Saturday 17th November 07

A fairly early start as had to be at St William's College next to the Minster by 10am. Cycled down, in costume, with the unicycle on the trailer, and met Gill from Zentist, the shop on Gillygate which is having the Christmas Fayre today. There's lots of stalls and talks on assorted esoteric subjects including 'the power of angels', and stalls with Tarot, Crystals and massage.

But whatever my personal beliefs about some of the subjects at the event, I was happy to be their unicycling advertiser, with a large placard on a stick which Sue had made into a good poster advert. So from 10am I unicycled around York and people read the placard, some asked where the event was, so the advertising worked.

At 12 I met with Gill and the boys for lunch... they first had a look around the Fayre but they weren't much interested, apart for meeting up with our friend Will and his girlfriend Alison. We went to the St Williams College Restaurant and had one of our first meals out together, which was really good. The nosh was what I'd call 'haute cuisine' as it was presented in an arty way, with squiggles of reduced balsamic vinegar and a swirl of lemony oil stuff. I could never do haute cuisine, I am more into having a reasonable quantity and having a good balance of different foodstuffs. The restaurant manager, Ed, introduced himself, as we met many years ago at a LETS event, he's friends with my friend Carole's son.... York is SO small!

So then I got back on my uni and wobbled off to wander round the streets of York doing my advertising. Met my friend Neil, who trades as Leo the Caricaturist, and quite a few other people who know me, which was nice.

Towards the end of my day unicycling I was going down Colliergate and wasn't concentrating as I should have been and my wheel met up with a dip in the road which matched it perfectly, so it stopped and I continued forward and downward and landed on both knees, which suffered abraisions and bruising and blood. A chap came to my aid and said he'd been thinking how good I was! I ignored the pain and got straight back on the unicycle and did a last half hour.

When I got back to St Williams they were all offering things like rescue remedy, aura readings etc, but I told them my immune system was quite strong and my body repaired itself reasonably quickly without much help. I was paid and I cycled home, tired, cold and achey, but satisfied I'd done a good job... I've been invited back for next year!!!!!!!!!!!!

As I had a cooked lunch, I had half a reject avocado and some sandwiches for tea.

Monday 12th November 07

A busy day, starting with a trip down the garden to put a load of materials collected last night into my new compost tumbler, the 400 litre CompostFlow. Our youngest son was suffering from a cough all night so he stayed at home, so Gill popped out to the bread shop and I did chores in the kitchen.

When she came in again, I cycled down to town to go to Out Of This World, to pick up some of the stuff following the shop's closure, and also went to Cycle Heaven to get some cycling gloves for me and the boys, who were complaining of cold hands recently, and won't use ordinary gloves as they cannot grip properly, apparently.

After lunch, I took the gloves to the school as our eldest is taking part in some cycle training, but he wasn't at all thankful about my bringing some gloves for him.

I collected him at hometime.

During the evening, my friend Sue came to give me a booking letter for this coming Saturday, when I'm doing some advertising for a 'Zentist' alternative health practitioners' fair in St William's College. It was lovely to catch up, as she's known me for a long time.