A fairly quiet day... I cycled round to the bread shop to get Yesterbake, and then to the Co-op to get goats milk for the people in the house who like dairy, cereal for me, margarine and paracetamol for the painful people, which today includes me, with a headache.
Stress today helped by a phone call from the school, asking where was our son? I was absolutely gobsmacked... I'd given in a letter, by hand, yesterday, explaining why he was away before Christmas and why he hadn't gone in yesterday. The communication within that school is abysmal! So my head was full of schooling problems... I really don't want to have to deal with this.... the school should be good enough to send our children to without them feeling so much fear they can't go in.
I usually feel better if I'm doing something outside the house, so I dismembered 4 waste pallets with my chainsaw and pure muscle, pulling the bits of wood apart to make stackable planks and nice long-burning cubes of wood with easy-to-pull-out nails in, once the cube is mostly charcoal.
In the afternoon, Gill had an appointment and I was just settling down for a late lunch when there was a knock at the door and there was my old friend Maggie, whom I haven't seen for ages, with two small dogs on lengths of string! She said she'd walked up to B+Q for something and had walked past our house and recognised the logpiles. She put the dogs in the back garden, tied to a bench, and came in for a coffee and chat. We got to talking about a chap we both know, called Andy S. whom we both called a friend at one time. However, he stole a bike from Maggie, and he's borrowed a large sum of money from one of my friends and not paid it back. Maggie told me about someone else who Andy had possibly hoodwinked, so I sent this person a message on facebook to find out more. What I want to do is to alert the police about this abuser so no-one else suffers in the future. I'm wondering how to get the message out without being accused of slander/defamation or getting a brick through the window.
I did a favour for Maggie who had taken out a stainless steel sink from somewhere and had it sitting in her back garden, and she asked me to put it on Freecycle. By the evening I'd had 4 replies and sent them Maggie's phone number. So I hope one of them gets it!
Anyway, Maggie stayed quite a long time and so I was unable to work with the boys as I'd planned to, after lunch, to get emails and letters sent off to family members to thank them for Christmas gifts. However, our eldest didn't need much persuasion to email some thank yous, but letter writing is a completely different thing. More stress.
Anyway, Gill came back, I did some more work outside til it got dark, and for tea I had a pile of old rice with a pool of pumpkin and parsnip soup in the centre, with some unidentified pickle on the side.
The highlights of the evening were watching a good programme on BBC4 about the brain, and finding an interesting forum called SelfSufficientish, which I joined, and read quite a few posts. The site is run all or partly by my friend John Headstrong, whom I met whilst getting involved with the (We Love The) Earth Centre thing in spring 2010, and I loved this YouTube video about the Robin Hood Tax which he's put on his blog.
Finally, I was pleased to find out today who the mystery visitor was, with the Internet Service Provider based in Buckingham. It is the spouse of an old friend whom I've known for a very long time, dealing with insomnia and getting ideas about domestic food and energy security, Transition communities and peak oil. I'm delighted to have been 'useful' and to have helped an old friend. So, 'hello' and your message made me smile!
Showing posts with label pallet smashing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pallet smashing. Show all posts
Woken at 6am by banging, shouting and screaming. I groggily tried to help with the situation .
I was woken again at 9 by a phone call from a nurse or public health professional called Jenny, who is presenting something about bacteria and the importance of washing hands to a reception class tomorrow, and is looking for some balloon models to represent the different sorts of bacteria. She said she'd like to come and see me on the way into town, so I got up and washed and dressed and breakfasted... she arrived 45 minutes later and brought with her a sheet of paper with some cartoon images of different bacteria. I agreed I'd have a go and she said she'd be back at 4pm.
Just before she left, there was a delivery from Cozmic Balloons, £85 worth of mixed colours Qualatex 260s, some clear 260s and a bag of Bee Bodies. What a co-incidence!
I went to buy bread and medicines for the house full of ill people.
I decided to do the sculptures after lunch, and think about what to do in the meantime..
However, after lunch Gill asked me to get some bits and bobs of shopping and I thought I'd put in a cheque in and get a cheque out, and I went into town via Sainsbury's. However, when I got to the building society I discovered I'd left my pass book at home. Duh me. I decided to call in on Alligator to pick up their unwanted resources, and they had just had a delivery of wonderful looking purple cauliflowers, so I brought one of those home... Via Country Fresh, who had 3 boxes for me. Lots of composting to do!
