I went for a haircut this morning, and discovered that my regular hairdresser, who sounded perfectly fine when I spoke to her first thing yesterday to make the appointment, was off sick. Somebody else was available to cut my hair instead, an offer I accepted with a slightly sinking feeling. The alternative was to depart in a huff because they hadn't rung me (they'd lost my phone number), but by that stage I was already in Colchester, and didn't really want to have to make a repeat trip, besides which, I badly needed a haircut. My hair, which last week didn't look too bad at all, had suddenly reached the 'For Goodness sake why don't you get a haircut, your head looks like a chrysanthemum' stage, and I'm due to do my talk to the beekeepers tomorrow evening on the topic of Plants for Bees.
Most people would probably rather have their hair cut by somebody they know. Mine is naturally curly and very thick, and grows in different random directions over my head, as far as I can tell. Hairdressers who haven't got the measure of it can be reduced to panic. The reason I switched to my current hairdresser is that an assistant at my previous place, who once cut my hair when the boss was ill, was so confounded by the way that the hair grew on the back of my head that she practically gave me a tonsure. I'm not one for refusing to leave the house because it's a bad hair day, but even I thought that was dire.
I explained to the strange hairdresser what I wanted, which is always tricky, since I don't know what I want except that I want it to be shorter and look nice. I indicated the fluffy bits that were sticking out around the sides of my head and suggested that they shouldn't be there, and asked hopefully if she could channel my inner Judi Dench. Since I also expressed my unwillingness to use any styling products, and explained that the haircut would frequently be out in the rain, or have a hat pulled down over it, this was probably a tall order. What I really need is a haircut that will survive being dragged through a bush backwards, since that is what's going to happen to it. She did quite a good job, in the circumstances.
With the Systems Administrator's help I have got a working set of slides for the talk, which is a relief. Two days before we were due to go on holiday we had a dummy test presentation, compiled by the SA, which we couldn't try out because the projector wasn't working. Not being a keen photographer I didn't have a library of my own photos ready to use, so while we were on holiday I spent some time searching on Google images for photos of my desired plants, preferably with bees on them, but crucially the right size and not watermarked or otherwise protected, and saving them. There turned out to be many more of these available than the SA had been expecting. However, it niggled at the back of my mind that with a week to go to the talk, my equipment wasn't working, and I didn't have any proof that our method of compiling the presentation would work either.
When we got back, a new lamp had arrived for the projector which once installed threw out the usual beam of light, thus proving that the problem was with the lamp and not with the machine. That was good news, but then it turned out that if you save Google images photographs as JPEGs on your computer, rather than copying them straight into Powerpoint, they won't copy over to Powerpoint, so images I'd collected were no use and I had to start again. Fortunately there really are lots of unrestricted pictures available, and it doesn't take long to search. Once I'd got as many Powerpoint slides as I wanted, with titles (!) and only one death by Powerpoint slide with bullet points, the SA taught me how to save the whole lot as JPEGs. I renamed them as Slide101, Slide102 and so on in my chosen running order, then after lunch we put them in the machine and they worked. They came up in the right order, and the photographs of flowers still looked pretty good, rather than being transformed into Impressionist blurs. Problem sorted, with over 24 hours to spare.
I feel quite bullish that I now know how to assemble a slide show from scratch. It seems like the sort of skill that should come in useful some time. It is marvellous that so many people post up useful photographs of plants on the internet, freely available for other people to use. All I have to do now is find the venue (I've never been there before) and hope that it is all right on the night.
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