long day

It's been a long day, so it's going to be a short blog.  Work was very quiet.  One person was on holiday, meaning that I was mostly stuck in the shop rather than working outside in the sunshine, but that was just as well really, since I forgot to take my hat.

The owner told us that one of the tills was playing up, and asked if I could ring the till service company at nine, and get them to come and fix it.  I duly rang them, and they asked what was wrong, suggesting helpfully that it might be something they could fix over the phone.  It was a noble idea, to try and save us a call-out charge, but suggested by somebody who hadn't seen the age of the tills.  I asked the owner how, exactly, the till had been misbehaving, but she didn't know, beyond the fact that one of the weekend shift had left a note saying there was something wrong with the electronics.  She told me to put some dummy transactions through it and find out what it was or wasn't doing, then till up to clear it and make a note for her that it had been a test, but when I tried to put in my first invented sale of £5.99 herbaceous, I discovered that one of the things the till was doing wrong was refusing to let you input anything at all, as it just beeped at me. I booked the cheaper option of an engineer calling sometime in the next couple of days, when he was in the area, but in fact somebody turned up a couple of hours later.  The problem turned out to be that solder from a previous repair had begun to break down with use and fill the inside of the till with what was effectively solder dust, which was causing short circuits.  The repair man fixed it, but left warning us that it would break down again sooner or later, and probably sooner.

To keep me busy while minding the till, the manager asked if I could weed and top dress the box hedging plants.  I tidied up the 2 litre pots first, then turned my attention to three plastic trays of young plants in 9cm pots.  (A 9cm pot is 9cm in diameter across the top.  Imagine a smallish coffee mug and you're in the right ballpark).  As I wheeled the trays into the shop, to work on them by the till, a gush of foetid water slopped out of them and on to the floor.  It smelt pretty rank, and I thought that was not what you wanted in a tea shop, a pungent background aroma of swamp.  Whoever designed the plastic trays had for reasons best known to themselves put the drainage holes about a centimetre above the bottom of the tray, so they collected water, and the box plants were sitting far too wet.

The dog attached herself to some visitors and walked right around the garden with them.  They were rather pleased.

After work came the beekeepers' committee meeting.  At least at this time of the year I have time to go home, change and clean my hands, and grab something to eat, which is easier than the summer meetings when I have to go straight there from a six o'clock finish.  It seems to be one step forwards and one back with those meetings.  The last one was unexpectedly productive, while tonight's wasn't.  We seemed to go round and round in circles.  Nobody lost their temper, but you could sense the collective energy ebbing away by the minute.

When I got home there was a telephone message from the Colchester Natural History Society's stag beetle expert, who sounded delighted with the beetle.  It was rather late to ring her back.