Human Lifestyle

I got up before I needed to... the phone rang and I wondered if it was for me, and I came down to sleepily 'be there' which seems to be a good thing when the boys are getting ready for school. Just being around is a calming influence. If I say anything or interact, this is not the case, so I've learned to just 'be'. I've often said that I'm not very good at being and am much better at doing. But in this case, the doing is to just be, if that makes sense.

Anyway, at 10ish, Katalin arrived. She contacted me first before last year's York Green Festival and wanted to take photos of the event, and she did just that, recording the festival. She has a website coming soon... I look forward to seeing it! We had a cuppa and chat with Gill... and then a slow wander down the garden. She loved lots of what she saw, she was perhaps the most enthusiastic visitor I've had for some while! So she took pictures of wormeries, compost, flowers, untidy bits, me, and I don't know what else... I'll have to wait and see!

She left at about 1pm and I washed up and had lunch. In the afternoon I planted some more seeds, different sorts of climbing French beans from the YiT seed swap.

At about 4pm I bombed down to town to deliver a letter and came back via Country Fresh and Freshways. I spent a bit of time starting a new compost heap in the rain, in the metal sided bin, with the basal layers being lots of shredded hedge. Gill made a simple pasta, carrot, mushroom, asparagus, home grown purple sprouting broccoli mix, with a slice of freshly baked home made bread. This was delicious, as usual.

Then I went to town again to attend the FoE 'environment' hustings... the environment has hardly been mentioned in this pre-election run-up, so it was good to go to a meeting with all four main candidates in York Central, down at the Friends Meeting House, and hear what they had to say.

They all agreed that the most pressing environmental issue is that of climate change. All candidates said their parties would deal with it. I was quite impressed with Susan Wade Weeks the Tory, who describes herself as 'the greenest Conservative that you'll ever meet', and I really like the independent approach of Christian Vassie, the Lib Dem City Councillor and City of York 'Energy Champion'. The Green Party's Andy Chase was reasonable, and Hugh Bayley was his usual experienced and professional self. Four people who all care and think they could be the MP for York. My guess is that Bayley has such a big majority that he'll be almost impossible to dislodge, but I would love Vassie to get it. If it was a close-run thing between Bayley and Vassie, I'd vote tactically and vote Lib Dem, but I think I'll vote with my heart and vote Green. Although the Tory seems a nice person, and pretty green in some ways, I don't like all of their policies and don't trust them.

I enjoyed this hustings a lot, despite Hugh Bayley calling me 'Stephen' when he answered my question on how we can reduce the amount of meat consumed. I'd have thought he would remember my name by now; we've been communicating for many many years and have met on dog-knows how many occasions. I forgive him, he meets LOADS of people, and at least he tried! But he won't get my vote.... he didn't have a good answer to my question!

I chatted to a few of my friends afterwards and cycled home via a pile of pallets which loaded themselves onto my trailer and followed me home!

A good day. Up not too early and got some paperwork done, cheques into envelopes and into the post box.

And then had a busy day in the garden, getting lots done, a bit more shredding and lots of tidying, riddled the last of a builder's bag of very mature compost, bagged it up into about 20 bread bags and 14 carrier bags. All the big bits... sticks, chunks of bark, etc, went back on the new heap. I did a bit of stacking, very green alder logs which I've split to get them dry quickly.

At 3pm, my composting friend Jo came round to borrow both my Rotasieves, as her son is doing a thing with Scouts and they need to riddle lots of compost, in preparation for planting seeds.

I worked in the garden til 6pm and came in for pasta with broccoli and carrot, with home-made tomato soup as a sauce on top. Very welcome and filling.

Then later, something I've been looking forward to doing for ages... I planted the first seeds of the year. I filled about 50 toilet roll inners with home-made seed compost with a spoon... it took quite a long time, but I did then 'in situ' in a stainless steel catering dish, the sort used in ban maries to serve hot food from,which I rescued from a skip years ago. The bog-rolls were put into it, all up against each other, and the growing medium carefully spooned in. Then I put a pea-bean in each one, and a bit of seed-compost on top. Then I got water from the water butt and gave them a good dowsing from the base, so the water soaks up to the beans. I love planting seeds. And especially these climbing beans as they are just about my favourite crop. The toilet rolls will be planted in 4 to 6 weeks without disturbing the roots.

