The compettion

The day started cloudy and cool as it has been for days. And for the second day running, I discovered a tick attached to me. Since it turned cool I have been treating myself to a nightly hot water bottle plus Eddie the cat has taken to lying on me/my bed every night. Normally in "proper" summer weather, he spends the night outdoors hunting mice, He otherwise never lies on me. So now fourth tick this year, all from Eddie. Given he's Irish, he ought to be deported to the country he originated from - well the country where the people who named him live.

Talking of which, son.in law in Ireland came up with the idea of making hay bales by stuffing the now very dry grass into a wheelie bin and pressing it down as much as possible by hand. Daughter Kate had sensibly kept the last 10 years worth of old bale twine. Clever.

By afternoon the sun did decide to revisit Bavaria and if one can believe the forecast, we are in for a reasonable weekend. This evening MrsMY came by for a late evening hack and Flash and I drove down the road for a gentle walk passing the large beehouse belonging to one of the senior beekeeping figures in Ottobeuren. I think there are about 30 hives working at the moment. Given they are only 750 metres from mine, it's no wonder I have no honey. MrB's 20 odd hives are only about 1,500 metres to the west and there is a commercial beekeeper with 8 or so hives about the same distance to the north. Adds up to there being some 3,000,000 bees well within flying radius of my few thousand.

Tomorrow I hope to do a hive check and hope that I can see that there is sufficient honey to make it worthwhile doing a harvest. If possible I would like to wait a few days so that I can show the process to some children. But perhaps there won't be any! But at least we do still have enough CO² here to keep the thirst quenched and the supply of food is not under threat. I saw this evening that crumpet production is now to be shut down in the UK.

I wonder what the English football fand are going to celebrate with next week without beer, soft drinks and even water.  99 Flakes?