Human Lifestyle

A fairly quiet day, no particular highlights other than visiting Richard at Country Fresh at about midday, and picking up a load of stuff from him, and then going on to Alligator, as Gill had asked me to get some jelly, and they do a good vegetarian jelly.  I had space for 3 bags of their biodegradable resources, and will collect more on Monday I expect.

I enjoyed some sorting out down the garden... there's still a bit of a backlog, so today's stuff stayed in the wheelbarrow but I loaded up more into the Compostumbler, and filled a couple of sacks of mature compost which a rodent had excavated from the base of one of the last heaps to be sitting on the ground.  Most are now up on top of pallets, to reduce the ability of rodents to nest in the heap.  They can still get in from the top, but a quick poke with the CompostMate means any tunnels collapse and they seek refuge elsewhere.  So this heap will be bagged up and then the pallets raised up off the ground so it's slightly less rodent-friendly.

I had an early tea, at about 6pm, just a bowl of soup plus an avocado sandwich, and at 6.30 walked down to Heslington with our eldest, so he could have his computer graphics lesson with Simon.  I chatted with Melody and shelled pumpkin seeds and read Resource Magazine.  Melody told me she too had heard of a horror story about Andy S. taking advantage of a kind and generous person, and I asked her to pass on the message to this (so far) anonymous person that if she wanted to contact me, I was putting together a dossier to try to get him stopped.  If any of the readers of this blog recognise the character I refer to, and has a story of him borrowing money and not paying it back, or using someone's credit card without permission, please do contact me. 

On the way back home I learned about my son's adventures on Blender, and we talked about animations and some of the things we've enjoyed. 

A quiet evening... blanched a load of grapes and put them to dry, watched a nice programme about Tom Petty, a musician I don't know a lot about.  Liked his music though...

A late start, but woken by someone screaming as if there was a murder happening.  In fact, it was just a lego piece going missing.  Ah, the joys of parenthood!

The main thing I did today was to go to Sainsbury's with a shopping list from Gill and her Nectar Card which had accumulated about £30 worth of 'points'.  So I did a £24 shop which therefore cost me nothing... pasta, baked beans, tinned tomatoes, bread, cereals, goats milk... I got myself a treat too, a bottle of Irish Cream stuff which is like Baileys but cheaper.

On the way home I picked up a load of stuff from Freshways and then spent a bit of time loading a compost heap with some of the accumulated and mostly frozen fruit and vegetables.

Oh, I made tea too... a nutloaf made with waste bread and tomatoes, plus some broccoli and new potatoes.

Enjoyed a science programme with my eldest son.

Got an early night as tired and headachey.

A milder day weather-wise, so it was cold but not bitter.  This meant that I was able to go and do some work in the garden, loading sacks of compostables onto two heaps, and building two logpiles.... a dry one outside the front door and on each return trip, freshly chopped 'green' logs, heavy with sap, to be taken down the garden to sit quietly for a year or two in a tidy pile.

The space between our house and the semi next door, our shared driveway, had become extremely icy and slippy, so I spent a bit of time with the spade, breaking chunks of compressed snow off the concrete and making a less slippery path to walk along.  I worry about Gill falling and injuring herself; she doesn't need snow and ice to do that, so the slippery conditions make it a lot more likely.

I also did a bit of work inside, washing up and hoovering, and keeping the stove going (just the one today), and soon after 6pm, Melody came round to deliver her 12 year old genius of a son to me, and I took my own genius son plus Melody's on the bus down to Cafe Scientifique at City Screen to go to a talk about Dark Matter.

This talk was extremely difficult for me to understand.  The presenter was Tom Whytnie, a PhD student at Imperial College, London, and part of the High Energy Physics Group.  He explained that scientists think that the visible and measurable matter and energy in the Universe is about 4% of the total, and the remaining is 70% Dark Energy, and 26% Dark Matter.  This has been hypothesized by looking at how disc galaxies revolve, and our understanding of gravity.

Tom works at the Compact Muon Solenoid at CERN, the Large Hadron Collider, which smashes protons together at almost the speed of light.  The debris from these collisions might give hints as to what Dark Matter is... but it is unlikely that it will ever be seen, as it is 'dark' and invisible.  Whether it exists has to be inferred from what goes into the collision and what comes out.... and if there is stuff missing, that might be Dark Matter.

