Human Lifestyle

Gill woke me by coming and turning the radio on in the bedroom as our friend Anneliese Emmans-Dean was on Woman's Hour, with some of her wonderful poetry (hear it here from about 14 mins 20 seconds in) so after that I got up and before breakfast, went to buy bread at Thomas's. 

A bit later I did a round trip to Hazel Court, disposing of wet carpet, some electrical equipment I found in a skip and I put it in the WEEE skip for recycling, some metal in the metals skip, and 3 sacks of drinks cartons.  I had no hassle whatsoever from anyone... in fact I had 2 nice conversations, one with a pet-fancier (rabbits?) who gave me his old straw bedding and another chap called Jeff whom I had a 10 or 15 minute chat with!  From here I went on to Country Fresh to see Richard and pick up some veg for us and for Debbie, and quite a lot of compostables.

Delivered Debbie's veg, home to deal with ours and before the light went, loaded some gubbins into the Compostumbler and then helped Gill prepare some sprouts for tea.  The sprouts were a bit bitter, (and we'd stir-fried them) so we added a tiny bit of sugar, some bouillon, herbs and sesame seeds... this made them delicious!  I had this with the second half of the rice/stuffing mix, and a bit of celery soup on top.  It was a good meal.

I'd been invited to Andy D'Agorne and Denise Craghill's New Year's Eve party, so I set off at about 8 and delivered Anna's TENS machine back to her... which wasn't really any use to Gill as TENS is good at localised pain, not the all-over type.  But good to know that Anna hires them out.  She was just setting off to the party, with her neighbour Pauline.  I cycled along to Broadway and was pleased to find quite a few people already partying, including a photo quiz which was fun.

I especially enjoyed talking to Will whom I know from the Green Party and his 12 year old son who was very bright and politically opinionated!  My friend Tracy, from York Green Festival days, was there with one of her friends. Guy was there, and Catherine who's voice I like, and Dave Taylor...although I didn't have a chance to speak to his partner Chris who people speak highly of, but I've never really got to know her.  There were others too... a buzzing party.  I left at about 11and cycled home via a collectible waste wooden structure which only just fitted on my bike trailer, but will make excellent kindling.

Saw the New Year in with Gill and the boys, which was really nice, lots of hugs all round. 

Quite an early start as although my work in Leeds starts at midday, the train times mean I had to leave on the 10.11 train. And before this, I had to deliver the pumpkin soup to St Nicks.

So, I was up before 8 and had a shower and hair wash, Gill made my sandwiches and ironed my costume, I breakfasted and packed, loaded the bike. Gill was worried about my taking the preserving pan of soup on my bike, but it was quite easy and I got it to St Nicks un-spilled and with the loose-fitting lid still on. Catherine, our head Rotter, was pleased to see this.

Then onto the station and got my day return to Cross Gates. Once there, it was a 15 minute walk up a hill to the Church hall where Swiis Foster Care were having a half-term fun day, with about 20 children and the same number of adults invited. I arrived an hour early, as the next train of the day would have meant me getting there only minutes before being due to start, so I got the earlier train and had an hour to wait. However, there was an aerobics class going on so I sat quietly at the back and half-read, half watched this... I've never seen anything like it!

They finished at 11.30 and I got set up, got changed and the guests and organisers started to arrive. One of the staff, Gael, is a friend of mine from the Northern Green Gathering, and it was lovely to see her again. I was glad to be in costume to welcome the children, and I played throw/catch with my juggling balls, although one got lost. At 12.15 I started my show, and they were obviously completely un-used to live interactive entertainment. But quite soon I had nearly all of the children and a couple of the adults up and doing things, and the show lasted just over an hour.

As usual, whilst they were eating, I inflated a unicycle-wheel full of modelling balloons and then got everybody, including all the adults, having an attempt at making balloon animals. Lots of fun, finishing just before 3pm.

Got changed, got paid, got back to Cross Gates where I finished my NewScientist and was back in York for 4.20. Home via Country Fresh, where Martin had got me God knows how much unsold stock... I was only able to take two boxes of it on my pannier rack as my trailer was full of unicycles and juggling equipment.

