Shiny shiny

Look what just arrived! New bins! Well, they might as well be new, look at them! Ooof. Amazing what they can do. I only wish that I'd remembered to take a photo of what they looked like in late July before I sent them off. Talking of which, isn't that really rather good after-sales service? £95 quid and a turnaround of about six weeks. 

I got a message yesterday morning to say that they were being shipped. From Austria. Fine fine, I'll get them next week probably. Maybe the one after that. No hurry. Yesterday evening I got another message saying they were arriving today, between 10am and 1pm. What about Brexit?  I bought a sprinkler for £26 the other day off Amazon, not realising it was in fact getting shipped from France, and that ended up getting stuck in a customs warehouse for a while. Apparently this is not a problem for expensive binoculars. Their progress across Europe has been lightning fast (insert inappropriate joke here). 

11th, 5am. Shipping label generated by Swarovski in Austria.

11th, 5.30pm. Left UPS facility in Innsbruck bound for Munich, arrived at 8pm.

11th, 10pm. Departed Munich for Cologne, arrived 11.15pm.

12th, 2.45am. Departed Cologne for UK, arrived Stansted 3.34am.

12th, 5.48am. Left Stansted for Barking, arrived at 6.31am.

12th, 8.58am - Out for Delivery.

They arrived at Chateau L at 12.58pm, with two minutes to go until the end of the stated three hour window. Amazing! To say I am delighted is an understatement. Although my venerable Leica Trinovids have been a superb stand-in, from an optical point of view they're not as good and I'm pleased to have them back. I saw a lot of good birds with the Leicas that I won't forget in a while, my first Scottish Wryneck for starters, and pretty much all of the autumn migrants in Wanstead. But I'm now reunited with my first love and the house bins will go back to being house bins. Mrs L has apparently been missing them, and had cause several times in the last few weeks to reach for them - to look at the moon she says but I reckon it was a bird as she has always been super keen to grip me off with something decent in the garden.