However, if these experiments don't come up with some results, it might be that our understanding of gravity is incorrect, and a lot of science will have to be rewritten.  I now understand quite a bit more about this subject area than I did, but my son got his head around it far more easily than me, and at the end of the talk, he asked the first question, which was a really good one, and showed he'd taken in a lot of the ideas.  I felt very proud of him.

The talk overran a bit, and finished at 9.30, the time Gill was expecting us home.   On the way out I spotted the tethered balloons floating above the Mansion House.... nice one James Alexander, not a litterbug!   We went to get the number 6 bus and didn't have to wait that long.  We got back home just after 10pm, and Melody soon set off home with her lad, and we got ours up to bed pretty quickly.

I had a lie in.  And then a fairly lazy day.  However I did go to Country Fresh for some potatoes and a cauliflower, via St Nicks with 5 demijohns for cider-making tomorrow.  I came back via Freshways, and did a bit of compost heap loading.

I also did a good lot of fruit slicing for drying, pears, apples and a couple of hands of bananas. I turned out the quince leather stuff, membrillo, and it wasn't completely set, so it went back on the stove on a metal sheet to dry off and set a bit more. I hope.  However, it tastes FANTASTIC!!

So, a pretty nothingy day... and what has this got to do with water, being as it's Blog Action Day, with the subject of water?

Well, I try to live my life with low levels of consumption of fossil fuels, resources and of course, water.  So, as today was a 'normal' day for me, what did I do, or not do, to reduce my water footprint?

Well I have a 'pirate wash' every morning, running the cold water tap over my flannel about 6 times and after each time, wiping my body down with that.  I don't really like showers but I have a bath once a week.  And this kind of low water use wash every day.

Diet is really important when considering embodied water.  Some foods are much more 'water heavy' than others, and meat is a good example of a foodstuff which has a huge water footprint.  So if I'd had a burger for breakfast (or equivalent, say a bacon sandwich) then that could have had a hidden water use of 24 litres just for one burger and bap.  But with a vegetarian diet, the embodied water is vastly less. See this water footprint calculator for some comparisons.  For breakfast, I have a bowl of cereals and soya milk, and a cup of coffee.  For lunch I always have sandwiches... nearly always vegan, ie bread, dairy free margarine and/or mayonnaise, hummous, peanut butter, marmite or avocado.  However, today one of my sandwiches was cheese and red pepper.  Cheese has a higher water footprint than plant-based foods, so a black mark against me here.  My evening meal was macaroni and cauliflower with a soya-milk and goats cheese sauce... reasonably low in embodied water, compared to a meat-based meal at least.

The biggest direct water use in most Western houses is the flush toilet.  We have two of these in the house but I much prefer to use my home made compost toilet, sometimes known as a dry toilet or sawdust toilet.  The only water I use directly is from a water butt to wash my hands afterwards.  However, the recycled tissue paper does require water in it's production, but I'm not giving that up!!!

The other activity connected with food is washing up.  I do the washing up in our house, and I'm very careful to keep the water use down here too, although I rinse the plates and saucepans with clean water and then leave them to drip dry/air dry, rather than wiping a (dirty) tea towel all over them... a great way to get bacteria all over your washed crockery.  I re-use the washing up water in the summer in our conservatory, but at this time of year the plants don't need as much, so today, the water was just tipped down the sink and would get cleaned up at the sewerage works.

Our water use has gone up recently.  Both boys now need to wash more, being as they are getting to 'that age' where boys start to emit adult male odours, and therefore they now use the shower more, and the washing machine has a few more smelly clothes to deal with.  This means our household of four uses 92 cubic metres of water a year (it's on a meter!), which is about 252 litres a day, or 63 litres each per day (23 cubic metres per year), if shared out equally.  This is direct water use, of course, as embodied water use is much more difficult to work out.  However, I did a rough calculation using this Water Footprint Calculator and it came up with 479 cubic metres per year for my personal water footprint.

I have written a special 'page' about my water use, as I feel it is a really important subject.  This can be found in the top right hand corner of the blog, or by clicking on this.  Thanks!

Well, a mixed day for me.  I was very sneezy and had a running nose, especially during the first part of the day.  Also, I'd offered to take one of the children swimming to help him with that, but no, he'd decided that the cycle to Yearsley Baths was too much.  I cannot understand why a 15 minute cycle is enough to put someone off.  In fact there were several parenting issues this morning and I felt like a crap Dad, and was glad to get outside and away from the house at midday.

