committees

This will be a very quick blog post.  I've just got in from a beekeepers' committee meeting, it's nine minutes to ten, and like The Sweeney I haven't had any dinner.  Nor has the Systems Administrator, who got in before I did after a day at the cricket.  I left a corn beef hash in the simmer oven before going out, what seems like a long time ago, so it should be done by now, though the SA didn't smell it on getting home, and I'm bound to admit that I can't smell it either.

I didn't think it was going to be a long meeting, but it's amazing how committees can go on sometimes.  This evening was  full two hours, as was the music society on Tuesday.  The music society managed to get through an autopsy of the jazz supper, a review of the accounts of the last financial year, and a preview of the whole of the 2014-15 concert programme, so did pretty well to cover it all in only a couple of hours.  The beekeepers, on the other hand, should have been straightforward, what we thought of our efforts at the Tendring Show, where were we going for our Christmas meal, er, that's it.  The Secretary and Membership Secretary were both unable to attend, as was the Training Officer.

Not so.  Maybe it is an immutable law of nature that meetings expand to fill the time available, and given a comfortable conservatory and choice of two home made cakes, even a three quarters strength committee will settle in for the duration.  The new Show Secretary wanted to defer discussion of the show until she had had time to digest the feedback from volunteers and her own thoughts, and the whole committee was there, but we somehow ended up discussing the show anyway.  And the terms and conditions of hiring equipment out to members, and where it should be stored.  And how old our supply of candle moulds was, and why some of them had funny interior finishes.  And whether committee members were willing to have their photographs on the divisional website, which would be accessible to anybody via Google search even though that section of the website was members only if you went in via the home page of the site.

And whether to buy some child sized bee suits for loan to children interested in seeing bees, and for use at school talks.  And having a register of members willing and able to do talks and who should coordinate it.  And whether we were supposed to be mailing out a list of the rules of the Essex Beekeepers to new members, and if so whether we had been, and where could we get a supply of new leaflets with the rules on them.  And whether we had mistakenly paid a subscription for somebody who had not in fact renewed their membership.

And so on and so forth for two hours.  And that is fifteen minutes of blogging, and I really need that corn beef hash now.