Shit! We need to tidy up

Back in August 2018 we actually put The Pile up for Sale.

Many people were surprised by this. "You have a lovely home", "You've made so many friends in the village" and "you will be really missed" are a sample of the lovely comments in response to the sight of our "For Sale" board.

Each of these comments was absolutely correct and we both acknowledged that, if the house didn't sell for the right price, we would live happily here into our dotage. However, if we could get a buyer we would love a similar sized property in a quieter location with a small parcel of land, say an acre or two.

The fact that we are still at The Pile today is evident that we didn't attract a buyer. After about twelve months on the property market we got fed up with the stream of idiots that came to see the house and their nonsensical feedback after viewing*, so we took it off the market.

The recent reduction in road traffic, as only essential journeys were undertaken, has reinforced our view that we would love a property in a quieter location. As a result 30% got on the 'phone to the Agents and the house was put back on the market a few days ago.

We didn't expect much to happen as Estate Agencies were in tick over mode and video viewings were the rule. However, Sunday's Ministerial announcement relaxing the English Social Distancing Regulations has enabled the housing market to restart.

Today we had our first request for a viewing and, with guidance from the agents, had to consider how this should proceed ... we decided to go with "face masks, gloves and they look but don't touch anything".

As it says in the title of today's entry, it looks like we need to tidy the house.**

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* I could go on at length about the viewers. 

There was the one that was downsizing, but wanted an artists studio and couldn't see that any of the four bedrooms, four reception rooms,  cellarage and double garage might serve this purpose. This is despite the fact that floor plans were provided with the house brochure. 

There was another that advised that she loved the house, but the garden wasn't large enough as she wanted to keep chickens ... we have a flock of fifteen layers that she cooed over when she visited. One can only think that she wanted a 5,000 strong, commercial laying flock as a garden feature!

** Apparently many people went overboard with cleaning and tidying as they went in to lockdown. We definitely did not!

Number crunching

I was absolutely delighted to be back at my desk, working my way through a surprisingly long list of emails that had accumulated in the couple of days I had been away from work.

In fact, I was so delighted that I had to use a reward system to encourage myself to "get my arse into gear".

I had spent the past couple of days refining some crappy wax comb in to a 3lb disk of beeswax.  My reward was to allow myself to continue with the refining of the wax provided that I did some bloody work first.

Consequently my morning was spent reviewing raw data and collating information in to a solution cost model that became more complex by the minute.

As midday approached I deemed that I had earned a break, so decided to refine some of the beeswax.

The large disk of wax had been broken apart and divided in to four roughly equal portions. One of these was melted in a double boiler on the hob.  It was then filtered through some fine cotton fabric to remove any remaining crud.  After cooling I was left with an aromatic block of beeswax.

Over the course of the day I returned to this activity, whenever I felt that I had earned a break, and ended up with four blocks of wax that will be perfect for candles, hand cream, shoe or furniture polish.

Oh, and I also produced a rather fabulous set of pricing options and associated financial analysis.

Boris may have overestimated his electorate's intellect

I had today booked off as holiday, making this the final day of a four day weekend.  It was going to be another cold day, so my plan was to stay inside as much as possible.

I started the day by carrying on with the beeswax rendering process that I started yesterday. The four disks of wax were broken up and melted together in hot water. Then they were, again, poured through a sieve in to a container and left to cool.

The cooling would take a good few hours, so I joined 30% on an expedition to Redditch to pick up a few "essentials".  She headed in to the super market and it was agreed that I should visit the DIY store next door for compost ...

It all seemed to start reasonably well. The store had laid out a queuing area and were restricting numbers entering the store. I was initially confused as to where the queue started*,  but eventually located the entrance to the queueing lane.  It was as I waited that things started to go wrong ...

Another potential customer wandered up and took up position in the queue no more that a meter behind me.  He seemed oblivious to the fact that he had breached my personal two meter exclusion zone as he surveyed the fine vista that is B&Q's carpark.  Fortunately the queue had started to shorten and I was able to increase the distance between us.  This odd cat and mouse game continued for the five or ten minutes of queueing. On occasions he seemed to observe social distancing and at other times he seemed not to be aware of how close he was to me.