I'll do the pumpkins and squash over the weekend, and sweetcorn, brassicas, and I don't know what else. A lovely time of year. Let's hope the Icelandic volcano doesn't affect the summer temperatures too much... it could make a cool summer. I've enjoyed today partly as I was pleased the volcanic ash has closed all the airports today. One comment on facebook was that Gaia is getting her revenge....

Excellent day, although got off to a slower start than I would have liked.

Gill went to art and I did the washing up before cycling down to the station so I could go over to Sheffield to see Ali. I took some climbing bean seedlings, a squash and a yam, for her raised beds. The train was a bit late and then there was quite a wait at the tram stop, so didn't get to her until after midday. But hey, that's life!

Had a lovely afternoon with her and at 3 went to collect 'littleboo' from school and she was, as usual, ecstatic to see me... and then when home, helped me plant the beans and other things. Hope the cats don't dig them up with their pooing activities. I buried a load of cat poo under the squash plant as extra fertiliser!

Ali had received an invite to go and see Carol Ann Duffy, the new Poet Laureate, perform a reading, and this is one reason I'd come over, to help Ali get there. We had decided to go on the tram, but the rain started coming down quite heavily so we changed our transport options to her car.... which turned out to be a good thing, as if we had of gone by tram, we would have been completely stuck. The rain came down, hail, thunder and lightening, continual cloud burst for some length of time, resulting in flash-floods all over central Sheffield, tram lines closed and traffic jams everywhere. We spent an hour and a half getting to where we wanted to be... we had intended to go and eat first but this time was used up with the chaos caused by closed roads.

But we got to the church where Carol Ann Duffy was due to speak. She'd taken the train over from Manchester but the floods had prevented her from getting any further than Dore, where she got a bus into town. I loved the poems she read, well, most of them, and her humorous commentaries. She started with a selection of her poems from her book 'The World's Wife' including 'Mrs. Midas', 'Mrs. Tiresias', 'Mrs. Aesop', 'Mrs. Faust' and 'Anne Hathaway', which is I think n the GCSE syllabus. Then she did some more personal stuff, 'A Child Asleep' and a series from Rapture, 'Text', 'Tea', 'Row', 'Syntax' 'Art', 'The Love Poem', and finally 'Prayer' and Premonition, a new poem about her Mother who died a few years ago, and she's only just got to a stage in her life that she can write about her. (see this page for biographical information and a selection of poems read by the author..)

After this we went to a nearby 'stuff yer face for a tenner' and did just that, after which Ali took me to the station. Lots of cancelled and late trains. I eventually got one to Leeds, which got in at midnight, and waited for the 12.34 to York which got in at 1.15. Fortunately a nice young lady was happy to chat, and she, Ruth, told me about her cybernetics degree at Reading Uni, and about her laptop, and I told her about some of my writing and entertaining activities. It made the journey go quicker for both of us.

Home just before 2am, damp but full of buzzy thoughts. Quite a day!

Woken by shouting but things seemed to calm down, thankfully. Our eldest got ready to go to Games Workshop with a friend. This is a shop space in town where people can buy different models, mostly plastic, and there's a central table where the different games can be played. He took sandwiches for lunch and ate those outside the shop.

I did quite a bit of paperwork, Gill got some documents photocopied at the Co-op and I sent those off.

So Gill and our youngest had quite a bit of time in the garden. I filled three containers with a mixture of old used compost and fresh rich compost, and planted three varieties of potato. I also planted two types of sweetcorn seed (Indian Rainbow and Blue Jade) in modules (little pots) and several sorts of beans, including unidentified runner beans, Cherokee Trail Of Tears and my favourite, Jack Edwards Climbing Pea Bean. Some of these bean seedlings I hope to sell at Country Fresh, but most will go in the garden and at the allotment. I sorted out a lot of detritus from the conservatory and planted yet more tiny yam balls, some of which were beginning to sprout on the floor of the conservatory.