Today has been on my radar for some while.  I am very positive about people making a special effort to 'be green' but I do it most days, my whole life is 'greener' than most.  So I hadn't planned to do anything special for the 350.org 10:10:10 Global Work Party.  But I thought about it and the nearer the date, the more keen I became to do something myself.

I only decided to run my event on the evening of the 8th, and it only went live on the website on the 9th, so although I posted it to facebook, there wasn't much publicity.


I wasn't expecting many people to come, and in the end, no-one did.
BUT I had a really good day managing my composting operations. I had rescued about 200kg of waste fruit and veg from the landfill bins on Thursday and Saturday, and cycled it back home in my bike trailer. I'd also pruned a lot of brambles which fruited earlier this year, so I was able to build good layers on two of my 40 compost heaps. I put the brambles on first, then cardboard, and the chopped wet and sloppy fruit and veg on top of that. The heaps are contained within pallets and material kept in with layers of cardboard up against the wooden pallets.
Additionally, I dug over a builder's bag (one tonne) of mature compost, removed uncomposted sticks and lots of plastic windows from envelopes which were given to me from a school last year for recycling. The plastic will unfortunately get landfilled and the sticks went into the top of one of the heaps I'm currently adding to. The builder's bag full will get bagged up soon in 20 -30kg sacks, and will end up being cycled round to a nearby raised bed being planned by Abundance York, who grow foodplants in public places in the city.

Gill mowed the top lawn and we worked together pruning overgrown shrubs and fruited brambles. That part of the garden is looking a lot tidier now.
However, just as I was finishing my work, Melanie and one of her friends came round and said they'd wanted to do a 10:10:10 action, and decided to plant trees. However, the garden centre was closed, so they drove round to me and asked if I might have any trees they could plant. I plant tree seeds every year, so I was able to give them a Horse Chestnut about 1m tall and a Walnut about 40cm tall, and they took these to the Buddhist Centre about 12 miles East of York, to plant there. This was an unexpected extra to the day for me, and I was really happy to have been able to help.

They came just as I was getting ready to go to the St Nicks Photo Exhibition at the National Trust Shop on Goodramgate.  So I didn't set off for that until nearly 6pm... but there was still plenty of food and wine left.  I met a nice Mexican composer called Claudia, and a chap who works in the shop called Nick, and an ex St Nicks Recycler called Sophie, plus quite a few of my existing friends.  Ivana had taken most of the photos, and there were also lots of the Haikus written during the birthday celebrations. I enjoyed the hour I spent there.

So this wrapped up a mixed day.  I'd enjoyed my composting activities despite feeling low with my dribbly nose and problems with the children, and was very pleased to be asked to provide trees for this 'special' day.

A good day.  I did a fair amount in the garden; I had about 6 sacks of greengrocers stuff waiting to be slopped onto the heaps, so I pruned loganberries and blackberries, the bits which fruited this year, and they formed a good 'airy' layer to put some cardboard on, with the really wet fruit and veg on top of that. 

I also almost finished the new stack of fuel next to the front door, started yesterday.  I did a lot more fruit drying... I'm speed-drying apple rings now, in about 24 hours.  I could do with more drying space as I have more apples than I can cope with.  In between times I stripped cable to get the copper wire out, so I had a busy day.

At 5pm, Barry from Transition/Abundance came round to pick up the fruit press and apple crusher, to be used at tomorrow's Eco-Family Day at St Lawrence's School and Family Centre.  I'm on the Transition stall, but I expect I'll help with the apples too.

Not sure what else happened today, but I'm feeling happy at the end of it.  Maybe it's because Steve Miller Band is on Jools Holland...

A lovely day, woke slowly and had a nice breakfast and after a bit of email/facebook stuff, then got busy in the garden.

Gill had got up early and pruned some lilac and holly, and removed a Buddleia, and she asked me to process this. In fact she suggested that the lilac tree could be taken right down, to maybe chest height, to make more light into the part of the garden currently made a bit claustrophobic by several large trees.

So I got the ladder from the conservatory and, with the bow saw, removed the top branches (with a diameter of about 10cm) and then cut down the trunk, which had a diameter of about 20cm. A nice big log for the front garden and soon for the logpiles. It's good to be able to grow our own fuel!