I was soon permitted to enter the store and was able to shake him off my tail. My shopping trip went reasonably well and I soon had a trolley loaded with compost ... and this is the point when matters went awry once more.  

The store manager had laid out a one-way system to the tills to enforce social distancing.  Unfortunately, the stupid fucking idiot, had deemed a 5' wide hardware aisle as the best point of entry to the tills.  As I turned in to the aforementioned aisle I was confronted with three elderly gentlemen wandering up and down enjoying the wide variety of screws, nails and other assorted fixings on display.  There was no way I could pass down this aisle until they moved on.

These elderly gents were totally oblivious to the fact that they were blocking the only access to the tills and a queue started to develop behind me as I waited and hoped in vain that they woud develop a modicum of social awareness.  Eventually a helpful assistant appeared, moved the old farts on and the log jam was removed.  She also asked me to do her a favour and respond to the "How have we done today" feedback request, by pointing out what an idiotic arrangement had been put in place.**

The Government's advice has now changed from "stay at home" to "stay alert".  Based on my experiences today,  I think a significant portion of the population have been intellectually defeated by the specific instruction to stay home. How the fuck does Boris expect them to handle the more nuanced "stay alert"?

Let's see how the R number responds.

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* or is that where the queue ended? This is a puzzle, one starts to queue at the queue's end, but finish queuing at the queue's beginning. So, do I join a queue at it's end or beginning?

** Her actual request was focussed on the mental capacity of the Store Manager and a lot funnier.

Slumgum

Today I got around to a job that I had been putting off for a while. The day was forecast to be cold, so I committed myself to refining some beeswax in the garage.

Over the course of the beekeeping season I tend to accumulate a reasonable quantity of beeswax and today had been put aside to process it. This is not a job I enjoy. It is messy and there is a significant amount of work to produce perfect, yellow ingots of wax.

In its raw form beeswax is comb; brood comb, brace comb or honeycomb.  The comb is generally contaminated with honey, pollen, bee larvae, their faecal matter and pupal cases and the older the comb, the more contaminated it is.  Old brood comb is black from the accumulation of debris over time.*

So, this morning I settled in the garage, spread sheets on the floor and started to dismantle a dozen old brood combs. In no time I was covered in wax, squashed larvae and smears of honey...

Oh, and I had a heap of comb to process. I do this using an old rice cooker. About a pint of boiling water is added to the cooker and it is switched on. The comb is gradually added and within twenty minutes I have a gently bubbling mass of black pupal casings.  This is poured through a sieve in to a bucket and is left to cool.  A few hours later I am left with a reasonably clean disk of wax floating on a soup of water, pollen and honey.  The disk of wax is rinsed and set to one side.

I repeated this process three more times and I ended up with a reasonable quantity of beeswax that will be ready for the next steps tomorrow.

3lb 3oz cylinder of beeswax

Now I had better explain the title of today's entry. Slumgum is the black, waxy collection of larvae, larval cases, pollen and other debris that is sieved from the melted wax.  Apparently it makes an excellent fire lighter for bonfires.

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* It is good practice to change the brood combs every couple of years to minimise the bacterial and viral load in the hive.

Does this bode well for a good harvest?

Today was beautiful from the start and it was a simple delight to drink our morning coffee in the sun, watching the bees as they started to fly from the hives.

Once we had breakfasted I spent the morning inspecting the hives and was quite amazed by the one that produced the shook swarm on 19th April.  At this time of year the supers do not demand much attention and my main focus is on the activities of the queen and workers in the brood box.  However, I always take a quick look at a couple of super frames, just to see how much nectar is being stored and converted to honey.

The uppermost super on this hive was crammed with stores and the bees had already capped off* more than half of the cells.  This is very early, especially as there is very little oilseed rape growing nearby to support an early honey crop.  I estimated the weight of honey as close to twenty pounds and can only hope that the other hives do anywhere near as well as this one.

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* The bees will seal each cell with a cap of fresh wax once the moisture level in the honey has dropped below 20%.

Another essential journey?

Today was another beautiful day, made even better by the fact that it was a Bank Holiday.

I spent the morning pottering outside. The recently constructed supers were given a coat of Danish oil, frames were constructed and equipment was gathered for Saturday's hive inspections. I even managed to drag the mower out and trim the lawn before lunch.

