Tuesday 1 July 2014

late post

This will be a brief blog post, because I have just got in from doing a woodland charity talk, and there wasn't time before.  Or at least, to be strictly accurate, there was exactly as much time as there is in any other day, but I didn't use any of it to post.

Traffic around here is so unpredictable.  I left so as to give a generous margin for delays, as is prudent with any journey involving the A12 (there were hold-ups this morning due to a breakdown at Chelmsford, and everything ran incredibly smoothly.  Thirty four minutes by the Skoda's trip computer and I had reached the signposts for the Witham exit.  It can take longer than that to get to the top of Clingoe Hill, this side of Colchester, on a bad day.

So I would have had time to write the post while waiting in the car, if I had taken my laptop, now it has a battery which actually holds a charge, and a dongle, which I could have borrowed from the Systems Administrator.  But I didn't, and read a book instead.

I was talking to a WI group.  They were nice friendly people, but keen on doing everything properly, though they did not sing Jerusalem, which I was rather sorry about.  There was some formal business to get through before I did my piece, which I was expecting, but afterwards I spent too long chatting over tea and home made Madeira cake, and so had not packed up my equipment and made a graceful exit before the meeting resumed.  After that I was trapped for the duration, since I was seated diagonally opposite to the door, and could not very well stomp about collapsing my projector table and tramping to and fro in front of the table where the chairman and secretary were sitting, and while people were addressing the meeting.

The report on a national forum of some sort by the group's delegate did have a sort of surreal quality, as an address by Andrew Motion on his career as a poet was followed by the presentation of a trophy for a winning fruit cake.  Maybe one of these years I'll join a WI, though I'd better see how I get on with Plant Heritage first.

Somebody wanted my contact details for a couple of other groups she belongs to, which is always an encouraging sign.  I'm doing the same talk again tomorrow afternoon, so I'll be nicely rehearsed for that one, and won't even need to unpack the car in the meantime, apart from collecting some fresh twigs, since tonight's specimens will have wilted by then.

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