Month: May 2019

The end of May – 31 May 2019

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But not the end of the rain!

Today we had planned to go to the Sagra Italiana festival of Italian food in Glasgow. The camera wasn’t being delivered until after 4pm, so that gave us most of the wet day to play with. The rain started seriously about 11am and from then on it was continuous. We reckoned the festival would be a wash out, but drove in to Glasgow anyway. We were right. There were about thirty people wandering around and at least half of them were family members of the girl group who were singing bravely on the stage. At least they were under cover. There’s nothing so desperate as folk trying to look happy and cheerful when the rain is pelting down and all the planning has been for nothing. I think we both felt sorry for everyone concerned.

To cheer us up we went for a pizza in Paesano. It was mobbed, but then again, it wasn’t raining in there. Everyone was warm and dry and being fed and watered. Went to CassArt and bought myself a little paintbox to celebrate the end of Every Day In May. I’ve had great fun doing the drawings and the paintings, but it’s been tough some days to work out how to interpret some of the prompts. I’d do it again. Today’s topic was A Crab. Try as I might, I couldn’t think of anything to draw other than a crustacean. After all, living in the middle of Central Scotland, there aren’t many crabs around here. So it was I wandered the arcades of the InterWeb looking for some decent photos. Eventually settling on an iStock image that was what I was looking for.

Today’s PoD was seen from Ingram Street in Glasgow. The poor bloke sheltering in the portico of the GOMA didn’t look as if he was the model of Domestic Bliss and I think that’s what attracted me to take the shot.

Came home and took charge of the camera from the DPD man. It looked in very good nick and after giving the battery a quick squirt I checked it over a bit more and was very pleased with it. Let the battery charge a bit more and then the warning light started flashing on the charger which indicates a battery fault. I tried it in the camera and it worked for about fifteen minutes before it packed in. I’ve just charged it up again, fully this time, and it seems to be holding its charge this time. Will find out if it’s really working in the morning.

The rain stopped for about ten minutes today, but it’s raining again. Tomorrow is to be dry, but then the rain returns on Sunday. We should make the most of tomorrow, but we’re not making any hard and fast plans yet.

Man seen building an ark in Condorrat – 30 May 2019

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I was wondering today, did it rain on St Swithins day? Then I realised that wasn’t until July. Maybe the rain is just practising.

We drove through the rain to Falkirk today to get some low-sugar muesli and a few other essentials. I thought the brand I usually get, with no added sugar was in the low sugar bracket. Nope, it was in the High bracket, carrying the danger sign of the red shield. What I forgot is that it was the extra fruity version and that extra fruity contains the extra sugar, but because the manufacturer is not actually adding sugar, they are telling the truth, just not the whole truth. There are a lot of devious people out there and they’re not all politicians. Had lunch at Morrisons because they do a lovely roll ’n’ link sausage, plus, Scamp likes their bowl of chips. Back in the car and through the rain once again to arrive back home with not one photo taken.

I’d been watching the progress of a couple of cameras on MPB and WEX, both second-hand sites. Today I made the decision which one to buy and will report back on it after it arrives from the DPD man tomorrow sometime. In case you’re interested, it’s an Olympus E-M1. Please don’t moan about ANOTHER new camera. It’s about five or six years old and originally cost over £1,000. I’m not paying anything like that. Also, it’s over three years since I bought the last Oly.

Started a sketch of a motorbike, today’s topic. An MZ TS 150, the bike I used to own. It was a bit rough, but a reasonable record of the bike. Then I got a bit frantic and dived outside to grab a couple of shots of our Schoolgirl rose in the rain. I’ve just posted it on Flickr and it will be interesting to see how many hopefuls I can trap with the title Schoolgirl In The Rain! It usually works well. It would be fun to see their sad little faces!

Just so you know Hazy, I got an email from A Small Orange this morning asking me to pay $89 for an overdue bill. That’s the bill for the webspace contract I terminated in April and have confirmation that it’s been terminated. I also managed to log back in to ASO and found that my invoice there has been cancelled. Wrote them a nasty email.

I was making Crab Spaghetti for dinner tonight when the ring pull on the tub of white crab meat broke and left me with a plastic tub, metal lid and no way of opening it. Tin opener wouldn’t work on the thin rim. Eventually used my favourite tool, Molegrips to wrench the lid off. Took some photos of the carnage and another nasty email will be on its way tonight.

