Human Lifestyle

I was lucky to get a lie-in til about 10, Gill woke me up saying my 11.30 appointment with Colin, to discuss AVP employment issues, had rung to cancel.  He'd been snowed in.

So I didn't need to do anything today, apart from housework, keeping the house warm, and preparing for this evening's talk.  Both boys were at home, Gill set them some work which they did quietly. 

Gill made a 'cobbler' for tea, basically a hot-pot veg stew with potato, sweet potato, parsnip, tomato, peas and onions, with blobs of scone mix on the top and then baked in the oven. Really delicious.

At about 6.30 I set out for the Physics building at the University of York.  I was due to do the talk titled: "Compost John : Britain's Most Sustainable Man. How does he do it?" in room P/L/005, but yesterday, a group of students, following the huge anti-cuts demo in town, decided to hold an occupation in the Physics building, to protest at the proposed increases in fees.  So I was contacted by the organiser and asked if I'd do my talk to 'The Great York Sit-In' participants.

So that's what I did: as a guest of the newly-formed University Green Party, I did a talk mainly about carbon footprinting, and how I organise my life to have one considerably smaller than average.  First I dispelled the myth that I'm 'Britain's Most Sustainable Man', and explained that this may have come from the Oxfam Carbon Footprint Competition in 2008.  So, this led to info about ActOnCO2 and my favourite Carbon Calculator, The Carbon Account, and what makes up someone's footprint.  I went through what I do to keep my footprint small, and with a goodly number of tangents, arrived at the other aspects of 'being sustainable' which in my opinion are Fair Trade and Organic consumption, and teaching others about your ethical choices.  I also admitted the un-green things I'm responsible for, including my children, and my extensive use of the railways, which isn't recordable in The Carbon Account.

There were some really good questions afterwards, as one would expect from a bunch of intelligent and motivated young people.  I feel very lucky to have these connections.  I had a cuppa and more chats, and then cycled home, picking up a trailer full of sticks and branches on the way home.  The snow wasn't too difficult to get through.

Played lots of Scrabble on facebook, read, watched telly and wrote blog til 3am.

A good day... up in time to cycle into town to go and see my dental hygienist who is very nice. I went via Morrison's where they have cash machines, as I need to pay for every other visit to the dentist.

So, a good scale and polish, and a chat... as always! Then back to Goodramgate to the newly refurbished Oxfam where I bought a big can of coffee, which has increased in price to £17. Then on to Sainsburys to get one of their delicious loaves and some mayonnaise. Home via Country Fresh where Shirley let me have two sack's worth, and to home, where I did a bit of splitting and stacking.

Lunch was good.. and an active afternoon, preparing some waste nectarines and peaches for stewing, some pears and kiwi fruit for drying, and a butternut to add to tonight's tea.

Later, did more website prep, getting ready to send stuff off to Jamie at Semlyen.net, whilst watching the Winter Olympics. I watched Panorama and was very moved by the stories of abuse directed at disabled people... this needs to be made a criminal offence the same as racist abuse. Currently, it is just 'breach of the peace' or something like that, and not much of what goes on is reported, and there have been very few prosecutions. I'll be writing to my MP about this.

Later still, more exciting snowboarding etc. Part of me wishes I'd given something like this a go when I was younger... but as a child I apparently had 'no stickability' and couldn't focus on anything. Classic ADHD, combined with my fidgeting, talkative nature, ability to annoy people and the rest. Glad I'm normal now... hahahaha!

An early start as various things to do in town, did most of them (paid cheque in, paid water bill, visited Anti Gravity, picked up mouldy oranges from Millers Yard) but as I didn't take a shopping list, I forgot to go to the Post Office to pick up a parcel. Duh.

So when I got home, and confessed my error, Gill suggested I cycle down again (after lunch!) and get the parcel (it was for the children) and get coffee from Oxfam and Gill-friendly ice cream from Sainsbury's. So I did this.

Fortunately I got back in enough time to do some compost management, filling the old Compostumbler.

We had a good tea... the leek and potato soup I made yesterday, plus assorted bits of quiche and cold pasta leftovers.

I then popped round to Lynn with some LETS stuff, and on to the Green Festival meeting in Stonegate, which was very productive.

Excellent day... spent lots of it outside working. Kids played, all was happy.

Our youngest went to the Yorkshire Museum quite early, with Ros and her son, to wave the 'Roman Coin' at the Portable Antiquities people. The consensus was that it was a reproduction... what a pity!

