Human Lifestyle

Join us at Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Atlanta as they host a congratulatory fete for Room Service Atlanta! 

When: May 25th, 5-7pm
Where: Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams, 3081 Peachtree Rd., Atlanta 30305
Why: Come support us as we celebrate our first success with the Nicholas House project   & discuss our plans for the future!


Please make sure to RSVP to: hayley@mgbwatlanta.com. Want to find out how you can partner with RSA? Come hear about our upcoming events for the Fall!

Hope to see you on the 25th!

Not a brilliant start to the day.  Something is whirring round my mind, a situation I want to resolve and make better and I'm feeling quite annoyed and angry about it.  But I got on with the day, did some wooding; a neighbour came round and asked if I'd like their shed which they'd taken down... I went to look but most was painted, and I don't burn painted wood.  But there were a load of floorboards and structural timber from inside, so I came away with a trailerfull. I chainsawed this up and quite a bit more. 

Mid afternoon I set off for Pauline's house, as she too is preparing for winter with her Clearview Stove. She's getting a bit old to chop logs and relies on a few willing volunteers to help.  In return for doing a bit of sawing, I get what can only be described as 'good counsel' and the benefit of her wisdom, although I'm sure she would deny that she has much of that.  I would argue strongly that she is someone who I trust with all sorts of difficulties and issues, and she always has something worthwhile to say.  I really value her opinions and observations.  Today was no different, as I shared my dilemma, and she picked out the crux of the problem, looking at it from the point of view of a mother and woman of mature years... just the perspective I needed.  She helped me see that anger and frustration were not going to get me anywhere positive with this, and to be gentle, measured and apologetic would probably have the better result in the long run. 

Our coffee and stollen and conversation finished at about 5pm and I cycled down to the Millennium Bridge, through the allotments (I had a quick peek at the YUMI plot) and along to Simon and Melody's house, as they had invited us to a party.  I arrived about 3 minutes before Gill and the boys rolled up in a taxi; Gill had made a cake with a spider's web design on and a pumpkin pie made with bought flaky pastry.  She'd spent most of the afternoon trying to find a costume for our youngest to wear, no time for making pastry therefore.

I was pleased to see Natalie, their daughter, who has come back from her first term of Fine Art at Oxford.  She'd made a very good pumpkin soup which was delicious.  Gill's pie was nice too.  There were fewer visitors than usual, Lee and Christine came and I had a nice chat with Christine who works for English Nature and knows our friend Sarah Woolven.  The children seemed to be happy and occupied, and near 8pm started to get excited about Merlin on TV.  I came home via a woodpile. I do not get excited by Merlin on TV, and was glad of a TV-free evening when I got in.

I enjoyed a facebook chat with my friend Loony who is staying with my sister in Sheffield.  Loony and I have a similar sense of humour and outlook on life, but of course, I'm not as loony as she is!  I'm glad my sis is having a good time with Loony, and will be doing Halloweeny things tomorrow with our niece and nephews.

The partygoing family members came in well after 9pm, closer to 10; they'd walked back.

Did fruit and washing up, and was awake when my laptop clock went from 1.59 to 1.00. 

A late start... it is still the holidays!

And a peaceful day... the boys had been invited to a birthday party at 2pm, so I got the sledge out of the garage after lunch and Gill walked down to Heslington with them, and she stayed there til the party finished at 6.30. Simon and Melody took their son and the three invited partygoers sledging on the hill on Low Moor near the allotments whilst Gill chatted to Natalie.

I prepared a meal for myself and Gill (couscous, onion and leek, stove-fried chunks of sweet potato, broccoli, and cranberry sauce for Gill, pesto for me) and took a Fiddlesticks booking, did some emailing and Scrabble on facebook, phoned a couple of friends and did a small amount of work outside. It was very cold outside, and lovely and warm inside, so I soon came back in!

The family came back at 7, children exhausted, Gill hungry, and all was well in the Cossham household.

A very late start to the day but got busy immediately with housework and fruit drying.

Did do a little bit outside but the weather wasn't very conducive to outdoor stuff.

I popped down to Heslington Road to give David my DVD of Age of Stupid which he's showing to friends tomorrow but he wasn't in. I picked up a load of compostables plus edible vegetables from Richard at Country Fresh and came home again, spending half an hour in the cold and wet to get them into one of my tumblers.

