Human Lifestyle

Up early as was due to be in Elvington by 10.30, to meet Mike, who responded to my request for an air rifle on Freecycle, by inviting me to borrow one of his.  He'd asked me if I'd had any experience of them, and I said, no, not since my Dad let me have a few goes on his when I was about 14.  He told me that he'd show me how to do it, and asked a few questions about our garden as some places are not suitable for using air rifles.

So I set off soon after 10am and zoomed out and Mike was waiting for me at 10.32... not bad timing!  I locked my bike and he took me, his dog, two air rifles, a bipod and two tins of ammunition pellets out to a farm about 10 minutes drive away.  He's related to the farmer and goes to shoot pigeons in a barn where they roost and foul the straw bedding and hay fodder.  The pigeons he gets are fed to the cats that the farmer keeps.  Mike set up a target using hay bales, a wooden board with an A4 paper bulls-eye on it, and showed me how to use the basic rifle, which has the charge of air put into it by 'breaking' it and flexing it to just past right angles.  It takes one pellet at a time.  I had a few goes and I think he was surprised how good a shot I was.

Then he showed me the multi-shot air rifle, which has a magazine of 12 pellets, and is powered by a little CO2 canister similar to one in a sodastream fizzy drink maker.  This had telescopic sights, which made seeing the target much easier, and the gun was lighter too, and easier to hold.  However, when the canister is full, the pellets go faster and end up higher on the target, and as the pressure reduces, they go slower and gravity pulls then down, so aiming is much more difficult.  However, the ability to pepper the target with holes withing a short space of time makes up for this.

I chose to take the single shot one with me, and when we got back to his place, it went into a plastic sack and into a pannier, and I cycled home.  On the way back, I found a pheasant and a crow which had been killed by motor vehicles, so I popped them in my trailer to add to my compost. I also collected some branches and they went into the trailer too, for the stove.

Had lunch, and then did a load of weeding in the garden, picked beans, and was interested to see the squirrels seem to have lost interest in the walnut tree.  Maybe it's the curry?

In the evening I had problems getting onto the internet, so couldn't finish or publish my blog and couldn't do my usual facebooking.  But I did do a large pile of pears and apples... and the stove is very well laden now. 

Well, a super day; my first job was to go and find somewhere to do some 'guerrilla composting'. We'd generated a small bag full of compostables and I wanted to dispose of this in as appropriate way as possible. So I took it just a few minutes walk from the back door and found a place in the woods where I could make a little heap and place a few rotten sticks over them as camouflage. This will just add a little bit extra to the leaf litter and fertility of the woodland, and avoids the only other disposal route open to us, landfill.

Then I went down to Mumbles to get cherry tomatoes, a cucumber, soya and goats milk. I came back in good time to get myself some lunch and get that eaten before Gill's Uncle George came to pick us up. But I was in the middle of making my sandwiches when there was a knock at the door and it was Karl. He wanted to find out from me how I earned a living as a self-employed entertainer/educator. I finished making my sandwiches and as I ate them, answered his questions and suggested how he might be able to do his creative 'thing' and make some money. I hope we keep in touch, he seemed like an interesting and nice guy.

Then George came, and Karl left. George is Gill's Father's younger brother. He is very much like what Gill remembers her father Brinley to be like, so this was a lovely meeting. He drove us via Langlands Bay, where we got out and had a quick look at the beach, and then on to Caswell Bay, Bishopton, Kittle and then onto the main road across the Common past the airport and into Killay, where he and Auntie Rhona live. We last saw them at our wedding in 1999, and it was really lovely to see them again.

We were shown a load of photos, including some of when Gill was pregnant with our first child. We had a laugh at this... the boys were amused at her hair colour, which was brown, whereas it's now white, and Gill was amused to see that in the photo she was wearing a blue denim dress and red woolen cardigan. She still has both items of clothing, and has them with her now here on holiday!