Schoolgirl eventually became today’s PoD, then after dinner when the swearing about that crab tub had subsided, I painted the proper MZ picture. Great bike. Just really a commuter bike. A two stroke that made a terrible racket and drank oil like it was going out of fashion, but a dream to ride with its flat ‘Vinny’ bars. So called because of its design being based on the legendary Vincent motorcycles. Had to sell it round about 1980 to buy a Reliant Regal 3/30 three wheeler. Tomorrow is the last day of the challenge and, would you believe it, the topic is A Crab. Maybe I should just draw the tub with the half ripped off lid.

Tomorrow we may go to the Sagra Italia event in Glasgow. It looks like being a very wet day, but Scamp thinks everything is under cover. If we decide not to go then we may go on Saturday. We’ve got (free) tickets for both days.

The day that the rains came – 29 May 2019

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… and forgot to go away.

It wasn’t the best of days. Like I said at the top, the rains came and forgot to go away. I don’t suppose it mattered really as we weren’t intending to go anywhere except to Glasgow for dancing in the afternoon and then again in the evening. The furthest I was past the door was a quick trot round the block to achieve my 250 steps every hour. It was on one of those circuits I found the little Glass Bead Plant growing on the wall at the back of the house. Of course it was really a moss with raindrops clinging to the fruiting bodies, but some people will be avidly searching Google for Glass Bead Plants as I write this! It got PoD.

Drove in to Glasgow and ticked off another 250 odd steps on our walk down to Blackfriars for Jive, Quickstep and Cha-Cha. We made a few mistakes still, but not as many as last week, thankfully. It was almost a private lesson again as the class started out with three couples, then two were spirited away to learn the stuff that we already knew, that left us to the tender mercies of Michael. Worked on another part of the Over the Rainbow routine and then did some work on our Quickstep and in between we tackled the dreaded ‘off beat’ Cha-Cha. Totally drained, we went for coffee (no cake) and then drove home in the rain.

Scamp drove in to Glasgow tonight and we danced with the intermediate class and the beginners who are getting through the moves at quite a pace now. Thankfully the Tipsy Ladies were not in class tonight, so it was much more bearable than last week.

Today’s sketching topic was A Knife or a Sword. I suppose I could have found a sword somewhere in the town. Some areas of Cumbersheugh are awash with them on a Friday night … allegedly! However, I resisted that temptation and settled on drawing my old Swiss Army knife. It’s been sharpened so many times, the blade is a completely different shape from when it was new. It was my tool of choice for sharpening pencils. So much more efficient than a pencil sharpener. Unfortunately, the world has moved on and it’s now illegal to carry this useful tool.

Tomorrow looks like being much like today, weather wise, so I doubt if we’ll be going far.

No more sweeties

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NHS, they take away your pleasures, one at a time.

Went to the docs to get the result of my blood test in my annual checkup. Everything was fine except my diabetic sugar result which was a bit high. I know it was my own fault for pandering to my sweet tooth, but now I’m paying the price. No more sweeties for the foreseeable future 🙁

After I had been given a gentle reminder by the nurse to keep a firm rein on my sugar and fat intake, I went home to find that Scamp had bought a ready-made curry for tonight’s dinner. One more curry won’t do any harm I told her. There was no way I was asking her to take it back! It was lovely, by the way.

I sat in the garden for a while and attempted today’s sketch which was “The house you are living in”. I prefer the back of the house to the front. There’s more privacy at the back and that’s where the most interesting and older plants are. That’s why I sat under the rowan tree and sketched it from there. I used a sort of wide angle exaggerated perspective. I was happy enough with the result and then went out for a walk along the Luggie Water.

Took a longer walk than normal. Right from the waterfall all the way along almost to Condorrat. Got a few landscapes and lots of flower pics. No beasties today though. PoD went to the three poppies – Red against Green. Strongest colour contrast in the box.

Tonight I redrew the house and gave it a few washes of watercolour, but I’m not happy with the result. Too twee and too full of fine details. Tomorrow it’s a knife or a sword. I have plenty of knives to sketch, but I’ll have to go down to Millcroft to get a sword!

Dancing tomorrow, hopefully and sketching a knife.

A Plan – 27 May 2019

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Today’s plan was an attempt at better use of time.

