As a diligent reader, you may have remembered that I have been volunteered to run the bookstall at the village festivities in May.
This coincided with the fact that we can no longer send our culled books onto another shop – it has closed.
I am going to forgo the brackets – because I over used them in the last blog – but I will explain.
In order to keep the shelves in an Oxfam bookshop looking fresh and interesting, we cull those that have been around for a while.
Should anyone want to understand this system in detail, let me know and I can provide you with the details…..
Anyway, because we currently have no other shop to send our books to, we have to put them in sacks for re-cycling.
And this came to my attention just as I was volunteered to run the aforementioned bookstall. It doesn’t take Sherlock to work out how this might work.
Yes, indeed, the culled books are currently stacked high in our garage, waiting to be sold to an unsuspecting public in Deepest Sussex and, hopefully, Oxfam and the village will get a 50/50 split on the proceeds.
Stalwarts who have been involved in the bookstall before me, have come to my aid and said they would help, and saying that I might need all the help I could get, and today, a newish friend turned up to sort out what was in the garage.
The sun shined on us and we hefted books and put them in various categories and chatted about this and that.
A successful London businessman, he has ‘retired’ down here and got involved in the most fascinating small business.
He helps a company which is making beepalaces.
Now, I put aside all thoughts of books and their interest when I first heard about beepalaces.
Did you know that most bees do not live in hives? Nor me.
Did you know that there are about 250 types of solitary bee in the UK who don’t make honey or have much of a sting? Nor me
Did you know that an acre of apple orchard needs only 250 solitary bees to pollinate it compared to up to 20,000 honey bees? Nor me.
As I sit here writing this, the sun is setting and very nice it looks too, and by chance, one of those very nice chances, a bee is gently wandering around outside the window looking for something useful to do. I now suspect it is not going home to a hive of thousands of others, but to a solitary bed.
Not least in thanks for the book hefting, and because it is so interesting, we will be buying a solitary beepalace for our garden.
I have to say that our purchases of bird boxes have gone completely unremarked by our bird, but we live in hope.
I also have to say, we have noticed that we don’t have that many bees in the garden but thought it was because bees are in crisis.
Looking at the beepalace website, I think we might have to grow a whole load of new things. Perhaps my newish friend will advise.
thereluctanthousewife 