I called in on the beekeepers' Membership Secretary on the way home last night, so that she could countersign the cheques for everyone who sold honey and cakes at the Show, and found her in full Kiplingesque mode, crawling over the paving in her front garden grubbing weeds out from between the cracks with a knife. She gave me a punnet of red currants and a cucumber, so I could have risked another box of eggs. Rather unfairly, there isn't a cheque for her yet in respect of her flapjack, because neither of us knew whether it was acceptable for her to sign a cheque made payable to herself.
The Systems Administrator returned home with a copy of the book, and having watched most of a day's cricket, grief at England's loss tempered by the fact that the SA had put ten quid on South Africa to win last week at fifteen to one. I had a quick look through the book, and it is very impressive, with lots of pictures as well as some serious analysis of why maps have developed as they have, and what makes them easy or difficult to use. I saw it when it was in proof form, but that's not the same. Maxwell J. Roberts is the name to look out for, Underground Maps Unravelled. Track down your copy now, the initial print run was only 2,000.
This morning I had some more beekeeping business to attend to, since the Show Secretary gave me a tin containing the entry fees, which I had to pay into the bank. I hadn't focussed on the fact that there were any entry fees, as I've never entered anything in the honey show, and I optimistically thought I'd be able to make a transfer from my account to the beekeepers' one, until I looked in the tin and discovered that three people had paid by cheque, total value of the three cheques £12.50. If it had been my money I'd have left it for weeks, or months, until I was going near a bank, but since it was other people's I thought I'd better be a diligent Treasurer and pay it in, so I had to trundle down to Brightlingsea, which has the nearest branch of the beekeepers' bank and free parking. Long live the day when everyone uses something like Paypal, or mobile phone transfers, if they aren't using cash, and saves me the faff of making a ten mile round trip to pay cheques in over the counter. There were two windows open, and both people ahead of me seemed to be trying to do something complicated, while a queue built up behind me. It did occur to me that, disgraceful as the many mis-selling scandals are, they are depressingly predictable and likely to recur while people like me, and the beekeepers, expect our banks to maintain premises and employ tellers and administer our current accounts and process cheques for three pounds, all free and gratis.
After lunch I went to the dump, working on the theory that it would be quiet then, which it was, and the staff were kind and helpful about emptying my bags of weeds into the crusher. Five enormous three-bladed wind turbines have sprung up rather close to the north-west corner of Clacton. It has now been officially admitted that actually, yes, they do reduce nearby property values, sometimes rather substantially, but maybe the official view is that as it's only Clacton it doesn't count. If they were that close to Dedham it would be another thing entirely.
Then I had my own Kiplingesque afternoon, since a garden is not made by singing Oh how beautiful and sitting in the shade. Sitting in the shade was exactly what the SA did, but the SA is not such a fanatical gardener as I.
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