Gill and our youngest went to visit Ashley and family up the road, leaving me to wait for our eldest to get back.

Charles rang up... he's a Green Party friend but he's going away for a Scottish Mountain-Climbing holiday over the Euro-Election season, and won't be able to cast his vote, either in person or by post. So he's asked me to be his proxy, and a postal vote will be sent to me to fill in and send off. We had a good chat and a wander down the garden, and the family returned from their various travels.

A good tea; spinach, chard, broccoli with pasta and chunks of yesterday's nutloaf, with garlic bread and cheese.

Bathed the kids (hey, they do it themselves these days, but I carry the water upstairs!) and watched telly and played Scrabble.

Wondered whether to do my Community Care Blog on the new North Yorkshire Credit Union which has opened this weekend. This means that the services of a Credit Union are now available to anyone living or working in North Yorkshire, as well as the City of York. I am feeling very pleased, and indeed a bit proud, since I started the ball rolling with York Credit Union, and am member number 0001. I've had nothing to do with the development of North Yorkshire Credit Union, but am still really happy that the Credit Union advantage is now available for so many more people, in Selby, Scarborough, and all over the County.

Watched my counter approach 10,000 page views since September last year...

I did eventually write my Community Care blog! It took over two hours.

Bank Holiday Monday and not much to do apart from a LETS meeting this evening.

A slow start but soon realised that I had a 2 foot high pile of paperwork to sort out as I got a phone call from my agent saying I hadn't returned a couple of bits of paperwork, so I had a good sort through and found them, signed and bunged in his envelope, and found three other things to send back, some phone calls to make, envelopes to tear up (plastic windows out, rest in compost) and spent til about 3pm doing this.

But I hate paperwork and needed to get out into the garden to do some more management... weeding, loading the Compostumbler, and later, planting this year's Jack Edwards Climbing Pea Beans, the best-tasting and heavy cropping green beans in the world! They'll be ready to plant out by the beginning of June and be giving us beans by July.

Just before 7 I came in for a quick tea and at 7.20 headed out for this month's YorkLETS meeting. This was well attended, well chaired by Ben, almost certainly well minuted by Lynne, and contributions from Helen, Jill, Will, David, Ann and myself. We discussed the constitution, AGM, fundraising, next newsletter, Lynn's socials past and future and lots more. It was SUCH a good meeting that some of us didn't want to go so we stayed back and had another half and a good ol' chin-wag. What a lovely bunch of people.

Collected some Freeccled stuff off Lynne before she went, and then on the way back home collected a pallet from outside Country Fresh. Got in just before 11.

Ahhh, a lie-in! how nice! I got up at 10 and Gill was already at Art, so I finished off my column on cosmetics and sent it in. This took til lunchtime, mainly because I got distracted by Scrabble on Facebook and chat, and interesting links... but by late lunch, was finished.

Gill came in and got a picnic together and went on the bus down to town to meet her 'Ladies who Lunch' friends, Melody and Alison, and had a picnic with them in Museum Gardens.

I just mooched around, dealt with a couple of phone calls, did some housework and planted some broccoli, calabrese and curly kale seeds.

My friend Robin had made contact with someone who lives near him who has just taken down a holly tree and passed my her details to me, so I rang her and she said it would be OK to go within the next hour. So I refilled my chainsaw with lube oil and got the loppers, and cycled over to near the Hospital along the Route 66 cycle track.

She'd taken down one holly, and I cut up the two trunks which she'd denuded of side branches. But a sizable one metre stump remained and I eventually removed that, leaving a 30cm stump. There was one other job she wanted doing, removing an overhanging branch of a sycamore. This was more difficult as my chainsaw, or perhaps the electric supply to it was malfunctioning. But I did manage to get some of it down.. but after an hour and a half working there, I'd had enough so I loaded up my trailer with some of the holy logs and went. I'll go back in the next week or so and finish the job.

