A disturbance in The Force

The possibility of moving house suddenly got very real!

After more than fifteen years here at The Pile we have become very accustomed to our environment and our daily routines.  One might say "stuck in a rut". If that is the case, it is a very pleasant "rut" and I would argue that we have just become very settled to, and comfortable with, our life here in the village.

There was, therefore, a massive disturbance in The Force today, when we received a very respectable offer for the house.  All of a sudden everything that seemed permanent was not.  Our future was unclear and a thousand questions filled our heads.  

It is fair to say that both of us were very unsettled by this sudden turn of events.  I know that this is the natural order of things when you put your house up for sale, but after the complete lack of interest a couple of years ago, we didn't expect anything ... but we did hope.

Needless to say we have politely rejected the first offer.  As I said, it was a good offer, but surely the prospective buyer has left some wiggle room and can up a little more ... After all we have conveyancing, removals and stamp duty to consider.

Other stuff

Obviously 30% and I are in a head spin as a result of today's news, but life goes on and there were a couple of other noteworthy events ...

Firstly, Dog #3's recent behaviour can now be explained.  She has come in to season over the weekend and is unbelievably clingy at the moment.  She is a complete "wuss" at the best of times, but can now be found lying outstretched on the sofa with a pained expression and exhibiting the occasional whimper.*  

I also grabbed a camera and took a few pictures of the Moto Guzzi to preserve her for posterity.

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*  This could be due to the indignity of having to wear a pair of Huggies pull-ups to prevent any mess. 

Weekend round-up

It's the end of a relaxing, yet stressful, long weekend. Let me explain ...

Saturday

I've already recounted that we had a second viewing of The Pile On Friday.  Well, early on Saturday morning the phone rang and it was the Estate Agents.  A third viewing had been requested with the stated purpose of "allowing the children to choose their bedrooms".  The family are obviously very keen, but isn't it more appropriate to agree a selling price before choosing where the kids will sleep?

30% was somewhat stressed by this rather bizarre situation, especially as Social Distancing is still in place and viewings should be kept to a minimum. She had a lengthy conversation with the Agent that climaxed with the advice that the prospective buyer should "shit or get off the pot".  I must admit I smiled to myself as I listened to her rant at the Agent. I attempted to calm her down and see the positive side of things, we definitely have a fish on the line and now we just need to stay calm and reel it in.

Much of Saturday morning was spent tidying the house in preparation for viewing #3, although 30% and I did have time to display a possibly serious error in judgement ...

We drove  few miles down the road to do a "drive by" of a property that seems to be just what we want.  It has land, a lovely view and is on a quiet lane, yet is within easy reach of the local town.  It looks like it could be perfect for us, but we cannot get a viewing until we have an offer on The Pile.  

The result is that 30% and I are now stuck in a complicated emotional stew of desire, frustration, anticipation and fear.

Sunday

A good chunk of Sunday was spent inspecting the hives.  The weather was just about warm enough, but the bees weren't flying well and the hives were stuffed with irritable workers.  All seemed well and the queen in the most recent shook swarm seems about to start laying.  

Sunday's inspection did have another objective.  Aa a result of Wednesday's chimney clearing escapade, I have been contacted by a chap who wants a nucleus of bees for a hive that his wife gave him as a present.  As a consequence I was looking at which of my queens I was prepared to let go would be suitable for him.  The prospective beekeeper is a nice enough chap, but he has virtually no knowledge of beekeeping beyond watching a few videos on YouTube!  He has a lot to learn in a very short space of time!*

The afternoon was started with a kip on the sofa before I headed outside and finally threw a bucket of water over the Moto Guzzi.  After her sponge bath, I wheeled her in to a sunny spot to dry off in the evening sun while 30% and I enjoyed the calm that comes at the end of the day.

Monday

The weather was scorching from the start, so I opened up the garage doors, assembled cloths and cleaning products and spent most of the morning and early afternoon polishing the Guzzi.  She now looks presentable and I need to photograph her before she gets grubby again.

The afternoon saw a trip to Redditch for a socially distanced afternoon tea with Mr and Mrs Tweedy in their garden.  It was Mr Tweedy's birthday and fun couple of hours were spent catching up on their news whilst partaking of tea and cake.

So, that's a quick summary of a long weekend.  The next few days could be interesting, exciting or very disappointing.

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*  I did give him a bit of advice and suggested that he joined a local beekeeping club and got himself a mentor.  I got the feeling that this seed of wisdom fell on stony ground, so I made it absolutely clear that I would give him a bit of advice, but was not willing to mentor him ...

I made that mistake a while back and spent eighteen months being accompanied for an entire beekeeping season by a chap who was intent on having a Top Bar Hive.  From the very start I advised him against it and pointed out the various failings and limitations of this third world beekeeping practice.  He steadfastly ignored my advice and I ended up spending a lot of time developing an approach to produce a nucleus colony that would fit in his non-standard hive.