Throughout the morning fragments of an idea tumbled around in my head.  Basically I had a memory stick holding some rather precious material.  30%'s dad's band had been persuaded to reform and play at our wedding and the stick contained a video recording of what is most likely their last ever performance.  I needed to deliver the memory stick to the man responsible for "getting the band back together".

At this point I need to introduce, give credit and offer huge thanks to Buzzer.  Buzzer was the lead guitarist in the band and can still be found gigging in a number of venues around Alcester.  He and his lovely wife have become very close friends over the years and they are affectionately known as my Alcester Mum and Dad.  It was Buzzer who basically used fairly unsubtle, emotional blackmail to "persuade" 30%'s dad to pick up his bass again and perform for his daughter's wedding.

So where have I got to?  It was a beautiful day. I'd completed most of my chores and I had a very small, but precious, item to be delivered...

I had motorcycles that were long overdue for riding and today was the day!

Only two of the bikes had a valid MOT certificate* and one of those was right at the back of the garage.  Being lazy, I was therefore left with no choice but to ride the most recent addition to my small collection; the R nineT.

I had admired this model since it's first release in 2014.  Last year I managed to find a little used 2015 bike with 6,000 miles on the clock.**  It was my first BMW and my first experience of a boxer twin engine.  My only regret is that I didn't get one years ago.  What a fantastic machine!  It isn't particularly large and is dominated by the two 600cc cylinders projecting from each side of the bike. Once you have thrown your leg over it, you feel like you are sitting on an enormous engine and not a lot more.

So, the R nineT was wheeled out and fired up. The route to Alcester includes a short, twisty section that is great to ride and the roads were traffic free. It was a delight to push her through the bends, but frustrating that I couldn't ride far as only "essential journeys" are currently permitted.

I found Buzzer, his good lady and their daughter all sat out in the sun dressed in 1940's fashion. Their entire street had decided to put on a "socially distanced" street party to celebrate the 75th anniversary of VE day. It looked great fun, although I think my little Royal Enfield might have been more appropriate than a large German bike.

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* The Social Distancing Regulations have extended MOT expiry dates if they were due for expiry on, or after, 30 March 2020.
** barely run in.

Two minutes of calm

One morning in the week I had a brief interval of absolute calm.

For the shortest period I was focused on the absolute present and everything else; the plans for the day, the niggles, concerns and irritations simply faded away.  It was two minutes of simply delightful calm.

It happened shortly before I started work. I wandered upstairs to brush my teeth and, after applying toothpaste to the brush and hitting the start button, I wandered to the bedroom window and looked out at the flowering cherry that sits just outside.

A flash of movement caught my eye and I spend the next two minutes watching a pair of blue tits flit amongst the branches collecting insects, presumably for their hatchlings.

It was two minutes of my life where nothing intruded to disturb the moment.

I appreciate that this might seem a bit Zen, but I wish more of my day was like this.

Sometimes the Caveman approach is best

Now I'm a strong believer in using the right tool for the job and that there is a right way and a wrong way to complete a task, but today circumstances proved that sometimes crude and brutal works a treat...

Let me explain. This morning I was busily entering cost estimates into a new model when my Boss pinged me. "Badman" he typed "Can you do 15 minutes on today's team call about bees and beekeeping?"

For the love of God! I know things have been quiet recently, but I'm actually close to working a full day at the moment and preparing a talk about one of my hobbies for the fortnightly team talk was not a welcome addition to today's schedule.

Fortunately I had a PowerPoint presentation and accompanying notes from a talk I had given to the local Women's institute back in 2018. I swapped from my work laptop to my Mac and soon had the presentation attached to an email. I had assumed that it would be a simple matter to email it to my work email address. How wrong I was ...

On hitting send I was immediately informed that the file was too large and could not be handled by the Gmail server.  "No worries" I thought " can simply upload the file to the Cloud and then download it to my work machine". A few minutes later I was attempting to access my Cloud storage from my work machine and was presented with a variety of security messages instead of the chubby PowerPoint file.

After a couple of attempts I gave up and went the Caveman approach ...

The original presentation was broken down in to two files and these were sent in separate emails to my work machine.  It was a matter of a few minutes work to stitch them back together and I celebrated my crude ingenuity.

