My day so far

..has been varied but productive. I took my lodger to the airport this morning, as she is off to a birthday party in Hamburg. Apart from this, I've been writing - finished a short story and did a lot of work on a new project, which is in development hell, as they say. I've been taking a necessary break from Winterstrike, after Hebden Bridge, but have now returned to it and need to get its plot back on track.

Otherwise mowing, cooking (I went into the fishmonger in Wedmore this morning and got some sea trout and some samphire, which always makes me think of the 'dreadful trade' mentioned in KING LEAR), and other bits and pieces. Sid's ear is healing nicely but there have been many determined incursions onto my lap: Sid needs company today.

And the big deal of the day: we are going to Wells tonight to pick up a nucleus. Of bees. T has been spending the day making up frames and now the whole house smells of honeycomb. So in about an hour, my car will be full of bees. Ulp. Hope they stay put.

Nucleus!

We have bees. Went over to Wells at dusk and after a necessary bottle of wine, not that anyone needed Dutch courage or anything, T and P suited up and transferred the nucleus to the hive we'd brought with us.

There were a lot of bees. Quite unnerving, to see this crawling mass of insect life. I brought a very angry bee into the kitchen and P's wife collared it with one of those twee umbrella things you put over food to keep the flies off.

P used rubber gloves: if he gets stung, he says, the bees just twirl round and unscrew their stings rather than tearing free and subsequently dying. I didn't know this was possible, but apparently so.

After this we had a long discussion about, of all things, the Peloponnesian War.

By this time it was dark and raining, so we loaded the bees (taped up) into the car and came home. They're in the orchard now, in their little house. It was all very peaceful, due largely to being dark and cold. We'll check on them tomorrow.