling Action Yorkshire event in Leeds in Jan where Id asked around if any local authorities might be interested in setting up a Rotters type scheme). She apologised for this being short notice, but she's been unwell and busy on some funding courses. Fortunately I was able to attend, and I'm very glad I could.

The Hullites were the Council's Waste Minimisation Officer, the head of Parks, the organiser of the Environment Forum and a new volunteer from Friends of the Earth, all keen to hear about York Rotters. I was able to give them a mini-tour of St Nicks, explaining about the site history, the passive solar design of the building and its photovolteic panels, hot water panels, sedum roof with drinking water harvesting, compost toilets, waterless urinal for both sexes, kerbside recycling collections, employment of various groups to help sort recyclables and the composting demonstration site, as well as the straw-bale urinal and hibernaculum for overwintering beasties. The mating frogs in the pond were also pretty spectacular!

Keely and I provided lots of useful info about how York Rotters was set up, funded and what it does and has achieved. I have been invited to give a presentation in Hull at the end of this month by Hull Organic Gardeners, and this may be a perfect opportunity to start the process of launching a Hull Master Composter project. I hope so.

That meeting was nearly 2 hours, so I shot home (via the St Nicks communal logpile, always a good place to find a few kilos of free fuel!) and had lunch before my scheduled meeting with Liz Topi at the City of York Council. This went well, she's happy to say yes to the Green Gala on July 29th, and she gave me some very helpful pointers and ideas. Then a quick visit to Out Of This World, to pick up a small volume of compostables.

Then I went to the Merchant Taylor's Hall to give blood as it's been over a year since I did so. This always entails a lot of waiting, but they always have some good magazines, I read Men's Health and Psychologies Magazine, the latter being very good. Actually giving blood only took 5 and a half minutes, the waiting and tests, nearly 2 hours. Worth it, though.

Zoom home via Richard and the veg shop, where I disobeyed instructions to not lift anything and loaded up my trailer and bike rack with about 6 sacks of biodegradables, including loads of grapes destined for raisinhood. Gill had cooked some potatoes and I made a yellow pepper and cheese omlette to go with them, and a simple coleslaw salad and some dead baked beans left over from the boys tea.

Believe it or not, I then went out again, to the Cafe Scientifique meeting at City Screen, which was an interesting talk about English Partnerships work on their (allegedly) zero carbon housing projects. Should be low carbon housing, as they are not counting the embodied energy in the building materials, just the energy used in the use of the house. Good work, though.

A long day, but finished the game of superscrabble I started yesterday with Gill, and then did my blog, finishing at 1.30am....

28th Feb 07

Another busy day, with a meeting to prepare for a meeting, AVP this time. Alternatives to Violence Project has re-organised its structure and AVP York has joined up with AVP Sheffield, AVP Nottingham and AVP Northumberland to become AVP North East and East Midlands. This new group has its first annual meeting in April or May and it'll be in York, so today a small group of us are planning that meeting.

I cycled up to New Earswick via a Freecycler who has offered my son a CD player. The lady I met was offering it on behalf of a friend in the same sheltered accommodation block ,who thought Freecycle was a great idea but didn't want to do it herself. The CD player was more than that, infact a compact radio, tape and CD system with seperate speakers. It's been in storage for a couple of years. I hope my son is happy with it, my wife and I will check it out tonight to see if it works.

The AVP meeting went well. I facilitated/chaired and took notes and offered to type them up and circulate. Such is the life of a hyperactive overenthusiastic sustainable communities idealist.

Then into York to see one of my favourite people, an unconventional professional and well-off woman who always has time for a coffee and chat. I don't entirely approve of her jet-setting lifestyle, always off to somewhere far-flung, but she intrigues me and we are good friends, just good friends! I moved off to Cycle Heaven to return the Filibus bike and collect mine... but my back wheel was still being built, so I went to Out Of This World to pick up compostables on the Filibus. Home for 2.40, just 20 mins for a late lunch before leaving to pick up the kids. Gill my wife has gone to Scarborough to see her Uncle who's in hospital. She'd made potato salad and quiche for the boys tea before going, so I had little to do when we got in. At about 4.30 my friend Mark came to visit for the first time, and I gave him a cuppa and a tour of our large garden and 30 compost systems. I think he was impressed!