I had a quiet few hours before going to Anna's Carbon Pledge 10:10 Party, which was really good. I contributed a large amount of dried fruit which was well received. I enjoyed the live music, provided by Ben, Rich and Camilla, especially a Bonzo Dog Doodah Band number which I didn't know but recognised from the style, with kazoo! Anna ran a quiz which was quite good. Lots of good conversations especially round the little bonfire-in-a-washingmachine-drum.

I got home well after midnight feeling refreshed and happy. Parties do this for me.

Bit groggy this morning as didn't get to sleep until after 3am and the air bed wasn't brilliant, with a bit of a leak, so it became flatter as the night drew on. But there was cereal for breakfast which is always the best way to start the day, for me, and some of the conversations from last night continued until lunchtime, when other folks drifted away, and then at 2, I went out to Canon Park station, as agreed, and met Ruth, my friend from college days, and we caught up with our various bits of life story for an hour and a half in the park, mostly sitting in the walled garden. It was lovely to see her again as she is one of my longest standing continuous friends.

However Ruth had to go and see her parents and was then heading out to a party, so at 4ish she got in her car and I walked through the park back to Paul's flat. I was amazed at some of the huge trees on the outskirts of the park and in surrounding streets, some are vast Sequoias more suited to an arboretum, not residential streets! Nice anyway!

Paul was having another party this evening, with some different guests, and I again helped to prepare a bit of the food.

Got up early enough to get all my stuff together and jump on the bike at 10 and head off to the station, where I caught the Grand Central service to London just before 11am.

I met a nice woman on the train (in the seat next to me) who recognised me from the talk I did in Northallerton, and we chatted all the way down. She was going to visit a family member with her two teenage children, and we got on well... covered a lot of subjects in two hours!

When I got to Kings Cross I decided I wanted to go and see the Thames... and find somewhere to have lunch... so I got the circle line to Embankment and went up on the bridge where there was a busker playing a pan (steel drum) so I ate my sandwiches listening to him play. Memories of Trinidad!

I decided not to go to Tate Modern but to get the Northern Line to Edgware... found an internet cafe to do emails and blog, then made my way to where I'm staying tonight.

Paul, who's about the same age as me, lives with his parents following a business venture which didn't work out, and they are away so he decided to have a few people over, and Lisa, one of his close friends, invited me following our meeting in May, where we got on well primarily due to our views on sustainability and social justice. When I arrived, Paul and his friend Naomi were just finishing getting ready... in fact there were a few jobs yet to be done so I helped by mopping the kitchen and bathroom floors, as asked.

I also helped chop veg for dipping, and potatoes fo roasting. People turned up in dribs and drabs after work and as they could get to Edgware from as far away as Dagenham and even one from the Welsh borders. The conversation flowed and the food was good. I always enjoy meeting new people and Paul has a diverse bunch of friends ranging from a nightclub entrepreneur through to a teacher of adults with learning disabilities. I really enjoyed the evening and the company of these people.

Paul had provided some blow-up mattresses and things to sleep on, and half a dozen of us slept in the big living room.

A good day today... boys happy on Wii, me busy in the kitchen as well as Gill making a trifle for this afternoon's visit. I went for some bread... as no 'Yesterbake' got the full-price stuff for the first time in ages. Also found a new line in the Co-op, a nice apple juice drink in a glass bottle (easy recycling!) made with English apples, so got some of that, again for Alison's party.

I washed and blanched a job-lot of grapes and put them to dry before cycling off to Chapelfields, the other side of York, for Alison's party. Gill and the boys went on two buses... I'd been there half an hour when Gill rang (she has got a mobile phone, 21st Century Girl!) and said she had got off where Alison said, so I went to collect them, just 5 minutes walk from Alison's.

The gathering was really good. Alison's sister Cheryl from Sheffield, and Cheryl's daughter Grace, who was really good with the boys. Our friends Melody and Simon with their two offspring, one of who is great friends with our two, and Simon's Mum MaryLou from London. And really good to meet up with my Green Festival buddy Randall and his wife Annie. Rand is a garden designer and has done a lovely job on Alison's garden, making a little patio and some raised beds.

Alison had requested that people didn't bring anything which none of us had heard, understood or obeyed, so there were some excellent foody bits and lots of dwinkabuls and we all had a jolly time. Including garden tours and memories of what it used to look like with a photo collection. The boys played boisterously and had a good time too. We left soon after 6, and as Gill got a taxi home she got in first. I picked up a sack of compostables from Country Fresh and a large pile of unsold mistletoe... with loads of berries which I'll try to plant into my Bramley Apples... might work!

So, a happy evening followed with not very much washing up to do, hooray!

