Lincoln Cathedral (The 16). Swarming bees in our garden!

Monday May 12^th

I am chuffed. Nay, better than chuffed. We may have found a publisher for our book on the caskets. We have to send some samples of the work we are planning to produce, chapter synopsis, photographs etc. Felice has found a “craft” publisher who may be interested. We have to send off some stuff for evaluation and if they like what they see we will go for a proper meeting. After we had finished dancing around Feli’s office we sat down and had a think about what we had and what we should send.

We also realise that we now have to keep a low profile with our side project, lest anyone get wind of what we are doing and try to throw a spanner in our works (or a clog). Laura had a brainwave at lunch and said we should include some charts or patterns or whatever they are, with colours for threads and instructions too. That could just be what tips the scales in our favour. I gave her a big hug and kiss in the middle of the restaurant which caused a few sideways looks but I didn’t care. She also told me off for being too curry flavoured to enjoy the kiss properly. I promised I would give my teeth a brush when we got back to my broom cupboard and we could do it again, properly. She couldn’t though, she had a meeting with her tutor about a possible work placement for the first semester of her final year.

I did a lot more work on the real research this afternoon to make up for messing about this morning and I found a letter! A real, honest to goodness letter. Not a list or a bill or a receipt but a letter. It is the first one we have found in all the pile of documents in the basket. It isn’t very long, only about  twenty or so lines but from the first few words it is clear that I have discovered a missive written over 600 years ago from one family member to another and I will probably the first person to read it since it was stuffed in the casket.

‘Read it’ is probably inaccurate English, as I have only managed to translate the first two lines (nearly). Felice is impressed with my find, as you can imagine, the only slight downer was our supervisor is off somewhere or other all week, so we couldn’t tell her. Never mind though.

Laura was at Dominic’s again tonight so I did some more sewing and tried to contact Kaybers but there was no answer. I wonder if they have gone over to Jan’s family in Norway. If they have I am a little miffed that they went without telling me, but I suppose we have drifted apart a bit since Laura moved in. Maybe having a friend who was single was easier to cope with than a friend who dragged along their lesbian partner?

Tuesday May 13^th.

Normal morning at Uni. We are taking our time with the letter as the language is a real mixture of Old French and “Chaucerian” English. Felice is in her element, which is not surprising at it is her field of specialism, if it was written in Latin I guess I would be equally as focused.

At XXX & Y Mrs Briggs jokingly asked what had happened to me on Sunday? I had to ask why and she reminded me that the University Symphony Orchestra had been playing at the Firth Hall prior to the Uni exams starting. They played Elgar, Vaughan Williams and a chap called Finzi. I asked if they played his Dies Natalis and she was amazed I had even heard of him. I had to confess that I had heard it before at Dad’s Uni when I was little, but I couldn’t tell you anything more about him than that. The Elgar was that old tub thumper the Cockaigne Overture and the VW Symphony 7 rounded off the programme. I was ashamed to admit that I had forgotten all about it. (When I got home this evening I checked and found we hadn’t even written it in our diary!)

She said that while you could tell they weren’t as polished or professional as, say, the Halle they were still very good. She had naturally assumed that I would be there as I seemed to be at most of things she attended of a cultural nature!

We checked our forthcoming diary dates and found that she won’t be going to Lincoln tomorrow to see The Sixteen, but she is going to the Lyceum to see ‘One Man Two Guvnors’ and also to see the final concert in the International Concert Series at the City Hall too. My Mum is coming to the latter two events too. She and Mrs B get on really well. I suppose that Mrs B must be about my sister’s age or a bit older.

I knew she is interested in my work at the Uni so I had brought in a photograph of the letter we had found and a photocopy of our attempt at a translation – so far as it goes. She was fascinated by it and said she could see why the attractions of being a Research Assistant had overshadowed being a fulltime Archivist at XXX & Y. Mr Carr came in as we were discussing the importance of the finding of the letter and he got hold of the wrong end of the stick and thought I had discovered something amazing in our archives. I let Mrs B do the explaining and he too was fascinated by the idea of the letter having laid undisturbed for centuries until we came along and tried to render it into modern English.