I got in sometime after 3 and immediately got busy with the balloons. I made some Bee Bodies into an apple shape but hid the stalk in the middle, to make a series of roughly globular Bacillus. I inflated 3 caterpillar balloons with sad or angry faces, and tied their knots all together and then twisted all 3 together so it looked like a load of rod-shaped cells, the top 3 with the faces on. I tried to do a virus with some heart balloons all tied together and a pair of legs, but it wasn't that successful. I also did another couple, I've forgotten the name of the bacterium but I used three 260s twisted together into lots of small bubbles and twisted these all together into a load of cells all together. Jenny arrived at 4 and was happy with all of them apart from the virus-type things, and suggested that I use a caterpillar balloon and give it four legs, and this was really good! She paid me £10 for doing these... a fun challenge!
After which I decided to chop up the pallets I'd rescued yesterday, and I brought some bits of old pallet up the garden and a plastic bucket which has 'kicked the bucket' and needed to be binned.
In the evening I jarred up a load of dried apple rings and chopped up 15 large juicy pears and balanced them on the racks for drying. I watched a good HG Wells adaptation 'The First Men in The Moon' which I enjoyed, as when I was a teen I loved HG Wells books, but then watched a second film which portrayed his life 'HG Wells: War With The World' which I really enjoyed, as I felt some kinship with him. Gill and I both watched this and she looked him up in her Cambridge Guide to Literature; it was a very stimulating programme. Later still, one of my friends contacted me, needed to talk, as someone she knows and cares about was seemingly preparing to kill themselves, and my friend needed to talk about it, and I'm not sure if I was able to help or give any advice, but I'm glad I was available for this person. What a sad situation.
I was woken again at 9 by a phone call from a nurse or public health professional called Jenny, who is presenting something about bacteria and the importance of washing hands to a reception class tomorrow, and is looking for some balloon models to represent the different sorts of bacteria. She said she'd like to come and see me on the way into town, so I got up and washed and dressed and breakfasted... she arrived 45 minutes later and brought with her a sheet of paper with some cartoon images of different bacteria. I agreed I'd have a go and she said she'd be back at 4pm.
Just before she left, there was a delivery from Cozmic Balloons, £85 worth of mixed colours Qualatex 260s, some clear 260s and a bag of Bee Bodies. What a co-incidence!
I went to buy bread and medicines for the house full of ill people.
I decided to do the sculptures after lunch, and think about what to do in the meantime..
However, after lunch Gill asked me to get some bits and bobs of shopping and I thought I'd put in a cheque in and get a cheque out, and I went into town via Sainsbury's. However, when I got to the building society I discovered I'd left my pass book at home. Duh me. I decided to call in on Alligator to pick up their unwanted resources, and they had just had a delivery of wonderful looking purple cauliflowers, so I brought one of those home... Via Country Fresh, who had 3 boxes for me. Lots of composting to do!
I got in sometime after 3 and immediately got busy with the balloons. I made some Bee Bodies into an apple shape but hid the stalk in the middle, to make a series of roughly globular Bacillus. I inflated 3 caterpillar balloons with sad or angry faces, and tied their knots all together and then twisted all 3 together so it looked like a load of rod-shaped cells, the top 3 with the faces on. I tried to do a virus with some heart balloons all tied together and a pair of legs, but it wasn't that successful. I also did another couple, I've forgotten the name of the bacterium but I used three 260s twisted together into lots of small bubbles and twisted these all together into a load of cells all together. Jenny arrived at 4 and was happy with all of them apart from the virus-type things, and suggested that I use a caterpillar balloon and give it four legs, and this was really good! She paid me £10 for doing these... a fun challenge!
After which I decided to chop up the pallets I'd rescued yesterday, and I brought some bits of old pallet up the garden and a plastic bucket which has 'kicked the bucket' and needed to be binned.
In the evening I jarred up a load of dried apple rings and chopped up 15 large juicy pears and balanced them on the racks for drying. I watched a good HG Wells adaptation 'The First Men in The Moon' which I enjoyed, as when I was a teen I loved HG Wells books, but then watched a second film which portrayed his life 'HG Wells: War With The World' which I really enjoyed, as I felt some kinship with him. Gill and I both watched this and she looked him up in her Cambridge Guide to Literature; it was a very stimulating programme. Later still, one of my friends contacted me, needed to talk, as someone she knows and cares about was seemingly preparing to kill themselves, and my friend needed to talk about it, and I'm not sure if I was able to help or give any advice, but I'm glad I was available for this person. What a sad situation.
