Friday, May 14, 2021

Beauty is in the eye of the bee holder

Over the last year or so I've had the same conversation with Mrs AC quite a few times. The doorbell will go around 11am and Mrs AC will state that it's the postman delivering something for her. Of course it's going to be for her as I hate shopping so much that I actually don't even like doing it online.

But anyway, the conversation usually goes something like this:
AC: what have you been buying now?
Mrs AC: something I really need, it's a ravioli maker / remote control hairdryer / phlogiston detector (insert other device which looks really snazzy but has virtually no use and will be used once before spending the rest of eternity hidden in a drawer)
AC: that's nice (whilst in my head I'm trying to figure out which drawer it's going to be deposited into in about 3 hours time)

If we both die in a freak accident whoever has the pleasure of emptying our house is going to think that we were a pair of utter nutters when they find out how much tat is secreted about the house. I might just leave a couple of notes in the aforementioned tat drawers absolving myself from any responsibility in order that my obituary doesn't read "Tat collector dies in alcohol fuelled idiocy." When I do get written up I want it to read: His last words were "what could possibly go wrong - watch this!"

So when the doorbell rang at 11am one day a couple of weeks ago I hadn't anticipated the next words out of Mrs AC's mouth: "Who can that be?"

Seriously woman? You've spent so much time with him over the last year that I'm surprised you don't know how many sugars he likes in his tea and his entire life story.   

"It's obviously the fucking postman" was my response. "Oh yeah, I'm not expecting anything though" was hers. She was right - the delivery was for me for a change. 

"It's for me" I told her, "I've been expecting something - It's my bees". Mrs AC then proceeded to call me by her usual pet name name for me - she can speak fluent Italian so she uses Italian to get me in the mood "fottuto idiota". Not now honey - amore later but I've got something to get on with. 

"I'm not that fucking stupid - seriously what have you been buying?" Now I have been known to wind her up about things - I've told her about mythical creatures called haggis which roam the Scottish countryside http://ayecarambapoker.blogspot.com/2019/09/haggis-hunting-and-scottish-long-necked.html?m=1 and once I tried to tell her that dinosaurs weren't as big as everyone thought but that time had caused the bones to swell to enormous proportions. I probably deserve my Italian moniker to be honest. 

"No seriously - I bought some bees". The look of disdain on her face was palpable. 

So anyway - back to the bees. It's my latest weird hobby - last year I made a few cheeses to pass the time http://ayecarambapoker.blogspot.com/2020/04/thats-mature.html?m=1 and this year I'm entering the world of beekeeping. Sort of anyway. There's a local society who are always looking for gardens to put hives in and one of the members asked if I'd be interested in putting a couple in the garden. 

I haven't really had to do much but as long as I get some of the honey I'm fine so I've been researching how to make mead so we've got some extra booze to get us through the winter and at least some members of our household will be doing some flying this year, because it's unlikely to be me for quite a while.