Last night when we went to bed, our damaged quail chick had absconded from the box he shares with a guinea fowl chick and was roaming loose in the spare bedroom. My personal feeling on this was good luck to him and worry about it in the morning.
The AWOL chick suffered a neck injury after getting crushed behind the waterbowl, and now is walking about with his beak pressed firmly into his chest. We’re hoping it’s just a muscular injury and that eventually it will loosen up and allow him to raise his head fully again.
Anyway, following the discovery of the missing chick I went to bed. Kate however decided that she was going to find the chick, and so it was that at 4am I was awoken by my darling wife to inform me that she had now found the chick under the bed in the spare room. I felt a little guilty to think that I’d spent more than 4 hours asleep whilst Kate looked for the chick. In fact I felt so bad that I couldn’t get back to sleep. Well Kate wouldn’t let me, and I had to go and help the chick back into his box.
With this done it should have been back to bed, however nature conspired to throw a spanner in by unveiling a glorious sunrise on the horizon.
Now I could probably have looked at the horizon, said “Ooh that’s pretty” and collapsed back into bed.
However Kate sometimes has problems with some very simple things like that.
So within a few minutes, at 4.30am, we were stood in the front garden with one camera on a tripod, taking multiple shots of the emerging sun. It was an absolute cracker, with mist rolling across the foreground to add a certain atmosphere to our emerging photos.
Job done it was back to bed and a late rise just after 8am. I got up to make schnooklebuns a coffee. I’m a good husband like that. Oh and Kate played the guilt card quite effectively making me feel very bad about leaving her up for 4 hours looking for the daft chick.
As the kettle boiled, I downloaded the pictures from the cameras and learnt what I am sure will be a valuable lesson. In low light conditions, cameras need longer exposures. Even if they’re on a tripod, the gentle nudge of pressing the button can be enough to cause the image to blur. That’ll be why the camera comes with a remote control then. It actually serves a purpose rather than being a neat little gimmick.
So we now have 20 or more so pictures of lovely bright colours, merging gently into eachother. Could be a sunrise, but you probably wouldn’t put money on it.
Talking of lovely bright colours merging gently into eachother, the homemade elderflower wine has cleared and a glass of it sits close to me now. Just there in front of the tiny pink gargoyle who sits patiently staring at the mouse as I move it around the mouse mat.
It actually tastes like wine. Between you and me, not the greatest wine; but, none the less, wine.
Now the more astute among you will remember that there are another two demi johns of fermenting wine; orange and grapefruit. The grapefruit was produced from a couple of cartons of grapefruit juice and promises to be a vintage. The orange was produced from orange squash, and following an interesting experiment in producing an orange liquer, I tasted it in slush puppy form. It’s best that way as, unlike the elderflower, the orange hasn’t cleared and so doesn’t look particularly appetising. Mind you, with all that orange squash in it, it’s unlikely to ever clear properly. That’s probably why the French have never produced an orange squash wine. It’s fantastic otherwise, and in a nation where they get their children drinking wine from an early age, it would seem the perfect introduction.
Following the success of this exercise, it’s only a matter of time until the production of polo wine; could be our fortune. That’ll make Christmas presents easy this year.