Well a busy day... Gill went to Fountains Abbey with our youngest's class, so I had most of the day to myself. I did a bit of work on the computer and decided I really didn't want to be stuck inside all day, so I did a bit of a tidy up in the garden. I did a variety of little jobs, including some weeding, finding broken plant pots and other plastic rubbish and binning them, and a bit later, some stacking of logs, chainsawing, more stacking and pallet butchering.
At 7pm I got a phone call from the Progressive Radio Network, a US-based web-radio, who had asked to interview me about green funerals. The show is hosted by Steve Barnett and is called Paradise Parking Lot, and explores green issues. So the producer rang me up and a few minutes later I was chatting to Steve about this sensitive issue. The archive recording is here (or better, here).
It went well, and although I was nervous beforehand, I enjoyed the experience. Rory was online for some of the time and trying to prompt me, but I really had to concentrate on what the interviewer was saying.
So I had a happy evening after this... a feeling of relief, and glad that it went well.
I also had a 'first'. I don't have a mobile phone... but Gill has an old one which she's lent to me for situations where it might be useful for me to have one, and today I put £10 credit on it. So I'm still learning new technology.
At 7pm I got a phone call from the Progressive Radio Network, a US-based web-radio, who had asked to interview me about green funerals. The show is hosted by Steve Barnett and is called Paradise Parking Lot, and explores green issues. So the producer rang me up and a few minutes later I was chatting to Steve about this sensitive issue. The archive recording is here (or better, here).
It went well, and although I was nervous beforehand, I enjoyed the experience. Rory was online for some of the time and trying to prompt me, but I really had to concentrate on what the interviewer was saying.
So I had a happy evening after this... a feeling of relief, and glad that it went well.
I also had a 'first'. I don't have a mobile phone... but Gill has an old one which she's lent to me for situations where it might be useful for me to have one, and today I put £10 credit on it. So I'm still learning new technology.
Up earlyish and feeling bouncy.
Not sure why but I was feeling good... despite knowing that Gill and I had lots of paperwork and admin to do. So we spent a couple of hours going through a pile of paperwork, ringing people up, putting stuff in envelopes, posting them, putting envelopes into the compost pile, minus their stamps which we occasionally give to a worthy charity. Gill started on the 09/10 accounts.
I bought bread and pasties, and posted yams and pea beans to a chap in West Yorkshire and the same to my folks in Sheffield. The beans they saved from last year didn't germinate, so I hope some of mine do. The ones I've planted are erupting from their toilet roll beds. I love seeing that!
I responded to a Freecycle offer of a commode, to replace the wooden one I got all those years ago for my compost toilet, which is now falling to bits. Jo in Huntington said that I could come and get it. One of her next posts mentioned that she was making a raised bed, so I offered her some compost as a gift. I found her road on Googlemaps and memorised the shortest route, and set out. When I arrived, I realised that I'd forgotten the piece of paper with her actual address on it! Duh!
So, I started knocking on doors and found a Jo... but it was the wrong one. No-one knew the Jo I wanted to find. I had a nice chat to a little tubby man who was tending his garden bare-chested, and I told him that if I couldn't find Jo, I'd give him the compost... which I did as Jo wasn't in the 40 or so houses I tried!
I cycled into town and got two cheques out for adverts in 'Book of Green' and one other cheque for someone. Then I came back via Country Fresh, where Shirley had one box of gubbins for me. When I got back, I rang Jo and explained my stupidity, and asked if I could come at 5.30.
So, I had a bit of time to..... do some pallet butchery! I've collected half a dozen broken or unwanted pallets over the past week or so, which needed dismembering and then chopping up into bite sized pieces. Before I set back out for Huntington a second time, I had the Thomas's pastie, and got another sack of mature unriddled from down the garden to pop in the trailer.
This time, I knew which house I was going to, and Jo and her partner and child were waiting for me. The little boy was fascinated with the compost beasties in the sack, and I worked out how to put the commode into my trailer, and cycled back to my neck of the woods. I'd timed it just nicely, arriving at Tang Hall Community Centre just before 6pm when the Hull Road Ward Planning Panel was meeting. I decided to bring the commode in with me, as it looked far too interesting for the local wildlife to ignore.
