In the spotlight

Today's blip is a little experiment of mine from late last night. The pink tulips from my Mum's Mother's Day flowers have all lost their petals but several of the white ones are still looking quite lovely. I managed to take this shot by shining a small torch on one of the flowers with my left hand which at the same time supported and operated the lens while I pressed the shutter button with my right hand.

I nearly had a completely wasted trip today as it was a public holiday here in Belgium and the sanctuary, like most other things, would be closed. I hadn't looked at the calendar though and was completely unaware of that when I left the house this afternoon. Fortunately a good friend who had seen the state of one of the brake blocks on my bicycle had made me realise that they were too badly worn and that it was too risky to still ride it until I'd replaced them so I took the tram instead. It was only when it rode through the main shopping street that I noticed that all the shops were closed and suspected that it must be a holiday. I got off the tram at the next stop and returned home after I'd phoned my Mum who looked at the calendar and confirmed that today was indeed a holiday.

When I got back to the house I decided to put the time that I would have been out otherwise to walk one of the sanctuary's dogs to good use and gave my bicycle the good cleaning that it desperately needed. I'm going to take the tram to the sanctuary again tomorrow afternoon but I hope to pick up some new brake blocks on the way home so I can replace the worn ones and ride my bicycle again on Wednesday. I've never done this before but hopefully I'll be able to manage it after watching a couple of videos on how to do it.

Thank you so much for the lovely comments and stars on blip of Rosie from yesterday.