Human Lifestyle

Up ridiculously early in order to get out of the house at 8am, to get into Wigginton Primary School to start teaching on the dot of 9. It took me just 35 minutes to get there, and I was going quite slowly as I had a delicate load of minibeasts in my trailer, mainly in glass jars.

I had been invited by Ian, a trainee teacher, as the school were doing a 'green plants project' and he wanted to add to that with a topic on composting. So, he'd initially booked me to do three 45 minute sessions, and the school were so pleased about this that they invited me to do a further two... and offered me a significantly better fee.

My lesson plan was to start with asking the students if they had a pet. Most of the class in each instance put up their hand. I asked what the pet needed to have a happy healthy life, and I had laminated A4 flash cards for Food, Water, Bed and Exercise. The children mostly came up with Food first, and I brought in the idea of a mixed diet, and Water next. We eventually got round to working out the other two, and I made a bit of a thing about the exercise being to do with getting Oxygen into their system (see where this is heading?).

Then I suggested that some of them probably had a pet in their back garden which had similar needs, and asked those with a compost heap or pile to put up their hands. There were fewer people with compost heaps than pets. So then we went back to the 'Food' and I asked what compost heaps were fed with. Once we'd got half a dozen suggestions, I brought back the balanced diet concept, and got out the 'Compost Browns' and 'Compost Greens' cards, and I explained, using the suggestions just offered, about Carbon-rich and Nitrogen-rich, drys and wets, structural and putrescible items which compost heaps need to have to work well.

I revisited the 'Water' card, and explained about the water content of fruit and vegetables... and the most environmentally friendly way to add moisture to compost heaps, which is, of course, to wee on them. Much muffled laughter and some horrified expressions, but in each class there were a couple of people who knew someone who urinated on their compost heap (often a grandad!).

The 'Bed' card referred to the bin or container, and the Exercise (after I made them laugh with my impression of putting a compost heap on a lead and taking it for a walk) was about turning it to get maximum oxygen into it.

Then I asked them what living things could be found in compost heaps, and I passed round pots and tubs with two sorts of worms, centipedes, woodlice, slugs, snails, millipedes and springtails, and discussed spiders, beetles, flies/maggots, rodents, hedgehogs, amphibians, grass snakes, slow worms and dismissed rabbits, moles and, weirdly, jellyfish! I also showed them a lovely mouldy grapefruit which allowed me to enthuse about fungi... and also mention bacteria.

Finally, I did a recycling game where I had a pile of assorted rubbish and I asked what should be done with this, which allowed me to get the biodegradable nature of rubber bands into the frame, as well as drinks carton recycling, taking paper off food cans, landfill and pollution from landfills. All this in just 45 minutes... three times before lunch and twice after... quite full-on and very tiring.

I left at 3 after writing out an invoice, and dropped off the teaching resources at St Nicks, as Catherine is doing a York Rotters school visit tomorrow. Got home at 3.40, shortly before Gill and our youngest did. Very satisfying, but was knackered. And full-time teachers do this kind of thing five days a week, plus having to plan and mark, etc.

I emailed my LETS friends to say I wouldn't be coming to the meeting tonight, and I had a quiet evening. Enjoyed the last programme of 'It's Not Easy Being Green'.

I cycled into school with our youngest, and in the playground had a nice chat with a new Dad, Peter from Taiwan. On the way back I collected lots of litter from Windmill Lane... mostly aluminium cans but also plastic bottles... all will be recycled (well, I'll put them for recycling; what the council and metal merchant do with them is their business!)

Gill went to her art class and I was a good househusband and continued the tidying she started yesterday and washed up. Went to Thomas's and bought their excellent value 'yesterbake' bread... two loaves, four packets of rolls, 4 danish pastries and some flapjack offcuts... all for £3.75. Excellent! This is stuff which didn't sell yesterday, and the shops all send the unsold things back to the Tang Hall Lane shop, where it is sold at half price and two for the price of one... so actually, quarter price. So a loaf selling yesterday at £120 would be 60p, but you can have 2 for 60p. Excellent, and they don't have to be the same item, so today for instance, I got a white loaf and a seedy loaf and four different packets of rolls. Good on yer Thomas's of York!

Gill came back soon after 11 and we spent some time together trying to plan the next few days... Gilly got on with some cooking and I got on with something else before Neil the Thomson Local rep came to discuss my advertising package for next year. He was very nice and we went off at a tangent/off topic on several occasions, but we eventually got to agreeing the words and signing the document.

