We went up to the local recycling facility yesterday, to take some cans, wood and other general rubbish. This 'dump' is a really fantastic facility. It's free to dump pretty well any rubbish you want (they won't accept tyres and asbestos). You have to separate it into its correct category before you throw it away, but after that it is recycled. There are separate skips for wood, green waste, paper, cardboard, copper, aluminium, other metals, phones, printer cartridges, plastics, glass bottles, cans, flourescent tubes, monitors and TVs, paper, cardboard, vegetable oil, engine oil, batteries, soil, concrete and an area for other electrical items which are either stripped of their valuable parts and recycled or shipped overseas for repair and reuse. Of course there is also an area for general rubbish, which still, sadly, goes in a hole in the ground. But there is less and less of this general rubbish as each day passes. I enjoy seeing the rubbish separated and recycled in this way, but most of all I like the recycle shop. People are encouraged to stop and donate anything that can be sold before it is thrown away. We've bought quite a few things there in the past, and yesterday we bought a nice kitchen table for ten pounds. The proceeds from the recycle shop go to a local charity, which runs the shop.





It still needs a bit of polishing, but Junko and I are pleased with it. We plan to refurbish the breakfast room shortly, so perhaps this will provide the initial stimulus.

The chairs, by the way, also came from the same place. We have collected them over the past couple of years. We have recently painted the blue one and the two red ones, and are waiting to get round to doing the light green one. You might be interested to know that those chairs are around a hundred years old. They used to be really common as kitchen chairs, but you very rarely see them nowadays.

Yesterday was the hottest July day ever in the UK. It is very worrying.