Wednesday 15th December 10

I had intended to go to St Nicks today and help with some coppicing, but Gill wasn't feeling too brilliant so I decided to stay closer to home and do some work in the garden, chainsawing and compost bin filling, harvesting artichokes, tidying.

I popped round to the bread shop, and after lunch went into town to put in a cheque and find a 'seasonal gift' for the family.

I came back via Richard at Country Fresh, and made a really good nutloaf, with equal amounts of breadcrumbs and grated parsnip.  I also put all the dried red and yellow pepper in the liquidiser goblet and reduced it all to dust, sieved it so that I had a bowl full of sweet pepper paprika.  Melody came to pick up her Suma order, so I gave her a jar of the paprika as a seasonal present.  She gave us a bag of foraged nuts, some jam and chocolates.

The nutloaf was delicious.  I zoomed into town after tea as I wanted to attend the York Green Party AGM at the Guildhall.  I enjoyed this.  Then I visited Anna as she hires out TENS machines and I borrowed one for Gill.  However, I'd asked on Freecycle about one and I had an offer there too.

I enjoyed a science programme quite late into the night, and a nice facebook chat with my friend Lisa.  She is fun.

Wednesday 24th November 10

I had an appointment at 10 to see Jane, a newish green friend who shares a love of Scrabble and has a lovely wildlife garden.  We'd met at several meetings and had tried several times to meet up, failing on at least two occasions.  But today's meeting had been in the diary for a while and it was good to meet up, attempt a game of Scrabble, and then give that up as chatting and Scrabble were not very compatible, and then had some lunch.  Our conversations ranged from bird and tree identification, oil paintings, communication in relationships, optimism versus pessimism, food and a whole lot between. 

I came back via Country Fresh where Shirley gave me the usual sack of gubbins, and then via Freshways who had a sack for me.  I got back to find Gill and our eldest had gone into town to get some glasses repaired but they soon came in.  I did a little bit of log stacking, and then our friend Maria came round to talk to us about home education, as she is a tutor who has some private students who learn mainly chemistry with her.  She had a good pile of text books and advice about resource material to get him through to GCSE in the three sciences.  Later we accepted her offer of an hour a week tuition.  Things are beginning to fall into place.

I had a subdued evening, dealt with some admin stuff and tried to write an important email which I've been composing in my mind for a week or two.  Late on I prepared some more apple and then a large pile of yellow peppers which I'll use to make sweet pepper paprika once they're dried.