I’m getting fed up with heading for bed after midnight. My aim is to use my time more efficiently. The month of May is a bit of a nightmare of my own making. Not only do I have to get the daily photo taken, processed and uploaded to the sluggish Flickr, and get the blog written and also uploaded. Now I have to devise a sketch, complete it and probably slap some paint on it too. It keeps my mind alert, certainly, but it’s playing merry hell with my sleep pattern. Today I’m trying a different tack.

This morning I planned out today’s sketch and the topic was Books. I drew a stack of books and it looked reasonable until I realised that Escher could have drawn it. However, nobody could have built it. The stack of books needed some helium balloons attached to help them achieve their perilous balancing act. That said, it was only a planning sketch and had pointed out the need to plan more carefully. The next sketch was better and it looked like the books would actually stack like that without falling down. It went on to phase 2 and had some colour added. Yes, with a touch of shadow detail it looked solid. It’s been photographed, processed and uploaded to FB.

After lunch and after solving he difficult weekend Sudoku, admittedly a day late, I went for a walk around St Mo’s to try for more insect (beastie) pictures. Managed to get a bit closer to the flies and am better pleased with the results. Photos are now processed and uploaded to Flickr. The management of Flickr are stating that the site is now stable. If this is stable, I’d hate to see unstable. It’s slow, pictures disappear without warning, comments disappear. The whole structure seems fragile at present and give very little confidence in its use. It may improve. We can but hope.

That was the extent of the day’s work apart from some pruning in the garden. Trying to get rid of aphid damage on the black currant bushes. One of the benefits of having a brown bin is that you can happily dispose of damaged plants in it. I didn’t want to put the damaged leaves in the compost because that would only spread the infection. Our composter doesn’t get hot enough to destroy pests like that.

Tomorrow I go for my annual checkup at the docs. In the afternoon we may take a trip to visit one of Scamp’s Gems in hospital.

That’s the blog completed. I just need to post it and I will be about two hours ahead of my usual time!

Watching the dancers dancing

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Not dancing ourselves, just watching the shivering and sheiking. All will become clear.

It was a wet, cool and windy Sunday and we could have gone dancing at Mango in Sausage Roll Street, but instead we’d promised ourselves a trip to the Record Factory to see The Shivering Sheiks (y’see, I told you all would become clear). They are a rock ’n’ roll foursome who play there every Sunday afternoon. We’d been told they were good and that there were lots of people up dancing to them.

The trouble was they were on early in the afternoon, from 2pm to 4pm, which sort of chopped up the day, but as it wasn’t a day for doing anything else, we decided to make the sacrifice. That was until we went out into a heavy rain shower and gale force winds. Also, to make things worse the Juke was parked under a spreading chestnut tree and what it was spreading was its flowers, aided and abetted by the aforementioned gale force winds. Luckily I’d brought along a soft brush, not a painting brush, what my mum would have called a “hearth brush”. Maybe we didn’t have a hearth, but the brush made short work of the chestnut flowers.

Drove in to Glasgow cursing the stupidity of driving all that way just to hear a rock ’n’ roll band. What were we thinking of? Got parked right away, just across the road from the venue and when we went in the Sheiks were in full flow. Rhythm guitar, lead guitar, double bass and drummer. Only a foursome, but the sound filled the place and soon the floor was filled with dancers too. We could have danced to some of the tunes they played and thankfully most of those who did dance were our age group. We stayed for about an hour and a half and then came home, vowing to go back next week and dance, then dance some salsa when it started after the Sheiks had gone.  Scamp had been right again … as usual!

There was just enough time when we came home for me to go out to St Mo’s and encourage a few spiders and flies to pose for my camera. That’s where today’s lovely model came from. After that it was time to plan today’s sketch which was A Cup of Coffee or Tea. I chose coffee and to add a bit more to it, I painted some coffee beans too. On the subject of food and drink, dinner tonight was marinaded short ribs cooked for 90mins at gas 4 in the Le Creuset. Very nice. Scamp had ‘Rats’, or as it’s now known “Just some Rats”.

We watched a boring F1 GP from Monaco which was the usual procession with so few places to overtake. Then spoke to JIC and discussed plans for Wales.

Weather looks poor for tomorrow too. Much like today it seems. That may decide how far we go and where.