I was the first there, followed shortly afterwards by a couple of young men from York University who have joined the panel. One of them is the President of the Student Union, and the other is also a SU officer... they are graduates, not students, but they've joined our group as they represent students and there is a certain amount of tension between student houses and the more permanent community. So they want to learn about the house conversions we deal with every time, enlarging homes from 3 bed to 5, 6 or more, making them 'Houses in Multiple Occupation', and possible scenes of loud parties, messy gardens and other accusations. Not all students are like this, and some non students have untidy gardens too (me, for instance!) but they are an easy target for locals to complain about.
We dealt with quite a few good applications, most of them pretty standard, and some of them house extensions, so our new members saw a good range of applications.
I got in just after 7.30 and did a bit of tidying up in the front garden before coming in and having some potato salad and other salady bits, with olives.
A very peaceful evening... enjoyed the new BBC programme 'The Story of Science', and had a good few goes on Scrabble on facebook.
Not sure why but I was feeling good... despite knowing that Gill and I had lots of paperwork and admin to do. So we spent a couple of hours going through a pile of paperwork, ringing people up, putting stuff in envelopes, posting them, putting envelopes into the compost pile, minus their stamps which we occasionally give to a worthy charity. Gill started on the 09/10 accounts.
I bought bread and pasties, and posted yams and pea beans to a chap in West Yorkshire and the same to my folks in Sheffield. The beans they saved from last year didn't germinate, so I hope some of mine do. The ones I've planted are erupting from their toilet roll beds. I love seeing that!
I responded to a Freecycle offer of a commode, to replace the wooden one I got all those years ago for my compost toilet, which is now falling to bits. Jo in Huntington said that I could come and get it. One of her next posts mentioned that she was making a raised bed, so I offered her some compost as a gift. I found her road on Googlemaps and memorised the shortest route, and set out. When I arrived, I realised that I'd forgotten the piece of paper with her actual address on it! Duh!
So, I started knocking on doors and found a Jo... but it was the wrong one. No-one knew the Jo I wanted to find. I had a nice chat to a little tubby man who was tending his garden bare-chested, and I told him that if I couldn't find Jo, I'd give him the compost... which I did as Jo wasn't in the 40 or so houses I tried!
I cycled into town and got two cheques out for adverts in 'Book of Green' and one other cheque for someone. Then I came back via Country Fresh, where Shirley had one box of gubbins for me. When I got back, I rang Jo and explained my stupidity, and asked if I could come at 5.30.
So, I had a bit of time to..... do some pallet butchery! I've collected half a dozen broken or unwanted pallets over the past week or so, which needed dismembering and then chopping up into bite sized pieces. Before I set back out for Huntington a second time, I had the Thomas's pastie, and got another sack of mature unriddled from down the garden to pop in the trailer.
This time, I knew which house I was going to, and Jo and her partner and child were waiting for me. The little boy was fascinated with the compost beasties in the sack, and I worked out how to put the commode into my trailer, and cycled back to my neck of the woods. I'd timed it just nicely, arriving at Tang Hall Community Centre just before 6pm when the Hull Road Ward Planning Panel was meeting. I decided to bring the commode in with me, as it looked far too interesting for the local wildlife to ignore.
I was the first there, followed shortly afterwards by a couple of young men from York University who have joined the panel. One of them is the President of the Student Union, and the other is also a SU officer... they are graduates, not students, but they've joined our group as they represent students and there is a certain amount of tension between student houses and the more permanent community. So they want to learn about the house conversions we deal with every time, enlarging homes from 3 bed to 5, 6 or more, making them 'Houses in Multiple Occupation', and possible scenes of loud parties, messy gardens and other accusations. Not all students are like this, and some non students have untidy gardens too (me, for instance!) but they are an easy target for locals to complain about.
We dealt with quite a few good applications, most of them pretty standard, and some of them house extensions, so our new members saw a good range of applications.
I got in just after 7.30 and did a bit of tidying up in the front garden before coming in and having some potato salad and other salady bits, with olives.
A very peaceful evening... enjoyed the new BBC programme 'The Story of Science', and had a good few goes on Scrabble on facebook.
Woken by anti-school noise but children did go to school.
However, this got me up and I did some moving of broken bricks from our shared driveway down to where the wall/fence is going to be built.
