Month: August 2020

Not the best day – 21 August 2020

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This morning we had sad news.

We got a phone call from Jamie this morning to say that Madeleine, Sim’s mum had died. She was a lovely person who introduced us to Trinidad and Tobago. She and Jaime took us into their house and treated us like royalty. We will never never forget her kindness and the energy she put into everything she did. The woman with two phones, making sure the wedding reception ran as smoothly as possible. A great loss. Our thoughts go to Jamie and Simonne and the rest of the family.

Today’s PoD is a little seedpod I saw in St Mo’s this afternoon.

Tomorrow is another day.

The Explorer – 20 August 2020

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It’s all about the Views and the Faves and the Comments.

Hazy phoned this morning and if she hadn’t I’d have struggled on with Angry Birds until the phone’s battery died. Caught up with everything that was going on down London way and picked up directions to what sounds like an interesting restaurant in Kingston. Hope the rest of your plans don’t get washed away in Friday’s rain Hazy. Enjoyed the chat and I’ll put the Utopia Avenue back on my ‘possibles’ list.

Do you remember Tuesday’s PoD? I won’t be disappointed if you’ve to rack your brains and then can’t find anything remarkable about it. It was a six frame panorama of Broadwood Loch, which in itself is a totally forgettable manmade loch. Just a big pond really, bounded on one side by a ring road and on the other side by the march of power line pylons. It’s got a ‘business park on its east end, although it looks like business isn’t really booming and on it’s west end is a car park. The least said about it the better. However, if you choose your viewpoint well to disguise the ring road, have the business park behind you and limit your view to avoid the car park and the pylons, it appear that you can take a decent landscape photo that wins a remarkable number of view and faves (favourites) with the bonus of the occasional comment. Today I woke to find that overnight I’d amassed just over 5,000 views, around 250 faves and 8 comments on Flickr. This is almost unheard of for me. On a good day I get about 50 views, half a dozen faves and the occasional comment. The reason for this interest is because some time over the last 24 hours the picture was featured in Explore which is Flickr’s much sought after ‘gold award’. Why it won this accolade and who awarded it is a secret, only known to those in the high echelons of Flickr. Whoever you are, I thank you.

After that, the rest of the day was bound to be a let down, wasn’t it? Well, not all of it. The weather that had been trying to make up its mind whether to rain or shine, settled on Shine. I’ve two old tablets that I occasionally use one, the Nexus 7 is ready to be sent to a place where old tablets go. It was groundbreaking in 2012, but now it’s just ready for breaking. The other is still running. It’s a Samsung Note 10.1 and in 2014 it was an expensive but decent machine. Now it’s sloooow. Too slow to do anything other than draw with. It has its own dedicated pen and the processor is fast enough to keep it working, but the OS is slowing it down. I could downgrade it, but that’s a pain. For less than half what I paid for it back then, I can get a faster, lighter tablet with twice the memory. That’s what I did this afternoon. Drove to Sunny Coatbridge to get a new 10.1, unfortunately without the pen. It’s a lot faster than the 2014 model and the screen is just as detailed.

With it charging, I went for a walk to St Mo’s and got almost nothing. The one shot I liked was of a mummy Coot feeding one of the baby coots. This must be the second brood she’s had because the first lot arrived around the same time as Covid-19 did, not that I’m blaming the coots for that.

Dinner was a new version of Spaghetti a la Carbonara, made without cream. Using cheddar cheese instead of parmesan and with peas. Our peas. The second flush of peas and they tasted ok. Jury is still out on the Carbonara. Scamp thought it was good, I wasn’t so sure. Like yesterday’s curry, it’s worth trying again.

The final count as I write this blog is   6,620 views  276 faves  8 comments.

Looks like wind and rain for all of us tomorrow, so it’s definitely a ‘wait and see’ day.

Bits and pieces – 19 August 2020

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A day of bits.

