mission accomplished

I woke up this morning and hadn't lost my voice or developed a raging temperature in the night, so I set off to to do the talk, armed with my projector and trug of twigs, and a precautionary box of hankies.   It was a clear, glittering morning, and the thermometer in the car registered -0.5 C for most of the journey.  The preliminary signs when I arrived were not entirely encouraging.  My hosts had thought to save me a parking space near the door, which made unloading easier.  You'd be surprised how club organisers don't always think of that.  Somebody wanted to help me carry things inside, which was kind, but I find faintly nerve-racking, ever since the time I slammed the car door shut on somebody's thumb who was trying to help.  Inside the hall I discovered, firstly, that the temperature was not a great deal warmer than it had been outside, and secondly, that the seating for my talk was in the form of chairs set around tables already set with wine glasses and flowers.  Lunch evidently followed the formal proceedings, and I was not going to be able to persuade everyone to sit in the front three rows where they might be able to hear me if my voice packed up.

I apologised to my host that I had a cold, and she offered the use of a microphone, remarking that some of their speakers didn't like using it.  I'd rather not use one if it can be avoided, especially since there is never any opportunity for a sound check before the talk, so you only find out if it is working after you've started.  Also it was a hand held mike, not a lapel clip on, and I wave my arms around when I talk, particularly when illustrating the growth habits of different trees, and need to brandish twigs at the audience.  It became apparent in the first two minutes of my introduction that this sound system wasn't set up right, as I tried holding the mike at various distances from my mouth but all were greeted with cries of 'we can't hear you', so I had to revert to unamplified (but hands-free) and try very hard to project to the back of the hall.  By the time all the members had filed in and sat themselves at tables there must have been sixty of them, so it was a case of having to reach to the back.

After that it went fine, and people said afterwards that they'd enjoyed it, and someone asked for my details for a 2013 programme she was putting together, so that was OK.  Once we'd done the Q&A (not many Qs) it became clear that they wanted me out of the way, and that I wasn't going to get one of the glasses of fruit juice that were circulating at the other end of the room, so I packed up my stuff.  Somebody unplugged my projector before it was ready, since the bulb gets very hot during use and you are supposed to switch off the beam and leave it until the fan has finished cooling the machine before turning the power off.  I wish people wouldn't fiddle with other people's equipment.  I suppose whoever it was was trying to be helpful, or worried about somebody tripping over the cable.  Their donation to the charity came to approx 50p a head given the size of audience.  I leave you to decide for yourself if that is generous.  Anyway, I was mightily relieved to have done my duty and to be safely out of there.

In the porch at home was an amazingly tall box, which turned out to contain my Ashwood Nurseries hellebores.  The plants only came a quarter of the way up the box, and I can only presume that they had run out of shorter boxes.  The pots were very ingeniously anchored to the bottom of the box with some sort of transparent sticky tape, and it took me a long time standing out in the cold of the porch and cursing slightly to cut them free with a pair of kitchen scissors, working at absolute arms length (I am a short person with correspondingly little arms).  My complaint about the difficulty of unpacking them is my only grumble.  The plants themselves are absolutely sublime.  Three of the hellebores are in flower (only one flower stem each, but I can see what I'm getting), and are chunky plants in 3L deep pots.  The other two (which were cheaper) are younger and smaller plants that won't flower this year, but their leaves look wonderfully healthy.

I was especially relieved to get the black hellebore, since when I looked at their website again later on the day I placed the order, it had changed from 'Add to wheelbarrow' to say 'Out of stock' against the black one. Until the parcel arrived and I unwrapped it I wasn't 100% confident whether I had indeed bagged one of the last black flowered plants they had for this season, or whether I would find on the packing note that they were out of stock and my credit card had been refunded.  The black hellebore is of course very dark purple, as most black flowers are, but it has the most marvellous dusky bloom upon it, like a very lux Fritillaria persica 'Adiyaman', and a formal boss of yellow stamens within like a Tudor carving.  The young leaves on the flower stalk are also purple, and it promises to be a glamorous addition to the garden.  It is true that dark flowers don't show up well from a distance, but never mind that.  This is a secret beauty, something to come upon suddenly as you walk round.

Ashwood included care leaflets for the hellebores, and the three little Hepatica that I bought as well.  They recommend cutting off all old hellebore leaves in December, to prevent any leaf disease being carried on to the new season's emerging leaves in January.  Opinions on whether to remove old leaves as a matter of routine vary, with some growers saying it is better to leave them unless they look tatty or diseased, as they help strengthen the plant.  My existing plants have been suffering from a degree of leaf spot in recent years, so maybe I'll go over to the December cutting-off method and see how that does for me.  It might also be that removing the leaves to expose their burrows to predators will help deter the rodents currently living among the hellebores in the ditch bed.

In my mailbox at home was a message from Transport for London giving me tips on how I can reduce the delays I experience travelling during the Olympics.  I already have a plan for that, which is not to go anywhere near the place for the duration.

Addendum  In a way I got off quite lightly, doing the talk.  My original idea was to go to a lunchtime concert at LSO St Lukes today where they were playing (I think) Brahms' clarinet quintet.  At any rate, it was something I wanted to hear, but then I discovered I was already booked to do something today, and the former colleague I'd suggested the trip to didn't reply to my e-mails anyway.  A lucky escape, as it turns out.