two talks

I don't do a talk for ages, and then two come along at once.  Last night was an introduction to beekeeping for a local horticultural society.  I used to feel slightly sniffy, when I walked past their village hall, that they'd never booked me, and now they have.  I think they enjoyed hearing about bees and what beekeepers do, but don't think I made any converts, as several people commented that it sounded like hard work.  It is not any harder work than gardening, but it something that requires regular commitment in the spring and summer, so I suppose they had a point.  The drive home took nine minutes, which was fine by me, and helps average out the drive up to the villages north of Sudbury, where I seem to have found a useful niche.

I am Sudbury bound this evening, talking about gardening for bees rather than straight beekeeping. This is the talk with the new slides.  When I went through them yesterday I was pleased with the way the talk was shaping up.  It is so, so much easier giving lectures that you have written yourself, with images you have chosen to illustrate the points you want to make, or rather act as triggers for you to talk about them.  I'm not even sure that academic research shows that talking while also asking people to read slides is a good way of imparting information, but I'm hoping my audience will be able to multi-task to the extent of reading one phrase while I expand on it.  Honey bees have short tongues.  All our gardens add up.  That isn't so hard, is it?

Meanwhile the Systems Administrator has been grappling with technology, having bought an enormous multi-volume history of the Second World War on disc, and found that it would not run on the SA's laptop.  The problem appears to be not that the laptop is too old, but that it is too new.  Evidently most customers for the book don't yet have Windows 8.  The SA's unkind comment was that perhaps, if the history mainly sold to the university sector, they didn't.

Anyway, time to go.  Wish me luck.