Minutes before midnight moments

A topsy-turvy sort of day petered out after I had a snooze late this afternoon. I'd managed to sort some issues and had a lovely chat with a couple of good friends who we don't see too often these days. Perhaps we will amend that in the next couple of months.

I thought I wouldn't take any photos today, as the weather changed late in the day meaning my plan to shoot the sunset from Minchinhampton Common was abandoned.

As I was sitting at my desk late this evening, having looked at others blips for a while, I heard some noises from the garden outside the window. I immediately thought it was a badger scuffling about amongst the flowerpots, as they sometimes do. I quickly grabbed my camera with an inappropriately long lens attached, opened the window and took a couple of random shots of the patio. I have managed to catch badgers like this before, but no luck tonight, which was lucky as the pictures were totally rubbish this time.

Turning around, I wondered whether I could see a blip around my desk and immediately my eyes caught this flier from Vistaprint, an online printing service we sometimes use, offering a free calendar. I had emptied a bag earlier today onto my desk and hadn't got around to sorting out the mess. The Cox apple comes from the Farm Shop and is from this summer's crop. It has remained my favourite apple since I was about seven years old when I first I picked them from a tree in our garden.

I squeezed as far back as possible from my desk, to be enable me to just manage to focus, and knowing it was only a few minutes to midnight, I took a couple of pictures. Helena hates this child's image, but I just liked the colours and the randomness of objects stuck together in a disorderly fashion.

As I sat down again, I heard more noises off, but this time it was cats. I popped the camera out of the window again but an exploratory flash interrupted their howling and I got no pictures. Minutes later Helena came up to say she was going to bed and of course Bomble rushed in and leaped up onto my desk to join in. He hates being left out of it. It was obviously him outside causing his own brand of mayhem before midnight too.