mud

There was mud.  Really a lot of mud.  Small children and little dogs were in danger of disappearing.  I had to be towed out backwards.  That's it in a nutshell.

It was a pity, because the beekeepers' stand was looking really good this year.  After a panic a couple of weeks ago because there were so few entries for the honey show, members rallied around and we had a good display of jars of honey, ranging in colour from the palest off-white to strong brown, plus candles, cakes, photographs and children's poems.  We had honey, candles and cakes for sale, honey tasting (free), roll your own candles or colour in a wooden cut-out bee for the children, and the displays about beekeeping, bee diseases and things to do with wax were really well organised.  Many years ago when I started helping on the stand they tended to be a bit of a jumble of assorted equipment, but not any more.  The queen bee in the glass fronted observation hive obligingly laid an egg every now and then, though the bumble bees weren't very keen on coming out of their nest to forage in their perspex box of flowers, but that wasn't our fault.  It was a jolly good stand.

As Treasurer I'll know the truth on Tuesday morning, when I sit down with the opening and closing stock takes and the cash and see if I can make them bear any relationship to each other.  As we began to take down the displays I think I stopped someone just in time from moving jars of honey from the show bench to the boxes of unsold honey where they would have been counted in closing stock.

I saw my boss, one of my colleagues plus a former colleague, my old GP who is now retired and growing old disgracefully with great gusto, some neighbours from down the road and the boss's mother's gardener, who was exhibiting some ferrets.  I met some beekeepers I hadn't met before, and caught up with old acquaintances.  It was all very sociable.   I managed to find the organic lavender hand cream stall in the poultry tent (where else would you look for hand cream?) where they cunningly get a free stall by dint of taking some geese along, as they are members of the Colchester Poultry Club.  I saw the Suffolk Punches, which are rarer than giant pandas, and the goats, and the cattle.  I saw a pipistrelle bat and some owls, and had a useful talk with the Essex Wildlife Trust, which I am hoping will help us put up an owl box.  The woman I spoke to was initially very discouraging, even though they had leaflets about owl boxes out on the stand, but I think I eventually convinced her that I really did live in suitable owl country and was not simply delusional.  I saw some rather nice handmade tiles in what used to be the flower tent and is now full of smart shopping opportunities, and had an interesting conversation about tiles with the man on the stand.

Unfortunately awareness of the mud and the state of the car park hung over everything else all day.  The car park was a sea of mud.  Great ruts and waves and crescendos of it.  I even saw a Landrover get stuck.  It took me some time to find my car, staggering through the mud carrying my cash boxes, and then it was not obvious how you got a tow, other than to stand there looking needy, but once I'd stood pathetically by my car in light drizzle for about twenty minutes a tall man from the NHS stand took me in hand, flagged down a tractor, and a terribly polite youthful farmer towed me to the gate.  I was amazed to be off the site by half past five.  I really thought I was going to be there until gone nine.