We've had another hectic few days, starting with obtaining our turf on Friday morning. Gary from Tuff Turf was working in our area and kindly came over to show us the offcuts he had available and check the size we needed, culminating in rolling out and cutting our turf on the roadside, giving us an inkling of what it looked like here when it was all fields...we now have the turf in the front room ready to add to the base next week. Our Thanks to Gary for his time and generosity.

Stuart also picked up the vinyl icons from the Sign Factory; these come in two parts, the coloured circle base and the white icon shape which goes on top, so we've been sticking these together carefully and have enough ready to use, with spares available in case of problems (such as air bubbles). As a spin off, it means the icon shapes are slightly raised on the surface, which gives them a slightly tactile quality, although possibly not enough to make them more accessible. Since we also heard from a contact at Disability Essex who is running a stall close by to Signpost at Village Green, we're hoping some of her visitors will help us find out! The information plate is being made by Signright, round the corner from us on West Road, so we've been pretty effective in using local firms, which saves on transport costs and also makes it easier to talk to someone about what you want, particularly important on a pilot project, where we're both learning as we go along. For example, the Signpost needs PAT testing as it is technically an 'electrical appliance', but we're able to call on Paul Malone's skills again for this. It's an important learning aspect for us in terms of our hopes to scale the project up, as any more permanent version will need rigorous testing to ensure it fulfills health and safety requirements. Right now though, our brains feel pretty full; less than a week to go and plenty to do.

Ok, firstly today we'd like to say that we've been getting some comments and having some discussions with a few of you by email. We really value your input and it helps us to shape our thinking about the project and our work in general. But we feel that by emailing us personally that others may miss out on the dialogue that is happening, so we invite you to use the comments function on each blog post which you can find at the top right above each post. Alternatively you can use the forum, which as yet only has a test post on it.

Today was a continuation of yesterday in the fact that it was pretty flat out. We got a phone call from Urban Print to say that our flyers and posters were ready to collect. I then phoned Tuff Turf to talk to them about getting some turf to cover the base of the post. Since we are only covering a small area, and he usually does whole gardens, we can probably get some offcuts which will save us some cash. He's a local guy too so we should be able to sort that out this week.

So we cycled down to Urban Print and picked up the Fyers on our bikes. Damien put them in her pannier and since they were a big heavy (2000 x A6) it made it a bit difficult for her to take left hand corners, but she made it home ok. Not bad for a girl with no balance (I don't know how she stays on two wheels, even unladen!). So we split the box and I took half of the to Sean at Metal. They will be promoting Village Green with BBC Blast in Southend High Street on Saturday so will hand out our flyers at the same time :o) (we planned that!). After a deluge of rain I carried on to The Sign Factory on London Road in Leigh to speak to Louise, who did our vinyl graphics for the Vibe Cube. We went through the designs for the icons (see earlier blog post) and will pop back tomorrow to pick them up. I then headed home to tidy up the front room, as for over 3 weeks its been full of Signpost stuff strewn about, so tidied up everything, vacuumed, dusted and made somewhere to sit down. But not yet, more work to be done....