Saturday 2nd April 11

Woke with a headache again.  But I wasn't going to let that stop me doing what I needed to do, so I got on with stuff, including sorting out the large piles of old magazines from our bedroom, as Gill and the boys are going to a car boot sale tomorrow and I wondered if a few bundles of NewScientists might sell.  I also went in the loft to find a few bits and bobs.  I did quite a bit of hoovering as the dust was impressive, and I had to empty the cylinder twice (well, once before I started, but filled it with stuff from our room!)

I wanted to go to the LETS seed swap and plant share at Simon and Melody's, so did a round trip.  I went first to Country Fresh and bought some veggies, and picked up about 75kg of compostables.  Then on to the lottie, to visit the People and Planet Allotment, which has a compost heap in need of some material, so I spent over half an hour chopping up twigs and woody stuff to layer the fruit and veg I piled on.  From here I went to Heslington, and was the LETS event's second visitor.  It was good to chat with Melody and Simon, we always have a joke and a laugh.  I bought a Yorky's worth of seeds from them, some Butternut squash and purple curly kale.

Although I was feeling grotty, still with a headache and bit of a cough, I decided I wanted to support the York in Transition and St Nicks 'Knees Up' fundraiser, so at 8 cycled over to Dalton Terrace and paid my £5 to go and watch the Ceilidh band and dancers, and have some snacky food.

I was really glad I went, as I had an interesting conversation with an unusual woman called Helen, who popped her head round the door to see the inside of the church hall, as she went there with her granny as a little girl.  There were lots of friends there, Edward, JZ and Maggie in the kitchen, Laura Potts and friends dancing, Kate Lock and her daughter, Rich Lane who as usual gave me some sensible feedback on an idea I'm working out at present, Ivana, the main organiser of this event, and John Brierley of course.  I was really please to meet one of Kate's friends, Pauline, who makes costumes, and she provisionally agreed to consider helping York in Transition with a Clothes Repair workshop, as part of our basic skills series of courses. I chatted to lots of other folks too, and enjoyed the buzz of it.

My headache disappeared completely during this event and by the end of it I was feeling back to about 95% of normal.  I really enjoyed the cycle home; the new brakes work really well... which is lucky as a woman was crossing the road in front of me and I aimed to go behind her, thinking she'd continue crossing, but she froze... meaning that I nearly hit her... but for my brakes and good cycling skills!

Home at about 11pm.  Had a bit of a late night......

Saturday 26th February 11

Quite a relaxed day, managed to have a read before I got up, which is a rarity these days.  Usually I read for a few minutes before I drop off to sleep...

The weather was initially not conducive to going out, so Gill and I did some tidying and sorting... going through papers and putting rubbish in the bin, putting the recycling out, hoovering the carpet, bagging up several kilos of nails and other ferrous rubbish from the stove, that kind of thing.  It's always good to have a blitz.

However, in the afternoon, I did a bit of pallet butchery, chopped up 6 of them, and did a load of stacking.  I had some woodpile-arty-fun with some of the sycamore logs I brought back yesterday, splitting them into 6 or 8 wedges, and then stacking them in their original shapes, as unsplit half-rounds, and I may be able to set them into the logpile as rounds, with the splits just showing like lines on a jigsaw.  When I've finished this, I'll take a photo and post it here....

I had a good phone conversation with the woman who rang me from the garden centre in Huddersfield, and she booked me for 19th June to do some Professor Fiddlesticks and John the Composter. It's a small family-run firm and I'm looking forward to going already!

In the evening I put a last lot of 29 supermarket bananas on the drying racks, and jarred up some of the ones I dried earlier in the week. 

Monday 29th March 10

Woken by screaming and yelling at 8am. I feel so sorry for our neighbours. I came down to see if my quiet presence might help smooth the exit off to school, and it did, with one child. Great!

However, there was an absolute refusal from our youngest so I quickly got dressed and got my bike out and Gill and I plonked him onto the pannier rack and took him to school, and he was not late. Hooray. (and, when he arrived home at 3.40, he reported having a brilliant day, so it was worth it)

I had a lot of assorted paperwork to do and Gill did a vast amount of sorting and tidying upstairs. I was doing the washing up after buying bread before lunch and she came down, beaming at me, told me she loved me, and pulled my left hand towards her, and slipped on my long-lost wedding ring. This went AWOL at least two years ago... I had taken it off as I was getting eczema underneath it and put it 'safely' in a pot on the sideboard (so I thought!) and that was the last I saw of it. I wondered if it had slipped off into one of my compost heaps, or had disappeared somewhere else.. but I had obviously put it safely somewhere, just forgotten where. It was on the dressing table in our bedroom; this hasn't been tidied or cleaned for, ahem, some while!

