New Babies

Well! Our new Queen Bee Philibert is certainly strutting her stuff in the Malarkey Hive. Yesterday's hive inspection revealed a whole mass of new baby bees born this last week- all furry and doing their house training before they go out a-flying. And we can tell they are new baby Philibert bees because they are a totally different colour to the old Australian Queen bees. The old bees are a caramel honey colour; these bees are black, like the original British bee which I am thrilled about. We have a multi-cultural hive!

There are masses more bees waiting to be born. There are eggs, there are larvae in various stages of development, and there, plain as the pointy nose on my Kentish maid face, was Queen Philibert herself, looking like she owned the place. Which, of course, she does. I think we've got the colony in the best position to weather the coming winter. Fingers crossed!

On another note, we've had another brief flirtation with moving abroad. Andy's colleague, Tim, has a house in Brittany. I say a house, it's a smallholding really, and every time it is mentioned it brings back the gripe that if we want to be able to afford a smallholding of our own the obvious way is to spend our money abroad, because you get more for your money, landwise, in foreign climes.

Any how, the conversation on Friday night, stimulated by another Daily Rant article on a certain segment of Brits scamming the social service system and preferring to live off benefits rather than fend for themselves, went thus:

'Tim says that in France you get benefits for a year, and then that's it,' said Andy. 'Once the year is up, you manage by yourself or end up on the streets.'
'How caring,' I said.
'Yes; and he says that once you've had a job out there for 6 months, you're pretty much guaranteed it for life because employers aren't allowed to sack anyone.'
'Wow...'
'And that although the taxes are much higher, you get to retire when you want, because the retirement pot is really well funded...'
'What, like when you're twelve even?'
'Yeah, whenever you like...'
'So,' I said, 'if it's that good, why isn't Tim working here?'
'I asked him that,' said Andy. 'He didn't know.'
'Perhaps we should go out there,' I said. 'You and Tim could set up a practice together.'
'I might have trouble with the lingo,' said Andy.
'Nah,' I said. 'All you need to do, based on your current client experiences, is say, 'Le poo ou le wee-wee?' and do a Gallic shrug.'
'Do you think that'd work?' said Andy, trying a Gallic shrug for size.
'Of course,' I said. 'Or you could stick to treating les animaux du expat communitee. I bet il y a un call pour that.'
'C'est possible,' dit Andy.
'And all your dispenses could be prefaced by 'Voici la jollop pour ton chien/chat/ couchon/ vache,' dit moi.
'Alors,' dit Andy. 'Je pense que nous habitons dans Cloud Cuckoo terraine.'

I got a bit lost then. 'But we've just had the hall, stairs and landing decorated,' I said. 'P'raps we should stay put for a while. Enjoy the wallpaper.'