The sting in the tale

Despite threatening clouds, Irene and I had a very pleasant afternoon selling our Goldenford books at the Pirbright Flower Show. Only problem was that we were under a tree, which would have been good if it had been hotter, but was rather windy. When we first arrived the plant tent adjacent to us was being held to the ground with sandbags and seemed in danger of taking off. But somehow or other, the Flower Show manages to achieve good weather, even in the bad summers of the last couple of years, and the wind settled and it remained dry.

I left our pitch a couple of times, once to look at the paintings from the local Art club, which are hung on the railings for display and sale, a la Green Park in London. (Do they still do that, I wonder? I haven’t been there at the weekend for years.) On the other occasion, I went into the show itself, to admire displays such as ‘four vegetables on a trug’ or the best coffee walnut cake. Despite the popularity of the presentations, we had lots of visitors to our table, sold some books and chatted with lots of people. I was delighted that one lady who had read Tainted Tree last year enjoyed it so much that she wanted another book of mine, and took a copy of A Bottle of Plonk.

The only fly in the ointment was - well to be precise, not a fly but a wasp, which decided to alight on my finger and sting me. There were loads of wasps hovering in our tree, and after this attack, I spent more time standing up away from them.

On Sunday, Irene came with the OM and me to Polesden Lacey, a stately home where the former King and Queen (George VI and Elizabeth, the late Queen Mother) spent their honeymoon. The owner of that time seemed to have climbed the greasy pole from being a porter’s daughter, albeit the illegitimate child of a brewery millionaire, to marrying the eldest son of a baronet. Since they had no children, she owned seventeen dogs, whose graves we saw in the gardens. Fascinating insight into the aristocracy – she ended up leaving her diamonds to the Queen Mother and thousands of pounds to Princess Margaret. ‘New money,’ the guides told us several times.

Since Monday, when I met up with the reading group, one of whose ex-members has just returned from Holland for a brief trip, I have been dealing with various forms of drudgery – invoices, quotations and washing. I’m bored with it. Next job is the Goldenford accounts and also the OM’s, and if I can polish them off, I’ll be able to do more fun things. So back to the treadmill …