Experiments with white balance

Read more, surf less is my new motto, brought about by an attack of 'iPad wrist', and the realisation that if I am ever to read all the books I've bought, or even a quarter of them, I'll need to spend some time actually reading.

The day started off overcast, so we decided to stay at home and leave gallivanting for tomorrow. I did read a bit of Mistress of Charlecote, the Memoirs of Mary Elizabeth Lucy, 1803-1889. To begin with it was tiresome, being concerned exclusively with grand balls, dances, marriage, and visits from titled personages, in a world where almost nothing else appeared to exist, but it becomes more interesting as she grows older.

Bomble followed me outside (it was very sunny by now) and I began playing with exposure compensation. This doesn't give good results on my camera, or maybe I'm doing it wrong...so I went to the controls for white balance, and thought I'd altered the settings to 'sunny'. However, the shots came out blue, as I'd been on the 'fluorescent lighting' setting. I was going to leave this blue, but then I popped over to the Distressed Fx app, and tried 'Ansel'. Seeing as there was no 'Gretel' to counterbalance it, and Bomble now looked as if he was floating on a white sky,
I tried 'lade'. That brought back the paving slabs. Bomble is a very dark cat, with a soft coat with a satiny sheen, so I don't really mind about the burned-out patches, as the only way to get a good picture of him is in silhouette! He has one canine tooth (the other disappeared a couple of years back) and looks a bit piratey when he smiles, though the missing one gave him a positively sabre toothed appearance, before it went. He's a British Bombay, which in the UK is part of the Asian group, but he came to us via a rescue centre, not a breeder. Show cat he ain't!

He is with me now, in the cabin, and soon I must go and get ready for a trip to
Cheltenham to listen to poetry and music. Seems a shame to go out on such a fine evening, but we'll be going on country roads. One of my friends wants me to read some of my poems when we get there ( it's an open mic) but I feel as if my poetry has only recently awakened from a long slumber, and is not ready for the bright light yet. In any case, I feel now, more strongly than ever, that I write to be read, rather than to perform for an audience. That may mean that only two people ever read it, but I am less concerned now about 'getting it all my words down for posterity'.

As I sit here and type, I'm watching a couple of birds on the feeder, and can't tell from here if they are bullfinches or chaffinches. Earlier today, CleanSteve saw the first swift of summer, high overhead above our garden.