After lunch I cycled round to South Bank to visit a Freecycler who had advertised some logs on Sunday. I'd emailed him and said I'd be unable to come on Sunday but if there was anything left on Monday, that would be good. So, as there were some logs left, I popped over and picked some up. The householder, John, had moved in less than a year ago and had just finished doing up the house, and was starting on the garden. There had been a row of huge bushy Leylandii, two collapsed apple trees and a selection of other trees. I was the seventh visitor to take some wood... most of the apple had gone, and so I only got a few chunks of that, but I took a trailer full of Lilac sticks up to 7 cm diameter. We had a chat about fruit trees, compost and conflict resolution... the usual range of conversational subjects I have with strangers!

From here I recrossed the Ouse on the Millennium Bridge and cycled into Fulford to my agent's house, as I had a booking letter from him I needed to get back to him. And from him through the University back home.

I had a quick tea... mashed potato, pastie and peas, and set out on my second Freecycle trip of the day. Someone else had offered a load of bricks... so I thought that I'd add to the bricks for the wall, and get a trailer load. I managed to get 37 in one load... 6 in each pannier and 25 in the trailer. The Freecycler didn't have time to let me go and pick up a second load, but an extra 37 'clamp bricks' for nothing is worth having.

Despite the rain, I did an hour of shredding before it got too dark to continue. I came in and helped with some homework, cut some fingernails and settled down to watch Newsnight and do more washing up.

Thursday 19th November 09

Up early to finish the large job of tidying the back room to make it acceptable for BBC audiences!

Took all my paperwork off the floor, bits and bobs from around the hearth, tidied jars of dried fruit, and used our new super vacuum cleaner. I even cleaned the glass of the stove!

Anna arrived a bit late as she got lost and needed to be talked here from Bootham. She came alone and had her camera, tripod, sound stuff, batteries and tapes. First we just chatted and had a cuppa, then we got down to business.

She first interviewed me inside, sitting at the table, about my small carbon footprint, how I achieve it and why I live like I do. Then she filmed me taking the readings from my electricity meter and gas meter, and inputting them into the Carbon Account on my laptop.

Then we walked up the road to where yesterday, a nice Polish chap had invited me to pick up 5 pine logs. I'd asked him if I could leave it til today, so I could be filmed doing it. He was happy to let me do this. So I walked up there with my bike and her with her equipment. When we got there she realised that she had forgotten her empty tape. So she walked back and got it whilst I looked after the camera on its tripod. We did loads of 'takes', all at different angles and from different places... they'll be edited together and will make up one half of a film about two people with different carbon footprints, me, a little one, and Adam, a York-based radio presenter, who has a big footprint and feels he HAS to use his car as he lives in Tadcaster and works in York.

Then we came home and she filmed me cycling along the road, turning into the drive, unloading the trailer, and finally, me introducing myself. By 2pm she was finished... but I showed her the garden before she motored off and I had a peaceful lunch.

The footage will be shown on Yorkshire Look North (6.30pm, weekdays) during their 'green week' which is in the first week of December, coinciding with Copenhagen.. The other film she's doing is to look at two families, a 'green' one and a non green one. The green family is, by chance, someone I recently met, John Grant from Sheffield, who is an excellent communicator and I am delighted he's doing it as I know he'll be able to explain things well.

The rest of the day was much less 'full on' and I just did a bit of housework and stuff on the computer.

Friday 2nd October 09

Quite a busy day as we have to get the house tidied and cleaned as we are having visitors this afternoon and overnight.

So, Gill and I did some sorting out and vacuuming... I took down most of the tomato plants and dead yams in the conservatory so I could put the trays of apples and pears there, from where they were in the front room, which is where the futon is. Which is what Jennifer and Mark will be sleeping on.

So, did a variety of jobs to try to make the place a bit more respectable.

They arrived at about 4pm and left their two boys with us as they had come over for a meeting, and came back about an hour later to settle down for a cosy evening.

The children had pasta, veg and tomato/leek sauce, and we had rice and nan bread and felafels, wine and chat, followed by a game of Scrabble which Gill won.

We watched Derren Brown on telly after which they went to bed. I peeled a load of plums for drying. I ate one and now I know why they were thrown away. I hope drying improves them!

Saturday 18th April 09

A very busy day.

Got up quite early and both felt like doing some spring cleaning and sorting out. Gill made a start on the conservatory, which has become somewhat cluttered, and I did some washing up including a load of storage jars which have been building up.

Gill also rang a chap who'd advertised two flat irons in the back of the Press. She's been wanting to have a couple of these to heat up on the stove so she doesn't have to use electricity (despite it being from renewables, and us not using very much, it still costs, so using less would be good!). Gill isn't into ironing everything, but the school uniforms and my work clothes need to look good, and the electric iron is quite heavy on the juice. So a pair of flat irons will be a good addition to our low carbon lifestyle. The old fella wanted a fiver each, as they were antiques, but was happy to hear they'd be used. He lives in Easingwold so Gill might take the bus out there next week to get them, or he might deliver if he's coming down the Hull Road.