Now there are people out there that would have spent hours pissing around with network settings and use of other Cloud providers to transfer the file across the ether. 

I say "why"? 

From memory, this is the first time in my professional career that I have ever encountered this issue. Why would I want to spend my valuable time farting around trying to find another, possibly more elegant, solution to a problem that is highly unlikely to arise again?

Picture Post

Having scanned the last few Journal entries, I can see paragraph after paragraph of unbroken text, so today I thought I'd go with a Picture Post for a bit of variety.

These were taken back in August 2015 on a road trip in the US.  

We were driving Route 1 up the Pacific Coast from Los Angeles towards Monterey when, somewhere close to San Simeon,  30% spotted a sign indicating an Elephant Seal viewing area.  We pulled off the road, wandered towards the beach and were rewarded with the sight of close to one hundred seals hauled out on the beach. We were commenting on their impressive size when we looked out in to the breakers and saw this colossal bull come in on to the beach.

A local lady informed us that we were lucky to see him, as, at this time of year, most of the seals were this year's pups!  It was likely he was coming ashore for the annual moult. 

A change of plans

It is the start of the working week, but at least this one is only four days in length, as Friday is the early May Bank Holiday.

We had planned to be staying at the Oxwich Hotel on the Gower peninsula for three days of this week, but our mini break was scuppered as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak and the resulting Social Distancing regulations.

We used to stay at a rental property a few miles down the coast from Oxwich in Pwll Du near Bishopston. We first stayed there in 2012 and had the honour of being their first ever booking. We had many lovely stays there, but became disenamoured over time as the beach became busier and was no longer the secluded hideaway we first discovered.

Our trips to Pwll Du had given us the opportunity to explore the Gower and we had walked the sands of Oxwich Bay beach on several occasions.  Our visits to Oxwich often ended with a drink in the hotel bar as we rested after our exertions.

We discovered that the hotel was very dog friendly and became aware that they did various doggy deals featuring three nights for the price of two, complimentary cream teas and other tempting offers.  Our first stay was probably in early 2017 and we had a fantastic time.

Having been used to dog friendly actually meaning dog tolerant, it was a revelation to be welcomed and the dogs treated as honoured guests. Our rooms were spacious and each dog was provided with a bowl, a handful of treats, pooh bags and a towel for drying them off after a run on the beach.  We were treated just as well and were delighted to find that there was a "snug" where the dogs were welcome to curl up under the table as we enjoyed their splendid menu.

Over the past few years we have become regulars at the hotel, often visiting twice a year in early Spring and and again in the Autumn.  We had our "mini-moon" there in March immediately after our wedding and had planned to have a few fun days there this week with Grubby Sue and Mark.

Unfortunately that will have to be put on hold for a while and we'll just have to make do with the lanes around the village.

A new drinking game for the middle classes?

Since Saturday didn't involve bees, Sunday did.  I could go on at length about the fun and games in the Apiary, but won't as I'm well aware that the intricacies of beekeeping do not make the most enthralling read.

This morning we had some unusual avian visitors. The garden normally plays host to a few overweight pigeons and a handful of Jackdaws that wouldn't look out of place on a Game of Thrones set.  However, today we found four mallard ducks grazing the lawn.  There have been reports in the media of wildlife responding to the lockdown by becoming less fearful and reclaiming territory lost to humans and their infrastructure. It may be that the quiet had boosted their confidence.

We have, on occasions, had unusual birds in the garden and I can remember a golden pheasant and a red winged startling* making an appearance, but this is the first time I can ever recall waterfowl turning up.  It was rather nice to see them pottering around, but I don't want 30% to get too fond of them as she has a penchant for domestic poultry ... chickens yes, ducks definitely not.**

As I've already mentioned, the day was mostly filled with beekeeping, but I did managed to come up with a possible new drinking game for the British Middle Classes ...

All that is needed is a bottle of one's favourite spirit, a few shot glasses and access to any of Lucy Worsley's splendid documentaries.  The rule of the game is simplicity itself, settle down in front of the television with a shot of your chosen spirit in hand and watch the delightful Lucy as she does what she does best ... and take a shot every time she changes her outfit.

Respect will be earned in great measure for anyone who can make it to then end of the show and still walk out to the kitchen to top up the dips and nibbles.

