A good day.... I got up in time to make my muesli and have breakfast and take my damaged trailer to Cycle Heaven (I managed to break a couple of spokes with a badly aimed attempt at a narrow bridge... the wheel slipped off and I kept going, buckling the wheel). I delivered that and then went to see Pauline, to give her a few more logs and to get my regular bottle of Port, my annual present from her. Mind you, I haven't actually finished last year's bottle yet! That's how little I drink...
But lovely to see Pauline. She had some very good news for me, potentially very good news but I promised to keep it completely confidential, so oh, blog readers, you will just have to wait. But I am very happy.
I then went to the bank, was surprised how little money we have, went to the building society and took a wad of notes round to pump up our account. Then back to the bike shop... and the chap assigned to my wheel was still wrestling with it, so I said I'd collect by the end of the day.
Cycled home and sorted out a large pile of envelopes for composting and put some cheques in the post, assorted memberships (Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, Equity, Garden Organic).
I finished making the tomato soup in the afternoon, and washed up and did bits and bobs of housework, plus computery stuff.
Then at 4pm, back into town to pick up my trailer and popped into see Dylan at Millers Yard to pick up his unwanted orange halves and chat about York Green Festival. We had a lovely chat and I got a second piece of very good news... but again, this is embargoed until it is ready to be made public. I cycled away happy but with a very heavy load of compostables.
I had soup and an avocado sandwich for tea, and then looked at my emails to try to find out where this evening's York in Transition meeting was. No mention of the venue whatsoever! It could be St Nicks or it could be The Stables, or even someone's house... i cannot remember and it isn't in my diary nor is it in any of the email communications... So I stayed at home and watched an excellent programme on BBC1, called The Human Power Station, a Bang Goes The Theory Special. This is available on iPlayer for a week... it's a must watch! The experiment was to install an average family into a house wired up with cameras and all the normal mod cons... and to ask them to live normally for a day. However, they didn't know that the house was switched to being powered by a bank of 80 cyclists, each on a stationary bike with a dynamo, capable of producing 100 watts if going normally, or up to 200w if pedalling really hard. The cyclists could see a dial with how much was being used versus how much was being produced... and it is a very exciting and interesting result. I loved it anyway, and decided to start a facebook 'fan' page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Human-Power-Station-Bang-Goes-The-Theory-Special/216787805126?ref=ts
So, a happy and productive day, despite my foolishness in breaking a wheel and having a reasonable bill to have it repaired.
Showing posts with label composting envelopes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label composting envelopes. Show all posts
Very busy day mostly inside, but enjoyable nevertheless.
First thing I did was to write an email to the people involved in the access issue about York in Transition meetings. I am determined to get this sorted so that we are open to all.
Then a visitor, an ex YorkLETS member signing the bank forms saying she is happy to stop being a signatory to the sterling account. I'll now be able to go to the Co-op Bank on Monday to get this paperwork checked, and hopefully sent off. That will be a big weight off my mind.
Then lunch and a lot of clearing up... I did a vast pile of washing up and prepared lots of fruit for drying... a load more apples (at least 10) and pears (at least 5). However, I enjoyed listening to some William Orbit and Massive Attack on Jango. This website allows you to play almost any music of your choice, and even have your own 'radio station' which you can access, and other people can too, and listen to your favourite bands or musicians. I only got outside at about 4pm. I did some compost riddling and even got some help with sorting out a load of used envelopes from the boys, which was really nice. I was given a sackful by school... and am composting them, but saving the stamps for charity.
Gill made tea, I washed up.
First thing I did was to write an email to the people involved in the access issue about York in Transition meetings. I am determined to get this sorted so that we are open to all.
Then a visitor, an ex YorkLETS member signing the bank forms saying she is happy to stop being a signatory to the sterling account. I'll now be able to go to the Co-op Bank on Monday to get this paperwork checked, and hopefully sent off. That will be a big weight off my mind.
Then lunch and a lot of clearing up... I did a vast pile of washing up and prepared lots of fruit for drying... a load more apples (at least 10) and pears (at least 5). However, I enjoyed listening to some William Orbit and Massive Attack on Jango. This website allows you to play almost any music of your choice, and even have your own 'radio station' which you can access, and other people can too, and listen to your favourite bands or musicians. I only got outside at about 4pm. I did some compost riddling and even got some help with sorting out a load of used envelopes from the boys, which was really nice. I was given a sackful by school... and am composting them, but saving the stamps for charity.
Gill made tea, I washed up.
A reasonable day. Gill still feeling very poorly so I did all the shopping we needed... went to Thomas The Baker and the Co-op before lunch, and Country Fresh after, to get veggies and fruit, and then Scummerfield with my eldest (shock horror!) to get goats' milk. This was really nice.
I did a bit of chainsawing, splitting and stacking AND compost heap adding.
But the antibiotics seemed to kick in and Gill felt well enough to make a pizza which was delicious. I did a big tidy up of my piles of paper, finding multitudinous envelopes and sorting them into re-usable, compostable and 'have to tear out the window-able'. I then spent some time tearing out plastic windows and crumpling the rest of the envelope into a ball for composting... Envelopes are not suitable for putting with the paper recycling as the gum clogs up the recycling process and the windows are best put in the rubbish. I could just crumple up the envelopes with the plastic window.... and then remove the window out of the finished compost. But although I've put some complete envelopes with windows into various compost bins, I'm happy to spend a bit of time removing windows first.
During one of today's outbursts, our coat stand in the hall got broken which caused tears of guilt and regret. I didn't react or say anything, I just ignored the situation, as if I'd said or done anything, it would have caused things to get even worse. Therefore within a few minutes, everything had calmed down..... a good thing! I think I'm slowly learning to be a slightly better parent. Maybe. But in my day, pushing the coat stand over so it snapped would have earned some kind of punishment. Thus I feel as if I am partly neglecting my 'duties' as a parent, to instruct between right and wrong, to encourage good behaviour and discourage bad... parenting does give rise to so many dilemmas.
I did a bit of chainsawing, splitting and stacking AND compost heap adding.
But the antibiotics seemed to kick in and Gill felt well enough to make a pizza which was delicious. I did a big tidy up of my piles of paper, finding multitudinous envelopes and sorting them into re-usable, compostable and 'have to tear out the window-able'. I then spent some time tearing out plastic windows and crumpling the rest of the envelope into a ball for composting... Envelopes are not suitable for putting with the paper recycling as the gum clogs up the recycling process and the windows are best put in the rubbish. I could just crumple up the envelopes with the plastic window.... and then remove the window out of the finished compost. But although I've put some complete envelopes with windows into various compost bins, I'm happy to spend a bit of time removing windows first.
During one of today's outbursts, our coat stand in the hall got broken which caused tears of guilt and regret. I didn't react or say anything, I just ignored the situation, as if I'd said or done anything, it would have caused things to get even worse. Therefore within a few minutes, everything had calmed down..... a good thing! I think I'm slowly learning to be a slightly better parent. Maybe. But in my day, pushing the coat stand over so it snapped would have earned some kind of punishment. Thus I feel as if I am partly neglecting my 'duties' as a parent, to instruct between right and wrong, to encourage good behaviour and discourage bad... parenting does give rise to so many dilemmas.