Home to a happy house, nice tea and pleasant evening. I was disappointed that Newsnight focussed on the budget and didn't have Ethical Man on.

Wrote my Community Care blog
http://www.communitycare.co.uk/blogs/green-living/2009/04/green-man-switches-off.html

After lunch I put my trailer onto my back rack and carefully cycled it down to Cycle Heaven where I'd checked that they'd be able to fit the new inner tube it needs. I had to be very careful cycling down as part of the trailer was sticking out, but got to the shop without incident. They sorted the problem within 10 or 15 minutes, replacing the shredded inner tube and putting a new tyre on, as the old one had torn. It was good to get back on my bike and have the trailer bouncing along behind again!

I went through town and to my GPs and then to inSainsburys and then via the cycle track where there were still logs and branches to harvest, so came back with a trailer load plus Freshways stuff on top of this too!

I planted some more seeds... courgette and zucchini tromba, a weird-looking curved courgette, I grew one last year so this year am planting quite a few more.

Gill made some cheesy scone pastry and made a pie with it, using yesterdays spaghetti and tomato/bean mixture, with new potatoes and some salad from the garden. Lynn had emailed me inviting me to provide her with some composting worms, so I went to delve in a wormy heap for pets for her new wormery (actually one that Ben had made out of stacking plastic boxes, and sold on the LETS).

I came in for tea and enjoyed the whole plateful, and asked Gill what one of the salad leaves was. She said 'Good King Henry' and I said I hadn't noticed her picking that, as I'd put that right down the bottom of the garden, near where I was harvesting worms. I asked where she'd got it, and she described the place where I thought I'd put some 'black salsify' or Scorzonera, so I looked that up to see if the leaves were edible. I found that Scorzonera leaves were totally different to the leaves Gill had harvested... so what had I eaten? I knew I'd harvested some tasty roots from that plant, so I looked through various books and on the web to see if I could find it. Eventually, with family panicking around me, wondering if I'd been poisoned, I found it was Skirret, Sium sisarum var sisarum. I cannot find anywhere about the leaves being good to eat... just indications that it might be like some other Umbelifers, ie not good to eat...!

Anyway, I stayed conscious during the meeting at Lynn's house, which was a LETS working group discussion about the constitution and managing the membership, and I was able to contribute quite sensibly. I also remembered to take the worms with me, and enjoyed seeing Lynn's garden.

Got back home after 10 and did a load of washing up as Gill had fallen asleep as soon as the children were in bed. Then onto the computer...

Nice photo of me in the Press:
http://www.thepress.co.uk/search/4304325.Green_issues_on_the_big_screen_in_York/

A very busy day.

Got up quite early and both felt like doing some spring cleaning and sorting out. Gill made a start on the conservatory, which has become somewhat cluttered, and I did some washing up including a load of storage jars which have been building up.

Gill also rang a chap who'd advertised two flat irons in the back of the Press. She's been wanting to have a couple of these to heat up on the stove so she doesn't have to use electricity (despite it being from renewables, and us not using very much, it still costs, so using less would be good!). Gill isn't into ironing everything, but the school uniforms and my work clothes need to look good, and the electric iron is quite heavy on the juice. So a pair of flat irons will be a good addition to our low carbon lifestyle. The old fella wanted a fiver each, as they were antiques, but was happy to hear they'd be used. He lives in Easingwold so Gill might take the bus out there next week to get them, or he might deliver if he's coming down the Hull Road.

Soon after this telephone conversation, we discovered our phone handset wasn't working... it was completely dead. Gill tried to 'ring home' with her mobile but only the base rang, not the handset. So, with the phone being important for my work, it was essential that we get it sorted. So, within the hour I cycled down to town to take it to where we bought it to see if they knew what was wrong with it, or maybe buy another handset. I felt a bit daft when the chap in the shop told me t was just the batteries which had expired. I thought they were rechargeable, but apparently they don't keep recharging for ever. I bought new batteries... and a second pair for when this happens again!

