Day 124 - tweeting birds and pirate pancakes

I have a CD alarm clock which is set to play the CD every morning instead of one of those nasty beep beep noises. The problem with it is that it starts spinning and takes a few seconds before the song is queued up and ready to begin. In that short time I'm awoken by the spinning CD and switch it off so I haven't actually heard the song which is meant to play for years. This morning it went off at 4.45am,  on purpose, as it was International Dawn Chorus Day. Up I got, dressed and straight out the door. Whoever chose the date did a damn fine job of it as the morning was perfect. Not cold, clear skies, a little mist in the valley and some really loud birds. I've been up and out at that time before but never really listened to the racket that's going on. We live right on the edge of town so have fields and woodland just around the corner. I walked up to the community orchard and sat on my own listening. You don't have a community orchard?  Set up a community group and look for some land. Every community should have one. We have a woodland too. There was all sort of twittering and chirping going on including cockerels and ducks. I recorded some on my phone but I don't think I can upload it. I was worried about getting up for something so early but I enjoyed it. There were some organised walks in the area but the Shrewsbury one was yesterday which was no good to me. One celebration done and not even breakfast time.

There was another No Homework Day listed for today, on a Sunday, on a bank holiday weekend. Really, does anyone do homework on a such a day? I certainly didn't but I'm not sure that counts as a celebration.

I did however  celebrate Lemonade Day. I did briefly think about buying lemons to make some so that I could say the "when life gives you lemons" quote but it was gone 4pm on a Sunday afternoon. It's not easy to find lemons at such a time so the wife bought some cloudy lemonade from the Spar. That went down a treat. The kids are sometimes funny about fizzy drinks. We don't like them having too many and they don't all like them too much but cloudy lemonade was a hit. It as also Beverage Day so I think I'll count that one twice.

Like everyone else in the country we scrubbed down the barbecue today and burnt some dead animals on it for tea. Whilst doing so I found out, courtesy of Squeezy John from Bellowhead that it was Accordian Day. I therefore found some accordion music on YouTube to listen to whilst cooking. I started with a rendition of a Queen classic followed by some Parisian cafe tunes. I'm not a huge fan of the piano accordian but I quite enjoyed the vibe.

Finally today I squeezed in a bonus pudding to celebrate Crepes Suzettes Day. I'd been for the first run since being hit with vertigo, or labyrinthitis, or whatever it was and was feeling very good. I therefore mixed up some pancakes and soaked them in a buttery orange sauce. I've never done the suzettes thing before, it was quite fun. The recipe didn't say that when you add the juice to the melted sugar it would set hard quickly making you think it was ruined.  I few minutes back on the heat sorted it out. I didn't have any grand Marnier so had to use rum. I think that it still counts although I think that orange and rum makes them pirates pancakes.  Either way they tasted damn fine and as it was No Diet Day I think that was again a twofer. A good day of celebrating today. I'm not sure that tomorrow will be the same, why not come back to find out.

Nighty night.