Misunderheard

Apparently it's called "bee keeping" rather than "bee farming" or "bee husbandry" because the little buggers are as slippery as eels and are always threatening to fuck off and set up home in a nice gorse bush. Or go back to where their hive used to be. Or wander off and look for a new queen. The challenge is keeping them.

Many years ago I found out that Mondays were unavailable for band-practices because my drummer went to bee-keeping classes that day. It made a very favourable impression on all of us, and we liked to picture him in white overalls with a net-curtain-hat and a watering can full of smoke. I don't understand how it happened, but it was a number of years before I found out that I'd misheard him, he was trying to get an accountancy qualification, and he couldn't make it on Monday nights because of his BOOK-KEEPING class.

For a similar reason, my shopping list at the weekend included "Kitten Roy". More than a decade ago one of my friends was shopping with a list that his girlfriend had written. It was a neat, feminine and loopy script, but ultimately slightly illegible. "Who the fuck is Kitten Roy?" "Kitchen roll. It says kitchen roll".

Richard "Brexit pursued by a bear" B