Thursday 5th January 12

I spent a good part of the day dealing with assorted paperwork and admin stuff.  I really don't like doing this, but now and again it has to be done!

I found, much to my annoyance and dismay, that our home phone is not working properly... well, at all!  The buttons when pressed don't register the number on the screen with a bleep immediately, making me think that press hadn't made contact... so I pressed it again and thus got the wrong number on the screen... and then when I pressed 'call' it just wouldn't, and finally when I tried to ring it from my mobile the base station rang but the handset didn't.  Very annoying.  I do hope we don't have to buy another phone.

Gill went to the hospital to see why her right elbow was hurting so much, after her tumble.  She came back late lunchtime having had an X-ray, which revealed she has chipped her ulna and burst a synovial bursa.

I needed to make some phone calls and did a couple with my mobile but not those which I had to wait for a long time in a queue... and the lovely Maria round the corner came to my rescue, saying I could come and use hers, mainly for the call I had to make to Yell to deal with a problem with a recent invoice.  I'd already called with my mobile and the 0800 number, which is free from a landline, is not free on a mobile, so I wasn't happy to just wait for 10 minutes and pay I don't know what... so thank you to Maria for letting me do that call from her house.  I also got through to the chap at the Council who the compensation form went to, and he asked us to put Gill's new medical diagnosis in writing and send it to him.

Late in the afternoon I had a bath... washed hair as I was due to perform in Leeds, an event hosted by Leeds Green Drinks, called Yorkshire Green Laughs. 

This was a successful event, doing my balloon show plus banter.  I got some positive feedback. 

Wednesday 16th May 07

A day. Not a lot happened except going to a local computer shop to see if they could shed light on my phone-line malfunction (they suggested putting 1470 before the dialup number as this allows your number to be shown to the recipient) but they'd not heard of this problem. I rang a friend and asked her to do a 1471 and see if we were giving the 'caller withheld their number' message but we weren't.

During the morning the problem went by itself. Weird. Allowed me to dialup and do emails etc, so back to normal.

At lunchtime Artur the roofer came back and fixed our other roof problem, the escape Velux window had been put in too low compared to the surface of the roof and water had been pooling and coming in. Artur (I hope!) has fixed this by putting on some weatherproof tarry sheet stuff which has raised the level and will stop the water coming in. Good for Polish Roofers I say!

The only other significant thing I did today was to dig a couple more trenches in the lottie for recieving more spuds, still lots to plant! Weeded onion set bed too, using a knife like a tiny hoe.

Tuesday 15th May 07

Another nothingy day. During the evening I was doing emails and I accidently pulled my dialup lead out in mid session and when I tried to redial I got a message telling me that 'The person you are calling is not accepting anonymous calls. Please redial without withholding your number'. Now I have never withheld my number and knew something had gone wrong. So I contacted the operator and reported the fault.

As I couldn't dialup I went through my old emails and did some deleting and replies, including to Darren who works in an ecocentre in Leicestershire, who went to school with me. He saw me on telly and has found me. His eco-project looks really good, see www.completewasters.co.uk (that's my first link I've done in this blog!!!!)

In the evening I redid the Community Care blog which now doesn't have to tally with my second column being published this Thursday, as I've been told it will be published on 31 May. I did it on community/voluntary work/groups, and on CRAG which is just getting started in York. Sent this in at 1.45am. Keen, eh?