I had a quick tea as soon as I got back, the boys were finishing theirs prior to going out to the St Nicks Pumpkin evening. I took my big pumpkin down, to enter it into the giant pumpkin competition, despite it being not much bigger than a human head. I decided to go via Country Fresh and picked up two sacks full of compostables and a big tray of grapes in punnets, each punnet having some mouldy grapes in, but, crucially, some good ones too! I left them in the punnets... and went to St Nicks and arrived at the same time as Gill and the boys who had walked down.

The pumpkin evening was very well attended, with quite a few folks I knew, including Jeremy Piercy, Jim and family, and Robin, to name but a few. My boys both carved a pumpkin, I had mine weighed and it was 24 lbs, and the biggest of three entrants! It looked like my medium pumpkin was the winner of the Giant Pumpkin Competition! Unfortunately, when the judge of the pumpkin carving arrived, Anneliese, and she chose her first, second and third from three age categories, neither of my boys won anything... but I won a new model of wormery called a Worm Cafe, see this (silent) video about how to use it! I was amazed.. I really hadn't thought I'd win. And it's worth close on £100! I balanced it precariously on top of the sacks of compostables and walked home with my family.

A quiet evening, slicing apples and sorting and blanching grapes. More raisins in a few days!

Awoken at 7am by loud banging downstairs and after three episodes, went down to see what had happened. One of my sons had got a splinter in his finger and was having a paddy about this. It is absolutely incredible how much fuss such a tiny irritant causes.... amazing!

I tried to talk to him calmly but was shouted down. I told him that if it were my splinter, I'd cut the top layers of skin off with my penknife scissors and extract the splinter, and he could do this himself if he wanted, or I could do it for him as any Dad would. He wouldn't let me, loudly. I then offered to take him to casualty. He could see the ridiculousness of this and soon allowed me to carefully remove the splinter in the way I'd described. It was about two millimetres long and not deeply embedded, and afterwards I got lots of thanks from him and Gill, and cuddles from the other child who hates the huge outbursts just as much as we do.

The day got better! Both boys were engrossed with friends and I went down to town with some York Rotters stall stuff in my panniers... as part of the York Fiesta weekend is a performance of Anneliese Emmans-Dean's 'Compost, the mini Musical' and we have a stall to catch any passing or associated interest. I was embarrassed by Anneliese introducing me as 'The Greenest Man In Britain' or something similar, but happy with 'He can answer any of your composting questions'!
(see http://thebigbuzz.wordpress.com/2007/07/05/compost-the-mini-musical-world-premiere/ for the info about the mini-musical!)

The musucal was good, although could have been better if the children had been wearing microphones as the city centre was noisy and their voices small. Our stall got only a few visitors, perhaps a dozen or so.

Before 2 we closed it down and Jo and I took the stuff to Rowntrees Park, as she's now got a cycle trailer, and we left it in the pavillion ready for tomorrow's Worm Charming do. We had a coffee and a good chat before I went to Anna's to pick up another large load of greenery to take to James St for the green waste skip. There's far too much for me to take back home to compost, perhaps 4 cubic metres? Quite a few bike-loads anyway, even though I get a lot on each journey.

No hassles at James St, they seem to have dropped their objection to cyclists with trailers visiting the site and doing their recycling, maybe the letters to the Press struck a chord and they realised the folly of their ways...

Home by 4pm. Did some work in the garden with one of our boys' 9 yr old friends, who was very keen to work with me and riddle compost with the rotasieve. I didn't realise til Gill mentioned it, that he either doesn't have a Daddy or doesn't see him much, and that made him wanting to work with me kinda nice and a bit more understandable. His comment about boys enjoying getting dirty made a bit more sense too, as he's in a female household and they may not appreciate his mud-pie making. I took him back home at 8pm, as he'd had tea with us and then come back outside to help me with the composting! Very satisfying.....

A good evening, nowt much on the box so typed away at my keyboard, mainly chatting on Skype message thingy with Ali whom I met at a recent gig.