Right.
Dartmouth Ghosts and Legends manuscript is in the post. K&K are upstairs - Ken is putting up Kai's new shelves, he has time now the book is finished, and it's raining, so it's not a good day for outdoor adventures. I've shopped - Tesco on a Saturday. [shudder] But the price war with Sainsbug's is still going on: Tesco's strawberries are 99p as opposed to Sainsbug's 'buy two for £3' (Moroccan, so I shall eat my Mother's Day dessert tomorrow feeling suitably guilty about the distance they've had to travel and the resources the trip has used up...), while the organic fruit juice cartons that Kai takes for breaktime and lunch are 78p at T, 89p at S. Annoyingly, S have now put the price of their Yeo Valley organic butter up to £1.19, same as T: for a good few weeks it was £1.09. Then again,
everywhere seems to be slowly increasing the prices of food items by 10p a time... Where was I? Oh yes...
We've ordered a second compost bin - a Rotol Composter (280 litre capacity, 100% recycled plastic) from our local
council. (£17 including delivery: apparently these retail at £34.99 usually.) We were planning to get one anyway, but we've kind of been forced into it because of the new waste-collection policy.
I don't know how these things work in other countries (or even other cities!), but in Briz (well, Brislington, at any rate) each household is provided with a standard large wheelie-bin and the rubbish collected once a week. Each household was also given a black box for recyclable materials - it takes paper (but
not cardboard), glass, steel and aluminium cans, and items of clothing. (I don't
think they allow plastic, but we always take ours to the recycling tanks at Tesco or Sainsbug anyway.)
However... with effect from... we're not actually sure, but it'll be sometime soon... rubbish will only be collected once a
fortnight, and each household will be provided with a kitchen caddy and a larger collecting bin for kitchen and biodegradeable waste, which will also be collected and recycled. (We've opted out since we already compost everything.)
I'm in two minds about this (the once a fortnight collection, I mean). Yes, I'm all for 'persuading' people to recycle as much as possible by any means possible, and if inconveniencing them has that effect then that's fine by me. After all, if the council are willing to take it away from right outside your house, you'd be stupid not to take advantage of the service. But we recycle as much as we can already, and even
we frequently still end up with a full bin (this is mostly the fault of packaging, I've found: we compost cardboard and the biodegradeable trays organic veg often comes in, but far too many things are - quite unnecessarily in my opinion - pre-packaged in polystyrene, plastic and plastic film, and so far I haven't found anywhere here that can take such things).
It'll be interesting to see how the scheme works out.
ANYway... the new composter should be delivered in about a week, and when the weather warms up and the slowworms have dispersed we can start dismantling the remaining old wooden one (which is only still standing thanks to the big stones around the bottom! But it's done us proud, so we can't complain). And at that point it'll be time to start getting the garden organised for this year: I still haven't finished laying the stones around Roeg's Pool, we have some pruning to do and a whole load of seeds to plant. I'd also like to get a strawberry planter and see if we can grow our own: we all love the fruit but it's expensive to buy.
On a sadder note our apple tree is definitely dying; it's going to have to be cut down and burnt. I've suggested replacing it with a pear tree - Ken and I both like pears, and the Concorde variety is described as being a small and compact tree. I need to check how easy it is to grow and whether it's prone to any diseases first though.
For now, I'm still wrestling with the pay-for-download. But only until dinner time: I've rented
Stealth (yes, I know, probably absolute crap but the planes look pretty, and knowing me I shall end up cheering for the AI to win...) and
Corpse Bride (Kai said he wanted to watch it) DVDs for afterwards.
Then tonight I get to play again!
#
Joules *Dances with Haddock* Taylor
pontificated this at 3:49 pm
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