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* Presumed to be an aviary escapee rather than a wild bird making a significant extension to its normal range of Central and Southern Africa
** They are very noisy and even messier than chickens!

A new look?

Today wasn't the most productive of Saturdays.  I assembled one of the supers that I'd collected on Thursday, 30% and I walked the dogs, I had a massive kip on the sofa and then, feeling guilty, ran the lawn mower around the garden.

This would be a very short entry if it weren't for the fact that I made something of a change to my appearance ...

My last haircut was back in late January and three months growth has turned my "grade two on the back and sides, short on the top and a tapered neck" into a scruffy mess.  My crown has become increasingly more head than hair over the past year, so I finally bit the bullet and let go of the minimal vanity I had about my hair.*

TP was instructed to get his clippers and within a very few minutes, my hair was littering the floor and 30% was muttering about collecting it and putting it out for the birds to use as nesting material.**

It is going to take a while to get used to seeing this new version of me when I catch sight of my reflection, but at least I don't have a head shaped like a potato.  30% has, however, now instructed me to shave, as a week's stubble doesn't work with a neatly shaved scalp.

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*  Bad Man Senior started to go bald in his late teens and, by his early 20's,  only had hair on the back and sides of his head.  From my earliest days I recall that he deployed a faintly ridiculous comb-over in an attempt to disguise his baldness.  The comb-over flapped in the slightest of breezes like a cheerful little pennant until his wife finally snipped it off when he was in his late seventies.
From my teen years I swore that I would never attempt to conceal my thinning scalp.  Fortunately I was somewhat more lucky than my Dad and, apart from a receding hairline leaving my with an obvious widow's peak, I managed to retain a half decent head of hair in to my 50s.
** This possibly amounts to animal cruelty!

The next two days are mine

There's not a lot to report for Friday. I avoided work as far as possible; dogs were walked and TP was given a modicum of assistance with his latest project, which is the construction of a cheese press.

Over the past few weeks, he has made ricotta and mozzarella and is now investigating the making of hard cheeses.  He has set his sights on producing a farmhouse cheddar and is in the R&D phase of the project. This morning I discovered him attempting to reorganising the garage and when I say "the garage" I clearly mean "my garage", so some gentle paternal guidance was provided.*  After a couple of hours he had constructed a working prototype and then headed upstairs to source a bacterial culture. ***

I've already mentioned that it was a quiet day, so I'll mention a couple of conversations we had as dinner was being prepared this week.

I suppose I had better set the scene. 30% tends to come in from work around 6.35 pm and we all tend to congregate in the kitchen for a drinks, nibbles and a chat about our days, whilst our evening meal is assembled.

The first conversation was with Marauder, who was mooching around begging for treats. I offered her a tortilla chip, which she wolfed down. She then looked up at me and asked if I didn't have anything better than "those crappy Mexican dog biscuits"!

The second was more of a learning experience for me ...

Thursday's dinner was a salad with baked potatoes and slices of pigeon and chicken terrine.  I had made the terrine a few months back and part of it had been frozen. I had also been instructed to put potatoes in the oven, so that they were ready shortly after 30% came in from work.

I learnt that it is not wise to claim that I had cooked dinner and that 30%'s sole contribution was the addition of garnish.

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* It would be fair to say that I am somewhat territorial about the garage. At this point it might be worth picturing a crazed, alpha male chimp having a full-on, screaming tantrum including the waving of branches and the throwing of faeces when his territory is invaded. It is, after all, my garage.
30% is, grudgingly, permitted entry provided she limits her activities to the deposit or removal of items from the freezer.
TP needs close supervision as, at the tender age of 23, he has yet to be trusted to follow the rules of the garage.**
** 1) Don't touch anything
     2) If you touch anything, put it back exactly where you took
         it from
     3) If it's plugged in and switched on, fucking leave it plugged
         in and switched on
     4) If you don't know what you're doing, ask
     5) see rule no. 1
*** Take your choice between an internet searching session or a commentary on the state of his bedroom!

An essential journey?

Since the Social Distancing Regulations were introduced in the last week of March, the furthest I have been from home is the, almost daily, walk around the Three Miler with TP and the dogs.