I got our youngest to school, and whilst coming back picked up loads of beer cans which had been thrown into the hedge bottom on Windmill Lane, nearly all aluminium and therefore worth collecting for cash.

When home, attacked a big pile of paperwork and spent most of the day sorting out stuff, some of which has sat for several weeks, naughty John tut tut. But, tis done now!

Just before Lunch, Damian and David popped in and chatted, and as Gill had planned to go into town (on the bus) they took her in their car. So I had a quiet lunch and then continued doing an invoice for Monk's Cross and a variety of other paperworky stuff.

I collected our youngest and came back and needed a little bit of fresh air so cut up a small load of sticks which someone had dumped, sorry, donated (me grateful!) in the front garden/wooding area. They were apple, mainly about 3 to 7 cm thick, and cut to a length which meant that they needed one or two cuts to get them to stacking length. I tend to cut these in a bit of an unusual way... when you think of cutting wood, you imagine someone drawing the bowsaw over the stick with the saw pretty horizontal. Well, with small sticks like these, holding them still is quite difficult and an easier way to cut them is to put your foot on the base of the bowsaw with the blade vertical and the bow propped up against leg or legs, and take the stick to be cut in both hands and pass it up and down the blade... this is a really quick and easy way of cutting thinner sticks to length. The only drawback is that you have to lean over and that can give some of us backache... I first saw this being done by Girl Guides at a camp I was doing a circus workshop at... and it's an excellent method.

I was disturbed by a chap who introduced himself as Jamie from round the corner... he's been building and living on boats for a while and knows about stoves on boats... but is now a landlubber but wants a woodstove in his house, and was interested in who supplied ours and about the flue. So I chatted, took him inside to see the 8Kw Clearview in action, and as he was talking about foodplant gardening, I gave him a tour of the garden. He was most impressed with our walnut tree.

Gill asked me to go and get goats milk, chocolate chips and frozen peas from Scummerfield and I chatted up one of the workers, Debbie, as she was very friendly with me...

I didn't have any tea at home as I was due to have food at the St Nicks Volunteers Party. However, I had a Hull Road Ward Planning Panel meeting first, in the Tang Hall Community Centre, and Carolyn was waiting for me when I arrived at 6.30. We took just over 30 minutes to agree the responses to the various planning applications and I then went to the nearby St Nicks for the party.

This was excellent... lots of folks to chat with, some old friends including Carole whom I've known for nearly 20 years and assorted other Green, Transition and Rotters people. Drank lots of Westons Organic Still Cider and ate apple crumble and pumpkin muffins... lovely!

Left at 10.30 and visited the newly discovered logpile twice to restore the number of unprocessed logs resplendent in our front garden.... I'll have to get busy with the chainsaw again!
Lovely to see Gill who was doing some sewing, turnups on kids trousers, and had a good chat with Ali who has free evening calls somehow....

Awoken by a phone call from a friend who's lonely at the weekend since his family has broken up, so I told him about York Green Festival tomorrow and he'll come down sometime in the afternoon. Then there was another phone call from a Fiddlesticks enquirer... and another phone call after that! It's so busy that it's almost like we have a Freefone number!

However the boys went out to play so Gill and I had a bit of time together after which I cycled round to the bread shop and then cut one of the hedges at the bottom of the garden. Over lunch we watched an old Time Team on More 4, and I did emails.

During the afternoon I did a huge pile of pruning.. holly, laurel, privet hedge, and shredding... almost a cubic metre of the stuff...

At about 5pm, cycled down to Rowntree Park to help put up marquees, with Baz and David, Bob and Richard, and advice from Liz who was tipsy (Baz's friend). The solar cinema was being put up with assistance from Sarah and I left at nearly 7pm.

Back home for a small tea and a cold shower as was extremely hot and sweaty... not suitable material for a party, which is where I was off to next. Will was having a 'wellness party' following too much time unwell, and it was an excellent party, with quite a few folks I knew and some I didn't. Drinks, food, music, then some games, and then I did a little balloon show which was fun for all concerned.

Home at about midnight.

A funny old day...

I took the kids to school as my eldest was behaving as if he had a hangover... was actually as a result of being at a disco til 9pm and not getting to bed until 10ish. But, once on their bikes, they went into autopilot and zoomed down to school, no problem.

I had some phone conversations with assorted people from the council and the HSE about tarry sleepers in the school's Japanese Garden, and then went to St Nicks to turn the compost pile I constructed last week. It was really hot!