He did say one thing which made me thing he was quite switched on; he thought our letter was like a piece of long lost treasure which no-one had known was there while our archives are merely forgotten treasures. People know they are they but no-one is really interested in them for their own sake. There will come a time when the law has changed or been amended so much that these ancient pieces of paper with their legal precedents will be superseded and worthless. I said that they would still be important as records of how law developed over to time and adapted itself to changing circumstances.

Surely they held some worth for that alone. He agreed and said that he wished my mind was being used by the firm all the time rather than it just being peripatetic! That is probably the closest I’ll come to a compliment from him, I guess.

Laura had the meal ready and waiting when I got in and then she zoomed off to work once more. I found there was a text waiting for me from Kaybers. They are in Norway and are being given the rounds of the family to parade the new little Orr! I hope it hasn’t cost her an arm and a leg to send a text from there, I know how expensive a place to live it is!

My lovely blonde bombshell was complete knackered tonight when she got back in, there had been a huge party in the restaurant and her legs were going wobbly because of all the “toing” and “froing” so I had driven down to the restaurant and picked her up. At home she flopped into the armchair and asked, “Do you think I could have a nice hot bath?”

I rushed upstairs and filled the bath adding some of the spa salts we had for Christmas and lighting all the candles and tealights we had in the bathroom to add extra ambiance. She lay back in the water and I proceeded to wash her carefully and gently all over. When I had done she reached out and gave me a huge smackeroo, put her arms round my neck and pulled me in with her! I was only in shorts and a t-shirt which was handy as they came off quite easily and were thrown into the shower cubicle.

She then proceeded to return the favour but we got no further than her soaping my breasts before lust took over and we forgot all about washing…

(A P.S. to this; as I’d had my ‘wash’ before Callie’s last walk all she got tonight was a stroll up the garden path and a release in the field behind the house by YT wearing her bathrobe. As doggy revenge for this inconsiderate treatment she woke me up at about three twenty in the morning wanting to go out for a call of nature. Dogs, eh? No romance!)

Wednesday May 14^th.

The 16 at Lincoln Cathedral.

Discovered an amazing fact today; which explains why I sometimes seem to be one of the few leaving the building of XXX & Y at six pm. The staff can choose to alter the length of their lunch time and go that much earlier if they have informed their line manager. This can be done up to twice a week. I have been working here all this time and never knew. I asked Mrs Briggs about it and she thought I did know but also thought I liked having long lunchtimes so I could dine out and wasn’t bothered. Even part time workers, like me, are included in the scheme. I feel a bit silly. I start could work earlier on Tuesday afternoons and go home at the same time as Laura does from Uni and cut an hour of my lunchtime every Wednesday to do the same then as well. What a drongo I’ve been.

Why am I mentioning this now? Well, I found out about it today and we left at 5 pm to drive over to Lincoln for a concert at the Cathedral. The drive itself took us about an hour and we found parking near to Lincoln Castle which is just a short stroll from the Cathedral precincts. The concert didn’t begin until 7.30 so we scouted a round for a place for a bite to eat. A pub heading down Steep Hill, called the Wig and Mitre, looked promising so we dived in there and had a bite and a glass of wine each.

The tickets we’d bought were for the front nave and were unreserved, so our plan was to head for the door as they opened at 6.45, snag our seats and then take it in turns having a swift wander round the building. That is what we did. There was already a queue outside the west door of about twenty people but as we waited it got longer and longer and longer. I carried the shopping bag with two cushions and a blanket to render our seats more comfortable and we chose a pair of aisle seats four rows back from where the choir would perform. Although, from what I remember of them performing at St. Marie’s in Sheffield, the need to view the choir wasn’t all that important, it was being in a good position to hear them which was important. We were right in the centre of the front of the nave, just before the transepts, where the acoustics should have been perfect. The three front rows had reserved labels on them; Dean, Sub-dean, Siemens(?) etc

Once we had claimed our seats Laura went off on an exploration to find the location of the Ladies’ toilets, always worth knowing. She came back and informed me where they were so I went to check too. Then she had a stroll round and when she passed the baton to me I did too. By the time I got back to my seat at about 7.20pm the place was bursting at the seams. I was glad we’d got in so early and had been keen to get seats where we did. I had tried to order interval drinks from one of the tables but the ladies manning it (womanning it?) claimed they couldn’t manage to do that and anyway there were three drinks stations scattered around the transepts and they would cope quite well. (It turned out they were correct.)

