Honey Bees

Posted on April 19, 2012 by Simon

I had a phone call at the weekend from a rather excited friend “we have a swarm of bees” he said, come and watch, there is a honey bee swarm collector on his way to collect them. So I jumped in the car and drove over to his village, I got there about the same time as the swarm collector did. He was pretty much what I had expected and put on his white suit and went over to have a look.

honey bee swarm collectorsWe were told that the bee’s are usually pretty placid, but because the weather was bad there was a good chance that they would not be today, so we had to stand a fair way back. He put a sheet down first, I can only assume that this was to see where the bees were better when some fell to the ground, then he got an old fashioned skep full of other goodies and a big green wooden box.

First he clipped some of the foliage away so he could see them better and reach them, then he cut the branch which they were hanging on, he then carried it over to the box which was sitting on the sheet and simply shook them into it.

My mate put the kettle on and we had a cuppa as we watched the stray bees swirling around and all heading to the box he had put the others into and made their way in too. It was pretty interesting to see and he said that honey bee swarm collectors never get tired of watching it either.

Anyway, once they were all in, he went over and blocked the entrance of the catching box, put it in his car and he was gone again. He did say that the few bees which were still hanging around would return to their original hive which would be somewhere in the area, and probably within a few hundred metres of where we were standing.

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Hypnotherapy to Quit Smoking

Posted on September 27, 2011 by Simon

Hello again, it’s been a while I know, but then again I’m sure hardly anyone has been back to see what I’ve been writing about for a while either, so let’s neither of us feel bad, sounds fair huh? I just thought I would write a little post about my ongoing battle with quitting the evil weed (yes, I do mean tobacco before you start wondering), I’m now thinking about using hypnotherapy to stop smoking once and for all.

I’ve been making half hearted attempts for quite a while now, in fact, it must be 5-10 years since my first attempt, so I decided to throw everything at it in one go, patches, will power and a hypnotherapist. I did toy with the idea of acupuncture too, but I just can’t face all the needles!

So you are probably wondering why this relates to any one of our three cities in question, well, being near to Swindon, I wanted to find someone locally, as if it’s a short course of treatments I don’t want to be hammering up and down the M4 to get there after work, whereas if I find someone in Swindon, I’ll try to book it for straight after work, that way by the time I leave, the traffic should have calmed down too and I’ll have a nice smooth drive home.

Why can’t you just stop the tobacco on will power alone I hear you cry (very quietly), the answer is: dunno! It’s a weird kind of addiction which you don’t even realise is there until you try to quit, then you suddenly want to smoke more then ever. It’s one of those feelings like when somebody tells you that you can’t do something, and that just makes you want to do it even more.

Anyway, in my search for a hypnotherapist in Wiltshire, preferably in Swindon itself, I found the National Smoking Cessation Institute, a body who have numerous approved acupuncturists and hypnotherapists who are specialists in their field, so that’s my first port of call to find someone to provide hypnotherapy to stop smoking, if I can’t find someone through them, I’ll look further afield, but would prefer to keep it local if possible, after all that’s also being a bit greener too!

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Web Design and SEO

Posted on June 17, 2011 by Simon

Here is something which I was sent by an seo company I was speaking to, it all sounds pretty reasonable to me.

Regarding the website in relation to the brief below.  There are 2 aspects to this, firstly the site design and content, then search engine optimisation (SEO). Whilst the design can incorporate certain aspects of SEO, which are referred to as on page factors, these and a few directory listings, may be enough to get the site on the top of page 1 in Google on their own for the domain name, which I expect people who know the company would search for.  However, if you want to be top of page 1 for other terms which are more generic this would take longer and require additional work. Again if centred around the Swindon area, midway between the two. If you decided you want an ongoing SEO campaign, it would need to be based on specific keywords and would be billed on a per results basis.

I would suggest using a content management system (CMS) probably wordpress. This could give you easy control over all the content without the need for additional software or any coding, both static pages such as homepage, drinks, menu, directions etc, as well as news pages which would automatically structure and file themselves when you add them in a typical blog format. In addition, should you decide to update the whole site at some point in the future, you will just need a new template designed and uploaded, so would keep the cost down, as page content would not need to be re-entered.

Using a wordpress CMS means the website can be interactive, so as well as contact/booking forms, people can post comments to your blog/news posts, you can chose to approve and show them and reply, or just delete them accordingly (regular posts and comments are also beneficial for SEO purposes)

Good navigation is essential for both site visitors and the search engines, so I would suggest a popular and familiar navigation structure, with main menu items across the top of the page, probably with drop downs for the subcategory pages, but also links within the text of pages taking the reader to relevant pages (again good for SEO).  An example could be a main header of “Drinks” the drop down could list “beers”, “ciders”, “Wine” etc. if you click on the drinks page there would be a page with a paragraph about each drinks category and links to those pages, or they could just select a page from the drop down and go straight to it.