The nuc was delivered and I saw very little of him after that, although when I last bumped in to him, at VI's funeral, he advised that he was giving up the Top Bar and moving to National Hives. At no point did he apologise for wasting my time or ignoring my advice and, to add insult to injury, he promised a curry to "thank" me for my mentoring and the nuc.  I'm still waiting!

Another long weekend

It was the start of yet another long weekend.

For most of May I have worked part-time and have really enjoyed the new balance between working and non-working days.  This new working pattern stemmed from the fact that 30% and I had planned to spend a few days down on The Gower at the beginning of the month.  That mini-break got cancelled, so, with the agreement of my Boss, I rescheduled my three days of holiday across the entire month. Basically I tacked them on to the weekends. This gave me three four day weeks and one three day week, as I took advantage of the two Bank Holidays.

Although I was allegedly not working, my days was already looking fairly busy.  I had arranged for "the impulse buy" to be serviced and MOT'd down at Arden Motorcycles in Alcester.  We also had a couple coming back for a second viewing of The Pile.  As a consequence I was either schlepping to and fro between home and Alcester or tidying up the house and garden.

Today I thought I'd jot down the story of the impulse buy...

TP and I like to go the Motorcycle Live event in Birmingham. It takes place every year around the time of his Birthday and, as we both love bikes, it's an event that we can both enjoy together and relate to it on equal terms.  30% likes to call it "male bonding". I suppose I see it as a maturing of our father/son relationship.

We attended the event back in 2018 and, frankly, we were not overly impressed with the styling of the 2019 models being presented.  They looked very similar to each other and their ultra-modern styling didn't appeal to either of us.   We found ourselves drawn to the more retro designs being produced by manufacturers such as Triumph, Royal Enfield ... and Moto Guzzi.

We lingered at the Guzzi display and both agreed that every one of their limited range of models was a delight of Italian design and individuality.  Their transversely mounted, air cooled V-twin engines are a prominent feature and were proudly incorporated in to the designs.  It is fair to say we both rather liked them.

For the preceding few years Moto Guzzi had been very successful with their V7 model range and one model had really caught my eye.  In 2016 they went from the V7 ii to the V7 iii and produced a limited edition model called the V7 ii Stornello.  It is a Street Scrambler design with a red, tubular frame, white paintwork on the tank and brushed aluminium mudguards.  It was a lovely bike, but there were only one thousand of them spread across the whole planet.

Our experience at the Bike Show rekindled my interest in the Stornello and, shortly after the event, I casually entered the model in to a Google search field.  I found a beauty about sixty miles away and, on impulse made a call to the Seller.  It was eighteen months old with only 1600 miles on the odometer.  The previous owner had bought it new, ridden it for a while and then px'd it against another bike.  After a very short discussion with 30%, I put down a holding deposit and arranged to view it...

By early December it was delivered and I couldn't wait to see the look on TP's face when he came home for Christmas and saw what his idiot Father had gone and done.

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Post script:  The purchase of the Guzzi was really the death knell for the Bonneville.  They both had the roughly the same amount of power, but the MG was much lighter and consequently performed and rode far better than the Bonnie ever would.  Its limited edition status also gave it an individuality that the Bonneville could never attain.

I would have added a picture in this entry but the Stornello is embarrassingly filthy, so that will have to wait until after I have "thrown a bucket of water over her".

My dog is a little shit!

This morning I was roused much earlier than I wanted to be.

I was dragged from the depths of sleep by dog #3 licking one of my hands. I withdrew it under the covers and the little bugger moved down the bed and found a foot poking out from under the duvet. That got licked too.  Having seemingly got tired of licking that foot, it then rummaged around until it found my other foot and gave it the same licky treatment.

By this time I was most definitely awake and I cracked one eyelid.  The light level told me that it was well before six o'clock and I groaned inwardly.  You see, the problem is that once I am awake I find it virtually impossible to fall back to sleep or lie in.  I knew that I was going to have to get up as it seemed that the dog wanted to be let out for a pee. My night's sleep was definitely over.

I checked my watch and saw that it was five, fifteen.  I'll repeat that; the little bugger had woken me at quarter past bloody five!  Now. I'm happy to rise at six, but this was unacceptable.  Clothes were thrown on and dog #3 jumped off the bed and trotted happily to the bedroom door.

We made our way downstairs and I grabbed the keys and unlocked the door to the garden.  The little sod had no interest in going out in to the garden.  She headed straight to the lounge and curled up in her favourite spot on the sofa.

The bloody thing then snoozed for a couple of hours until the Marauder and Whiffler woke and, only then, went out to desecrate the lawn.