The concert started on time after a brief address from a man in a long grey frock. They performed three pieces one from each of the three composers represented, Shepherd, Mundy and Davy, then we had the interval. The piece by Davy was the weakest of three by a long way, especially as it had sections in it where the choir seemed to be singing variations on the words; “Ha ha ha”, “He he he” and “Ho ho ho”. I mentioned this to Laura and she had thought the same. Without a copy of the score it was difficult to work out what they were singing, even for a Classics scholar.

We rushed to the interval drinks stalls and had a glass of surprisingly pleasant white wine each and then got talking with a couple who had brought their little girl to the concert, she must have been about seven or eight I suppose. I think she was the youngest person we spotted all night. The little girl thought the music was pretty but it did go on a bit in places, and there was an old man with white hair and a huge bald patch sat in front of her who kept jiggling about in his seat from left to right which blocked her view, so then she had to move. She had wanted to slap his bald head but her Mum had restrained her. I think I would have primed her to say, “Will you please stop fidgeting? Don’t you know how to behave at a concert?”

The second half consisted of five shorter pieces and they definitely saved the best work until last, Mundy's "Vox patris caelestis". I thought it was by far the most well formed and structured piece of the whole evening, probably because, to my ears, it sounded quite modern compared to the other items we'd heard. The whole concert was over by 9.15! We wandered around the top end of Steep Hill and then headed back to the real hills further east. 

I thought the whole experience was truly uplifting and inspiring, especially in such a magnificent setting. They are playing Carlisle much later in the year, I may see if we can get tickets for that, if it is on a weekend. The Cathedral was much as I remembered it from my last visit and Laura was keen to come back on a normal day and have a good old wander round whilst the cathedral and everything else is open. We have planned to do that one weekend before we go to Australia.

Home by about 10.30 and charp hitting after walking Callie and a spot of Ugandan discussions!

Thursday 16^th May.

A day of contrasts. I had a very tearful Laura to console this morning. I opened a letter from the City Hall and it was a flier for their next International Concert Season. Pre-booking opens at the start of June – just days after the final concert in this season’s programme. I said I would get us booked in for the whole of next season asap and Laura just started crying. I asked us what was the matter and she told me that it really upset her that I would buy things like that for her when she couldn’t really afford to do it herself or to pay me back the huge amount I would be spending on her. (The season costs just under £300 in advance.)

I gave her a big hug and asked her if she had enjoyed this season. She said that she had. Would she like to go to next season? Yes, she would… but couldn’t she just buy her tickets for herself? I said would she mind buying her ticket from me on the day of each performance? She said that would be alright. So that is what we have arranged. I will go ahead and buy the two season tickets for next year and Laura will buy her ticket from me each time rather than stump up £300, she hasn’t got all, at once.

I got really worried that she might think I am buying her affection or behaving in a unthinking or thoughtless way when I do things like this (ie spend a lot of money on something for the both of us – the Veronese trip cost me about £150 altogether, for example). She said that she felt awkward about the fact I would just hand over my debit card to get something without seeming to think twice about it whilst she was, kind of, counting her pennies every week. This made me upset too and we both ended up having a good cry about it.

We agreed to go through our finances together so we could see what each other was able to contributing to the house hold and the like. It does turnout that she has a pittance really from her part-time job (and tips) compared to the fortune I seem to get every month. My salary has risen from about £16K per year to just under £31K(in one almighty leap in September) but with absolutely no extra outgoings. Naturally, I have a hell of a lot of spending money.