Soon after this telephone conversation, we discovered our phone handset wasn't working... it was completely dead. Gill tried to 'ring home' with her mobile but only the base rang, not the handset. So, with the phone being important for my work, it was essential that we get it sorted. So, within the hour I cycled down to town to take it to where we bought it to see if they knew what was wrong with it, or maybe buy another handset. I felt a bit daft when the chap in the shop told me t was just the batteries which had expired. I thought they were rechargeable, but apparently they don't keep recharging for ever. I bought new batteries... and a second pair for when this happens again!

I also visited the Friends Meeting house where the old AVP computer has been waiting for me to pick it up and bring it home to erase the hard disc data, before taking the whole lot to the recycling depot at James Street. The monitor is huge! It only just went in my trailer but with bungees, it came home safe and sound. I set it all up and tried to run the DBAN 'boot and nuke' floppy disc that Ben had supplied, but I didn't quite understand the commands so I phoned Ben and asked him if he could pop round and press buttons in the right order.

Gill was doing wonderful things with the conservatory and I helped too, being ruthless about throwing stuff away, for once! Ros came round with her son, and she stayed and had a coffee and chatted about some of the stories from when she was a customs officer. Our boys played happily all together.

Ben came round and found that the software would work if the computer was tweaked slightly first, and so he reset a password by doing something to the innards and then set the disc to AUTONUKE and completely wipe the hard disc. He also showed me how to take out the disc afterwards and extract two very strong rare-earth magnets, which make excellent fridge magnets. After 40 minutes nuking, the monitor declared it was now 'done', so I switched the whole thing off and extracted the hard disc (actually 3 of them in a stack) and the two magnets. The rest of the hardware will be going to Hazel Court tomorrow for recycling.

I then found time to sort through seeds and plant some courgettes, squash, pumpkin and basil. This felt extremely satisfying. All three boys ate together and then played til 9pm when I took our visitor back up the road to Ros. I spent some of the evening peeling some giant pumpkin seeds I found from last year, and sorting out old seed packets from newer ones which I will hopefully plant up soon.

A very productive day. And destructive too, with the mangling of the old computer and throwing away of loads of unrecyclable and unusable stuff. Satisfying!

Sunday 18th January 09

Woke late and didn't feel that comfortable with such a lot of cleaning activity going on so I went outside to take cardboard down to the current compost heap, then cycled to Hazel Court to take drinks cartons, batteries, and some scrap iron for recycling. On the way out I was gently accosted by one of the operatives who explained that bicycles were not allowed up to the area where cars go, and that I should leave my stuff down at the pedestrians area. However, this area does not cater for drinks cartons or scrap metal, so I told him that I intended to continue using the normal area. There does not seem to be any sensible reason why cyclists should be singled out as not allowed... as when drivers get out of their cars to take stuff to different receptacles, they too become pedestrians. I will send in my application for a permit to use my trailer and see what happens. In the meantime, every now and then, I'll take in my tetrapaks for recycling, and use the correct 'bring bank'. Grrrr.. I hate stupid regulations!

Anyway, came back feeling refreshed and invigorated, having done my recycling and had a good-natured discussion where I stated my case clearly and politely.

Or kitchen was immaculate! Thank you Linda!!

Had lunch, said goodbye to Linda and got the stove going whilst listening to Gardeners Question Time on the radio and doing emails. Then I went and did some more tidying in the garden... mainly cutting back last year's blackberries and putting the chopped bits on the compost.

Listened to a little bit of York's best radio station, Equinox 107, which broadcasts on Sunday afternoons. Also popped down to Country Fresh to pick up a bag of resources, and cycled it down to put most of it on the new compost heap.

Tea was mainly reheated stuff from the previous day, but also broccoli and butternut squash. Lovely as usual. Gill is feeling much better and is up and about, keeping active and is eating well.

A fairly quiet evening, warm and cosy, watched an amusing documentary on the work of Health and Safety Inspectors, called 'The Fun Police'. Tried to do some writing. (other than this!)

Monday 30th June 08

A good morning, the boys were well behaved and I took them to school. I spent a few minutes collecting soil from molehills to add to the compost to help fill the remaining containers.

Home to help Gill with a big clearup, as Gill's sister is coming to stay next week. She said 'dont do any tidying up' but if we didn't, she'd have nowhere to sleep, as the front room is totally full of clutter and my mess, piles of paper etc, so we HAVE to do some clearing up!

I did an hour in the garden too, before lunch.

A pleasant afternoon, but at 3 we both went to school so that we could have a chat with a class teacher and the head... whilst both our boys played outside.

I did lots of tidying outside after this, chainsawing logs, stacking, and had a chilled evening.