Well, the gardens need the rain – 25 May 2019

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As you will have gathered, it rained today, almost incessantly. I do believe it’s raining still.

It didn’t keep us in. It almost did, but we both got a bit ‘scratchy’ and needed to get out, just to see how heavy the rain was. It wasn’t all that heavy, just irritatingly wet and constant. We consoled ourselves with the title of the blog. The gardens do need the rain. I tried a sort of rain dance the other day by washing the car, that usually triggers a shower, but it didn’t work. It kept the car feeling smooth for a day, but after that the sticky, sugary sap dripped from the trees outside and made it feel like sandpaper again.

We drove to Kirkintilloch to have lunch at Calders garden centre. I attempted a haggis and mozzarella panini, but it must have weighed over a kilo and I had to give up on it. Scamp had the more sensible tuna sandwiches. After that we just drove home. I’d hoped to get a chance to sketch Underwood Lockhouse for today’s challenge, but sketching in the rain is no fun. I’ve tried it and it’s just annoying, not to say impossible. If you like random washes on your drawing, then try it, but it’s not for me. Instead, we just drove home where Scamp settled down and I just paced the floor. It did wonders for my step count, but nothing for my peace of mind. There was only one thing for it. I was going out for a walk in the rain. To my mind there is nothing more calming than a walk in the rain, especially if you are well dressed for it. I was partly well dressed for it. Down to, but not including my feet I was impervious to the rain, but my old boots were leaking like a sieve. They need to be replaced and soon. However, I just accepted the wet socks and squelching feeling and took some photos to clear my head. My favourite was the waterlogged dandelion clock you see at the top. Others are now on Flickr, if it’s working. It’s been a bit temperamental since their latest upgrade.

Back home it was time to search out a photo of a ruined building. I still hankered after a drawing of Underwood, but eventually settled on a ruined house near the airport in Fuerteventura. I quite liked the finished result. Tomorrow should be a bit easier: A cup of tea / coffee.

The rest of tomorrow will hopefully be filled with listening to and perhaps dancing to the Shivering Sheiks, then watching a thrilling GP from Monaco where we would have been if we’d taken the option of an early season cruise!

Coffee with Fred

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Val was off on holiday to Dunoon, (serves him right) and Colin was being “The man who worked in the garden”. So it was just Fred and me.

Read for a while, trying to eke out the last few pages of “The Boy and His Dog at The End of The World” by C. A. Fletcher. (There you go, Hazy. That saves me emailing you). That’s when the aforementioned Hazy phoned and I had to dress and get down stairs to find out about all things London-side.

Out to meet Fred in Costa. Not so much a coffee shop as somewhere to leave the kids while you talk to your mates. That’s how the mothers in Cumbersheugh seem to view it anyway. Today was less screamy than usual with fewer weans trying, unsuccessfully, to jump from the top of the stairs to the land balletically at the bottom. Most of the ‘mummies’ just looked around and said those famous words of Mhairi’s “They bounce!” Our own conversations ranged around his sketches, my sketches, the world in general, how much better it was when we were younger. All true. Well, it was better when we were both younger. The world was a much better and safer place than it is today. After an hour and a half of reminiscing, we both went our separate ways. Me to go home for a late lunch and him to Tesco. We agreed to meet in a few weeks time.

Came home and tried unsuccessfully to coax the Sony TV to play the video that was on the memory stick I’d inserted. I got so fed up with the whole thing I took my Olys for a walk over to St Mo’s to see if there was anything worth photographing. Got the one at the top of the page and nice shot of a dandelion clock, but don’t bother trying to see it online, because somebody’s broken Flickr. It’s called Ongoing Maintenance apparently.

When I came home, I did the unthinkable and read the instruction book for the TV, where I found out that the format for the video was not MP4 using an H.264 profile (no, I don’t know what that is either), but MPEG (no, nor that one either). I tried converting a short video to MPEG and it worked! Hooray. About two and a half hours wasted and all I had to do was RTFM (Read The F*cking Manual).

Today’s topic for sketching is A Well-used Bag: Fred laughed when I told him. Fred has a dirty mind and an even dirtier laugh. The bag I drew was my old camera bag that I’ve recently sewn back to life again. I’d forgotten how useful it was to take only the camera you’re going to use with you and not a bucket full of lenses that you won’t use. Simple.

