Stereophonics

So about yesterday: we'd been frolicking in the hay, making mischief on the pumpkins, I'd been silly line dancing and singing, driving the tractors till we were chased off and it wasn't until we arrived at the wagon ride that I realized Reuben was missing his hearing aid. Panic. The darn thing, no I mean fantastic invention thing, costs about $6,000 and is a lifeline. Where the hell was I to find it, a needle in a haystack. Jenn (Reuben's long term night nurse who came along with me for kicks today - she seems to need no sleep ;-) ) was trying to retrace her steps as she'd walked over to Callum and I with Reuben by the tractor that Callum had been climbing into. Strangely, we still went on the last tractor ride of the day, partly perhaps to give me a chance to think about how to go about searching for it, because it would have just been impossible to have searched everywhere.

The ride was fun, we bumped up and down and the kids reached up for the weeping marrows as we rode through cornfields and fields of sunflowers. And when I got back, it hit me. Which of the 1000 pics I'd taken had the hearing aid still visible? I raced through them, trying to decipher the tiny box - yes, yes, yes, the aid's in those ones. Then bingo, a photo without the aid. So I'd narrowed it down to a brief 4 minutes of the day when I hadn't taken a photo and that was after I'd been kissing the boys at the end of a tractor and then rolling them in the wagon. So that was it. I'd knocked it off whilst kissing and tickling them both. I returned to the same place and could suddenly make out an almost imperceptible buzzing sound. The hearing aid! I riffled through the hay (Jenn had previously started raking mud in a desperate attempt) and lo and behold, there it was.

God bless ya, Canon. So the moral of the story is: always carry your camera and always take a zillion photos in a day. You know it makes sense.

Stereophonic: define as "commonly called stereo, is the reproduction of sound using two or more independent audio channels through a symmetrical configuration of loudspeakers in such a way as to create the impression of sound heard from various directions, as in natural hearing."

Rockers Stereophonics are my all time favourite British band over the last 20 years and one of the soundtracks of my life. I recall a fabulous moment of sneaking backstage at a gig, riding in the elevator all without perception and then sitting down with Kelly and the guys drinking coke and listening to Tina Turner til their manager chased me away. Classic rock.