In the Year of Our Lord.

Today's Blip is an iron casting set into the right hand side of the fire surround in the Undercroft of Newbattle Abbey. No matter how much I look at it, it seems to have a list to starboard and, no matter how many times I measure it, it seems to be upright.
The date of 1140 is the year that the abbey was founded by the Cistercian monks from Melrose under the patronage of King David the first of Scotland and his son Henry.

We held our AGM there this afternoon, we being the Newbattle Beekeepers' Association. Beekeepers have much trouble deciding where to put the apostrophe in the titles of their associations. It is of minor interest that the casting was probably made by the "lost wax" process, the wax in question being bees' wax thus creating another problem with an apostrophe. I could, of course, have used the conventional spelling of beeswax, but where's the fun in that?

The evening's task was setting up the cinema to show our first Bollywood film, "English Vinglish", it wasn't my taste and it scored quite low in our "Bean Pole" even though it seems to be rated highly in other circles. Our bean pole is an exit poll, the idea being that each customer takes a bean out of a pot and puts it into a numbered cup to give it a star rating out of 5. Having realised that most raw beans are dangerous if swallowed and cooked ones are messy, I substituted stainless steel M6 nuts, hence the exhortation to our clientele to, "Cast your nuts as you leave, please!"