Made a focaccia again today to go with a lovely salad Scamp made. How on earth did some Italian punter years ago came up with the idea of pouring one and a half times the usual amount of water into a dough and then pouring a jug full of oil in too before he / she attempted to knead the slurry into something resembling a dough? What made them think it would work? The strange thing is, it works really, really well. I’d just like to know how they came up with such a strange recipe.

Tomorrow, we’re going for lunch somewhere, and then it’s going to rain.

Out to lunch – 23 May 2019

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Today we were going out to Hebo House for lunch.

If you don’t understand what Hebo House is, don’t Google it. The original sign read THE BOAT HOUSE (all caps). After the original owners sold up, some of the sign’s letters disappeared and it now reads HE BO HOUSE, hence Hebo House. Much better when it’s not shouting at you too. It’s been re-opened for some time now, but the present owner(s) can’t be bothered to fix the sign. Maybe they too like the kudos of the Hebo House. The lunch was quite good, by the way. Mine was a burger and it worked for me. Scamp had a chicken burger that also looked good.

Now that we were fed and watered (soft drinks only) we went for a walk along the canal, mainly because my task for today was “A bridge over a river or canal”. We walked under the bridge, and I took photos from both sides and neither looked interesting enough to sketch. The other thing was the temperature. The car thermometer said 14ºc, but outside the wind sucked a lot of that heat away. We didn’t walk far. We just headed for Lidl in Kilsyth for essentials (wine, beer and ice cream) and came home. I still hadn’t a photo, so I drove down to the Luggie and went for a walk, because the sun had come out and it became pleasantly warm. Not only did I get my PoD shot of the railway arches, but I also got the ink sketch for today’s EDiM topic: A bridge over a river or canal: Bridge over Luggie Water. This is a lovely place for a walk. Along beside the Luggie Water under this bridge and then under the arches of the railway bridge. A lovely place … in the daylight at least! Don’t go after dark. Not without kevlar armour and a very big stick.

Used one of my sketches as today’s drawing and slapped some paint on it tonight. I like it.  Like Scamp says, “You can walk into it”.  Made a pizza tonight just for a wee snack since we hadn’t had anything substantial since early afternoon and the pizza was slightly overdone, but very nice.

That was it for the day. Tomorrow I’m having coffee with Fred at lunchtime and maybe a pizza for lunch before that. I believe someone is going to have to make a focaccia at some time too.

Private Dancer – 22 May 2019

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Well, almost. More like a private lesson for the normal price.

Because Wednesdays are such a rush, in the morning I got started on the sketch for the day. I’d taken a photo of the playpark last week and only had to transfer it to the tablet upstairs using Dropbox. While I was drawing, the gardener was planting in the new bed under the back window. Her final decision was to plant the green spotty plant and a couple of others in the space we had, then add some lower level primulas which we had split up yesterday. By the time she was finished, I had laid down the ink outline and it was lunch time. When I checked my email I found that Jamie G would be in Embra today. That would put paid to Salsa tonight.

After lunch we drove in to Glasgow to dance some Jive. It turned out that we were the only couple there for our level and had Michael’s undivided attention, which meant he’d catch every mistake we made, and we made a few. However, although we didn’t learn any new moves, we cleared up and cleaned up a lot of the ones we did know. Quickstep followed Jive and the same thing happened. Little things that we knew we were doing wrong were spotted and corrected. We’ve a lot of practise ahead of us this week.

While we were walking along Ingram Street, a wee man stopped in front of us and started photographing the glass building with his phone. We had a chat about the reflections on the building and the great shape of the curves. I took a few shots myself because the reflections looked so good today. I’d just switched the camera off when a seagull passed along the face of the building and the glass facets picked it up and multiplied its reflections so it looked like a flock of seagulls … and my camera was off! I must try and get that shot again. It looked lovely in my mind’s eye. PoD became the reflections on the building minus seagull! After a coffee we drove home.

Back home I started adding colour to the sketch and although it looks ok, it’s not as fresh as it could be. Overworked, I think. It was after dinner time when I checked on Facebook that I found the update from Jamie G to say that he’d make it back for class after all. That was a bummer, especially as there isn’t a class on Monday because of the bank holiday. That means our next class will be next Wednesday. Oh well, these things happen.

Tomorrow Scamp is meeting Shona for coffee and then I think we may go out for lunch.