Tuesday 3rd January 12

Well a very low key day in lots of ways.  Gill and I filled in her Council form to claim for the cost of her glasses, broken when she tripped up over the wonky pavement on the 27th December.  Her bruised right elbow looks horrendous and she's still got a painful forehead and achy knees.

Later, I cycled down to the EcoDepot to hand the form in, and then on to Country Fresh which is having a closing down sale of sorts.  I came back via Freshways and got 2 sacks from there, and there were enough tomatoes in them to make a huge pan of soup AND a pan of stewed tomatoes, which I'll make into a pizza topping or something.

I did quite a bit of washing up and fruit preparation, took a couple of phone calls (hooray, got a Fiddlesticks booking for the end of the month!) and did the usual round of facebook Scrabble and assorted discussions and arguments.

Just before bed-time I popped out and liberated a few more logs from skip-hell.

Friday 16th December 11

A very early start.  I had to be in Meltham near Huddersfield before 10am... meant I left the house at 7.30 to get the 7.55 train which got into Huddersfield at 8.44, and I then got the Number 324 bus to Meltham at 9am.  It all went very smoothly, which is pretty normal for public transport.

I found the venue for the Pre-School Playgroup building, a Church Hall, very easily but couldn't find the door as two seemed sealed shut and one was locked.  However, the locked one was eventually unlocked and I was let in.  I talked through what I was going to do and what their timings were before getting changed.  I had only agreed to do the circus show for them but I thought that for the money they were giving me, they could have the balloons too, and they were pleased with this.  My only deadline was to be finished for 11.45 for Father Christmas to visit.

The shows went well, although they weren't easy as the children were very young and that has it's difficulties when you've a circus workshop show and a balloon workshop... however, the grown-ups seemed happy, no child burst into tears and nothing went wrong.  And I finished on time, got paid, and was waiting for the bus back to Huddersfield by 12.10.  The train came 10 minutes after I got to the station and I was home before 2pm.

I then got busy with the chainsaw as I really want to clear the front garden, as I'm expecting to get more logs over the winter, and I need to make space.

I made some tomato, onion and red pepper soup when it got dark at 4ish, and at 6 the family had that, along with bread.  Delicious. 

Sunday 30th January 11

I got up fairly early wondering if I had a gig today; I'd written 'Goole?' in my diary but no details.  I hadn't got a booking letter... well I don't think I had anyway.  But I did half expect a phone call saying 'see you at 2pm then' or somesuch!

Fortunately this didn't happen and I was able to spend the day doing useful things at home. So first thing I lit the back room stove and watched Country Tracks and did the washing up.  The newly empty bowl allowed me to sort through a carrier bag full of pretty manky tomatoes, thrown out by the two retailers.  I washed them and cut out the bad bits... which ended up as over half of the bag full.  However... I collected a large colander full of trimmed tomatoes.  I used a reject onion, a bought potato, a stick of celery, and fried these up first, then added the tomatoes, chopped with scissors.  I stewed this gently on the stove for several hours, and will tomorrow season it and 'whizz' it to a smooth soup.

After lunch I did some work outside... I gathered together a load of twiggy bits, trimmed off sticks and branches, and hedge trimmings, and shredded them as I needed some woody stuff for the composting.  I cut back some old brambles and fed those through the shredder too.  I didn't get a chance to put the stuff on any of the heaps though, as I remembered that Mandy Waggett had invited me to collect a load of wood she'd sorted out of her garage (and put on Freecycle) so I went round with some paper sacks to load it up, and filled the trailer and two sacks.

Gill made tea... the left over butterbean and veg stew with some extra bits, and a topping of mashed potato and sweet potato, so a sort of cottage pie.

I went out after this and brought another trailer full of logs home, and decided to call it a day.  But then I sorted out a load of nails and ironwork pulled out of the grate, and put this for recycling (I take it to Hazel Court) and stripped a bit of copper wire, and shelled some pumpkin seeds too.  As usual, I didn't start winding down til about 2am, well after The Sky at Night.

Monday 17th January 11

Not too bad a day on the whole.  I spent most of the morning sorting my messy piles of paperwork, basically trying to find a booking letter which has mysteriously disappeared.  However, I did sort out loads of envelopes, tearing out the plastic windows and putting the rest for composting or lighting the stove.  I got a big pile of recyclable paper which went in the recycle bin and sorted out various documents to store for my business records.  The missing letter did not materialise.

After lunch I popped round to see the local vicar, Tim Jones, who had asked me to go and see his compost bin and give him advice.  I said I'd go and see it and tell him what needed doing, with the possibility of going again to sort it out.  I get on with him, I like his sense of humour, and I expect to go and work in his garden next week and do some pruning, shredding and compost heap deconstruction and reconstruction...

Then I cycled into town to put in a cheque, pay a bill and get some cash out.  We'd got a post card form the Post Office saying there was a letter for Gill with a £1.38 bill to pay on it, so I went to pick that up.  On the way back I popped into the alterations shop on Walmgate as my bum-bag had a broken zip, and I wanted to know how much it would cost to replace it.  The guy in there took one look at it, and said he'd mend it.  10 seconds later, don't know how he did it, but it was a fully functioning zip again!  Wow.  I gave him a pound coin.

Came back via Freshways who had two huge bags of gunk for me.  One sack had split so I asked for a new bin bag and I made the two sacks into three to enable me to get them home.  However, there were a lot of slightly over-ripe tomatoes so when I got in, I set to and created a big pan of soup on the woodstove.  Four onions, thrown away as they had manky outer skins, about 20 large tomatoes and a small potato.  I brought it to the boil, simmered it and will whizz it tomorrow, and add bouillon and herbs.  Yum!

A relaxing evening with Gill, enjoyed some good telly and companionship.