Then we went into the garden where George grows leeks, runner beans, more leeks, a few potatoes and courgettes, and more leeks. I offered to do a bit of weeding for him, as his compost bin needed some more materials. I said I'd swap the weeding for half an hour on his computer so I could catch up with my emails. So I pulled out lots of spindly brambles, lots of small rose bay willow herb and some bindweed. I joined in with a game of boules and did some more weeding/Rotol Bin filling.

Then it was tea time; we'd brought a few bits with us, a plum and apple crumble, some pasta salad and a kind of nutloaf made with the excess Bulgar wheat from yesterday's stuffed courgettes. Rhona had provided potato salad, lettuce and coleslaw. After this George showed me his computer and I signed into Tiscali webmail, where there were some messages I was really glad to get and to reply to, and I went on facebook too and got up to date with a few messages there. I finished just as George and Rhona's daughter in law Diane arrived, and soon after, their son and her husband Jonathan. Gill hasn't seen these cousins for decades, so this was really nice too.

As it was getting dark Jonathan took us back to Mumbles. Although it hadn't rained much today, it was fairly cool this evening so Gill said yes to me lighting the stove, which is a Nestor Martin approx 4kw jobbie, with a top-loading facility. The glass in the door was quite well sooted up so I used the old method of cleaning it... screw up a sheet of newspaper, spit on it and dip the wet area in the ashes in the grate. This has the right amount of abrasion to easily remove the soot, and the window came up clean very nicely. The stove worked reasonably well and was fun to have a go with. I'm glad I collected some fuel.

I was really pleased to see the first episode of the latest series of my favourite comedy 'Ideal' which is completely surreal and very funny. Gill loves it too.

Up too early for my liking, left the house at 8am and was on the 8.38 to Malton... which got there just after 9am. My work today was a 5 hour session in the new WHSmith in Wheelgate in Malton, just 4 minutes walk from the station. So I got started early, before my 9.45 official start, and although I went to the venue in my removable aircast, I took it off for the gig and wore both my colourful Fiddlesticks boots.

I had been booked to do balloon models but I took my juggle-kit too, which proved handy as there was a fair amount of interest in juggling, balancing peacock feathers and trying out flower sticks. I did about 120 balloon models, had 20 minutes for lunch and was busy for the full 5 hours.

There was a nice face painter called Becky who arrived after I got set up, and she did some really lovely face painting... and arms and hands....

I left soon after 3pm and got to the station just after the 15.10 to York, so I had the best part of an hour to read my NewScientist, this was most welcome.

However on the 16.10 home I nearly fell asleep as the tough day began to hit me but once I was on my bike again I was OK, and I got to Country Fresh just before Richard closed the shop, and I was able to thank him for the fantastic gig The Falling Spikes did on Thursday. He told me that the band had really got off on the audience reaction and thought it had been their best gig ever.

I spent some time sorting out the compostables so they fitted in my trailer alongside the bag of juggling stuff, and was soon home and spent an hour relaxing and eating tea, the last of the bulgar wheat and home grown squash, with a small portion of cauliflower cheese and pasta.

But then I thought I ought to load up the stuff I brought home today so I spent til nearly 10pm in the garden, dealing with the two tumblers and then doing some nettle-pulling in the pond area. This part of the garden seems to have a lot of rubbish in the soil, bits of glass and pottery, and I found a well-preserved clay pipe, just the mouth-end of the stem missing, and the bowl perfect.

Later Gill and I watched Catch Me If You Can which was a very entertaining film.

Up early as lots of protests about school starting today. I wish children didn't have to go to school and could just play. Life might (or might not?) be simpler and more peaceful.

But both boys did go to school today, and I spent most of the day doing housework. Gill did some accounts. I washed up and tidied. I spent some time relaxing and playing Scrabble on facebook, but interspersed with chores.

In the afternoon, I made a nutloaf for tea, which all the family enjoyed. We had it with purple sprouting broccoli from the garden.