There was one other exception, when I accompanied 30% in to Redditch for pet supplies and pharmaceuticals, but for the most part, my horizons have been very close to home.

Today I needed to make an essential journey ...

The very sunny April has kick started the beekeeping season and my colonies are increasing in size at a tremendous rate. There is a risk that I may run short of supers for the bees' stores, or just to give them more space in the hive.

I ordered three supers from a great, little, local supplier earlier this week and, this afternoon, TP and I headed out in the Defender to collect them. The local lanes were very quiet and our twenty mile round trip took barely forty minutes and that included a few minutes chat with the supplier.

It felt quite odd to be out and I do have a feeling of being constrained the restrictions. It's because there is the potential need to justify the journey, rather than being able to travel as required and ensure that sensible precautions are taken to maintain social distancing.

I am starting to wonder how this is going to come to an end? Certain elements of the population have ignored the restrictions since the outset. Others have patiently complied and then there are those like me, that understand the reasons for the regulations and follow them, but are concerned about how long they will be in place and whether they will ultimately be effective or destructive.

I prefer to be asked rather than being told what to do.

Making up the numbers

My workload has started to increase after a few quiet months and today was the busiest I have been for a long time.

I opened up my email first thing this morning and saw that a set of management costs had come in  from colleagues in the US. As a result, the rest of the day was spent drafting a solution document and aggregating the US costs with estimates* to cover ancillary activities.

Shortly after lunch I was able to get the work peer reviewed and submitted for pricing. Now our Pricer is a stroppy cow and I was expecting her to perform her usual trick of rejecting the request and demanding pre-meetings and reformatting of cost sheets before she would develop the price. I was therefore truly amazed when I saw the pricing delivered to my inbox a few minutes after four o'clock.

I have to admit that it was an enjoyable experience to be busy after such a long interval and the piece of work is likely be accepted by our client as it will facilitate network connectivity for personnel required to work from home as a result of Covid-19 Social Distancing regulations.

One unexpected result of this flurry of activity was that I was exhausted by the end of the working day and asleep on the sofa by eight o-clock this evening.

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* The less generous would say that I had simply pulled these numbers out of my arse. I would counter that years of experience had allowed me to suggest reasonable numbers without the need to trouble very busy support personnel.  I would probably also add that I have the sense to document my work in order that there is full disclosure of the approach.

A new anniversary

Today could be regarded as an anniversary.

Not one of the traditional ones like Birthdays or a Weddings, or even one of the less formal ones, like a first date* or a first kiss.  But today is definitely a date that deserves to be noted down somewhere.

Back in the October of 2018 we were invited to the wedding of a couple of friends from the puppy training class. Initially we were just invited to their "evening do", but we actually got upgraded and attended the entire event; Church, Wedding Breakfast and Evening Reception.

We had a fantastic day and were absolutely bowled over by their choice of venue for the Reception. It is a Country Manor House on the Worcestershire/Gloucestershire border and it is superb; rolling park land, splendid views out to the Cotswolds and a fine Manor House hotel, settled perfectly in the landscape.

We enjoyed the day so much that we actually started to think again about our own wedding ... or, more accurately, the fact that we had been engaged since 2005, and had not got around to tying the knot.** If the truth is told, we were both apprehensive about "the whole wedding thing" and that nervousness had resulted in a very long engagement.  We had both been married before and had attended quite a few as guests, but that wedding in October 2018 was the first time we both felt that that type of wedding would work for us.

Over the following months we discussed our wedding often and even started to look at venues.***  We didn't get very far with this selection process before we both realised that we both actually wanted to use the same venue as our friends had.

On this day last year, we headed over to the venue to attend a wedding fayre. As soon as we walked though the entrance we knew that we had made the right decision and were soon sat with their wedding coordinator discussing packages and dates in 2020.

I had been thinking about an Autumn wedding, whilst 30% was keen to go much earlier and February 2020 was mooted. We started to look at dates in February, having agreed that Friday, 14th February was definitely not an option.  As I started to work out the Saturday dates in February it dawned upon me that it was a Leap Year and that the 29th was going to fall on a Saturday!

The cosmic tumblers had clicked in to place and a booking was made.

