Small unexpected joys

Well, it's all a bit yin and yang, to be honest. Looking back at some phone and camera images taken during the past few weeks (an exercise in displacement activity as regards Botchit), I thought I saw a bit of a trend...

Some days we have a period of bright sunlight for an hour or so just after dawn, and if we're really lucky, another short solar blast at sunset. In between, it is a very mixed bag, with the results somewhat unbecoming of a G2V type yellow dwarf star. This image was taken through cloud at tea time, for safety reasons using LiveView rather than looking through the camera lens.

Of course, if we can't manage a fix on the Sun, there's always the Moon...

That early morning light, which I mentioned above, does often pick out random objects in the Orcadian landscape.

I repeated the shot about 11 hours later, from the exact spot by the front door but, unfortunately, handheld isn't great for such light levels.

Recently, I was working away from home, and began to experience the first sign of a migraine, which, for me, is a tingling or numbness of the extremities (fingertips and tip of my nose). With a day's work ahead of me and a ferry trip back to Orkney to contemplate, I wasn't in the greatest of humours. To be fair, I very rarely have full-on migraines these days (with added visual distortions and stomach-wrenching nausea), and even the '72 hours of eye ache' version is much less frequent. But these initial symptoms were worrying, especially in the circumstances. Seeking advice from a fellow sufferer, I was astounded to learn that she uses caffeine as part of her treatment, which is why, after a swift trip to a chemist and some pharmacist advice to take the medication with food, I was to be found in a tea room with a huge slice of cappuccino cake (the hot chocolate with soya milk was optional). Well, that's my excuse, anyway.