Pauline rang following an email conversation over the past few days and I agreed to go round today and pick up the Freecycle-request credit card holder she has found for me, and to help her with her wooding. So I got 3 sacks of logs together as this is my 'traditional' seasonal gift to her, loaded up my trailer and cycled round for 12.30.
I helped her stack the logs in her outhouse and then used her bow saw to chop a few bits of wood for her Clearview Stove, and brute force to smash up an old chair she found in a skip.
This didn't take long and at just after 1pm I had my sandwiches and Pauline made me a coffee, and we caught up on assorted news. I didn't stay too long as I had to go to the Building Society to put in a cheque from the weekend and take out a big cheque to pay off the last of our Council Tax, which I then went to pay. I cycled back via Country Fresh where I met some fairly old people trying to ineffectively break up a pallet outside the shop. They were happy to accept some help... and I showed them how to do it, by slamming the pallet down on one corner and then on another corner til it falls apart... which i was very glad it did, because it made me look like a veteran pallet smasher (which of course I am!!). Picked up two sacks worth of compostable items and some dryable ones too... includung four 'dragon fruit' which are very expensive and weird, not brilliant to eat but do make an interesting addition to a bag of dried fruit. I'm now thinking ahead to the LETS event in December where I'm going to do a very large number of bags of fruit, and try to do a bit of a clearout.
Got home in reasonable time to load up two of my tumblers with a load of stuff.
For tea I had a veg stew that Gill had done on the woodstove plus half the last slice of quiche and three slices of roast squash. Very filling!
At 8pm there was a meeting at the Yorkshire Terrier on Stonegate to do some planning for the Towards Carfree Cities Conference. This is going to be the 9th international conference run by the World Carfree Network, and it is to be at the end of June 2010 in York. My friend and Green Festival colleague Randall is heading this up (he's been involved in this organisation since their first conference) and Ivana and Richard met in Prague whilst working in the Carbusters office, as far as I gather. I also met Graham Titchener from Cycling City York and Andy from my favourite cycle shop, Cycle Heaven. I think I'll be doing some volunteering with this event, although I don't know exactly what yet.
Home at nearly 11pm, went straight onto the computer to sort out emails and record a good day.
However, this got me up and I did some moving of broken bricks from our shared driveway down to where the wall/fence is going to be built.
Pauline rang following an email conversation over the past few days and I agreed to go round today and pick up the Freecycle-request credit card holder she has found for me, and to help her with her wooding. So I got 3 sacks of logs together as this is my 'traditional' seasonal gift to her, loaded up my trailer and cycled round for 12.30.
I helped her stack the logs in her outhouse and then used her bow saw to chop a few bits of wood for her Clearview Stove, and brute force to smash up an old chair she found in a skip.
This didn't take long and at just after 1pm I had my sandwiches and Pauline made me a coffee, and we caught up on assorted news. I didn't stay too long as I had to go to the Building Society to put in a cheque from the weekend and take out a big cheque to pay off the last of our Council Tax, which I then went to pay. I cycled back via Country Fresh where I met some fairly old people trying to ineffectively break up a pallet outside the shop. They were happy to accept some help... and I showed them how to do it, by slamming the pallet down on one corner and then on another corner til it falls apart... which i was very glad it did, because it made me look like a veteran pallet smasher (which of course I am!!). Picked up two sacks worth of compostable items and some dryable ones too... includung four 'dragon fruit' which are very expensive and weird, not brilliant to eat but do make an interesting addition to a bag of dried fruit. I'm now thinking ahead to the LETS event in December where I'm going to do a very large number of bags of fruit, and try to do a bit of a clearout.
Got home in reasonable time to load up two of my tumblers with a load of stuff.
For tea I had a veg stew that Gill had done on the woodstove plus half the last slice of quiche and three slices of roast squash. Very filling!
At 8pm there was a meeting at the Yorkshire Terrier on Stonegate to do some planning for the Towards Carfree Cities Conference. This is going to be the 9th international conference run by the World Carfree Network, and it is to be at the end of June 2010 in York. My friend and Green Festival colleague Randall is heading this up (he's been involved in this organisation since their first conference) and Ivana and Richard met in Prague whilst working in the Carbusters office, as far as I gather. I also met Graham Titchener from Cycling City York and Andy from my favourite cycle shop, Cycle Heaven. I think I'll be doing some volunteering with this event, although I don't know exactly what yet.
Home at nearly 11pm, went straight onto the computer to sort out emails and record a good day.
