Speaking as a non-Christian, it seems a waste to have the bank holiday weekend so early in the year. Today was raw cold at work, the sort of dank, chill air that grips the back of your throat and makes you think you must be going down with another cold. My nose dripped all day as if it had a faulty washer, until I had to substitute a paper hand towel for my original hanky. Customers, shrouded in layers of clothing, fumbled with numb fingers for their credit cards and money. Oh, the joys of an English spring.
The cold weather disagreed with the back door in the shop, which failed to open half the time even when somebody was standing inside it. We had to scuttle over from the till to let people out, and the sparky girl who looks after the tea room did sterling service nipping to the end of the kitchen and pressing the door open button. A few customers managed to find the button for themselves, so perhaps they had been watching the people ahead of them in the queue, but most stood baffled, waiting to be let out. We tried leaving the door permanently open some of the time, but that made it jolly cold for whoever was standing at the till, not to mention those sitting down in the tea room. When all of the people in your cafe are still wearing their coats I think you have an issue. The boss is going to have to fix the door.
My job for the day was to ring people to let them know that plants they had been waiting for had arrived. It always feels rather awkward calling someone to try and interest them in buying a plant they asked for this time last year, and a secret relief if for the most long-standing queries you just get an answer machine, but amazingly some people did still want their plants. It takes a certain consistency of purpose to ask for Alstroemeria 'Rhubarb and Custard' in May 2011, and not have found something else to fill the space before April 2012. Some people had found the plants elsewhere in the meantime, or been in recently and bought them without getting their names crossed off the list, but that's only to be expected. Some sounded pleased and grateful to be rung, as well as thoroughly surprised, and none were hostile.
I came home via the house of the beekeepers' Membership Secretary, and so got one of the required signatures for my bank mandate change form. She raised the question of whether she and the Chairman could jointly sign a cheque, both being signatories and two signatures being required, or whether one of the signatures had to be that of the Treasurer. If that's the case then I need to track down the Chairman as a matter of urgency, since until we've got the mandate changed we can't pay anybody for anything, and we have a hefty bill outstanding for wax for the recent candle making day. Another question for the outgoing Treasurer.
I got home to find the Systems Administrator sitting in a deckchair in the front garden, wearing a thermal hat and looking cold, staring at the chickens who were eating grass. I asked whether it wasn't rather cold to let them out, and was told it had been warmer when the sun was out. The trouble is that the chickens know exactly how to play on the SA's heart strings, rushing up to the door of the run squawking and looking eager and anticipatory when the SA goes near them from mid-afternoon onwards.
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