another woodland talk

I have just done another woodland charity talk, this time at the AGM of a local horticultural society.  They are a friendly group, whose activities mainly revolve around their spring, summer and harvest shows, and flower displays for their local church, so the AGM lecture is the only one they have during the year.  I was invited once before, about four years ago, to talk about seasonal planting, and I gather that at last year's meeting they had a park ranger from Colchester to speak to them.

The formal proceedings were wrapped up admirably quickly, in twenty-five minutes, which beat last year's record by five minutes according to the minutes of last year's meeting.  These were ceremoniously read out and signed, though as the chairman said who could remember what had happened a year ago.  The treasurer's report covered all the relevant facts while fitting on one side of A4 paper, and I paid careful attention, given that I'll have to present my own report at the beekeepers' AGM, which will be the first time I have ever been to it.  Normally I try to avoid AGMs, on the grounds if you are an ordinary member with no particular gripe about how your club is run and no intention of standing for office then they fail the test that meetings should be either useful or entertaining (millions of hours of human time would be freed up every year if all organisations adhered scrupulously to that rule).

After the AGM there were home-made cakes and sandwiches, which were very good, but I had to partake abstemiously since trying to talk to a room full of people when your own stomach is full of cheese nibbles and fruit cake is not a good idea.  There was a good turn out, and the annexe to the village hall was nearly full, which goes to show that if you want people to come to a potentially boring meeting then bribing them with food is the way ahead.

I had to set up my equipment to discover the correct position for the projector table and check the wall socket worked before the AGM started, and then move the projector table out of the way so that it didn't obscure the officers of the society from half the audience.  I was a little on edge about having to switch the projector off and move everything then set up again during the refreshment break, since I'd have rather got it all sorted out before the room filled up, and sat there knowing that it was ready to go and I had only to un-blank the image to begin.  However, I managed to put the stand back where it had been before, and not drop anything or press the wrong buttons on the remote control, and it was fine.  I am not a mechanically adept person, especially under time pressure or when people are watching me, so my anxiety was not entirely unjustified.

The fact that I am not good with machinery was demonstrated while I was setting up, since a large and kindly man with long hair and sandals, observing me adjusting the angle of the projector by jamming a sailing magazine under the back edge, observed that my projector stand had a tilt adjuster, and wound a screw underneath it, which had the effect of elevating the back of the stand and so lowering the height of the image.  I have been using that stand for around a decade and never grasped the point of that screw, but was quite happy to be shown.  When you know that you are not good at getting equipment to work, you take all the help you are offered, if you are sensible, provided it is genuine help from somebody who knows what they're doing, and not just somebody being bossy (I had one of those the other day at work, who was very keen to supervise while I loaded trees into her horse box, despite the fact that she had no prior experience of the task and much less practice at loading trees into vehicles than I had.  Her view on how to load the trees turned out to be wrong, and it was the manager who worked out the best way of fitting them in).

After my talk there was a raffle, for which we had all been given one free raffle ticket.  The prizes were boxes of polyanthus, for which there is a class at the spring show.  I won a box, though I think I am excused from entering the show.  Also I discovered that somebody has started putting concerts on in their village church, so left my details to put on the mailing list for details of those, and with a couple of people who thought they might want a talk for other clubs they belonged to.  It was a nice evening.  It is remarkable what can be achieved with some goodwill, some twigs and a projector, and some cake.