Saturday 21st May 11

Gill left fairly early to go to the Steiner School Spring Fair with our youngest, who has a stint on the Year 6 Cake Stall and at 1.30, a Maypole Dance Show. Gill took loads of cakes in for the stall, and she'd also volunteered to do some tidying and other things.

Our eldest doesn't like crowds or too much noise so he wasn't going; so I stayed with him at home.  At 9.20 I was woken by a phone call from the daughter of a well known local entertainer, who does close-up magic.who had managed to cut the end of his finger off and couldn't therefore work.  She was hoping that she'd be able to find a replacement entertainer for tomorrow at 1pm.  Well I was very sympathetic but couldn't do the work as I already have a gig tomorrow afternoon.  I gave her my agent's number.  I also rang my friend Stephen who is a puppeteer and suggested he might contact her.

We had a really good morning, lunch and early afternoon.  After lunch we did some shredding together, and after Gill came home and I was cutting the front hedge, one of his friends came round, so he had a good day.  I did a load of weeding.... Ground Elder mainly.  This doesn't need shredding as it's quite soft, but I collected all the hedge trimmings together in a builders sack and put them through the shredder as many of them were woody, and the shears I use to cut the hedge don't chop the stalks small like some powered hedge trimmers do.

As I was going out with David at 6.30, and it was likely to be a late evening, I had tea before I went out, pasta salad with a leafy coleslaw and two dolmades.

David had booked me to take him to St Michael-le-Belfrey to hear the Yorkshire Bach Choir, so i got changed into some tidy clothes (not shorts!) and cycled down.  We set out at about 7 and there was a space for wheelchair users.  I chatted to a lovely old lady from Sheffield called Celia who had a great sense of humour, not bad for 81 years old.  The choir was good... 44 singing, one on an organ/keyboard, and one playing a theorbo, which I'd not seen before, or at least, never heard the name of it.  I really enjoyed the choir.... I liked it that between songs they moved around and changed places, even for one piece three of them went and stood quite a way away from the rest, which made quite a good effect.  The only problem was that I understood none of it.... it was, I think, all in Latin.

David enjoyed himself immensely and was very pleased to have been able to attend.  We got back to his place just before 10 and I got him some food and sat with him and ha a drink before going... I got home at 11pm. 

Monday 2nd May 11

Another good day, got up quite early and after breakfast, did some fruit sorting until shortly before 12 when I got some sandwiches together and got 3 sets of devilsticks, and cycled down to May Day in the Park, which I thought was at Clifford's Tower.  I cycled round it a couple of times, went to Boots to get Gill some painkillers, and then cycled round again... no May Day celebrations.  But then had a brainwave, maybe the event was in Tower Gardens.  It was; I'd misread the proposed venue.  Anyway, the event was just four trestle tables and a few rag-tag students and older Socialists, but it grew and by 1pm there must have been about 50 people there, including a small choir with instruments to keep them nearly in tune.

I played with my devilsticks and several other people joined in, borrowing my second and third set and having a go.  I had my sandwiches and chatted with an interesting person with a wonderfully curious name, Hann Bunn, and that made me happy as I really like meeting people... and if they're interesting with a curious name, that's even better!

I left at about 3pm and came home via Country Fresh and Freshways... lots more goodies to process.

I finished potting up the sweetcorn I got from Country Fresh, each one in it's own pot with home-made compost.  I'll plant them out when the danger of frosts has gone... or reduced, at least!

I cut one of the hedges near the house, and removed a bramble which has for years been in the wrong place, so I'll keep on top of it this year and that should work.

In the evening, I had a meal of couscous and pickles, then a cycle down to The Seahorse to the YorkLETS meeting, and it was good to see two prospective members, Carol and Andrew, as well as Sue and Kay, who are existing members.  We had some good chats, mainly about growing food, allotments and how LETS works.  I got a phone call at 9 from Gill asking when I'd be home as our youngest needed a bath and the pan was on the stove, and needed taking upstairs.  I was happy to come home and do this, as the meeting had finished.  Sue dropped by a bit later to view the pallets I'd got her to make a fence with.  She'll collect them tomorrow.

Then, quite late on, I blanched a load of grapes, to make raisins, and jarred-up a load of apple, red pepper and some other odds and ends of fruit, to make space for a large load of red pepper, which I'll use to make sweet red pepper paprika.

(Added on Tuesday) I forgot to say that I got a message from Debbie saying she was in a bit of confusion about how to sort out a problem.  A visitor to her house had snapped off a key in the padlock to her back garden.  She wanted to know if I had any bolt croppers.  Well, I don't, but luckily, I had a potential solution... which worked!  I found that if I knocked the lock against the gate, I could slightly move the key so the broken edge just protruded from the slot by a tiny amount... just enough for my tiny tweezers from my Swiss Army Knife to be able to grasp it and extract it, after several minutes of trying.  The two halves of the broken key should be enough to get a new one made.