Up in the night with a sexy nurse

I feel hungover this morning

Not that any alcohol was drunk last night....it wasn't

It is just the fact that I was woken up at 1.30am, again at 2.30am and didn't fall asleep until well after 4am

I feel jetlagged  and somewhat jaded.

and the reason for this, I hear you ask?

yes, it was my one and only black indian runner duck

Over the past month or so, several of the runners have gone missing on an evening. All have eventually returned after dark, only to be found quacking in hysterical circles outside their locked duckhouse in the wee small hours.

I suspect that the young and inexperienced females may have been sitting on eggs, only to be driven off them when the dark frightened them home.

The same thing, I suspected, happened to the black runner last night. as at dusk Halleh, the lone drake could be seen  standing nervously at the far border of the field looking out at the fields beyond as if he was searching for her.

But as the heavens opened and hens all trouped back to their damp hen houses, the black runner sadly never appeared.

I went out with a torch at 11pm, and again at 12 midnight, and still the duck failed to turn up, so I went to bed with the bedroom window open, just so I could listen out for any homecoming quacking in the middle of the night.

At 1.30 I was woken up and I was sure I heard the duck ( now I think I may have been dreaming)

so out I went in the torrential rain to search for her, but there was nothing to be heard or seen

I was up again soon after, and then was wide awake listening to the rain thundering on the cottage roof until 2.30 when I finally made a cup of tea and sat down to watch the French film "À Bout Portant"

Gilles Lellouche..... unlike most nurses I have ever met!

I would recommend A Bout Portant ( English title Point Blank) to anyone who is wide awake in the middle of a miserable night for it is a silly but entertaining thriller about a Parisian nurse Giles Lellouche ( who, by the way, has a pair of brooding Gallic eyes to die for) and his drastic attempts to save his wife from a gang of criminal kidnappers.

The film has lot's of  exhilarating chases, gunfights, and silly plot twists and turns to enjoy  and it's all a bit daft, but like I said, when you are up worrying about a lost duck during a storm, the film proved to be an ideal panacea to all the ills in the world.