Had quite a busy morning, up just after 9 and dealt with a slight hangover by having a large coffee and 2 paracetamol, and a shower.
I needed to be in tip top condition for work... Professor Fiddlesticks had been booked by Anna, the organiser of today's 'Multi Sports Day' near the Fulford end of the Millennium Bridge, which was due to run from 2 til 4pm. So I had an early lunch and got going with my bike trailer full of the usual gear at just after 1pm. I also took a couple of bags of dried apple rings for the LETS stall, and the York World Naked Bike Ride leaflets.
Stuff was already happening when I got there, and I secured a place on the path with my bike propped up against a lamp-post and immediately there were youngsters wanting to have goes on the unicycles. So I was busy for over 2 hours, unicycling and helping people with the 4 wheel unicycle, 2 wheel unicycle and occasionally the one wheeler. Oh, and rewarding people with balloons and doing some unicycle and devilsticking demos.
But it wasn't a perfect day... we had gusts of wind, strong enough to lift up some of the gazebos, rain showers and even a hailstorm, but several nice patches of sunshine. There were at least 100 people there, possibly up to double that, and it seemed that everybody had a good time. I was pleased to see quite a few of my friends, including Tony my WNBR friend who had collected the Yorkshire WNBR leaflet, half of them for Sheffield, half for York, and he'd also got some flags. These will be available on the York Ride, at a slightly discounted rate.
I packed up soon after 4pm as I'd had a phone call just before I'd set out from Randall, who wanted me to help fill in a Risk Assessment for the forthcoming CarFree Network Street Party, and he was due to come round at 5pm. I got in at 4.50, and then got a phone call from Rand saying he'd been moving paving slabs around with his bike trailer and would prefer not to have to cycle from Acomb to Hull Road... so could we do the meeting by Skype?
So we had a 1 hour 45 minute Skype call, filling in the documentation and raising several important questions. At the end of it Gill gave me a bowl of home-made celery soup which was delicious, and then home-made 'stuffed crust' pizza with salads, also delicious. Gill is an awesome cook, and knows it, and loves it. She's always saying how much she likes being a mother and looking after us. We are all damn lucky.
I visited Ben as he had offered a CFL bulb on freecycle which would fit our ceiling light socket in the front room (downlighters) and he also might have a solution to my shaver conundrum. He'd found a large heavy transformer, a box with knobs on which changes mains power to whatever voltage you set the dial at, and analyses whether things are shorting, etc. In return, I'm taking a box of waste metal to the recycling site for him.
Later I did the washing up and sorted through the bananas and set about 30 of them to dry, and left my shaver charging on Ben's machine.
Showing posts with label Millennium Bridge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Millennium Bridge. Show all posts
I took our youngest to school and came back via a logpile and therefore with a big load of dry and ready-to-cut logs...
Spent a couple of hours chatting to Gill who seems to be slowly recovering from her tooth abcess, and did emails and writing. I have been asked by BBC Radio York to do a piece on reducing food waste for their website, so this took an hour or so. Then went out to wrangle logs... excellent!
Lit the stove as a child needs a bath. Enjoyed my lunch, my good mood seems to have reappeared, thank goodness! This was compounded by a phone call from ITV 'Britain's Got Talent' as I'd been spotted on the local news unicycling at Harrogate Car-Free-Day, and the ITV lass invited me to apply to be on Britain's Got Talent. I haven't seen this programme so she explained what happens, and I asked her opinion about whether she thought my show/skills etc was suitable for the expected 3-minute format. Once I'd put the phone down I couldn't stop giggling about this... I found it absolutely hilarious to think of going on the show. But I've decided not to bother. My entertainment career doesn't need any help, I don't want to win any money and it sounds like a bit of a bear-pit audience-wise. But it was good to be asked!
Went down to school at 3.15 to help out with Green Thumbs... I took a group of 6 or 7 kids and about 10 ceramic pots which had been painted by children last week, showed them why a crock was needed over the hole in the base (they went to find stones etc for this and placed them in) and used compost from the planters which have had crops growing in them all summer to half fill these pretty pots. Then they placed 3 or 4 Narcissus bulbs in each pot and filled them up to the top with more growing medium. Then they watered them and that was the 45 minutes taken up, and I cycled home via the logpile I've recently discovered, near some new development where some trees have been taken down.
I had a brief time at home and then went into town to meet a friend and had an interesting evening, we ate at El Piano and walked down to the Millennium Bridge and then up to the Youth Hostel. I've learned quite a lot about historical re-enactment, and how in the 'Dark Ages' people had to make their own clothes and cutlery (for instance) and this means that objects were valued more than in today's society, and being in a re-enactment group helps you learn skills which in a 'greener' world, we'd be doing more, not just relying on being able to buy stuff so easily and replace stuff if it goes wrong or breaks. I'd never thought of this 'by-product' of being a re-enactor. Infact I'd not given much thought to the whole re-enactment scene at all!
On the way back to home after the pubs shut I picked up four huge sacks of leaves which had been tidied up from roads (I think!) and just left for the binmen to pick up... so my leafmould pile 2008 is starting today.
Spent a couple of hours chatting to Gill who seems to be slowly recovering from her tooth abcess, and did emails and writing. I have been asked by BBC Radio York to do a piece on reducing food waste for their website, so this took an hour or so. Then went out to wrangle logs... excellent!
Lit the stove as a child needs a bath. Enjoyed my lunch, my good mood seems to have reappeared, thank goodness! This was compounded by a phone call from ITV 'Britain's Got Talent' as I'd been spotted on the local news unicycling at Harrogate Car-Free-Day, and the ITV lass invited me to apply to be on Britain's Got Talent. I haven't seen this programme so she explained what happens, and I asked her opinion about whether she thought my show/skills etc was suitable for the expected 3-minute format. Once I'd put the phone down I couldn't stop giggling about this... I found it absolutely hilarious to think of going on the show. But I've decided not to bother. My entertainment career doesn't need any help, I don't want to win any money and it sounds like a bit of a bear-pit audience-wise. But it was good to be asked!
Went down to school at 3.15 to help out with Green Thumbs... I took a group of 6 or 7 kids and about 10 ceramic pots which had been painted by children last week, showed them why a crock was needed over the hole in the base (they went to find stones etc for this and placed them in) and used compost from the planters which have had crops growing in them all summer to half fill these pretty pots. Then they placed 3 or 4 Narcissus bulbs in each pot and filled them up to the top with more growing medium. Then they watered them and that was the 45 minutes taken up, and I cycled home via the logpile I've recently discovered, near some new development where some trees have been taken down.
I had a brief time at home and then went into town to meet a friend and had an interesting evening, we ate at El Piano and walked down to the Millennium Bridge and then up to the Youth Hostel. I've learned quite a lot about historical re-enactment, and how in the 'Dark Ages' people had to make their own clothes and cutlery (for instance) and this means that objects were valued more than in today's society, and being in a re-enactment group helps you learn skills which in a 'greener' world, we'd be doing more, not just relying on being able to buy stuff so easily and replace stuff if it goes wrong or breaks. I'd never thought of this 'by-product' of being a re-enactor. Infact I'd not given much thought to the whole re-enactment scene at all!
On the way back to home after the pubs shut I picked up four huge sacks of leaves which had been tidied up from roads (I think!) and just left for the binmen to pick up... so my leafmould pile 2008 is starting today.
