A life in the day of Pete at Steward Community Woodland

(the account of an actual day - 4th September 2000)

I wake early, the daylight coming through the longhouse windows stirring me to life. Ben wanders in looking for hitching signs - he and Clare are off to Teignmouth today.

I get up and walk down to the glade to fetch up the last of the drawers for my new chest of drawers that I bought for a pound from the recycling centre yesterday. I carried the rest of it up yesterday, and I'm eager to have it all assembled in my bender. I'm upgrading my storage from plastic bags and cardboard boxes.

I slept in the longhouse last night, not my bender, it depends how dark and steep the path up to the bender seems late at night. I hear the morning meeting bell and head down to the kitchen, having admired my new improved bender. It seems more of a home and less of a box room now.

In the meeting we discuss taking down the marquee. The marquee went up a few weeks ago for our carnival campfire night, and we have used it a few times for meetings and entertainments since. It was only planned as a very temporary structure though, and it has accumulated a worrying amount of tat in it since the campfire. It has been too tempting a dry way-station for people carrying things up the hill. It has to go...

Jim takes on looking after the kitchen and making dinner, so Merlin, Dan and I agree to start clearing the stuff out of the marquee so we can take it down. I find out what people want from this week's organic food delivery and phone through an order. We put an order in once every few weeks, some is bought from the internal food coop by individuals, some goes straight into our communal food cupboards.

I catch up with the others in the glade, and start moving the pallets and clothes and boxes and tools up the path. The job turns out to be better than I expected, I get into a satisfying rhythm of unhurried work and movement in the morning sunshine. Its going to be a hot day. We eventually clear the glade of all but some slab wood and Merlin and Beccy's huge woodstove. We fold up the large white tarp, heave it into a wheelbarrow and move it down to the agricultural shed. We probably won't use it again until next year now, so we store it well.

The Mid-Devon Advertiser (a local newspaper) is sending a photographer to the woods today, so Kat and I spend some time tidying the longhouse. The photographer arrives about 3 o'clock and takes some photos of us sitting on the longhose steps. Our planning application has generated a fair bit of media interest recently.

After that we have arranged to pick up some stuff from a house clearance in Moreton. Due to a communication mixup we end up having to take a sofa and an armchair that we don't want or need, as well as some nice yellow rugs that we do want. We go back to site a bit miffed, next time we'll be more clear about what we want and don't want. Its all experience.

Jim has nearly got supper ready, so i go and read in the longhouse for a while. I hungrily drift over to the kitchen, and watch Merlin frying falafels. After the feast I offer to wash up while Kat clears away. I have been avoiding the washing up for a while as my hand ws badly cut, so I feel I owe a few nights now it is well again.

We finish up in the daylight, which is always a bonus, and I go back to the longhouse with a cup of peppermint tea to do some work on the newsletter, which is nearly ready to print now. I eventually go to sleep to the sound of the cycle generator as Ben checks emails. Yet again the hill is too dark and steep to sleep in my bender. Goodnight now.