Staying with the drinks theme, we could also link images on the pages, so if we used a Wadworths logo, or product shot on various pages, that image will link to the Wadworths page , either within your site or the Wadworths website could pop up in a new window. We could also have relevant words on a page link to more information, so for example the word wadworths, could be a live link to that page too.

This was from a local company who offer seo services an seo consultancy who can apparently optimise my website to appear high up in Google.

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I’ve Not Mentioned Salisbury Yet !

Posted on June 2, 2011 by Simon

That’s a bit of a bad show really, this site has been up for about a month already and I’ve not even mentioned Salisbury yet. There is plenty I can say about it as it’s surrounded by history, as is everywhere in Wiltshire, so I will be back soon and start listing some of the obvious ones to start with, such as the cathedral, Stonehenge and Sarum Castle.

Salisbury isn’t far from either Trowbridge or Swindon.

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A Fancy Wedding

Posted on May 23, 2011 by Simon

Just a quick one today to talk about a wedding I went to over the weekend, it was at6 a really nice venue in Swindon, well, the reception was, it was a bit of a day of contrasts by all accounts, as the bride and groom were not religious, so just went to the registry office to do the formal part of getting married. A very quick, cheap and cheerful ceremony, to get the official side of things out the way, then most of the guests only arrived at the big posh country house where the speeches food and evening entertainment were. By this point the bride was wearing the typical wedding dress, fancy hair do and make-up, I assume she wore this to the registry office too.

The food was pretty good considering that they were catering for well over 200 people so no complaints there, well I’m sure I could hear somebody complaining that something wasn’t cooked just how they like it, but what’s that old saying about not being ablke to please all the people all the time!

Speeches, my favourite part of the day,, not! But it was fairly painless, the brides father make it short and sweet, probably because he was clearly so nervous about standing up and talking in front of so many people. The groom seemed surprised that he ha to do one at all so kept his very brief too and the best man cracked a few jokes, showed an embarrassing photograph and sat back down again too. So all in all I think we got off rather lightly.

There were all the usual accessories, table decorations, wedding cake and masses of very OTT wedding flowers all around the place, not just in the function hall but also from the front door and through the hallway to the room we were in.

Then the music came on for the first dance and up they got and started off doing a nice sensible romantic dance as you would expect, by half way through the music had jazzed up a bit and they were doing a silly dance they had obviously planned well in advance and the pro wedding band were most definitely in on it too as they played the live music for it. This is typical of those two though, they can never do anything too sensibly.

The group were fantastic though, they managed to keep the dance floor busy all night (and it wasn’t just the little kids and grannies either) the music varied from old 60′s songs through soul and into modern pop music, they were one of the local Swindon wedding bands, so I’m not sure if they were friends of someone involved in organising things, but they were a very good choice anyway.

We all drank and danced into the night, although some did more drinking than dancing, so there were a few people laying around the place by the end of the night, but it seems that all went well and a good time was had by all. The happy couple are off sunning themselves somewhere hot and romantic by now, so we will probably all catch up again once they are back in Wiltshire in a couple of weeks time.

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Swindon in Wiltshire

Posted on May 11, 2011 by Simon

Swindon is a major town in the British county of Wiltshire, it sits in the North East corner of the county and has a population of 155,500 making it the largest town in the region. Wiltshire itself is in the South West of the UK and is steeped in history as it contains many ancient sites including Avebury Stone Circle, West Kennet Long Barrow and of course, the world famous heritage site Stonehenge.

There are a number of key local landmarks, however probably the most famous is the “magic roundabout” it was officially called County Islands (strangely, as island is a slang northern term for a roundabout) however in 1990 it was officially renamed the magic roundabout to match its local nickname.

Swindon is approximately halfway between Bristol to the West and Reading to it’s East, so was historically a region where travellers between the two would stop off, in fact one local village is called Halfway, due to being exactly half way between the two.

The area known as Old Town was the original market town until the industrial revolution , at this point in history the region experienced a large and rapid expansion, initially this was due to the canals passing through the region and creating viable transport and trade links, however, the later establishment of the Great Western Railway in Swindon during 1840 meant it became a truly thriving industrial town. Surrounding towns which also benefited from this growth include Marlborough, Cirencester, Malmesbury Calne and Devizes.

For many years the major employers in Swindon were the BMW and Honda factories, hence the close association of transpotation with Swindon, it also has a wide range of supporting industries in the region, these include the likes of metal works and tyre manufacturers.

 

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