Monday 20th February 17

A fairly early start, 8.30 on the alarm, left Anna’s house soon after 9, and enjoyed zooming down to the valley the railway line and station sits in… takes about 10 minutes as it’s all downhill, and then about another 20 minutes to get to the venue in Darnall, I arrived at 9.40, before Ava did.  I was made welcome by the staff member and I got myself ready for an unusual mix of balloon show and composting workshop.

It was a tough gig.  I prefer a bigger audience as that gives a certain ambience which is lacking if there’s under 10 people watching. All four children were under 5, and there were 3 mums and two people connected with the project. The venue wasn’t really set up for me to demonstrate my circus stuff, but I did what I could.

The balloon show went well, but the compost info session was made difficult by the children who weren’t interested in compost, and were making a lot of noise.  However, I was reasonably happy with how it went and I had a delicious lunch at the centre.I also popped round to one of the participants’ house to see her compost bin.  She’s just moved in, never had a garden before. The bin was full of grass mowings, hay-like, dry and not composting. I gave her some advice!

Then I cycled up to the allotment and started on the border which still has one end not de-nettled. I did 3 and 3/4 hours there. and stopped because it started to drizzle. It took 53 minutes to get back to Anna’s.

Anna said ‘would I like a bath?’ and I was really glad to be able to have one as I was achy and mucky. And after a good soak, she fed me, pie, potato and peas, with gravy. The pie was goats cheese, spinach and sweet potato.  Lovely. What a pampered evening….