Day 97. Covered in bees.

There are many things my ageing brain struggles to remember, usually where I left my house or car keys, but I am blessed with a whole grey cell drawing room filled with Eddie Izzard quotes.

From "There must have been a death star canteen" and "Cat, are you drilling?" to "Das Orange and Pears can Fuck Off", if ever I need cheering up, a quick Eddie fix does the trick. And if you're one of the few people who's never seen the Lego version of the Death Star Canteen sketch watch it now, it's a work of genius.

Today, walking along the riverbank, it was with delight that a chance sighting of a fox and a scout around to see where it might have gone led us to discover this collection of hives.

For the past 2 years we've seen the owner head down the farm track without knowing where he kept them - he always has a couple of hives on the back of his truck, he doesn't drive around wearing a beekeeper uniform to identify himself. Next time he passes I'm going to try and find out where he sells the honey so we can buy some that is truly locally sourced, not just Norfolk honey, Roxham honey. Will suggested leaving a note on one of the hives. Given the number of bees we could see buzzing around today I think I'll pass on that approach and stick to waving down his truck like a mad woman.

I wonder if his father was a beekeeper and his father before him? Maybe he wants to walk in their footsteps "and their footsteps were like this - covered in bees!".  Like I said, a temporal cortex filled with quotes.

Day 39. Sugar, tomatoes and bees.

We live very close to the British Sugar factory at Wissington and piles of sugar beet are a common sight for us through the Autumn and early Winter.

It's the largest sugar factory in the world, producing over 400,000 tonnes of sugar a year, fairly standard stuff for any sugar factory (after all the clue's in the name). However, at British Sugar they have an integrated manufacturing system which means that the output of one process - waste carbon dioxide streams from processing the beet - becomes the input for another - used by tomatoes during photosynthesis. Who knew? Approximately 250,000 plants are grown each year in the UK's largest tomato glasshouse and more than 8,500 bumblebees, in 170 bee hives, pollinate the crops.

So next time you bake a cake or sweeten your tea, remember the tomatoes (and of course the bees); all part of the sugar production cycle and an output most people won't even be aware of.