you wait for ages and then

I should have been on a manual handling course at work yesterday morning, but I had something else on.  The course was arranged to teach us how to load large pots and bags of compost and so on into customer's cars without injuring ourselves.  Or at least I hope it did.  The neat pictures you see in training diagrams always show people lifting regular shaped parcels vertically up from the ground (keep your back straight and lift with your knees) but most things you need to lift in real life are irregular shapes, and often with protruding lumps, or slippery.  I should have liked to go on the course, but it would have turned the day into a mad rush, and I didn't want that.  The boss has promised to tell those of us who weren't there what was said, though I don't know how much benefit you get receiving these things second hand.  I'll have to hope that the Pilates has taught me sufficient awareness of how I'm using my body to prevent me injure myself lifting.  That and my cheerful willingness to refuse to lift anything I think I can't manage.

I would have liked to go to a study day that the Suffolk Agricultural Association was running yesterday on historic gardens, but I had something else on.  There was a pile of leaflets at work, and I'd got as far as bringing one home and getting quite excited about it, before realising that I couldn't go.  One of the speakers was Kim Wilkie, a landscape designer who recently did a splendid black reflective pool for the gardens at Boughton House, which I hope to visit one of these years.  I think they had the historian Caroline Homes as well, and it promised to be a good day.  One of my colleagues was going.

However, I was already committed, to do a talk on trees in Billericay starting at 2.30pm.  That's the second talk I've done in Billericay this autumn.  They must like trees down there.  I'd been through the town as well when I went to the beekeeping conference last month, so could visualise the point where according to my instructions I had to fork left, and made it to the church hall car park without getting lost.  They were a nice group of people, and seemed to enjoy the talk, and made a generous donation to the charity, though I realised when I got home that the cheque only had one signature on it.  Either they have lax financial controls, or the bank is going to refuse the cheque, but I'll post it off to the charity and let them deal with that one.

It's a pity the way that nothing happens for days, and then three events come along at once, but there you go.  Today I'm going to the Royal Academy, which should have happened a month ago, but that's another story.