Simon came round with his son, and our eldest played with him whilst Gill and I chatted with Simon over a cuppa. I then cycled over to Goodramgate to visit Oxfam which sells big tubs of Cafedirect instant FairTrade coffee, 500g for £14.99, a somewhat better price than the Scummerfield 100g jar I got yesterday (as we'd run out!) for something like £3.40 I think. Anyway, I like to buy stuff from Oxfam. I then went on to Sainsburys and spent the same again on assorted things and came back along the cycle path and brought back sticks.

Then did a load of composting jobs... dug out a static tumbler (one which has ceased to rotate as the frame broke but I still use the drum for putting tumbled compost in, to mature) and then emptied the Compostumbler 600l machine, forking the stuff into a dalek. The children helped me with some riddling, using the Rotaseive. Did loads of this, after they'd done a couple of loads. They played on the trampoline and made mud bricks and built a wall.

A lovely but hard working day.

Gill woke me at about 8 to help her make a costume for our youngest's 'book day' at school. Several days ago, Gill asked him if he'd like to dress up for the day (school encourages them to dress like their favourite literary character on book day) and he declined. She offered to make a costume which would make him look like Twig from The Edge Chronicles, but he wasn't bothered. This morning, at 7.45, he said he WOULD like to go as Twig. So Gill got to it and found a fleece-like woolly jacket which needed the arms cutting off and cutting down the front and the blue stuff at the bottom taking off, and she came up to ask me to do it as it would take too much time, when she was getting them ready to leave the house... I asked her to hold the garment, stretch it, whilst I wielded the scissors. 2 minutes later, the costume was ready! The only difference between Twig and our son now is that Twig's hair is in small tufts, and to get our boy's hair into tufts would definitely take too long!

I went back to sleep for an hour, much needed after some very late nights and busy times...

However, when I did get up after 9 I had a good session of washing up and did my Carbon Account readings. At midday I went out to visit Pauline who had requested a wood-chopping session in exchange for a lunch and coffee. We had a lovely chat and I processed a pile of scrap wood for her. She's trialling a compressed sawdust briquette product and has also tried a paper briquette product, which is made locally by people with learning difficulties.

After Pauline, I popped into the bank and then Oxfam for £15 worth of coffee and Kyi Po for a chat with Matthew and I bought some delicious lemon-grass flavoured mayonnaise but resisted all of the large selection of organic booze they have in now... lovely though it may be!

Then onto Sainsburys for bread and Ribena and marge and some other bits and bobs.

I came home via the cycle track where I picked up 3 chunky logs, and when I got in at 5ish, I did a bit of chopping and stacking before having tea with Gill. The boys had already had tea and were happily playing with a friend, who is staying the night.

A peaceful evening with nothing notable.

A totally amazing day
including
breakfast with Oxfam
Meeting Hilary Benn MP at DEFRA
Meeting Peter Ainsworth MP ant the Palace of Westminster
Watching Prime Minister's Questions
Meeting Steve Webb MP
Attending a Lib Dem meeting with MPs and Lords
Doing a photo shoot for CRAGs and nearly getting arrested
Going to the Oxfam Office and chatting
Going back with 'Peckham Anna' to her place via two childrens' nurseries to pick up her child and a friend's child
Doing a short balloon modelling thing for the kids whilst Anna cooked pasta
Talking with Anna during the evening

A memorable day

A lovely day to start with, a lie in whilst the children played with lego, then breakfast and I went on the computer to email my Newsnight and 'One Show' friend Justin Rowlatt about my Oxfam competition win, and the possibility of getting the subject onto Newsnight and/or the One Show.
I also emailed Newsnight direct and kept Oxfam in the loop. I want to take this opportunity to get carbon rationing and low carbon choices into the public arena again, and as many people as possible to consider what they can do to cut their emissions.

Watched Countryfile out of the corner of my eye too... multitasking with several electrical appliances on....

Quite a good start to the day but a simple disagreement between the boys developed into a huge angry outburst which resulted in a mug getting broken. But I had to get ready and go to the Fair Trade Festival which I'd said I'd go to support as Professor Fiddlesticks and do an hour of entertainment for free. But I went with a heavy heart, it's difficult to be jolly and funny when you're depressed.

So arrived in town at about 10.30 and met up with two of the organisers Richard and Sarah and very soon the Lord Mayor and her posse arrived, and we had our photo taken.

Then I did an hour and a half of circus and balloons, a mix of juggling and devilsticks and unicycle, with balloon models being given to the younger ones. Had quite a good time, and was pleased to meet an old friend called Robin, whom I met whilst at Leeds Metropolitan University doing Environmental Health... who's now doing Health and Safety at North Yorks County Council.

