I am proud to say my very first solar power project is a success.  A few domestic items in my home such as my bedside lamp and my electric fan are now running from a battery that is charged from solar power collected during the day.

The bulk of the work was building the actual unit to sit in the garden and this is wear I saved the money.  It has to be weather proof and transparent.  The unit is essentially a glass-roofed wooden box, varnished and mounted at a 45 degree angle to the sky, facing south.  Contructed from scrap material the photovoltaic plates (purchased earlier this year at Sunrise Celebration) are glued to the underside of the glass and wired in parallel.  I make it sound easy here but trust me, I made a fair few mistakes.

Now I know I can do this, my next step will be to scale-up the project.  The unit pictured above generates just over 12 watts of power in full sunshine but as you can see I could easily have used a bigger piece of glass and fitted more plates into the space.  This was afterall, just an exercise in self teaching.

The total cost of the project was about £40.

Here are a few pictures of what I produced for the sale....

Charlotte modelling "FIGHT" design on baby blue knitwear - £22 (still available)

Charlotte modelling "FIGHT" on sexy pink knitwear - £22 (SOLD)

Charlotte modelling "Cheeky Face-rise" on white oversized tee - £10 (still available)

If you were in town on Saturday you may have seen us pushing our trolley round town, hotly pursued by 2 police man and a handful of obese shop security guards with nothing better to do than follow us.

Felix with the trolley on the high street.

Trolley in the kitchen ready to roll.  Baby pigeon tee (on right of image) still available - £14

If you are interested in buying any of the garments give me a shout at martin [at] martinjoiner.co.uk  All clothes are top quality, carbon neutral garments printed with acrylic ink.

This Saturday and Sunday (that's 17th and 18th July) between 11am and 6pm you will be able to go to Felix's house on Alma Street in Taunton (a short walk from town centre) and look through a wide range of clothing for sale at incredible prices.

On offer will be original t-shirts and jumpers produced by local artists at prices from about £5 up to £15. I have produced a few t-shirts myself including the "Fight" design above and there's also stuff from FRA (Fresh Rotten Apples), Felix himself and many more people who I will add to this blog when I've got confirmation later tonight.

As well as the new clothing there will also be a large selection of second hand and vintage clothing from Charlotte and friend's personal wardrobes.  They all need clearing out before they move back to London permanently never to be seen in Taunton again.

THIS SALE WILL ONLY EVER HAPPEN ONCE.  Grab this opportunity to get unique art style threads at very affordable high street prices!  It's got to be worth popping by!

Down tempo world music

• Ibrahim Maalouf - Hashish
• Fever Ray – Concrete Walls
• Aphex Twin – Ageispolis
• Pantha Du Prince - Bohemian Forest
• Faithless – I hope

Minimal dupsteppy slash electronica type stuff

• Kid Cudi – Day n Nite (Not the crookers remix)
• Various Productions - Hater (Music video by Kandle)
• JJ N° 2 - Ecstacy
• Burial - Near Dark
• Delphic - Doubt (Ramadanman Refix)

Acoustic loveliness

• The xx - Crystalised
• Tunng – Hustle
• The Moldy Peaches – Anyone Else But You
• Sigur Ross – Staralfur
• Slacker – New Days Dawn

If you only have time to click on one of these videos I thoroughly recommend looking at Various Productions - Hater.

This week I performed my poetry to a crowd of poets.  Having previously only performed to general open mic audiences this event was my first poetry specific open mic.  I am pleased to say I really enjoyed the other performers and they really enjoyed me.  I read The Adventure a poem about having a night out and avoiding the crap to create an enjoyable evening, and my first and only love poem, Junk Food Date.  I will definitely be heading back to the Pheonix on September 15th for the next "Taking the Mic" where I'm gonna crack out my controversial crowd pleaser, Pinnochiophile.

The event is hosted by Liv Torc who also happened to be plugging her new book, a professionally printed book with glossy cover and illustrations.  Lately I've seen a lot of poets plugging their books at open mics which is interesting as I am currently thinking about self-publishing my poems.  Most advertise prices of £2 or £3 for books and don't seem to be selling them.  Does poetry simply not sell?

But looking closely, most of the self published 'books' were just basic vehicles for the words.  Black and white photocopies stapled together and badly folded.  Most people would rather read from a computer screen than another sheet of A4 copy paper.  They had all the charm and beauty of a school newsletter.  In contrast, my book is going to be a work of art.  A tactile and sculptural binding of leaves printed in traditional mediums.  A hard cover and spine will firmly hug a neat stack of high quality archive paper.  Each book will smell of fresh plywood and ink, be numbered as a limited edition and will have been handmade by myself.  All this and it will still retail for about a fiver!

I re-potted this year's chilli crop into a brand new autopot twinpot system with 47 litre tank today.  The clever Australian designed system keeps the pots sitting in a constant shallow pool of nutrient solution, never allowing them to flood or dry out.  All gravity operated and completely reusable the tank is filled weekly with water and liquid fertiliser.  Notice the bottle of Growth Technology Chilli Focus liquid nutrient in the background.  This stuff is the mutts nuts and it's made right here in Taunton.

If you are wondering these are Cayenne Peppers seeded from last year's crop and these 2 plants will fruit around late July and be continually harvested through until October when it gets too cold.  They will produce enough fruit to keep me and my friends in supply of culinary kick for the next year.

Hard to choose an image that sums up Sunrise Celebration 2010.  But to sum up the element that was most inspiring to me personally is slightly easier.  The fantastic British inventors who are producing tomorrow's energy solutions in their sheds were fantastic.  To see more visit http://www.ianmoore.org/

The poetry stage was a success.  I painted a sign that sat on the stage all day advertising start times of 12 and 3 so the audience could gather in preparation.  This was in contrast to last years set up of relying on 'chance'.  People who were interested in poetry could choose to be there at the fixed start times.

Unfortunately my brain had done it's usual trick of missing a hugely important and obvious fact.  I had failed to notice that the day was called Family Fun day and not Inappropriate adult material poetry day.  I quickly introduced sensorship of the swearwords but left all subject matter the same.  I avoided reading Pinnochiophile and Honey Drug.

The performers were myself, Dave Marrow and Rupert Green.  We performed in a rally, each stepping up to perform a poem in turn.  So the audience were treated to a lively and constantly changing array of styles that went on for a solid 30 minutes.

Main lesson learnt from this is that I need to write some material for children.  I started my poetry by writing gritty social commentary.  I then tackled love poems.  I can do children's stories next.  I want to keep my adult stuff for adult situations and my family stuff for family events from now on.  Where's my pen?