Liz Williams: journal

We have a new Saturday employee, S. I have spent the day in town partly at the shop and partly in town, giving her a chance to learn the ropes. I realised when we started talking that I already knew S: she has done the paintings for the goddess temple and used to go out with a man with an owl.

Anyway, she was fine: she dealt well with the customers and apparently enjoyed herself, which is a large part of what it is all about.

T's friend M came into the shop and we had a discussion about Manchester, which northern city he hails from and where I spent 4 years in the early 80s. M enlivened things by telling us that the sign for Canal Street, which is Manchester's main gay quarter, regularly had the 'C' and the 'S' stolen. Work it out. It made another customer have hysterics but we are easily amused here in the sticks.

Another part of my day was spent in contacting those suppliers who won't talk to T because he is a card-carrying, dick-owning representative of the Patriarchal Conspiracy (radical lesbian separatism is alive and well in this part of Somerset and hey, fair enough).

Carrying on a theme T, who is built along Klingon lines and about as hetero as you can get without actually being issued with some kind of governmental ID, earned eternal kudos in my eyes by telling a young man in the pub that he had beautiful hair. Which he did: long enough to sit on and the colour of mink. The young man, who was sitting with a biker group, was rather pleased. 'Oh, thank you!' he said, blushing prettily. There is hope for the British male yet.

Weather has been lovely - clear and sunlit with a green twilight sky and now a full moon. We are Wassailing tonight. The orchard has been here for 103 years. I am interested to learn from my folklore book that carols are dissolute songs, inspiring lust and lewdness. Here's hoping, eh?