At teatime I did a bit of chainsawing, the pallet planks I prepared the other day. I did a bit of weeding too, the raised beds which I hope I'll get some crops into soon. I also did a layer or two of compost in the metal-sided bin, and riddled some leafmould.

In the evening I chatted to Lorna on the phone and found out that she managed to get an invite for both days of the Spencer Tunick event! Even she's not sure how she managed that!

A quiet evening, actually quite a boring evening. Tired.

I was expecting a visitor at 10am and told Gill last night... but I slept til the phone rang at 9.50... it was Nick saying he'd be with me at 11, and then Freecycling John arrived, as I was getting dressed. I met John through Freecycle when he was offering some wood from trees he'd removed from his garden, to make space for vegetables... so I told him then about my excess of compost. He emailed me a day or two back and arranged to come round at 10 today.

So, I showed him round and he was very happy to choose four sacks of mature compost which I wheelbarrowed up the garden and he loaded into his car. Then a while after 11, just as I was having a coffee after my cereal, Nick arrived. We chatted and he had a coffee and then went down to the composting area... and he chose some sacks to put in his cycle trailer.

So, I sold 7 sacks and one bag of riddled... probably my best day's sale EVER!

Then I had lunch, did a bit of wood management out the front and then did lots more outside stuff down the garden, despite the rain.. including lots of weeding, and digging out a dalek bin with some very friable and crumbly compost... loaded it into plastic sacks and I hope to riddle it and use it soon. The weeding I did was around the raised beds where the hedge has been replaced by a wall, and I need to eradicate the ground elder from there, which was growing through the hedge and continually re-invaded the raised beds.

A very satisfying day.

I was woken by Gill as there was a chap with a large van who was offering me some logs. It was the man from around the corner who had invited me to take the logs from the front of his house... I'd taken quite a few in the bike trailer but obviously he wanted his driveway clear. I helped him unload and thanked him, and then had breakfast.

A relatively quiet day, including washing up, nice lunch and another visit from a chap offering me logs. He too lives round the corner and told me he'd cut down an apple tree and did I want the proceeds. Well of course I did, so I went round to his house and helped him take the logs from his back garden to his front drive, and then I got my wheelbarrow and took 6 loads back to my house.

The front garden is beginning to look a little full! But it's OK, I do a bit every day, mostly. So I did about half an hour with the chainsaw... but it was a very warm day so I got decidedly sweaty.

Whilst Gill was in town with our eldest I spent some time in the back garden with our youngest, as Gill had asked him to harvest some poppy seeds and had provided him with a paper bag to put them in. I cut off the ripe seed pods and he did the seed removal, and I did a load of weeding and removal of perpetual spinach beet flower spikes, some of which are as tall as me and are flopping all over the place. They have self seeded for years now, and there are loads of new ones coming... we harvest leaves from them regularly.

So a hard-working day, but very little happened really.

A nice sunny morning so I got up reasonably early, and at 9.30 got ready to go to John Bibby's again, as yesterday I'd promised to help his wife, Shirley, move her compost bins, as the new development (they've sold a chunk of their garden and a house is due to be built) will be on top of where their compost bins are. I took my 'compost mate' tool as it is the best way to extract the top layers from a dalek bin, so they can be put back in the new empty bin. Once I had a wheelbarrow full of the most recently added stuff, I installed an empty bin in a new place, and put a load of prunings and cardboard in the bottom before putting the semi-rotted stuff on top of this.

The base of the compost bin was full of well-rotted material, so I just lifted it up off the pile, and installed it in the new place, leaving the pile of rich compost for Shirley to use in a new border, which will go in front of a new fence. I shovelled one wheelbarrow's worth into the barrow and left the rest for Shirley to do. I reckoned an hour and a quarter was enough. I filled the trailer, panniers and rack with another batch of logs and cycled home, slowly.

Gill was just getting ready to go out with the boys and one of their friends to Pocklington by bus... there's a lovely garden there, Burnby Hall and Gardens, where there are fish to feed and water lilies to look at. And a Sainsburys.