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* 30% and I cannot agree on our first date.  I say 22nd December 2001 which was the date we first met up after linking up via the old Friends Reunited website. We had a curry at the Shahi Palace in Redditch ... see I do remember!
However, 30% claims it was 14th February 2002 when we went to see Monsters inc at a Cinema complex in Rubery.
Now we both agree that we were at both of these events, so how on earth can the later event be the "first date"?
** We considered getting married in Las Vegas on our first trip out there in 2006 ... that was until we got there and immediately realised that neither of us wanted to associate our marriage with the tacky, "plastic" Vegas experience.
*** We went to look at one local venue and, after making an enquiry about menu choices, we were asked "Well, didn't you register and get a package as you came in?"  It rapidly became apparent that 30% and I had been considered to be parents of the Bride or Groom rather than the happy couple ... funnily enough, we didn't give them any further consideration as a potential venue.

Sometimes you need to rant!

Today was always going to be challenging!

On Friday I was instructed to take over the lead on a piece of work assigned to Colleague M.  Now Colleague M is a well meaning and intensely irritating little tit,  so today was spent on a series of calls attempting to extract information from him in a structured way and get the aforementioned info inserted in to the relevant sections of a Solution document template.

You can imagine how delighted I was to hear such comments as "So, all you're doing is putting information that I have in a series or emails or in my head in to one spreadsheet" or the equally inflammatory "You seem to be spending a lot of time saying what we won't be doing".  There was absolutely no fucking recognition that I was taking his scant items of information and using a common sense approach to weave a service definition that could be rapidly costed and contracted without causing financial exposure the Neat & Tidy Piano Movers.

Option 1 was to remind the moronic prick that I had suggested that he start to document the solution over a week ago, and had even provided the template to do so.  In this option I would have also pointed out that he didn't have the intelligence to realise that I was defining the solution, it's components and how it was dependent on other Service elements.

Instead I went with Option 2, where I bit my tongue* and made vague statements about how well he had done in his initial investigations and how defining the solution would ensure that there was a clear and common understanding by all involved parties.

If I'm honest, it was actually quite rewarding to perform the interrogation and see the resulting solution start to appear from Colleague M's addled ramblings. We now have a pretty clear, high level scope definition and now know who we need to talk to about costs.

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* I had to bite it quite firmly

More nonsense

I'm certain that many of us have encountered a blinkered old fool that rambles on about how "things were much better in the old days" and the possibly contradictory statement that "kids today haven't had it so good".*

Right, where was I going with this?

...  Crisps, that is the subject for today's dissertation.

When I was a child there were only four or five flavours of crisps; ready salted, cheese and onion, salt and vinegar, smokey bacon and roast chicken. These flavours were judged to be the only necessary snack flavourings in the early 1970s.** They were just perfect, except for salt and vinegar which is just a bag full of fried potatoes covered with acetic acid dust and ready salted which needed a more mature palate, than that of an eight year old, to appreciate their simple perfection.

So, why did crisp manufacturers decide to release new ranges of flavours? We clearly didn't want or need them and this is evidenced by an internet search of UK crisp sales by flavour.  This shows that these 1960s flavours are still top of the charts.

At this point in the rant I'll mention that some of the new flavours are just cynical rebranding of an existing flavour. How different can Red Leicester and Caramelised Onion be from the flavourings used in the original blue bagged, Walkers Cheese and Onion?

And, now I'm on a roll, let's get to the quite bizarre flavours that are available. Thai Sweet Chilli and Worcester Sauce and Sun Dried Tomato are a couple that spring to mind. Why on earth would you want to taste those in preference to the "original 5"?

One evening last week TP and I were having a G&T and tucking in to a few crisps that 30% had tipped in to a dish. Not being able to see the packet, we started to try to guess what flavour they were.  We are still undecided but, after several of the of the unappetising, vaguely tangy slivers, we agreed that a strong favourite is Tramp's Vest.

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* 30% and TP are concerned that I may be heading in this direction at a rapid rate of knots.
** I do have a theory that you should never eat a food product that has been developed any later than about 1976. If you stick to this rule of thumb, you will still be able to enjoy well made convenience foods, confectionary and desserts but avoid the chemical laden, massively processed crap that is on offer nowadays. I will mention one example ... a few years ago in the US we encountered a pressurised can that sprayed "cheese" from a nozzle. I rest my case.