I don't like heights

As a beekeeper I seem to have become the "go to guy" for any Hymenopterid related issue that may arise in the vicinity.  If a friend or acquaintance encounters a swarm, a wasp nest or even bumblebees in the garden I seem to get a call.  It actually goes beyond that and I now get a summons if friends of friends have an insect problem!

I don't really mind and am happy to offer advice or guidance. I'm also happy to collect a swarm. provided it is within easy reach.  I am certainly not going to put myself at risk climbing up trees to collect a swarm, especially as I already have more colonies than I really want or need.*

So, how on earth did I find myself forty feet in the air on a scaffolding tower, wearing a bee suit and looking down a redundant chimney?

For the past few weeks I have been consulted intermittently by a friend who has bees in one of his chimneys.  The chimney is no longer in use and the friend has had scaffolding erected so that he can re-point the brickwork.  He is no fan of being stung and consequently wanted my advice about the bees that appeared to be in residence.  We initially thought that they were masonry bees, but found them to be honey bees when a brick was removed from and he found himself peering at comb crawling with bees.  I was sent a WhatsApp image and asked what to do.

This wild colony probably originated as a swarm and had viewed the hollow of the capped chimney as the perfect place to settle, they live in hollow trees, small caves and crevices in the wild and a chimney is a handy man-made substitute.  There was no way to remove the colony without significant risk, so the decision was taken to use a chemical insecticide to kill them** and enable the removal of the combs.

The insecticide was applied about a week ago and this afternoon I turned up with a couple of bee suits and we were soon high in the air looking at bees buzzing around the chimney.  As it says in the title; I really don't like heights and I was very conscious of being so high. Even more so, when I had to climb up off the platform and perch on a scaffold rail to peer down the chimney.

The weird thing was that my fear of heights disappeared as soon as I found myself inspecting the comb blockage.  Apparently doing something normal is a great distraction from one's phobias.  Over the next forty minutes we dug out fifty or sixty pounds of sticky honey comb that extended a couple of feet down the chimney. This bagged and lowered to the ground and then we celebrated our ingenuity with beers in the sun.

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* I worked out that four colonies are more than sufficient.  I can take a reasonable honey harvest from them and their management takes a couple of hours every week, leaving me enough time for family and other interests.  If I loose a colony over the Winter there are still three remaining and a split or shook swarm can be taken to replace any losses...  The problem is that bees do like to reproduce and I overwintered six colonies and currently have eight spread over two apiaries!

** This may seem harsh, but this pest removal rather than the destruction of threatened British wildlife in their natural habitat.

Politicking

This morning found me with my nose to the grindstone reviewing feedback on the recommendations that I had spouted before disappearing for a long weekend.

It was no surprise that I had ruffled Colleague R's feathers.  He needs to understand that his reign is over and the brave new world is going to fall under my dominion rather than his.   I may need to calm him down, but it'll do him good to stew and lick his wounds for a couple of days and I am never in a rush to talk to him ... on any day of the week.

As for Colleague M, I had heard nothing from him directly, although I had seen a couple of emails that reinforced my view that he is a bone idle fucker that does the bare minimum to push a task forward. I have worked with him on previous occasions  and am well aware of his shortcomings. It is unfortunate that my boss never took enough interest to work out what the rest of the team have known for a long, long time.  As a result I ensure that I always give him clear and documented direction and follow up on a regular basis to make sure he is doing a half-arsed approximation of what he is supposed to.

I managed to grab ten minutes with my Boss to have a quick chat and to ensure that he was crystal clear on the whys and wherefores of my recommendations.  He had already agreed to my approach, but I just wanted to double check before I committed resources. The clock is slowly ticking down to the end of June when the contracts expire and I don't want to pulled up in a couple of weeks' time and asked "why the hell are you doing that"?

In summary; my day was spent talking to a number of colleagues and my manager to ensure that we were all aligned and in agreement with my plan of action.  If I wasn't playing politics, I was setting up meetings to get the plan moving.

Oh, and a couple came to see the house. We don't think they were particularly impressed to be asked to wear masks or gloves for the viewing and the feedback suggests that this wasn't what they were loooking for.

A busy weekend

It is fair to say that my three day weekend was fairly busy.  Our primary goal was to get the house and garden cleaned and decluttered in preparation for the viewing on Tuesday. 

In addition to the Spring Clean, TP needed assistance with bottling twenty litres of home brewed IPA and he also had a young cheddar cheese that needed to be coated in beeswax before it was placed in the cellar to mature.  He is certainly trying to keep himself occupied during the lockdown.

There were also bees to be inspected, lawns to be mowed and dogs to be walked. At the risk of repeating myself, it was a busy weekend.  I won't create a boring narrative of domesticity, but will note down a couple of things that amused or interested me.

Firstly, I inspected the hive from which I created a shook swarm in mid-April.  I am pleased to report that the new queen has mated and has started to lay.  Hopefully she will have the colony back up to strength in the next few weeks and they will continue to add to the honey already stored in the hive's supers.