I also visited the Friends Meeting house where the old AVP computer has been waiting for me to pick it up and bring it home to erase the hard disc data, before taking the whole lot to the recycling depot at James Street. The monitor is huge! It only just went in my trailer but with bungees, it came home safe and sound. I set it all up and tried to run the DBAN 'boot and nuke' floppy disc that Ben had supplied, but I didn't quite understand the commands so I phoned Ben and asked him if he could pop round and press buttons in the right order.

Gill was doing wonderful things with the conservatory and I helped too, being ruthless about throwing stuff away, for once! Ros came round with her son, and she stayed and had a coffee and chatted about some of the stories from when she was a customs officer. Our boys played happily all together.

Ben came round and found that the software would work if the computer was tweaked slightly first, and so he reset a password by doing something to the innards and then set the disc to AUTONUKE and completely wipe the hard disc. He also showed me how to take out the disc afterwards and extract two very strong rare-earth magnets, which make excellent fridge magnets. After 40 minutes nuking, the monitor declared it was now 'done', so I switched the whole thing off and extracted the hard disc (actually 3 of them in a stack) and the two magnets. The rest of the hardware will be going to Hazel Court tomorrow for recycling.

I then found time to sort through seeds and plant some courgettes, squash, pumpkin and basil. This felt extremely satisfying. All three boys ate together and then played til 9pm when I took our visitor back up the road to Ros. I spent some of the evening peeling some giant pumpkin seeds I found from last year, and sorting out old seed packets from newer ones which I will hopefully plant up soon.

A very productive day. And destructive too, with the mangling of the old computer and throwing away of loads of unrecyclable and unusable stuff. Satisfying!

A relaxing day, woke before the children went to school. one wasn't wanting to go but he begrudgingly allowed me to help him get dressed, and Gill took them in. Once in school, he was happy and told his mum that he was glad to be there... fickle or what?

I needed to go to the Civic Amenity site to get rid of several bags of drinks cartons which can be collected for recycling there, and I took the old wheelbarrow which has been rusting in the garden since we moved here in 2001, and put it in the metal skip for recycling... really glad that cyclists are now allowed into the site without any hassle. Then on to Country Fresh but Jamie's promised load wasn't in yet, so came home via the lottie where I prepared the compost heaps for the coming onslaught, ie layered them with cow-parsley stems and docks and nettles. Had a friendly chat with my neighbour Jackie, who's nearly been thrown off her plot due to it being left to get too weedy. My plot is looking untidy but it is being used... onions, leeks, potatoes, asparagus, artechokes, 4 compost heaps....

Home on the dot of 1pm, lunch and chats with Gill who had been to town, and got money back on some trousers she'd got for me and didn't fit.... I'm a bit fatter than she thinks I am!

I then had a VERY satisfying time planting up a lot of seeds... better late than not at all! So loads of curcubits, sweetcorn and beans. Hooray!

I went to school but came home with no-one as my eldest went to a friend's house and my youngest was doing yoga. Home to go to the veg shop to collect a large pile of stuff from the wholesaler... and was only just strong enough to get this to the lottie, and it took quite a time to get it piled up and layered on the three heaps that are currently being used. Home in time for a quick shower before bombing down to the Bishopthorpe Road to 'Lal Quila' where the Hull Road Ward Planning Panel were having an unusual meeting. We were ushered upstairs, but then we got a message that Carolyn had arrived and she couldn't get up the stairs, so we came down and had our beers, poppadoms and onion bhajis plus the one planning application we needed to look at. It was a very enjoyable meeting, so thank you to Abul, one of our members, who suggested the change of venue and was our host for the evening.

I cycled down to the council offices to put the reply to the planning application in their letterbox, and came back via Jamie's van where I picked up another load and took it to the allotment.

Home by 9.30 pm, lit the stove so I could wash up and dry some apples not saleable but washable, peelable, core-able, slice-able and dryable.... and also ditto to a melon.