Human Lifestyle

Gill took the kiddies into school and I got ready to go into Radio York to talk about being a part-Freegan, someone who gets some free stuff, sometimes out of bins and skips. I got there for 10am and was soon ushered into the studio.

First there was a recorded interview with a woman who goes skip-raiding at supermarkets, and she described some of the things she had found and eaten from the bins, and why she did this. Then the interviewer, Adam, chatted to me about the arangement I have with the greengrocer and my habit of collecting drinks cans from the sides of roads and then selling them when I've got several sackfulls... it was a good interview, went really quickly.

Then went to Millers Yard for a coffee and was pleased to meet Ros, who's chair of the York Community Furniture Store. She's someone I've heard of on many occasions but never met. She's a composting enthusiast too. We had a good chat and I then picked up Dylan's compostable orange skins and cycled off to see my friend Jo for lunch.

Jo has now got an allotment so we discussed how to deal with lots and lots of nettle roots, how to compost them successfully. She'd made some bread so it was a good sandwich, after which I bombed back home as we were expecting a visit from a surveyor to discuss external insulating render.

This was finished by 3pm when I went to school to pick up the boys, who came home quickly as we were expecting to have a visit from a neighbour who keeps lizards. However he didn't turn up.

I went to a meeting in town at 6 to go to the first Hull Road Ward Planning Panel, being held at the Guildhall. There were 6 of the new panel there, plus Roger Pierce, one of the Councillors and Jennifer the Neighbourhood Management Officer, and we had a training session and got organised... I said I was not willing to be the Clerk but would chair the group if they were happy with this. However no-one else wished to be Clerk so I was appointed Clerk-until-someone-else-comes-forward too. Then we discussed our first planning application, a temporary building at Woodlands MS Respite Care Centre used to store clothes etc donated for the shops, which has been there for a couple of years and they have applied to have it there for another two. We had advice from Roger who has much experience of planning matters, and our decision was to say that we had no strong opposition to it but wanted to say that we didn't want to see it become a regularly renewed consent, that the building should be temporary not permanent.

Got home at 7.20 and had a mellow evening, until....

Much later, I was in the middle of a skype conversation and the house shook quite violently... an EARTHQUAKE!!! It was the most frightening and weird thing ever..
I was very shaken up, if that's not a silly thing to say, and had adrenalin going through me for an hour afterwards.....