The rest of the afternoon was spent sorting out a new woodpile outside the front door AGAIN... but hey, we've been very cosy during this cold patch and not used any more fossil fuel than we normally do. Just loads of logs.

I picked up our youngest, and as usual managed the compost bins I've installed at school to recycle some of their stuff they throw away and don't bother to recycle themselves. However, children are often really wasteful themselves and throw away fruit they don't want to eat, rather than take it back home to face their parent/carer who would (perhaps!) sternly say 'Why didn't you eat that?' So I often find uneaten bananas, apples, pears and sometimes unopened packets of crisps or dried mango. This is my reward! I bring the fruit home, wash it and mostly dry the stuff for my cereal... or the kids gobble it up as they love the dried fruit so much! I leave dried fruit out on the racks and it just disappears. I've told them they don't ever have to ask to take it... and it just goes. Great!... I bring more home just about every day to slice up and bung on the racks above the stove, and this snack is much more healthy than sweets or biscuits (although they sometimes have these as well).

I went to visit Richard at Country Fresh and he gave me a huge load of seconds tomatoes, so I'll sort them out and make soup for the coming couple of days. Yummy!

Popped in to Freshways too... and oh no, they had tomatoes as well. So, I wish I had a cauldron. I might make a batch of soup-base and freeze it... A busy evening awaits.

Did have a busy evening. The boys kept busy too, on their computer (thank you Uncle Tom!) but somehow the screen went upsidedown and enlarged. I wanted to laugh but had to appear concerned, serious etc or there would have been an outburst. I offered to help but my solution didn't work, so I rang Simon and he talked our eldest through it... and solved it! Well, I think so...
Enjoyed 'It's Not Easy Being Green' but I don't think this series is as good as the first. Not enough Brigit!!! Hahahahaha...

A good day but where did it go? Still feel as if we're recovering from the holidays, and the morning went by very quickly... after taking our youngest into school, and picking up some branches on the way home and prepared them into kindling, bought bread and brain flakes and bingo, it was lunchtime! After lunch we had a visitor, and bingo it was time for me to go to school and pick him up again!

Did a little bit more in the garden and popped down to Freshways... Gill made a nutloaf with some extra spaghetti from yesterday.

So, not much to report today, but survived it... just. Probably the highlight was a heated discussion on one of the email lists I'm on, or possibly the new series of 'It's Not Easy Being Green' on BBC2, with the irrepressible Dick Strawbridge and just a quick flash of his lovely wife Brigit. I might try the carbon calculator they used, or rather the very wasteful flash cricketer whose name I cannot remember...

Having done that calculator, I'm not that impressed, as it wasn't as detailed as some I've used, but it's a start. I was rated as 1.61 planets/year, which is more than most of the more detailed calculators which take more lifestyle choices into account. A reasonable introduction to carbon calculators for novices though!

A second day filming with BBC Inside Out, they came at 10am and met me at the veg shop, to film me picking up compostables... unsold produce, for a penny per sack! We did this to differentiate between 'waste' (which it is from their point of view) and 'resources' which I believe it is. If it is waste, offences are being committed as they have a duty to dispose of it in an official way, and I don't have a waste carrier's licence... so I officially buy the materials!

Richard at Martin's Country Fresh was happy to have his two and a half seconds of fame and pass the two sacks over and accept my two pence! We filmed various bits there, several takes to make it possible to edit together a good bit of film.

The next bit was at home, sorting through the materials, and there were lots of carrots, slightly blemished, but pukka enough for soup. They filmed Gill peeling them and chopping them for the soup, whilst chatting about life with me and what she thought of our green lifestyle. Then we did a bit about my 100% illegal recycling waste deposited in the litter bin outside our house, but they didn't film me doing anything illegal! Phew!

They did a bit of me and Gill in the garden, and then we went to St Nicks to meet up with Louise, a lady who wants to start composting and didn't know how. So I assumed my Rotters persona and talked her through the basics. There was an interview with Gary Haq who works for the Stockholm Environment Institute at the University of York, researching ecofootprints, developing carbon calculators and the like. He had introduced Louise to the film crew and that's why she was included in the film about 'being green'. Finally, came back home to meet the boys, film them on the trampoline and do a quick interview about Daddy's composting.

So a long day, busy and tiring.

Enjoyed the update edition of It's Not Easy Being Green, with the Strawbridges helping various people green up.