However, this generated a huge pile of shreddable material, so I spent quite a long time with my Mountfield Quiet Shredder (see this humorous YouTube video of one, worth watching right to the end, and enjoy the Joan Baez song) and got a lot done. I ended up with about 7 sacks of holly and lilac, some of which I used immediately on the current pallet bin, which I nearly filled with fruit/veg and shredded twigs, in layers, surrounded by cardboard to stop the material falling out. It was a very satisfying day.

When the post arrived, there was a lovely get well card from Sheffield Green Party, who had met recently and asked Nigel to send it on their behalf, following my accident at the Green Fair on 26th June. Well, today I've been working in the garden with just wellies on, and my ankle has felt OK, although when I go away tomorrow, I think I'll wear my support, just in case. But it will take several more weeks before I'm completely back to what I was able to do before the accident.

Before the shop shut I visited Richard, since I won't be able to tomorrow, and got a few veggies plus several sacks of resources for my compost heap.

Gill made a nutloaf with grated butternut squash in it... really good! I continued working outside until nearly 10pm, and came in and had a bath.

Both of us are preparing for a busy day tomorrow; I'm working in Pickering and then camping in Thornton Le Dale with the boys til Tuesday, to give Gill a break, and to have some fun with my sons. I'm hoping we can hire bikes on Monday and explore Dalby Forest...

Spent most of the morning writing. I did two Press Releases, one for the York World Naked Bike Ride and the other for the forthcoming website launch.

In the afternoon I cycled down to town to get some train tickets for next week, and then went to Boots to see if they had a replacement beard trimmer lead. They didn't, but the assistant gave me the phone number of Remington, who make the trimmer... and when I got home I rang them and was given another number for 'Shaver Spares'. So I rang them...and they didn't have a lead either.

On the way back from town I popped into Country Fresh and Martin was happy to load me up with several boxes and bags of stuff gone mouldy... so after phoning Shaver Spares, I did a lot of compost heap building. I spent quite a bit of time riddling compost too, as the shop needs re-stocking so I filled about 15 carrier bags with good fine rich compost. I'll take it down tomorrow. I might go to town again and see if E.Roy has a charging cable for the trimmer.

So, a quiet day.

Another late night, went to bed at 3 (whoops) and then lay awake for at least an hour, with absolutely no reason whatsoever this time. But I did drop off eventually.

Was woken at 8 by loud refusals to go to school, so I sleepily and passively talked to the refusnik and then hung around til he got out of the door. I am such a sight in the morning, so dopey and nonthreatening, this seems to work.

When I'm awake, I generally cannot go back to sleep, so I got up and by 10am was dressed and heading down the garden, to sort out the slightly nightmarish situation with my voluntary compostables collection. I finished the cleaning out of the pallet bin, which is perched on 3 horizontal pallets and lined with metal mesh, both these to reduce access by rats. I then put a load of shredded hedge (remember last year, the huge hedge removal? Well, the sacks of shredded twigs have just sat quietly awaiting today!) in the base, and then alternate layers of rotting veg and past-it fruit with shredded pine tree, hedge and other garden material such as artichoke stalks. I must have put on about 20 brewing bin's worth before I came in for lunch at 1.30.

I had a good afternoon with the chainsaw and splitting maul, and re-started the processing of the fruit logs I got from John Bibby last year. I started a new stack in the front of the house, this is green wood and it will take a year or two to dry. I stack it in a particular way: raised up off the ground on bricks and long parallel lengths of wood, to keep the logs out of the wet, and with the bark, if any, uppermost, as this sheds the rain slightly better than the cut surfaces. Also, really important, not touching the wall of the house, as this would possibly allow moisture into the walls and I like the airflow to get to all sides of the logs. I generally don't cover them up, as I don't mind them being rained on as I don't believe it stops the wood drying out. I only have one covered woodstore.

Tea was parsnips and potatoes with a cheese and home-made baked bean toastie... the last of the home made baked beans, thank goodness. I was getting a bit bored of them!

At about 740 I got my bike and headed off to Stonegate and the Car-Free Cities Conference planning meeting. I'm not a core organiser but I am playing a role and have a handful of people to contact and things to do. My dynamo was playing up and after the meeting I tried to fix it but seemingly made it worse. I'll ring Cycle Heaven in the morning and ask for help.

A peaceful evening at home followed, watched an interesting TV programme on diarists, which I enjoyed as I've written a daily diary for over 20 years... until I started writing this blog which I find even more satisfying, and have just about managed to post daily since I started.