Human Lifestyle

A good day... chilled morning watching The Big Questions and Countryfile, whilst playing Scrabble on Facebook and keeping the stove going. The bananas I loaded up yesterday are looking a lot smaller and soon I'll be able to move them to another cake rack to finally dry off. The banana glut has been caused by the heavy snow last week. Don't see the connection? Read on!

Every day, primary school children get a piece of fruit under the 'Fruit for Schools' scheme... it could be an orange or apple, banana or even a stick of carrot. This is a regular consumption pattern, so when the snow came, and a percentage of schools were shut for a few days, this meant that several hundred thousand pieces of fruit were left uneaten... and came back onto the market. So a box of bananas, which ordinarily might cost £15, became available for about £5. So, many fruit shops bought these and sold the bananas more cheaply than they usually do. But they go off quickly and some people don't like over-ripe bananas (I do though!) so that's why there are over 100 bananas still sitting in our hallway, waiting to have the chance to be rapidly air-dried, jarred up and bartered on the LETS, or given to friends as gifts, or even chopped up and put in my daily muesli.... or composted, which is what will happen to most of them.

So, Sunday afternoon was equally relaxed... did some wooding, visited Country Fresh on my bike which is just about on it's last legs (if that's not a misnomer) as the jumping drive cog is worse today... making it almost unrideable uphill with a load, but still OK on the flat or downhill...

Later, after tea, I made the same journey again, down to David's to see the photos he took down at the Residents' Festival and then last week down at the Museum Gardens. Some nice Fiddlesticks images, we think we almost have enough for David to start doing my new publicity leaflet.

During the evening I got both 5 gallon cans of bathwater hot so as I can have a bath tonight, as I'm doing some filming tomorrow up in Middlesborough, and although it's about frugal living (someone's trying to live on a pound per day, I think, and I've been asked to help and give some tips and advice), I do want to look clean and tidy... not as if I've been head down in a skip!

Had a bath and hair wash. Lovely!