There used to be a feature in comics and magazines for children – probably in weeks when there was far more space than copy — in which the reader was presented with photographs of Familiar Objects Viewed From An Unfamiliar Angle. It might be a head-on image of the four tines of a fork, or an intense close-up of the gills of a mushroom — and it was as if you were seeing these quotidian things for the first time. Suddenly a fork had drama.

A few evenings back I was sitting at the bottom of the garden with three nice glasses to hand: a nice pair of field glasses (to relish an old-fashioned term) and an equally nice tumbler containing a golden liquid. A small bird flew across: idly I raised the bins and followed it as it landed in a chunky sallow bush about 80 yards away. Where it exploded.

It was as if the bird had turned into a glowing coal, get close and it would scorch your eyes, grasp it and it would burn your fingers to obliteration: a small spot of molten heat in a semi-circle of cool green. It was a bullfinch, at the same time the gaudiest and the most retiring of all garden birds. It was for once in plain view, and doing so at the one moment when the lowering sun could catch the pinky-red and reddy-pink of its breast at its outrageous best.

It was like seeing a bullfinch for the first time – no, more, it was almost like seeing a bird for the first time. Are there really such wonderful things in the world? I passed the bins to Cindy, who was sitting beside me, and took a sip from my third glass. Just to make things perfect.