I finished at 12.15 and came home via the fruit shop, told Richard I'd come by later when I was coming back from Foxwood, where I had wanted to go to get my bicycle microchipped. However when I arrived home Gill and our youngest were in tears because of the other difficulties going on. Gill asked me not to go to Foxwood. So I had lunch and things calmed down, and so to distract away any further crap behaviour, she took them to town to use a book voucher. I reluctantly let them go, and I just felt like going to bed and crying.

However things got better and I perked up a bit during a quick Skype chat (thanks K!) and then the family came back with a pile of books and some lego, which kept them occupied and happy. I went out to split some logs, tidy up sawdust for my compost loo, put sacks of sticks away before it rains and also did some composting and weeding, getting in at 5.30, feeling much happier as this kind of busyness is just what I need to keep me sane in a difficult world.

I had a simple pasta and tomato/leek/bean tea... and was delighted to see the Press had published the article about my Oxfam competition win, with a lovely photo of me next to a logpile.

My dear friend Mary M. rang me up and congratulated me, which was lovely as we have a mutual admiration relationship as I really appreciate her work with projects like York Fanteakwa Link and various other things connected with developing countries, poverty etc etc.

The boys had a good evening with near perfect behaviour, and once they were in bed, Gill and I had a good game of Scrabble, a tough one which Gill just won by 7 points. Made her feel a lot better...

I went on the Press website to see what had been said about the article and posted a reply to correct some misaprehensions and thank supporters...

A better day although both feeling wobbly still after yesterday's horrible-ness. There was some anger before going to school but as there was a school visit to a stadium starting at 9am, there was only a bit of misbehaviour,as more would have resulted in missing this.

We went to visit Gill's GP about the stress caused by what we are going through, and his advice was to make sure we had a 'unified front' as any differences in parenting style would be easy for the child to push apart and get between. He also suggested working out a 'long term strategy' with the people who are helping us with this issue. No short-term fixes, got to just get through it and hope he grows out of the phase...

After this I went to visit Pauline to chop some wood for her, then popped in to the Council office to pick up some Planning Panel stuff, and on the way home popped into St Nicks to pick up some posters/flyers advertising the CRAG meeting on the 15th on carbon offsetting.

Home for lunch, made a leek/tomato/bean stew for tonight's tea. During this, got several Fiddlesticks enquiries and a phone call from Oxfam saying I had won the Carbon Footprint competition and they were inviting me down to London to meet up with MPs about the issue... wow oh WOW! Amazing!

When I went to get the children, Julia who has started the Green Thumbs gardening project rushed up to me and thanked me for putting her in touch with Melody, my friend who works for CVS as a funding information person; she has told Julia that it will be easy to get a grant of about £1000 for the project, and Julia was delighted and very complimentary.

Had a good evening, including a good TV programme by Kristina Murrin, about reducing road traffic. The programme this week was about Boston, where car use is high and so is obesity. She had a tough time trying to persuade people to give up their cars, even for one day. But I respect her approach and admire her.

Spent most of the morning retyping in my paid blog but also got a call from a TV company wanting to do a programme on green people, and a Professor Fiddlesticks enquiry.

I got the blog done by lunchtime and spent most of the post-lunch hour or so doing washing up, recycling duties etc, then went to school to pick up the boyos who were in a good mood.

I did some composting down the bottom of the garden whilst it was still light, I dug out a builders bag of mature and ready-to-riddle material, into another builders bag, perhaps two thirds of a tonne of compost. I can't wait to put it through my motor-riddle! Just as I was coming to the end of this, Gill called me to the house as I had an intersting phone call.

It was from Oxfam who have been running an e-competition to find some people with very small carbon footprints, three of whom will be invited down to London to talk to people in Government about climate change and policies which could help reduce our national Carbon emissions. I had done the Carbon Calculator http://actonco2.direct.gov.uk/index.html and they were ringing to say I had one of the smallest footprints and I might be picked to go to London. The researcher went through the calculator with me, asking me my answers and came up with an annual figure for me alone of 0.45 tonnes. This was slightly smaller than the first figure I got, as I had included the boys' computer and printer/scanner in with my calculations, whereas with the Oxfam person, we ignored these items. I'll be contacted when the 'lucky people' have been chosen. What a suprise! What a buzz!

Very soon after this I got a phone call from an Irish radio station researcher who had seen the Observer article and they'd never heard of CRAGs and were very interested, and wanted to do a live radio interview about CRAGs and my way of being green. I'll be getting another call tomorrow afternoon, and a call on Thursday morning for an interview..... very exciting! Again!

Tea was rice and veg cooked on the woodstove.