Acerca de

LOCAL HEROES

Just another place for you to read my brief ramblings and moments of wistful enlightenment (sort of) ...

aboutus

I’m a paragraph. Double click here or click Edit Text to add some text of your own or to change the font. Tell your visitors a bit about your services.

LEARN MORE

Sat 25th Sep

York's annual food festival was a really fun day out. Ok, full disclosure - I made it stretch over two weekends and visited almost all the shops and outlets in the booklet. From curry to chocolate drops, smoothies to sausages, and quesadillas to vegan cookies, we dragged our stuffed bodies around the city, absorbing all the culinary gobbits that staff were keen to impart on us, before returning home and collapsing in a sated heap in front of Strictly.

It was great to see the food tents back on Coppergate and in Museum Gardens, and enjoy some of the discounts in the booklet as well, such as at the York Chocolate Story, where we had some very tasty hot chocolate, and at one of my favourite foodie haunts SPARK, though in my overexcitement I refused to wait for napkins and consequently ended up with a celebratory orange oil stain on my coat.

Back at home after the lateral flow testing (see blog), I considered the way the waste from the packs was being handled, because these are the same kits that GPs like me have at home, to test twice a week. As with any changes that benefit the planet, the barriers are usually cost, time, people-power (who's responsibility is it?) and altering a habit! Well certainly the cost of all the set-up in schools is staggering, and the time that has already gone into implementing these temporary testing areas is immense, and we are all really grateful for the efforts to keep our young people safe and happy and back in school with their friends. As for people-power, it's difficult to ask staff to do any more than they already are doing, so I thought any changes would have to require almost no effort at all.

Hmm. So, it needs to be really really easy, right? Well here's the video that I consequently came up with, in keeping with national guidance from DEFRA.

Sound on and enjoy!

I hope you'll find it useful, and please share it with anyone you know who is testing or has children who are testing.

Wed 10th Mar

Wed 17th Feb

Two little sustenance-related pitstops today. Firstly Dough on Bootham, which had a very tempting display of breads in the window, all baked in-store. There were also pizza slices, cakes, and lasagnes, including vegetarian options. Plenty of delicious things to eat for lunch, and I can tell you the pizza slice almost didn't last the 45 minute walk home!

Next La Bottega on Goodramgate, a popular family-run coffee house on one of York's busiest streets and close to the beautiful Monkbar with its entry point onto the walls (one-way only remember!), intriguing model shop (look closely for the dog doing a wee), and a number of other Italian deli/ice-cream/coffee outlets. At La Bottega (which means more than just 'shop' in Italian, but a workshop or place where apprentices learn in a creative way) they are completely set up for socially-distant purchases, with a nice sign outside offering to come out to you if you'd prefer not to enter the shop. And I was delighted to see that they now have compostable coffee cups, new in this week and stacked happily atop the coffee machine. So no need to 1) panic, or 2) forgo your essential caffeinated beverage if you forget to take a reusable cup into town *shakes head sheepishly*.

Sun 7th feb

This is one of York's lovely little independent bookshops, The Bluehouse Bookshop close to Bootham Bar. It may be closed at the moment, but you can order books and the owner delivers to your door with a contactless drop-off! They are also registered on www.bookshop.org which is a brilliant alternative to Amazon as it helps smaller businesses keep going, particularly important at the moment, right? You can use your book tokens there and even check if your favourite local indie reading haven is on their map - if it is, they get the full profit from your order! Do it now!

Anyway while we're talking about Amazon, did you know that the rainforest in South America has lost an area the size of SPAIN over the past 18 years? That's crazy isn't it? And this is largely through - morose drumroll please - the need to free up land for cattle grazing. So maybe I'll have a meat-free burger next time I order takeaway...(looks like the iron-flavoured gummy bear thingies are really going to come into their own now, ha!)

Thu 4th Feb

At the vaccination hub this morning, I had a total tumbleweed-brain moment when scrabbling mentally for the actual NATO alphabet. Urgh, please can I have a medal for every time I've had to spell my name "Romeo, underwear, marmalade, idiot..." I mean, these are the words that spring to mind. Hey, don't eye-roll me!

Anyway, apologies to the patient whose name I had to spell out to my brilliant but socially-distanced admin buddy, over the noisy hubbub of the cabin, and sadly all that sprang to mind for 'V' was 'vulgar'. *shakes head sorrowfully*. Maybe I should write down a list of all the correct words? Hmm...

Wed 3rd Feb

I just received an exciting box from Peace With The Wild, which was totally free of plastic packaging and contained some goodies like plasters and some vegan iron supplements in a vegetable starch bag which apparently can go on my compost. Hooray!

I'm not going to lie, when I saw the Vegums advertised on www.peacewiththewild.co.uk I instantly worried they would be like sugar-free Haribo gummy bears, but phew, I can report no #adversesideeffects thus far...