cold Easter

Speaking as a non-Christian, it seems a waste to have the bank holiday weekend so early in the year.  Today was raw cold at work, the sort of dank, chill air that grips the back of your throat and makes you think you must be going down with another cold.  My nose dripped all day as if it had a faulty washer, until I had to substitute a paper hand towel for my original hanky.  Customers, shrouded in layers of clothing, fumbled with numb fingers for their credit cards and money.  Oh, the joys of an English spring.

The cold weather disagreed with the back door in the shop, which failed to open half the time even when somebody was standing inside it.  We had to scuttle over from the till to let people out, and the sparky girl who looks after the tea room did sterling service nipping to the end of the kitchen and pressing the door open button.  A few customers managed to find the button for themselves, so perhaps they had been watching the people ahead of them in the queue, but most stood baffled, waiting to be let out.  We tried leaving the door permanently open some of the time, but that made it jolly cold for whoever was standing at the till, not to mention those sitting down in the tea room.  When all of the people in your cafe are still wearing their coats I think you have an issue.  The boss is going to have to fix the door.

My job for the day was to ring people to let them know that plants they had been waiting for had arrived.  It always feels rather awkward calling someone to try and interest them in buying a plant they asked for this time last year, and a secret relief if for the most long-standing queries you just get an answer machine, but amazingly some people did still want their plants.  It takes a certain consistency of purpose to ask for Alstroemeria 'Rhubarb and Custard' in May 2011, and not have found something else to fill the space before April 2012.  Some people had found the plants elsewhere in the meantime, or been in recently and bought them without getting their names crossed off the list, but that's only to be expected.  Some sounded pleased and grateful to be rung, as well as thoroughly surprised, and none were hostile.

I came home via the house of the beekeepers' Membership Secretary, and so got one of the required signatures for my bank mandate change form.  She raised the question of whether she and the Chairman could jointly sign a cheque, both being signatories and two signatures being required, or whether one of the signatures had to be that of the Treasurer.  If that's the case then I need to track down the Chairman as a matter of urgency, since until we've got the mandate changed we can't pay anybody for anything, and we have a hefty bill outstanding for wax for the recent candle making day.  Another question for the outgoing Treasurer.

I got home to find the Systems Administrator sitting in a deckchair in the front garden, wearing a thermal hat and looking cold, staring at the chickens who were eating grass.  I asked whether it wasn't rather cold to let them out, and was told it had been warmer when the sun was out.  The trouble is that the chickens know exactly how to play on the SA's heart strings, rushing up to the door of the run squawking and looking eager and anticipatory when the SA goes near them from mid-afternoon onwards.

getting to grips

The prospective house sitters seemed nice, and sensible, and to genuinely like the house.  You could say that it doesn't matter whether they like it or not.  We're the ones going on holiday, while they're professionals hired to do a job.  It's better all round, though, if they do like it.  I don't want two people spending a miserable week of their lives on my account, and it will be nicer for the cats to spend the week living with somebody sympathetic, and in a weird way better for the house.  As a scientifically trained, non-superstitious rationalist I can see that last claim is absurd, but every house has an atmosphere, which is not improved by having people who hate it live in it, even for a week.  Psychologists have demonstrated, scientifically, that there is such a thing as a lucky person, in the sense that lucky people put a more positive interpretation on events, or react to them in such a way that the outcome is better than it might otherwise have been.  So maybe it is entirely scientific to expect house sitters who appreciate the whole set-up, house, pets, plants, and garden, to look after them with more competence and flair than people who feel uneasy at being here.  Alternatively put it down to my sentimental good nature.  Anyway, I would rather have happy house sitters, even though I'm not going to be here to share their pleasures or suffering.

Fired up by having a clean house, and the question of sitters sorted, I turned my attentions to the beekeepers' treasurer's duties.  Having read everything in the two carrier bags I was given I think I know roughly what I'm supposed to be doing.  I had to go to the bank to get myself certified for security purposes, as I'm not an existing customer on my own account.  The form you have to complete so that they can check you out for money laundering contains some questions that seem entirely reasonable, such as name, address, length of time at address, nationality, date of birth, and some that seem quite irrelevant for that purpose, though the answers would be handy were Barclays, hypothetically speaking, to be using the information at a later date to try and sell me financial products.  Number of dependents and whether I have a mortgage or own my property outright?  What, exactly, does that have to do with whether or not I am a money launderer?  They might have well have gone whole hog and asked for my annual income bracket, and when my buildings and contents insurance expire.  Anyway, I now possess stamped and signed photocopies of my passport and a recent bank statement, to be sent off with the form and a second form to change the bank mandate, which has to be signed by the chairman and secretary.  The secretary volunteered so recently, I'm not sure if she's official either.

