Once I drove out into the lanes this morning it turned out to be foggier than I'd realised. thick patches that swelled off the fields. It stayed that way until mid morning, and at one point I could see moisture droplets forming, not even drizzle falling out of the sky but water condensing out of the air in front of me. Then suddenly the sun broke through. I came out of a meeting about the website and a tree planting promotion to tie in with the Queen's Jubilee, and it was a beautiful day, with the sort of sky the word cerulean was invented for.
The owner had the very sensible idea of taking part in the national tree planting campaign for next year's royal Jubilee. She knows a firm that makes plaques, and we have trees, ties and stakes, so we can offer our customers a package. It turns out that patriotically celebrating your monarch's sixty years on the throne is a far from spontaneous, joyous action, and that there is a set of official rules and guidelines running to several sheets of A4, covering what commemorative objects are deemed suitable by the Palace, and giving suitable approved phrases to use. However, it looked as though we could use an off-the-shelf set of words for the plaques (if you want to dedicate a building or suchlike it seems you need to apply for an official permit).
A very cute guide dog puppy in training came into the plant centre, and my colleague and I politely refrained from distracting it, because we both knew you are not supposed to distract working dogs. It turned out that the puppy had developed a dislike of going out, and we were invited to make a fuss of her as part of the puppy walkers' project to convince her that life outside the reassurance of home was fun. She was a five and a half month old golden retriever, and they have amazingly soft hair at that age.
I had arranged to leave work half an hour early, so that I could get to the concert in the church. It seemed a shame to miss the first half when I have a season ticket, and given that I was set to spend the interval pouring out tea and washing cups. It took ten minutes scrubbing away in the slightly basic facilities of our staffroom to get my hands to a state where anybody sensible would want them near a teacup. I thought as I signed off my time sheet half an hour early that I hadn't planned this properly. I should have offered to stay late at some point so that I could take the extra time in lieu this afternoon. Oh well, I didn't.
This afternoon's concert was by a brass quintet, whose playing was colourful and repertoire not entirely my sort of thing. They chatted a fair amount between numbers, and the consensus from the other committee meetings was that less chat (there were some fairly weak jokes) would have been welcome. The brass quintet do a fair bit of work in schools, and I wondered if they were slightly stuck in talking to schoolchildren mode. The performance of the opening to Handel's Water Music on a collection of watering cans and kettles, while amusing, seemed aimed at the school market. I did learn something, which is that the tubes in trumpets and trombones are the same diameter most of the way down (trombones logically must be, they slide), whereas in flugelhorns and French horns the tube is flared all the way down. I never knew that.
The large thorn worked its way out of my knuckle last night, though a small one that I think had been there for ages without causing trouble is now on the move. It's good that the potential source of infection is gone, though I suppose having started on the antibiotics I have to finish the course for the greater good. The residual inflammation is spectacular and painful. Tomorrow's Cardunculus may be a short one, depending on whether by then I am reduced to typing with one hand.
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