In lieu of spectacular lighting shots

Some willow trees in sun and wind*
I had very intention last night, of going to bed at midnight. It can't be so hard can it? You just get up from whatever you're doing, take the dog out, come back in, shut the windows, get the dishwasher going, get something out of the frezer for tomorrow's dinner, put the cats in their bit, put the dog in his bit, gather up whatever you need upstairs, set the alarm, put some water on a tray, close some doors, go upstairs, wash and brush.....
Easy. Well there's the small distraction of youngest ringing up at 1 am to ask if she could collect something on her way home from work, (yes of course but I'm going to bed in 15 minutes so you can't stop)....but that only sets me back a few minutes.**

And then what ? there's a thunderstorm....So I spend the next hour glued to the bedroom window upstairs trying to catch a flash of lightning. Had the camera set to burst so it would take lots of pictures one after the other but of course with it being dark, it had to think about what it could see before taking another picture (yes I know I should have had it set to sport mode or done something with the shutter speed? aperture? ((surely not)) but I still haven't worked all these things out. As I said once before, I'm not a photographer just an ex- artist who now plays with photos)***
And of course the next six flashes came while the camera was thinking.
I considered the law of averages and decided that if I stayed there for a few centuries I would almost certainly end up with a couple of flashes on my camera. but over the next hour? just as likely not.****
So this morning I overslept through my alarm and now I am cross. and dopey! And I'm pretty sure there are absolutely NO pictures of lightning on the camera.
}:#
So what am I doing now?
Well obviously, running about like a demented bluebottle catching up with all those things I was going to do earlier.

Er...right.
Bye.

*Just across the road from the cross man in the yellow van.
**well it takes a while to do all that stuff and I had to shut the computer down because of the thunder as well.
***And I did wonder also, in view of the story on the news last night about the woman whose house was struck by lightning while she was asleep, what would be my chances of being struck myself. Pretty high over a century or two and much higher than you'd expect over the next hour.
Honestly, having firmly crushed a childish terror of thunder by the time I was twenty or so (to the extent of running around the house with the whole family in tow looking for the best vantage point), now I'm 50 or so I realise that lightning is actually quite dangerous even if you're safely tucked up in bed. Well when you think about it, it's a bit unlikely that stuff going FLASH BANG RUMBLE CRASH directly over your head is completely harmless and wouldn't hurt a fly.
Fried fly.
There are times when children have more sense than their parents.
****And possibly the complete works of shakespeare as well?