Human Lifestyle

Quite a good day... up at 9ish and Gill had already gone to her physio appointment, to see if her leg pain can be cured.

I had the usual muesli and emails... I'm pleased that since paying for extra Tiscali email space, the number of spam emails has dropped hugely. Now I need to contact them about the occasional bounces possibly caused by my sending emails out using the Phone Co-op but with a Tiscali address... Ben has tried to explain this to me but so far the problem persists.

I also got a letter from a friend who I thought I'd lost contact with, but she's a poet and her publisher contacted me inviting me to buy her latest book. I did so, but put in a note to pass onto my friend. I'm glad she's well and is now more easily contactable as the violent man she was hiding from has died. Previously I had to write to her mother who passed on the letter... or not! My last letter (4 or 5 years ago) was not answered.

I got busy outside and continued shredding the holly that Gill took out, and then did some quite radical pruning myself, taking out a lot of dead clematis and honeysuckle from a pergola, and then cutting back a hedge with privet, beech, a shrub with pink blobby flowers and quite a bit of bramble... all shredded! Some of this I used immediately but I also bagged some up for future use.

Then I took the electric 50m extension flex up the garden to the front and did a good load of chainsawing. I heard another chainsaw somewhere near and cycled round trying to find it, n case of some more logs becoming available, but I didn't find it as it kept on stopping. So I visited Debbie to see how she was and then picked up a couple of logs from the nearby woodlands where logs are often dumped.

I dealt with Melody and Simon's redcurrants and later, Gill and I made jelly out of the juice.

I took the children to school, and Gill went to town to look for footwear for several family members. I dealt with loads of emails, including from The Phone Co-op, my broadband provider. They tell me that I have overshot my gigabyte allowance last month and nearly this month already. Apparently, after some discussion, this is due to my regular skype sessions... which are very heavy on the cost of my broadband.

A quiet lunch, Gill came back bearing new sandals for me, which are lovely and comfortable.

A slow start but then got busy and did some piling stuff up on my latest heap and did a load of organising for my busy working weekend, a day in Castle Howard and then a day in Beverley... lots of travelling!

I also sorted out my future 'telephony provider' as I'm currently on dialup using BT but route all my other calls through The Phone Co-op as they have a hand gadget which allows me to divide up my outgoing calls into Professor Fiddlesticks, LETS, AVP, Green Party, personal, etc by using 'cost centre coding' and this splits up my bill so I can clain my Fiddlesticks expenses and, if I wanted, claim expenses from the various organisations I do phoning for. So I'm going to have The Phone Co-op for my line provider and get broadband.

I got our youngest at 3.15 and cycled down again for 4.15 for the older one, then off to Cubs with him, in the pouring rain, at 6pm. Had a pint with Pete whilst Cubs was on and then went back to see Jo with him before getting back to Cubs and collecting my larger cub and cycling home.