The illuminated road signs in Colchester have stopped telling us to plan our journey during the Olympics, which is all that they've said since May, irrespective of whatever hold-ups and delays there were on the A12 or the A120, and are now warning us that there is heavy traffic at Chelmsford due to an event at Hylands. This is the V festival. The Systems Administrator's train out of London yesterday after the cricket was standing room only, because it was packed with young people carrying rucksacks. They were discussing A level results and very Wow that's like totally amazing. The SA thought it was odd to see them there, given that train didn't stop at Chelmsford, but most of them were too busy texting or talking to notice as they sailed through. By Colchester some were looking confused, though the SA heard one girl confidently telling her friends that it was, like, OK, because Chelmsford was the next stop after Colchester.
I converted £25 of my Tesco clubcard points into double points, and spent them all on cat food. I don't suppose that's what we're meant to do. I expect the Tesco marketing department are hoping I'll convert them into vouchers for clothing, or electrical goods, and then buy something I wouldn't have bought otherwise, but we always need cat food. You have to queue at the information desk to swap them for vouchers, which was staffed by a young girl with either a summer cold or bad hay fever, who said that I could convert that one, indicating the voucher for ten pounds. I asked why I couldn't convert the other two vouchers, for £2.50 and £9.50, and she said, between sneezes, that the converted vouchers had to be for multiples of five pounds, but that she could give me another £20 worth of cat food tokens and put the other two pounds back on my account. Which rather begs the question why Tesco sent me vouchers for £9.50 and £2.50 rather than £10 and £2. Fifty pounds buys quite a lot of cat food, and should keep us going for a while.
I returned home to a flashing light on the answering machine, which turned out to be a message from the bookings organiser of the garden club I'm talking to next Tuesday, saying that her Chairman had been asking her how I was going to achieve 'masses of colour' using plants rather than slides, and asking if I could ring to discuss it. I thought it was a bit late for that now. They knew when they booked me that I talk using live plants, not photographs. Was she expecting me to offer to put together a slide display before Tuesday? Or suggest a different topic that didn't require plants? I could talk about beekeeping or the woodland charity if she prefers. Or did she think that the plant centre would be full of masses of colour, but I might not think to bring it with me unless reminded? Or that the quality of my presentation would be improved by letting me know in advance that she didn't have faith in me, and rather wished she hadn't booked me?
When she rang making the original enquiry and we got to the point in the conversation where I told her what my fee was, she told me that I charged the same as my manager, and suggested I might like to offer to do it for less. I wasn't sure that my manager would be thrilled to know that his garden club ladies were disclosing his fee rate to his staff, but seeing that we were both doing talks freelance and not as representatives of the plant centre, I didn't see why I should be expected to undercut him, and politely declined. Nine times out of ten, if you are going to get trouble, it will be from a posh lady with a purring voice.
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