Gill came back and met Mark, which was nice as I'll be working closely with him over the next few months, on the CrUST Green Gala scheduled for July. Mark left and we had tea. The boys wanted to go on the BBC 'Shaun the Sheep' website, so before bedtime I went online and got onto the site, but we couldn't really get it to work properly. A bit of a let-down.

My friend Justin Rowlatt emailed me to say I will be on Panorama next Monday, which is on Justin's 'Ethical Man' experiences as part of his job with BBC Newsnight. I must phone my Mum and Dad to tell them. It's nice to be able to do/be something they can be proud of, as for many years they viewed me as a failure and a dropout, but all that time I was 'incubating' my green-ness, which is now fashionable! Justin came to film last year as he was intrigued by my compost toilet. It's very satisfying to use the BBC media machine to promote sustainability.

Must go, I'm really tired tonight. But I'm loving blogging!

24th Feb 07

It's Saturday and an exciting meeting... for me anyway! At 9.30am at CVS was the first AGM of York Credit Union... exciting for me as I was the person who started the ball rolling back in 1997 and so to get to the first AGM is quite a milestone and makes me very happy. The meeting room was already quite full when I arrived, and soon filled up so much that more chairs had to be put out. The proceedings were very sober and really quite boring, as a CU AGM should be! However the fact that at 9.30 on a wet Saturday morning we could pack out a meeting room with such an event bodes well for the future of the organisation. The info reported was up to last September, so things have moved on somewhat with numbers of members, monies saved and loans taken out.

In AOB I told the assembled about the creation of CrUST, and our plans for a summer Green Gala on 29 July, and on the way out three people gave me their contact details and asked to be kept in touch with proceedings. I was pleased with this.

Cycled home via Richard's greengrocery to collect about 40kg of compostables.

Home-life this Saturday seemed to consist mainly of my boys wanting to 'bundle' with me, ie play fight and roll around trying to overpower me. They're not yet big/strong enough to do this but it won't be long. There is quite a possibility that someone could get hurt in these bundles, but we're sensible enough to hold back and not do anything too violent. Lots of fun, boys need bundles!

20th Feb 07

A good evening. Just returned from the Friends Meeting house where I met up with 4 others who are starting CrUST, Credit Union Support Team. I started the ball rolling with York Credit Union in Dec 1997, and spent 8 years trying to get the Credit Union started, working alongside a wide range of unionists, ecoactivists, social entrepreneurs and greens, even the leading Tory, after he lost his seat... But, when the Credit Union got the go-ahead from the Financial Services Authority I decided not to be a Director as the responsibilities didn't match my lifestyle. But I did want to support what the Credit Union was doing, so I invented CrUST.


We have 3 'Aims and Objectives'; to raise funds for YCU, as it needs funds to run and has to raise money somehow... so far the money raised by interest on loans isn't enough to pay for the staff; to put on social events for YCU members (can also be fundraising); to raise awareness about YCU and tell potential members (who have to live or work in York) why they should become a member and the benefits that they'd get with membership. (see www.ycu.org.uk)


Our one focus at the moment is to organise a summer festival in Rowntree Park, provisionally booked for July 29th 07. This will promote a range of 'lifestyle choices' connected with sustainability, peace, social justice, fair trade, personal and planetary health. We also hope to have local bands and possibly other entertainment. We discussed how we could run the event on renewables, and about sponsorship. We discussed a better name, and 'York Green Gala' was popular. I've now got to fill in the forms provided by the Council and see if they'll say yes to the event. Then the hard work begins. We've a second meeting planned in a fortnight.