Another tough morning. I am not enjoying parenting one bit at the moment.
Took our youngest to school and came back to get ready for the Compost Doctors training; Catherine the York Rotters was also booked in so she picked me up and drove me to Elvington Airfield where the training was taking place.
Cath and Doug ran the training and I was slightly disappointed that the DEFRA offer is for 'third sector' organisations which promote composting, not individuals who might be wanting to be consultants. So if I am to be a 'Compost Doctor', I'll have to do it through York Rotters. Now York Rotters is a 'Master Composter' scheme... it trains up volunteers to promote home composting, not businesses' organics composting or 'commercial' composting. The Compost Doctors scheme is aimed squarely at businesses... schools, prisons, greengrocers with a garden behind the shop, a cafe within a park... basically any catering establishment with grounds in which to compost their catering waste and, importantly, grounds which can use the resultant soil-improver. However, I enjoyed the training and participated in my usual enthusiastic way, and the issue of working through York Rotters needn't be a barrier to my doing this consultancy work. It might be good for York Rotters, providing some good publicity and and some income.
The food was good, and I enjoyed meeting the other potential Compost Doctors, including Chris from Leeds BTCV who goes into schools and teaches about 'education for sustainable development', something I'm keen on. Hope to meet him again. The training finished just after 4.30 and Catherine and I came back into York. She too thinks that if I do the Compost Doctor stuff, she will not need to do much admin, so I won't be using up her core York Rotters time. So a decision is needed soon as I have just 8 weeks to do the work!
Things were calm at home... as calm as waiting for a volcano to explode. But we all had a civil teatime, not much talking and no arguments or the like. Gill manages to just keep going and kind of 'surf' over the difficulties, but I am feeling depressed.
However, I cheered up when I got a phone call from Kirbymoorside in Transition, who are launching their Transition initiative in April, and after seeing my spread in The Ecologist, have been asked to speak at the launch. How nice! I also got a Fiddlesticks booking for an event in Hull.
Showing posts with label BTCV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BTCV. Show all posts
A funny day, recovering from the BBC filming and doing various things to try to keep the York Green Festival organising from stalling.
However I started by taking the kids to school and then soon after that had my LETS friends Patric and Jo come to buy 2 big sacks of compost off me, for 20 Yorkys, and then Tom from Freecycle came and picked up a bag of mulch, the stuff which doesn't go through the riddle and has lots of sticks and lumps in it. He was nice and said he might visit again and buy some compost off me.
Then spent lots of time on the phone and some on the computer. In the afternoon I found my bike's right pedal had somehow come loose and I rang Cycle Heaven and they said just bring it in.
So after picking up the kids, I took it in, they couldln't believe it, how do I manage to wreck my bike so completely? They said it would need replacing and so I went to visit Pauline who lives close by, and chatted and when her grand-daughter came in, and needed feeding, I chopped a load of wood for her. Picked up the mended bike and got home after 6, not much time before going to the YGF meeting.
This went well, with two new people fron BTCV who want to have a stall and possibly have bird-box making, or a tree-dressing, or a tree-trail/quiz.... I told them that all those things would be fine and a good addition to the event.
Came home and at 10 went to St Nicks stone circle to meet up with any othe Solstice Celebrants, but there was only one, a student called Victoria, so I made up a small bonfire and we chatted for a couple of hours, got on very well, an interesting evening.
Got in after midnight and spent time with Gilly before retiring to the oh so welcome bed.
However I started by taking the kids to school and then soon after that had my LETS friends Patric and Jo come to buy 2 big sacks of compost off me, for 20 Yorkys, and then Tom from Freecycle came and picked up a bag of mulch, the stuff which doesn't go through the riddle and has lots of sticks and lumps in it. He was nice and said he might visit again and buy some compost off me.
Then spent lots of time on the phone and some on the computer. In the afternoon I found my bike's right pedal had somehow come loose and I rang Cycle Heaven and they said just bring it in.
So after picking up the kids, I took it in, they couldln't believe it, how do I manage to wreck my bike so completely? They said it would need replacing and so I went to visit Pauline who lives close by, and chatted and when her grand-daughter came in, and needed feeding, I chopped a load of wood for her. Picked up the mended bike and got home after 6, not much time before going to the YGF meeting.
This went well, with two new people fron BTCV who want to have a stall and possibly have bird-box making, or a tree-dressing, or a tree-trail/quiz.... I told them that all those things would be fine and a good addition to the event.
Came home and at 10 went to St Nicks stone circle to meet up with any othe Solstice Celebrants, but there was only one, a student called Victoria, so I made up a small bonfire and we chatted for a couple of hours, got on very well, an interesting evening.
Got in after midnight and spent time with Gilly before retiring to the oh so welcome bed.