So they went out and I had lunch and got on with various things in the garden, including log chopping and splitting, sorting out an old compost heap... a pallet version which has finished rotting down and some of it's contents have fallen through the base, so I took it all to pieces, tidied up and put everything in a builders bag. Also did more weeding... green alkanet, ground elder, nettles, all growing much better than any crops!

I did a load of stacking too, round the back under my covered woodpile, and then Gill came back; they'd had a nice time and the bus journeys were easy, and the fish were hungry.

We all had egg, beans and chips for tea, and whilst they watched Robin Hood I did some more wood wrangling, getting in at about 10. I love these light nights.

Late on, I played Scrabble and watched a version of The Midwich Cuckoos, a film called Village of the Damned. John Wyndham was one of my favourite authors when I was a teenager... I gobbled up Jules Verne, Isaac Asimov, lots of science fiction. Now I don't have time (or inclination?) to read fiction... and I prefer science fact anyway now! Some of the stuff I read in NewScientist is stranger than fiction anyway!

Gill went to a little party gathering next door, Diane and her sister, female friends only. She enjoyed the company. It's not often she goes to a party!

Up at a reasonable time and Gill was planning the trip to the IMAX cinema in Bradford, as the boys wanted to see The Night At The Museum 2. She bought tickets over the phone yesterday and had sorted out which train to get, and booked a taxi. But due to factors which I don't fully understand, the boys said that they didn't want to go this morning, so Gill did a second round of ringing round and cancelled everything, and will hopefully get her money back from the IMAX.

So, both Gill and I spent quite a bit of time in the garden. I was busy most of the day, potting up peppers and more tomatoes, sieving compost and loam to use as growing media. I did a load of weeding, mostly ground elder and green alkanet. Also compost heap building, so a perfect day in the garden.

Our youngest is complaining that his bike is too small for him, so after tea I cycled with both boys down to Bikerescue via Walmgate Stray and the Millennium Bridge. When we arrived at the Parkside Commercial Centre, the Bikerescue dog, a friendly enough hound, was there, and my son who is scared of dogs ran away and had to be coaxed and cajoled back, and I asked the chap who dealt with me to put it in the office so my boy's fear didn't prevent us deciding on a bike. We chose one, and it needs a bit of work so I put down a deposit and was told it would be ready in a week or 10 days. We cycled back a shorter way.

I cycled back into town immediately, as I'd agreed to help a friend who's moving house soon. She cannot get into her loft as the hatch is quite narrow and her hips are not! So I went up to the loft space and handed down assorted boxes, bags, piles of books, electrical items and more. Then we had a good chat before I came home, getting in after 9, but doing some sorting in the front garden before coming in.

A quiet evening, enjoyed watching 'Surgery Live' on C4 with Gill.

Beth woke me up at sometime after 7 as I needed to leave the house at about 8, in order to get to the nearest station by 8.28, to get to Peckham Rye by 9.30 and meet Anna. A quick breakfast and goodbyes, walked up to the station, got a ticket to where I wanted to go and caught a train four minutes earlier than expected all the way to Victoria, as suggested.

However, when I got to the ticket barrier at Victoria, it wouldn't accept my ticket... and the member of staff looked at the ticket and pointed out that it said 'not valid via London' and he said that I'd have to speak to the barrier person at platforms 1-7. So when I did this, they wouldn't let me through either, and told me to go to the ticket office to get sorted out. I did this and the only option was to be sold a ticket from Clapham Junction to Peckham Rye for another £2.10. This meant that I got through the barriers and on to Peckham Rye by 9.30, and Anna arrived with my keys, a teeshirt and NewScientist. So much for leaving in a hurry the previous morning...

I gave Anna a book I'd got at the conference on Sunday morning which I thought she'd be interested in... she was delighted as it definitely was right up her street, so her walk to the station was worth it for her too.

