A clothes dryer would be nice right now!

When my father was an art student he visited a friend from the army who had recently become a father. This would be early 1950s. There were nappies strung up to dry across the kitchen. My father could remember driving back to College on his motorcycle thinking "Another good man down". In a few years he was in the same situation with my nappies needing to be got dry.

This time of year it is not warm enough for clothes to dry quickly. But it is not cold enough for me to put my central heating on, so drying clothes, sheets, towels, kayak gear, etc, is a problem. My kayak trousers which I will be wearing tomorrow are still slightly damp from last week.

We have had some lovely sunny days recently, and today was forecast to be dry with some sun. So I put my washing out on the rotary dryer. It was misty - the two items I had handwashed, rinsing in warm water, steamed as I hung them out!

The mist did not clear for ages. No blue sky until the afternoon. Very little sun. Sheets, towels and clothes still damp and had to be put on clothes horses indoors to finish off.

Luckily I live alone. If part of a couple, or even worse a family, I would find space for a clothes dryer, however ungreen that might be!

Competition for off-cuts

This afternoon on my way to the shops, just round the corner from the end of my road, I saw several lengths of clean wood, 50/60 cms long with screws sticking out of them. A short time with a screwdriver and then sawn* in half they would be perfect for my wood-burning stove.

On the way home they were still there. I took my neighbour's shopping into her house, put it all away, sorted out the cheque to pay for it. Went and put my shopping away and then walked up the road to find all the wood gone!

Is there another person with a wood-burning stove, or perhaps an open fire, locally? If so we will now be in competition with each other!

With 2 lots of shopping and one shopping trolley I already propping 3 canvas bags of shopping on the top of the trolley so couldn't have collected the wood on the way home.

* The spell-check didn't like this, but I've just checked my dictionary and it's in there!

New energy saving light bulb brightens the sitting room

Wow, I've been in this house a long time! The energy-saving light bulb which I put in the sitting room overhead light a few years after I moved here has blown. So I popped a new one in and it brightens up more quickly - and seems brighter overall (but I expect that's my imagination).

Should I be picking sloes in the Forest?

I was hoping this year to pick my sloes in a thicket alongside the path near the Middlesex Filter beds which I pass if  am taking my cycle ride southwards along the Lea Navigation. However someone picked those in August.

Down in the south it is not a good idea to leave sloes until the first frost as is advised (it saves pricking them with a needle to get the juices to flow). By the time that happens here the sloes have either fallen off or shrivelled up. August seems a bit early though - I pick mine in September.

So on my day off today I went to Chingford Plain on the edge of Epping Forest. The first clump of sloes bushes I came to had plenty of sloes to fill my soya dessert tub with, and plenty left over for someone else.

Picking fungi in Epping Forest is forbidden, mainly because people doing it commercially were taking too many. I am a little worried about whether I should be picking sloes. I don't think I will be making any difference to wildlife. Presumably something eats them - would the stones passing through the digestive tract of an animal be how the plants are distributed? But I think the vast majority of sloes not picked go to waste.

I would quite happily pick blackberries in the Forest, so have decided - for now - that I can do it.

I will be pricking the sloes this evening as I catch up on iplayer.

Need to record mother's wisdom

My bathroom basin has one of those plugs that rests on a bar which is risen and lowered by a plunger at the back of the taps. When not in use I keep the plug on the shelf below the window as the cats pat the plug out, and I am worried about this damaging the basin. I am more worried about the plug being patted under something and never seen again for months (I found it on the hall floor one evening before I stopped keeping it in the basin).

Last week I dropped the soap down the plug hole and, when the water softened it, it must have squidged and it was making the water back up.

My mother told me to pour a kettle full of boiling water down the plug hole to melt the soap and flush it away. It worked a treat.

I am asking my mother to start writing down all the tips she has, adding any family stories that can be associated with them.

Sparrows the bosses of the drinking bowl!

I have a casserole dish which I fill with water and put in the garden in the summer for the foxes and the cats. This year I've seen birds using it too.

This morning I looked out of the bedroom window to see a sparrow drinking while a female blackbird waited her turn (though there would have been room for both to drink). When the blackbird was drinking another sparrow flew down for a drink and the blackbird gave up her turn for him.

Eventually she got a proper turn and after a drink she also had a bath.

On my cycle ride home yesterday after blackberrying I saw a lesser spotted woodpecker in the cleared shrubby area that they've put a path through alongside Orient Way (the Ruckholt Relief Road that was).

A fellow kayaker has had all the corn off his corn on the cobs on his allotment eaten - he thinks parakeets.

Successful gathering/scrounging

I have been picking a few blackberries from my neighbour's overgrown garden to eat with my breakfast cereal for nearly a week. Today on my bike ride I went up between Leyton Marshes and the riding stable to pick a soya desert tub full of blackberries. Saw several other people also picking. I made blackberry crumble - yum!

There was also some horse droppings, so I passed them, picked the blackberries and came back to scoop up the horse droppings for my compost heap.

I then turned and cycled off towards the cattle creep at the end of Coppermill Lane, passing some Prudential riders coming the other way*. Then under the cattle creep, around to the Navigation and back home.

On the way back from shopping got several bits of offcuts from a skip - when sawn up there will be about 2 hours burning.

*My friend in Plumstead is having problems as they have shut the river bridges to traffic because of the Prudential cycling event. She has had to hurriedly get her bike fixed so she can cycle all the way from Plumstead to Clapton for kayaking tomorrow (she now works for the club and is in charge so needs to be there). This is not going to encourage support for cyclists from motorists!