Then I worked my way through the spreadsheet of subscriptions paid, and think I am now in a position to fill in the form for Bee Disease Insurance.  One of the benefits of belonging to a part of the British Beekeepers Association is that you get insurance, including for the loss of bees and equipment if your bees are found to have a disease so serious that the bee inspector has to burn the hive.  Beehives are not cheap, and this is worth having.  The standard membership covers three hives, or double that for joint members, and then you can opt to pay extra if you think you might have more than three hives at any stage in the year.  Three is not very many, since if you start with one, split it in two for swarm control purposes, and collect just one swarm, you are up at three already.  I'm quite surprised that so many members reckon they won't have more than three, since running just one hive is more difficult than running at least two, and if you start with two hives and split them for swarm control you are immediately above the insurance limit of three.  Anyway, it's their business.  I just process the fees.

I have probably overcooked my own estimate for the maximum number of colonies, since one of my overwintered colonies is not building up well and doesn't look a likely candidate for splitting or swarming.  I need to work out why that's the case.  I shall put an empty hive out, when the swarming season starts, since I fancy some free bees, and empty boxes that smell of bees do attract swarms.

As treasurer I have been invited to the meeting to make plans for our stand at the Tendring Show, and as we take quite a lot of money at the show, including for sales of members' honey and candles which we then pass on to them, minus a commission, I think I'd better go.  When I originally checked the show date in my diary it was for a weekend when I'm due to be working, assuming I counted forward the weekends correctly, so I had better break the news to my employers that I'd like to take a Saturday off.  By mid July things are generally winding down in the plant centre, and with the hosepipe ban this year they almost certainly will be, so that shouldn't be a problem, except to me since I stand to lose a day's wages.  

my second career in finance

I have had my handover meeting with the outgoing treasurer and membership secretary of my beekeeping division.  I just have to get the bank mandate form completed, and signed by the appropriate people, and be formally voted on by the rest of the committee at the next meeting, and my three year tenure will commence.  It doesn't look too onerous.  Last year's accounts are done and dusted, and the last treasurer said to refer any queries to him.  At the year end we had no debtors or creditors, I've got the bank statements for the year so far, and while we need two signatures on cheques, I'm the one with the cheque book.  All equipment bought out of divisional funds is written off as an expense, not carried on the balance sheet as an asset, so the only assets are in the bank.  The balance sheet at the end of the year will therefore consist of the start of year balance, plus receipts, less outgoing payments.  As long as I can tell from my records what the money going in and out represented, the income and expenditure account will practically write itself.  That's the theory.

There are one or two wrinkles, of course.  The membership secretary's membership records look very clear, as I expected they would be, and she banks the cheques from members, so I don't have to do that.  I do have to split every subscription between contributions to the division, the county and the national association, plus payment for bee disease insurance.  BDI looks the most potentially fraught.  Full members get cover for two hives automatically with their membership, and can pay for more hives if they think they might need them.  The forms issued by the national body apparently don't make the distinction between total number of hives, and additional hives above two, as clear as it might be.  The worst thing would be to accidentally under-insure somebody with the central body, who had paid the division for sufficient cover.  (Two hives scarcely gets you anywhere.  If you start the year with one colony, then if you split that in the course of swarm control you've hit your limit.  Collect a swarm and you have three colonies, just like that).

I won't be able to use the bank mandate form that the last treasurer printed off, and started to fill in, since he didn't know that the name I'm always called by isn't my full baptismal name, and put my nickname in the box.  Given that the bank's instructions on changing signatories require me to turn up with a passport and additional means of proving my address, I don't think the everyday name will do.  If I have to get the old treasurer to sign a fresh form that will be rather a bore, as we don't live very close to each other, and could have done it this afternoon, if it weren't for the confusion with the name.  (In the modern age of computers, databases, identity checks, identity theft and all the rest of it, it is better to stick with your given name as it appears on your passport.  If you're a Patricia then try to avoid being saddled with Pat, or Patsy, and especially avoid diminutives that don't immediately look or sound like part of your name, like Trish.  And try to avoid combinations like William-Bill, because it will throw out your initial.  I knew a Christopher who firmly put me right the first time I absent mindedly referred to him as Chris.  At the time I thought he was being precious, but now I see he was right).

Fortunately I have been given a folder, issued by the county association, that sets out what the treasurer has to do, and when things like paying for bee disease insurance and county subscriptions fall due, and even a proforma of what, eventually, they would like every division's accounts to look like, with standard headings for outgoings, though I understand this isn't being applied yet.  And I have been told that the county treasurer, and the BDI treasurer, are very nice and helpful.  That sounds good.  Also I have inherited a bag containing the last three years' accounts.  My predecessor is an organised sort of person (another reason why I felt reasonably safe volunteering for the job) and I don't expect to have any trouble with them.  In addition I've been given a box containing earlier years' financial records.  Nobody knows how long we are supposed to keep these, and it was suggested that it would be OK for me to chuck them out.  My guess is that they will spend the next three years in my spare bedroom, before being handed on to my successor.  Without a very definite instruction from somebody that the old accounts can be binned, I'd feel exposed throwing them away, and I don't know who would be competent to give me the go-ahead to destroy them.

We'll see how it goes.  Compared to £39 billion of pension fund assets it should be straightforward.