I got the bus to Kings Cross, waited for the platform to be announced and got on the train which left at 11. I had some nice chats with the family sitting in the 3 seats with me, but I couldn't use my laptop for very long as the plug socket in the carriage wasn't delivering any power, and the battery on this thing doesn't last very long without the mains, perhaps about 30 or 40 minutes!

Anyway, York appeared soon and I cycled home via Country Fresh and Freshways, getting in at 1.30.

The boys were delighted to see me, they'd all had a good time, with a visit to Scarborough and fun with Simon and his son, and Gill was pleased I'd got such a lot from the conference. I don't think she missed me, perhaps as I did ring every evening to see how things were!

I had lunch and Gill asked me to go and do some shopping, so I did that and then spent some time in the garden, planting beans, squash, peas, and weeding and piling stuff into a couple of dalek bins. Nice to be back!

Gill made a quiche and cooked the potatoes I bought, and we had a lovely evening together, watching Ideal and talking over some of our weekend.

A quite relaxing day, in many ways. Gill went to Art and I eventually went to the allotment with some chitted potatoes and got two rows in! Hurrah! I also pulled out more nettles, by hand (there really isn't any point wearing gloves as part of the love of gardening is being in contact with the soil and plants) and deconstructed a compost heap which fertilised the potato rows.

Home for lunch and then spent the afternoon with Gill, before she went out to have a stitch removed, left from her gall-bladder removal, this one got left behind! I went to school to get our youngest, and took a large plastic sack to collect a dose of school fruit waste. Came back with over 30Kg... would have been thrown away if I didn't rescue it. I wonder when they are going to address the composting situation? I've heard nothing since a 'Health and Safety' **** said 'composting isn't allowed in schools' and my working compost bin was removed.

Gill came home, minus a 1cm long piece of thread in a jar. Greatly relieved! She skimmed the small ads in the Press and saw someone was selling a unicycle for £15, so I rang up and it sounded fine... except it was up in Wigginton, about 5 miles North of here. I decided to go and get it, so cycled up through Haxby, popped into the Cemetery to see a tree I planted in memory of a friend Lin. The tree and plaque I bought were not there. I was a bit upset, but wrote down the details of the people to contact, and will write to them both, just to see if it has been moved...

I then cycled on to where the young man was selling the unicycle. He'd bought a bigger one, with handles on the saddle, to catch when falling or jumping off. I chatted with the whole family, and demonstrated unicycling backwards, paid the asking price (a bargain!) and cycled away with it in my trailer, down the Wigginton Road this time. Near Clifton Moor I found a pallet in the hedge (a rather larger piece of litter than most I pick up!) so brought that back too, coming along the cycle track from near the Hospital all the way to Hull Road, where I picked up a sack of biodegradables from Freshways, and as usual, some friendly banter with the gentlemen who work there.

Home for some squash soup, which was delicious! Had a couple of bread rolls with it... and that was a perfect tea. A relaxing evening, but starting to get ready for going away tomorrow.

Nice bath with woodstove water.... ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Did some paperwork this morning... emailing and various Fiddlesticks and Green Festival stuff, including getting a phone call from Ed at the Co-op North Yorkshire Area Committee telling me that they had decided to sponsor York Green Festival again. This is such fantastic news!

After lunch I went to the allotment and dug loads of clumps of grass out, dandelions, thistles, nettles, weeded around the asparagus, and got perhaps enough space to put in my spuds, late but not too late! They'll romp away once in. Someone has stolen some pallets from around one of my compost heaps but pallets are easy to get hold of so I'll just get some more and rebuild.

I love being there, but my hands are now fizzy from all the nettles!

Gill and I made the tea together... I did some potatoes and some fruit for fruit salad afterwards. I doctored the soup with some soya milk and used up some dead spaghetti from a couple of days ago... a right big mix of stuff.

At about 7, went to Lynn's with the bags of clothes she let us look through... Gill only wanted a few bits, and wanted to get shot of the bags of spare stuff. Lynn had also got two squash plants for me, grown from seed from a commercial squash. So, no knowing what might grow from them!

