I have just got back from Romford. The Wives group, or mostly Widows nowadays as Lily told me, were kind and welcoming and enjoyed the woodland talk. I thought it would probably be a fun gig. The A12 behaved impeccably, and I went whistling straight through on the way there and coming home. In fact, the return trip took only just over an hour, which since I stay within the speed limit (better petrol consumption, and my opinion of my driving is about as unfavourable as is Damian Hill's assessment of the average British motorist) shows how close together the two ends of the county actually are. As drives go the A12 is never a pleasant prospect, because accidents are so frequent and the resulting queues so horrendous, but all that I saw today was one car that had been driven half way up the embankment just the far side of the M25. A police car was in attendance, diverting traffic out of the nearside lane, and a distraught young woman was standing on the verge and talking into a mobile phone.
I arrived at the venue with an enormous margin to spare, having allowed for delays, so if only I had a mobile enabled portable device instead of an antique Nokia (it has its advantages, like holding a charge for ages and generally working when required) I could have written my blog entry while sitting in the car park before the talk. But then you would not have heard now nice Lily and the ladies were. I'd taken something to read, in case the traffic was fine and I was early, so I used the time to get to the end of Gunter Grass's autobiography Peeling the Onion, which was serialised (in heavily truncated form) on R4 a while back. I bought it because I'd enjoyed the serialisation, and The Tin Drum, and The Flounder, which is about as much Gunter Grass as I've read, and was surprised to see from the jacket notes that he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, not because I didn't think he was a good enough writer, but because some other books I've tried to read by Nobel Prize winners have been quite stonkingly dull.
The ladies this evening seemed genuinely interested in the trees and woods, and said that they appreciated my enthusiasm. People do like other people who wholeheartedly like things, and so I do get told that fairly regularly, though at my last beekeeping talk I began to worry I might be overdoing it after one of the members asked me whether I talked a lot to children, I was so enthusiastic. I don't talk to children at all, or at least, not in groups. I don't have any children, and don't feel I know how to talk to children, and am not CRB checked, and find the whole idea that somebody meeting children once only, in a group setting, under the supervision of teachers, still has to be treated as a potential paedophile abuser deeply depressing, so I'm not going to get CRB checked. If I have to talk to individual children I talk to them like grownups, and that seems to work fine.
I could have written the blog entry before going out, but then I'd have had to come in from the garden even earlier. I felt a pang at having to pack up at quarter past four, alleviated ten minutes later when it began to rain hard enough that I've had been forced inside anyway (though I suppose I could have gone and skulked in the greenhouse, if I hadn't been going out). I am beginning to feel that I have to keep more time clear for gardening, and have just passed on an offer to tack a woodland charity talk on to the back of one somebody else is doing one afternoon about local woodland planting initiatives. The audience would only end up thoroughly confused, and it really didn't seem worthwhile losing half a day's gardening time to give a twenty minute presentation.
I can see that the Systems Administrator is approaching the final pages of To the Baltic with Bob, having previously recorded today's leg of the Tour de France and spent a nice evening watching it while I was out, so I shall now stop writing the blog entry. Good night folks.
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