Totally maxed out!

This morning Wilson prepared a fabulous breakfast of freshly-baked croissants, freshly brewed coffee and freshly opened orange juice, with not an ant in sight… but sadly I couldn't enjoy it. 

Long experience has taught me that an extravagantly delicious meal like this is W's way of breaking bad news to me. And my intuition didn't let me down.

Since Wilson is in charge of all the shopping and household expenses, he has free use of my VISA card. 

The bill arrived this morning. 

The card is maxed out!

They're here!

They're here! A pre-production sample of Wilson's New ODDSIES! wrapper has arrived, together with a dummy of a special Mystery Edition pack, where you can't see the colour of the socks you're about to buy. 

Two things worry me about this whole enterprise:

1) whether people will pay hard-earned money for odd socks in fancy packaging, and

2) how much all this design work is costing.

But Wilson is confident — he says this is exactly how the fashion industry works… although he's started calling it the 'Fash Biz' and sometimes 'Rag Trade.' 

Anyway, he's signed off the samples and we can expect boxes and boxes of them to arrive any day soon. I'll bet he stores them in the kitchen, along with all the boxes of unused paper coffee cups… and the empty Ant Juice cartons…

It's a Girl!

This morning Wilson told Chandler that she is definitely a girl bee. 

'In that case,' she said. 'I should like to be known as Tracey. "Tracey the Bee."' 

Warming to her subject, she elaborated, '"Princess Tracey the Bee the 1st"… or should that be "Princess Tracey the 1st the Bee"?' 

After a moments thought, she reached a decision: 'Her Majesty Princess Tracey Bee the First!'

Wilson said that was too long for the sign.

Volkswagen

While Wilson was in the village handing out his new business cards to anyone who would take one (and one or two who wouldn't), he noticed the logo on the front of a Volkswagen in the Waitrose car park. 

He examined it closely before declaring, 'WV. Hmmm. That's a very good logo. I could have saved a lot of money if I'd noticed that before I commissioned my own design…'

I explained that it was not WV but VW, and the logo had belonged to Volkswagen since the 1930s.

'Intellectual Property Law is a complex area fraught with difficulties,' he replied. 'Given the right lawyer, I think I could have successfully sued them for infringement of my design; at the very least they'd have given me a free car to keep me quiet. Probably.'

Business cards

Last night Wilson watched a Horizon documentary about bees, and it seemed to suggest that if a bee is out and about among the flowers it's a lady bee. The way W explained it to me is that all the boy bees are inside the hive doing something unmentionable to the queen.

'D'oh!' he exclaimed after the programme, 'I could have carried on calling my bee Polly after all!'

This morning, though, an exciting package arrived for Wilson which quite distracted him from his bee problems: a big box of business cards with his new logo on them! 

He's outside at the moment, handing them out to anyone he comes across...

Chandler

The bee, whatever his or her name is, has finally said she doesn't care whether she's a Worker or a Drone, she just wants to get back to the flowers. 

Wilson protested, 'But what can I call you if we don't know your sex? Should you have a boy's name or a girl's name?'

The bee thought for a moment, and replied, 'Chandler. I should like to be known as Chandler the Bee!'

I think Wilson is a bit peeved by this as he thinks it's such a cool name he wishes he'd thought of it before he started calling himself Wilson. 

Nevertheless, he has agreed to this. 

And to re-paint the little name board outside the Bee House.

Also, when he gets a chance, Chandler would like her flowers changed, as they're looking a bit tired.

Sex questionnaire

When Wilson spoke to Jonny B (or Polly, as she still may be) it turned out that the bee had no idea whether s/he was a male or a female, having been too busy working to have given it any thought. However, s/he said s/he was very in touch with her feminine side. 

He told her it all came down to whether s/he felt more like a Worker or a Drone; a Polly or a Jonny B. 

Wilson's only paradigm for questioning people is crime drama he's seen on tv, and I felt at one stage the interview was going a bit like a scene from The Bill, with W trying to play Good Cop and Bad Cop at the same time. Then it turned more Dragnet when he actually used the words, 'We just wanna get the facts, ma'am!'

Throughout the interview, W has stared the little bee in the eyes while s/he buzzes nervously.