Then onto St Nicks for the York in Transition meeting. Lizzie our facilitator today had gone to the wrong place... The Stables, and cycled fast across town to get to us. It was worth it, a very good meeting.

Spent time on the laptop doing the YiT facebook page, doing an event page for the Transition picnic and multi-sports day on the 31st May. And chatting to Lynn and Ali.

A rainy day, and we were expecting a Suma order so we stayed in... the delivery was much later than usual and arrived after 1pm. Despite the rain, I did a good wood stack outside the front door.

I also did some weeding as some weeds come out more easily if the soil is wet, and did some compost heap management, piling several sack's worth of assorted veg on the current pile, with a good layer of woodchips from a stumpgrinding operation at Woodlands last year.

We had leek and potato soup with some garlic bread... Gill's home-made bread... and the last slices of yesterday's nutloaf.

At 7pm I cycled down to the Museum Gardens to attend the meeting of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society in the Tempest Anderson Hall, a lecture by Dr John Barrett from the Stockholm Environment Institute at the University of York. I've been to quite a few of John's lectures and they're always good, this one was called 'The Carbon Footprint Of Everything We Consume' and although I knew quite a bit of it already, I learned new things about 'consumption based emissions' and 'greenhouse development rights', and things which will hopefully come to pass at the Copenhagen Climate Talks in December. I have quite a bit of research to do...

I asked a question at the end about carbon calculators and John suggested two I could try, the WWF calculator and he B&Q One Planet Living calculator, both of which were developed by SEI, with the B&Q one in association with Bioregional.

I have been meaning to join YPS for some time, so tonight I did. I was then able to go to the small gathering in the Gatehouse for a few chats and glass of wine.

Zipped home in order to see Newsnight which I had hoped would have the Ethical Man meets Joe Jenkins, author of The Humanure Handbook, 'the book which changed my life', but unfortunately he wasn't featured, he was left on the cutting room floor as it were. Relegated to a mention on the blog. How sad! How disappointing! Missed opportunity BBC!

But, on searching the blog for the mention, I find that there is a vid of the piece they didn't broadcast. Seeing this made me happy. Another 13 seconds of (nameless!) fame... just over 2 minutes in, and how nice to see my hero Joe. Cool. (not Joe Cool, Joe Jenkins...)

Gill and I watched a film 'Wimbledon' which was quite good.

Woken by kids yelling as if being murdered downstairs, so sleepily rushed down to be met by two laughing boys saying 'April Fool'. Didn't quite know what to say, but all was good humoured!

Gill took our youngest to school and went on to her art class. I did a bit of emailing and Facebooking, and then got dressed and made some leek and butternut squash soup, and started building a logpile of dry wood outside the front. This one isn't going to fall down!

Had a good day, doing bits around the house and garden, nothing very focused but had a productive day. Shredded a load of twigs (mainly from John round the corner) and took apart a large clump of tough grass/sedge which Gill dug up ages ago. The soil had dried so I could crumble that off and pulled out the bits of the plant with roots, and shredded these too. The soil I added to my store of turf/soil/loam in one of my many compost bins. This is used to make potting composts, mixed with rich compost from fruit and veg, and leafmould, in varying proportions depending on what I'm using it for. I emptied one of my tumblers, putting well rotted stuff in a large plastic sack (for continued decomposition and eventual riddling and use) and unrotted sticks, paper and cardboard in a pile, ready for putting back with all the shredded twigs, sedge and a vast pile of cauliflower stalks, bad oranges and off potatoes. All this went straight back in the tumbler, filling it right up in one go. Compost bins are rarely empty in this garden! I took the temperature of one of my recently loaded pallet bins, just over 60 celcius in the centre... a veritable sauna for the microbes in there!