What on earth are you doing up there?

Saturday; the weather was forecast to be fine, so today's plan was to mow the lawn and, once the day warmed, inspect the hives. This is fast becoming the norm for a lockdown weekend.

The turf was soon clipped and I then headed over to Kathy's cottage with a car stuffed with beekeeping paraphernalia.*

My main objective was to relocate the shook swarm from their six frame nucleus hive to a National Brood box. The National Brood holds eleven frames and will give the colony almost twice the space it had in the "nuc".  Hopefully this will assuage its swarming tendency. I soon had the bee covered frames transferred to the larger hive, although I failed to see the queen during the procedure. I then went through the other two colonies and both are doing reasonably well. I needed to remove a few queen cups and they are likely to need additional supers if this warm spell continues.

Back at home, I made a start on three of the four hives in the garden.** All was as to be expected until I reached the smaller of the colonies. I took a look at a couple of frames in the super to see how much nectar was being stored and was surprised to see large patches of worker brood.

Now the occasional few drone cells at the bottom of the frames are to be expected, as the workers will relocate drone eggs from the brood box up in to the super, but solid patches of worker brood suggested that the queen had managed to make her way up through the queen excluder.

It took me two searches of the super's frames before I found her, returned her to the brood box and reassembled the hive. I am now wondering whether I have a small queen that can fit through the bars of a queen excluder or whether this recently acquired excluder has an oversized mesh?

The aim of a queen excluder is to ensure that the stores of honey and the developing bee larvae are kept separate. This is because no beekeeper wants brood contaminating their honey crop. The brood in the super is not a major problem this early in the season as the eggs and larvae will complete their development in no more than 21 days.

I just hope she doesn't make her way back up their again.

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* Keeping Bees involves a fair bit of planning, especially if the hives are away from your equipment store. I had a mental list of everything I was likely to need and still managed to forget syrup for the shook swarm.
** The hive from which produced the shook swarm will be left for four or five weeks before being inspected. This should be sufficient time for the queen cell to hatch, the queen to have her mating flights and start laying in the hive.

Dad does dinner

For the past couple of weeks I have been shadowing two colleagues that will be leaving the Neat & Tidy Piano Movers in the near future. They both have a muddled and confusing approach to work and I have been attempting to sift through their rambling narratives and contradictory emails in an attempt to work out what the hell they have been doing!*

Today I finally thought I had made progress as I had whittled Colleague R's task list down from three pages to one and had provided much needed mentoring and guidance to colleague M. You can imagine my delight when my Boss pinged me for a discussion about colleague M. We both agreed that he had bitten off more than he could chew and it now appears that I am to lead his piece of work complete pile of fucking shit ... Oh Joy!

I am now going to step away from this rant as it is Friday and this bloody mess can wait until the weekend is over.

This evening I was assigned to Dinner duties and 30% instructed me to "do that smoked salmon and pasta thing that you do".  This was a dish that I picked up from my elder sister many years ago.  It has almost certainly evolved over the years and this is its current incarnation ...

Pasta with Smoked Salmon in a Cream Sauce (serves 4)

1 medium onion (finely chopped)
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
Sliced button mushrooms ... I must have used 20 of them?
olive oil
A dash of white wine or cider, half a glass or thereabouts
1 tsp dried rosemary
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried basil
A pack of smoked salmon cut in to narrow strips
1/2 pint double cream
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
15 oz of pasta ... I used penne

1) Add a good glug of the oil to a frying pan along with the onion and garlic, sauté until they start to soften.
2) Add the sliced mushrooms and dried herbs, continue cooking until the mushrooms start to soften
3) Add a good splash of white wine or cider and continue cooking until virtually all of the liquid has evaporated
4) Remove from the heat, season with the salt and pepper and add the sliced smoked salmon. Set the pan to one side
5) Cook the pasta and drain it well.
6) Return the drained pasta to the pan and add the salmon, onions and mushrooms.
7) Stir in the double cream and place the pan on a low heat. Continue stirring for a minute or two to ensure the dish is heated.
8) Check the seasoning and serve immediately with a green salad

This takes no more than twenty five minutes from start to finish and is a simple, but tasty supper dish.

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* At this point you might be wondering what my boss does during his working day ... so do I!