The second was an amusing discussion that I crashed in to.  30% and TP were discussing the impact of the lockdown on students and graduates and ended up talking about the son of one of her colleagues.  Apparently he was due to go to University in September, but was considering taking a gap year to concentrate on his sporting interests.  We were advised that "he is one of the best swimmers in the Country".  My pithy response was "What, better that a duck?"  After a few minutes of analysis it was determined that, however good this chap was, there were a significant number of British ducks or pike, for that matter, that could out-swim him.

What a couple of wankers!

I've already mentioned that my Boss has asked me to manage the handover of work from a pair of Contractors that will be moving on in a couple of month's time.  They both have a reputation for being wind bags and slackers and, so far, my findings have reinforced that view.

Today I had workload review calls arranged with both of them and I turned up promptly for the first with Contractor M.  I had already picked up M's most significant piece of work because he hadn't got a clue how to move it forward to completion. As we worked our way through his very short list it was apparent that he had one key task that needed attention and he had done fuck all with it in the three weeks that it had sat in his work stack.

He has been coasting for a while now and, if I am honest, there is little point in kicking his arse at this late stage*.  Instead, I pointed out that he had an administrative role looking after a configuration management database and he was going to be spending the next few weeks preparing a "Dummies Guide" and performing knowledge transfer to some selected colleagues. 

He is an evasive little fucker and I am going to have to keep a close eye on him to ensure that all of this happens. Step 1 in the management of this was a full set of meeting notes with actions that were issued to him and our Boss.

The second call was with Contractor R and this took place about forty minutes later.  I had been focussing on this chap's work stack since the beginning of April and had already proven that eight of his nine work activities required zero input from him.

At this point I will acknowledge that the ninth work activity is a bit of a beast, but I had spent the past few days preparing for this call and had summarised the task, the deliverables and the fact that all Colleague R needed to do was prepare a Service Description Document.

We spent the next eighty minutes in the most ridiculous discussion where it rapidly became apparent that R had absolutely no plan to close out this work activity.  It appears that he is simply revelling in attending inconclusive customer calls and claiming that a lack of requirements is preventing progress.

I'm a completer/finisher by nature and this situation is absolutely abhorrent to me.  This chap is being paid a fortune and is happy to coast along spouting nonesensical bullshit to conceal the fact that he is making no attempt to drive this activity to conclusion.

It is fair to say that I came very close to going ballistic at a few points in this discussion, but kept my temper in reasonable check and formulated a plan to delimit the requirements as they were currently understood and to develop the solution definition document to align with the pricing that is being developed by a frolleague of mine.

Funnily enough my manager got another meeting summary with a proposal that the current documentation should be abandoned and that I should manage the production of the necessary document. 

Let's see what he says when I get back in to work on Tuesday.

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*  and that would be my Boss' job, not mine

Furniture Polish recipe

The main purpose of this journal is jot down the comings and goings of life, things that amuse or irritate me and useful pieces of information that I want to note down for perpetuity.  Basically it's part diary, part scrapbook, part jotter.

It was a quiet day today, so I thought I'd note down a recipe for furniture polish that I had made at the back end of 2018.  I made a couple of jars, so have a plentiful supply.  Its likely to be years before I need to refer to the recipe again ... but at least I stand a chance of finding it in here.

I suppose I had better start with a warning. If you attempt to make this polish you will be working with highly flammable substances and you do so at your own risk. I'm not responsible if you set fire to yourself.

Ingredients

1/3 Beeswax

1/3 Boiled Linseed Oil

1/3 Pure Gum Turpentine (not the synthetic stuff)

Method

1. Measure out the ingredients.
2. Put the turps and linseed oil in sealed jars and put these in warm water to heat both the jars and the contents.  The aim of this stage is to pre-warm these substances safely.  If cold turps and linseed oil are added to the melted beeswax, it will solidify quickly unless it is kept over the heat.  By pre-warming these solvents it should be possible to blend them with the beeswax away from any source of ignition. Do not use a Bain-marie, double boiler or any other stove top device. Put the sealed jars in a washing up bowl and add hot water from the tap or kettle. As the water cools replace it with warmer water to keep the solvents nice and warm.
3. Melt the bees wax in a Bain-marie or double boiler.
   Once melted remove from the heat and turn off any sources of ignition
4. Add the warmed Linseed Oil to the melted beeswax and stir well
   If the wax starts to solidify it will be necessary to return the container to the Bain-marie, which should be warm enough to melt the contents without the need for the external heat sources.
5. Finally add the heated Turpentine and stir well.
6. Pour in to the warmed jars and leave to set

Note: test the polish on a concealed area of any item you plan to polish to ensure it is compatible with the wood finish.  

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.