I also did lots more weeding, as we have an excess of deep rooted Green Alkanet (Pentaglottis sempervirens) and easy-seeding Geranium species (some type of Crane's Bill) and the always-on-the-make Ground Elder (Aegopodium podagraria) which is perhaps the most invasive thing in this garden, apart from the encroaching compost bins... I pulled out some nettle seedlings, baby brambles, docks trying to sneak their roots way too deep for me to get them and dandelions trying to be as tenacious as docks. My fingers are now tingling pleasantly from the stinging nettles, a feeling I quite like.

I found one of last year's yams, just beginning to grow, and tried to dig it out, but it was so deep, the main body of the tuber was over 60 cm below the soil and it broke off, just giving me 50 or 60 cm of thin rooty tuber hardly worth doing anything with. I'll replant this bit, probably in a pot as it's easier to get the crop! I bought this as 'Angela's Cinnamon Vine', 5 tiny balls which form in the vine where the leaves branch off, it climbs several metres up, and produces a bigger tuber every year if left. So far my biggest tuber was about 70 cm long, after 2 or 3 years growing. The vine dies off during winter.

Gill called me in at 7.30 and reminded me it was tea time... I just get completely lost when I'm in the garden, there's always more to do than I have time for, and eating gets put down the agenda (or falls off the end of it until it's too dark to do anything more). I had a two bowls of leek and butternut soup, seasoned with marmite from a nearly empty jar, washed out with hot water to get the last of it. This with a hunk of bread and hummus and blobs of pesto, and some cucumber out of the compostables... one end was unsaleable, the other end delicious!

An evening not worth writing about, as I spent most of it writing...

Quite a relaxing day, although I did a lot. At about 10, two Film and TV students arrived, Liam and Laura, to do a piece on recession, freeganism and green, low carbon lifestyles, drying fruit and composting.... well, they wanted to do recession and freeganism, I turned it into all the rest!

We cycled down to Country Fresh where unexpectedly, Richard wasn't working and Shirley was, so she got the starring role of handing over the box of compostables. We came back via Freshways, but Raj, the 'Mr Charisma', wasn't there, so no filming. Back at home, we did a bit on composting and how I re-use some of the stuff that the shop is unable to sell... such as a blemished red pepper which had three quarters of it perfectly edible. Back inside, we did the dried fruit theme, and by 1.30 they had got enough 'footage' and they went. I hope that they got something useful and interesting for their project. I've asked them to send me a copy so I can see what they've made me say. Anything can happen in the editing suite!

After lunch I did a bit of work in the garden, weeding and more compost heap loading and some work out at the front, bow-sawing some smaller timbers... and then David came with his LETS bank account paperwork and we discussed him photographing another gig, so we can finish off the new publicity material. Then the children came home and all was good humoured and happy.

I had the hot-pot with scone top that Gill had made yesterday, reheated on the woodstove, and I attempted to catch up on assorted e-jobs such as doing some publicity for a forthcoming Green Festival meeting.

So, an unhurried day and quite productive.

A bit of a lie-in, until 9ish, and then whilst eating breakfast, the boys wanted me to watch a DVD they found in the PDSA charity shop yesterday, on Hypnodisc from 'Robot Wars' TV programme. Very exciting!

I felt quite grotty and didn't get up, so watched Countryfile and did a bit of washing up after lighting the stove, then lunch and I lay around and watched the Grand Prix on TV (I don't know why I like this, as it is not something which contributes to sustainability and I don't like cars). Then listened to Gardener's Question Time on the radio, and after that went to bed as feeling well grotty. Gill woke me at 6 telling me that I could come down for tea and watch Scrapheap Challenge with the boys, but had to deal with eldest son's bad behaviour and talk to him about why he'd been told off by Mum. He has a lot of anger and needs a lot of loving and tolerance and explanations. He did eventually calm down and eat his tea, I ate mine and spent an hour and a half planting out some beans and courgettes and sunflowers, and did a load of weeding in the raised beds.

Came in after 9 and did a bit of email stuff and aimed for an early night.