Nice chats with Catherine the head Rotter, who proudly showed me her new 'pet poo wormery' and to Ivana about activities over the summer for kids..

Lunch with Gill, did an hour's chainsawing, and went to school again to pick up our little darlings.

Was reminded that at 6 we'd been invited to Simon and Melody's 'Dr Who Party', so despite my not liking Dr Who, I took the boys down. However, before this I tried to download my emails and my computer just kept crashing. So when I got back from the party with two tired boys, I had a go getting onto my emails on Gill's laptop... and used the Tiscali webmail thing for the first time. Not the same as Outlook Express,but has different features like Blind Carbon Copy (which I don't think OE has?) but I find it not as easy and I cannot find all my inbox, so no deleting tonight! Also, Gill's laptop is really old and slow, very odd! But, hey, we are lucky to have been given it and it works, so no complaints!

The party cheered me up, I took the boys but Gill stayed at home to complete the accounts. Several people arrived whom I knew plus others whom I didn't know so well or at all, so there was lively conversation and good food, and I left with the boys at about 8.40pm. A good party, thank you to Melody and Simon.

A lovely morning... I had a bit of a lie-in til 9 and then a happy family time downstairs, including silly jokes, some bundling (play-wrestling) and NO TEARS! Most enjoyable. I extracted myself from the rough and tumble before it got too rough and went to have a bath, as I've got a gig this afternoon.

Good bath, came out clean enough for a cycle ride out to Sutton on Derwent and a wedding, where I'd been booked to just do the balloon models... and all went very smoothly and easily, including meeting a lovely friendly child who'd met me twice before and was obviously a fan, which was nice. So the session went quickly and I got paid and I cycled off back home, getting in at about 6.

I made tea... a pile of Basmati rice with tumeric and dried red pepper... the stuff which didn't go through the seive when making sweet paprika, and a stir fry of onion, celery, olives, mushrooms and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar and red wine, served with a blob of tomato and basil relish given to us by Debbie, who didn't like it.

After tea I had a short time in the garden and before going to the party I'd been invited to, went to do my emails and ended up going on Facebook to answer a couple of composting queries on the group called 'Organic Gardening 101', where I host a topic called 'Any Composting Questions Answered', which I really enjoy doing.

Then to the party... I thought it was Rich's birthday but it wasn't, it was Jenny's housewarming, and there were loads of folks ther that I knew and loads I didn't but got to know. I took my balloons and several people had a go at making models... it added quite a bit of fun to the party.

I had a really good time but left at about half past midnight as I have work on Sunday....

A cracking day... up none too early after a reasonably comfortable night on Dawn's living-room floor, and read for an hour or so before making a public appearance in the kitchen where I chatted with Dawn and had breakfast. A quite lazy morning... the only strenuous activity was rebuilding a bit of dry-stone wall that had collapsed in Dawn's garden, which was my first experience of dry sone walling, albeit not a 'proper' dry stone wall, but a dry stone facade wall against a retaining brick wall... just cosmetic really, but looks good.

Sam went to see his Uncle and I had some good chats with Dawny over lunch, then the phone call came from my employer Ali who picked me up in her car. Her five year-old daughter was happy to see me again, she's been 'Professor Fiddlesticks' mad since meeting me at the Sheffield Green Fair last summer. We got to Totley Junior School where the party was to be held and I was introduced to Ali's carers and and her teenage son and friend, and I got changed and got ready to party on.

About 25 children and probably the same number of adults came to the little girl's party, the idea was to help her form some friendships in a new school, help her mum meet some other parents, celebrate her 5th birthday and for everybody to have lots of fun. Which we did do, as usual, the circus show took a full hour with lots of participation, and tea was a traditional spread (apart from what Ali had made for me, which was salad and homity pie, yum!) and then we did the balloon activities, again, loads of fun and silliness. It all finished, as expected, at 6pm and one of the carers drove us all down to the station so I could get my 6.54 train back to York, very satisfied and with payment in my pocket.

I decided to go to Baz's party and was really glad I did. I took a large bottle of perry and some smaller bottles of 'pear cider' (silly name as it is infact perry!) and parked my bike/trailer in the back yard. The party was half Baz's birthday and half Liz's housewarming, so two lots of people got to meet each other and I enjoyed myself immensely, lots of new faces and interesting people, the best social event I've been to for a trememdously long time. Good to have Rob Renegade on decks playing some cool tunes, and lots of folks in fancy dress. I made a dozen balloon models over the evening and they were well received!

Home at 2am! Did blog before going to bed! Needed to sit and wind down slightly....