Salters' Road.

I needed to collect some honey jars from Newbattle so Hamish had to tag along; as with yesterday, he spent some time in the car but he did get out several times for a run which included him standing in the river barking for sticks to be thrown. By the time we left for home, the car stank of wet dog, the passenger seat was rather damp and all of the seats were covered in a thick layer of white and ginger hair. He must have spent the time that he was by himself carefully threading the individual fibres into the upholstery. His pets were unimpressed when I asked for a donation towards the valeting fee. The Blip was taken on the old Salters' Road that the monks used to transport salt from Prestonpans to the Abbey.

While I was there, there was much talk of bees and I was able to watch the beginners learning how to extract a crop of honey; it was fascinating, they were using tools the “wrong” way and employing a paint stripper to remove the wax cappings from the honey cells. These strange techniques appeared to be rather effective so I Googled them when I arrived home and it seems that using the uncapping fork the wrong way is common practice and carried the recommendation that the procedure is carried out above the extractor rather than an uncapping tray. I tried it and didn't spill a drop of honey on the kitchen floor which, in turn, meant that it wasn't trodden into every carpet throughout the house – anything that keeps Herself happy is good at times like this. The hot-air paint stripper I didn't find successful; the inter-web for it carried heated arguments about the merits and demerits of the procedure, mostly centred on the possibility of caramelising the honey; I just found it didn't work, perhaps I just need to practice, after all, the novices seemed to manage alright.