Laura contributes to the household by paying the equivalent of the council tax each month putting that and something extra into the household bank account - which is what we use to pay all our bills, food shopping and fuel for the car etc.

We each have our own personal bank accounts too which we use for whatever spending we want. I am putting away over £500 in my saving account every month (Stocks and Shares ISA in fact) and still am pretty flush.

I had no idea that she felt so worried about the disparity in our incomes. We made a tearful vow that we must never bottle anything up again, if we felt bad about something we had to get it out into the open, not leave it to fester.

The other event of the day was a bee swarm on the side of Callie’s palace when we got home from Uni. It was a ball of seething little black creatures about the size of a netball. They seemed pretty settled and calm although their buzzing was made quite loud by the amplification effect of the shed being like a sound box. One or two scout bees were flying around, probably looking for a better location to swarm to next, but the rest seemed quite happy to use the dog’s house as their new home.  

Not quite knowing what to do I went and knocked on Ann & Steve’s door and asked them. They came and had a look at the swarm, which was very impressive and then Steve remembered a guy he knew who kept bees. He rushed off to fetch the number.

The upshot of which was at about 6 pm a chap in a blue van arrived, wearing a white overall (bee suit), he asked to see the swarm and told us he could remove that quite easily. He asked if there were any bee keepers locally and we had to tell him we didn’t think so. We had attracted quite a crowd on our little patch of lawn as people heard about the swarm and wanted to come and see it before it was taken away.

The chap disappeared for a while and came back with a roll of gaffer tape and a cardboard box. The box was about 12 x 10 x 8 inches and it was into this he was going to knock the swarm and then seal it up. He asked us to move back, so we crowded into my conservatory (or into Muriel and Ken’s next door) to watch.

He placed the box directly over the swarm with one of the side lid flaps folded in and then just shuffled it from side to side for a moment before putting it down on the grass and folding over all the lid flaps. He used the gaffer tape to seal the lid and then, with a small knife, began to make a tiny hole in one corner of the box which looked like a 1” wide little door with a ramp of cardboard.

He placed the box upside down on the grass again, with the flap of the little door down on the grass to and said that we ought to wait for about an hour for the remaining scout bees and any others to find the temporary hive and go back inside. We had him come and wait with us in our conservatory and he expounded at great length and detail about bees and bee keeping. He was fascinating and obviously an expert. This was the third call about a swarm he had had today. One was in a tree which he’d moved prior to coming to us and one was on the eaves of a house too high to reach, even with the home owner’s ladder! He had left that one until he could get them down by other means.

We had a couple of cups of tea and a few biscuits and he explained that he had a spare couple of hives which the bees would go into and then he would place the whole lot in an orchard he used over towards Barnsley. It seems he’s been keeping bees for years and currently has seventeen hives altogether. He is just about to start a new method of producing comb honey and has bought some contraptions which are placed in the hives and the bees construct their combs into them but when they are full and sealed the devices can be taken out, unfastened and dropped straight into a jar! They are made especially for that purpose. I have asked him if I can have a regular order of one of those jars (once a month) because comb honey is absolutely gorgeous.

Laura had to zoom off to the restaurant at seven, so the bee man and I kept chatting until he thought most of the other bees would have found the swarm and we went out to finish off. He closed up the little door and sealed it with gaffer tape, we then took this round to his van. He allowed me to carry it and it was amazingly light. He said there were probably about 2kg of bees in the box.

His van was a veritable Aladdin's cave of bee keeping paraphernalia. He had several full racks of combs, full of honey, which looked so tempting and several boxes with empty racks in them waiting to go into the hives. He put the second swarm of the day next to swarm number one, closed up and drove off.

Laura was still excited about the swarm when she got back because she hadn’t seen one before. I saw one once as a child but I didn’t see how it was removed from the branch it was on. I was just shepherded away from it before the bee-keeper arrived. She was also pleased because she had made over £35 in tips tonight, which (I thought) should go some way to relieving her fears about her financial situation. I didn’t tell her this though. I merely told her that I had bought a jar of honey from our bee-keeper and did she fancy trying a new way of eating it.

She (and I) did!