Friday 14 October 2011

Thursday 22nd September 11 World Carfree Day

Got up at 8 so I could cycle with our eldest over to Bishopthorpe Road.  On the way there, his mudguard got very loose and then fell off.  I put it in my pannier and pocketed the bolt... but the nut was no-where to be seen.  From his school, I went to the bank to see how much money was in our account as we have bills to pay.  I took £250 to the Council to pay another installment of Council Tax, and then popped in to see Dylan who had a box of mostly mouldy oranges for me to dispose of.... I cycled them over to St Nicks, and sorted out about 20 good ones for the volunteers there, and washed them, put them on some plates for people to take.

From here, via Freshways and back home.  Gill was just getting ready to go out and I got a phone call from St Nicks, who'd been contacted by a BBC Autumnwatch researcher, who wanted to know what sorts of animals could be found in, or connected with, compost heaps.  Well there was no-one at St Nicks who could go through the range of wondrous beasties, so I rang the researcher and spent 40 minutes chatting, and describing springtails, worms, staphylinid beetles, several sorts of fly, slugs, ants, and vertebrates like newts, frogs, toads, slow worms (my favourite reptile), grass snakes, mice, hedgehogs, rats, magpies.

Later, by email, I told her about woodlice, millipedes, centipedes, mites and pseudoscorpions.  It's unlikely that they'll want me to go onto the programme but it was nice to be able to help!

I was able to do a bit of work outside... not much, and then at 3 I was off again on my bike to go and pick up our son.  I found the nut which had fallen off his mudguard on the way into school, which was lucky, I think.  Once I'd collected him, we popped into Cycle Heaven and one of the kind guys there tightened up his mudguard by inserting a sliver of rubber before re-tightening the fixing.

We came home along the roads, rather than go all the way to the Millennium Bridge... an interesting experience, especially when a large lorry decided it wanted to share the bike lane (Sorry Mate, Didn't See You - SMIDSY syndrome) but my lad was impressed how I dealt with this.  Actually, I was impressed too.  And glad that he didn't witness his Dad being knocked off or squashed.

I got a Fiddlesticks booking for a 5 year old's party in Wakefield, and then later in the evening, the chap from Poppleton brought my apple press back to me, in time to take (somehow!) down to town tomorrow for the Edible York stall at the Food Festival.  I spent several hours peeling a huge load of pears for drying, and played bits of Scrabble on facebook between times.

1 comment:

Old She dragon said...

yeah slow worms are my favourite too. We get lots of them.
I think the foxes like them as snacks or maybe they get caught by cats as we often find dead ones.
They have beautiful eyes.