all go

It's been all go today.  I sat down after breakfast to tackle the next stage of the beekeepers' accounts for the Tendring Show.  I didn't get very far, because I haven't yet had claims for most of the expenses.  However, it was a great relief when the amount that we should theoretically have raised on sales of honey, candles, and cakes, based on the records of stock brought to the show for sale and left over at the end, tallied almost exactly with the amount of money taken on the day.  Actual cash receipts were six pounds and something more than nominal sales, which makes perfect sense since someone bringing biscuits which turned out to be ineligible for the baking competition (for reasons which escaped me) donated them to be sold in aid of divisional funds.

The phone rang half way through the accounts, and it was a beekeeping friend I'd sounded out at the show in the hopes that he knew someone who could sell me some small straw bales to put in the chicken run.  In the winter the ground gets very muddy, which is not good for them, so I throw down straw, which is periodically raked out and added to the compost heap.  A small bale is what you might think of as a normal bale of hay, and not many farmers do them nowadays.  If you look at a field being cut by a modern combine you'll generally see those enormous rolls of straw laid out across the landscape.  Plus, we don't really know any farmers, apart from Dave the lettuce farmer. Farming seems a mysteriously closed world.  We used to get small bales from a friend's partner, who was a farmer, but they split up, leaving me without a regular source.  My beekeeping friend not merely had six for us, but proposed delivering them that very morning, in about half an hour.

Half an hour stretched into more like an hour and a quarter, so the bales were left dumped on the end of the concrete parking area as I steamed off to Colchester for a haircut and to go to the bank, while the Systems Administrator was London bound for a curry with old work mates.  While in Colchester I paid in the outstanding cheque I had from the show, meaning that I was temporarily up to date with my accounts.

Dashing home again for lunch, it seemed a terrible waste to leave the bales standing outside, just in case we got one of the thundery showers they were talking about on the weather forecast.  Those bales need to see us through the winter, with the ones left over from my friend's farming romance, and I didn't want them going mouldy in storage.  Our stock of straw lives under a lean-to between two sheds, and it was an effort heaving the bales to the top of the stack.  I'd arranged to meet a friend for coffee and a catch-up at the Chatto Gardens at two, reasoning that as I'd have been at the hairdressers that morning, I would be less grubby and sweaty today than any other day of the week, so it was a slight blow to be rushing up to the gardens at a minute past the hour, aware that I had worked up a sweat, and probably had bits of straw stuck to me somewhere.

Dashing home again for the cats' tea and to check that the feeder hole of the chickens' water supply hadn't blocked up again, there was just time to put the recycling out for tomorrow, before going round to my parents' house for an early supper with the grandchildren.  Or at least, I presume that's when small children normally eat, but it was an early supper for me.  Handy in that I had a beekeepers' committee meeting at quarter past seven, on the far side of Colchester.  The children were in rumbustious mood.

At the committee meeting I was given the paperwork for the Show Secretary's expenses, a bag containing cash for show entries, a second bag containing cash raised at a wildlife fair, a cheque reimbursing us for some show tickets (it's a long story), and another in respect of a membership fee.  Meaning that I have come full circle, as tomorrow morning I need to update the beekeepers' accounts, and go to the bank.