Lots of bits, all bolted, glued and welded together to form a cohesive day. It all went wrong when I made a list of all the things I wanted to do today. I did actually do all those things, but the idea was that I’d sacrifice the morning to those tasks and that would leave the afternoon free to paint or draw. Burns got it right again “The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley”

First, get my thoughts down in Goodreads about “Flowers for Algernon”. Did you notice the link there? Algernon is a mouse and the Burns quote above was from “To A Mouse.” See, there’s a lot of thought goes into this. Anyway, the write up took minutes and that was a tick in one box. Next on the list was find the big thick graphic stick I needed to add texture and shadows to the sketch I was going to do. I’d looked everywhere last night and hoped I’d just put my hand on it today in the light. Gave up eventually and ordered a new one from Amazon. Five minutes later I found the graphic stick. It was in a box in the bedroom. Don’t you hate when that happens. Next was to solve today’s sudoku. It was impossible. I gave up after half an hour. Went in to the garden to prune my buddleia bush. Then Scamp and I proceeded to chop down the original buddleia bush that had only flowered once or twice and then in the autumn once all the butterflies that it’s supposed to attract had gone. It was a tough bush. It needed the combined efforts of a hacksaw, an axe and finally a full size panel saw, but it did come out of its pot eventually.

I should have been painting after lunch, but instead I took myself, my camera bag and my Benbo tripod off to walk along the Luggie Water. I’d forgotten to add ‘Take a photo’ to my morning list of things to do and it would only take a few minutes. The minutes somehow joined together to make an hour and a half, but I got the photo. The PoD is the railway bridge over the Luggie. Not a flower and not a beastie, but a landscape and an architectural picture for a change.

Back home I had a look a the the resulting photos and after some work, posted two on Flickr and found that it was now dinner time. Scamp made a really interesting veg curry and had baked a cake with chunks of pear in it. Quite heavy and moist, but beautiful cinnamon flavour. She’d also found time to cut the front grass. Makes me look like the lazy person I am. The painting never got done, nor did the sketch. Maybe tomorrow, or maybe I’ll get Scamp to do them. That way they’ll get done.

Tomorrow is to be wild with heavy rain and strong winds, and more of the same on Friday. Well, it is summer and it is Scotland

Making the jump to Lightspeed – 18 August 2020

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New modem today. A little prezzy from Mr Branson

It was a lady from Yodel who handed Scamp the box just before lunch. Over lunch I digested the instructions as well as bacon and an egg. It seemed too easy. Switch off and disconnect the old modem. Connect, plug in and switch on the new one. They even supplied a plastic spanner for the disconnection/connection. Then we waited as little coloured lights flashed across the front of the new black box. Finally they settled down to a plain white (on light) and a couple of green lights. After that and after typing in the long password we were in!

Before the switch over the stats were:

Latency 24ms. Download speed 66.4Mbps. Upload speed 9.8Mbps

After the switch over:

Latency 30ms. Download speed 104.6Mbps. Upload speed 9.6Mbps

Yes, it’s all gobbledegook to me too, but the download speed was over what we’d been promised, so a 6ms lag in response was forgivable … for now.

With everything ticking along smoothly and both our phones now connected to the new black box we went out for a walk. Just to be on the safe side we both packed a light wet weather jacket, because heavy rain was forecast for the later afternoon. We needn’t have bothered, the rain kindly waited until we’d walked round the boardwalk at Broadwood Loch, walked over the dam, continued down and round the exercise machine circuit (no, we didn’t use any of the machines) and on up to the shops to get some fruit, then home. It was after all that, that the rain came. Lightly at first, then heavier until it was good wetting rain. Scamp had decided not to risk cutting the grass when we got home and I’m sure she knows it was the right thing to do. It means she’ll be out there tomorrow testing the grass to see if it’s dry enough for a short cut.

We spent the evening introducing the various electronic devices in the house to the new black box in the corner. Still got some to do, but it’s all a lot easier than when I brought a little bit of circuit board home one Sunday afternoon long ago, plugged it into the back of my home built PC and found the Internet.

PoD was a panorama of Broadwood Loch made in Lightroom from six frames and with a more interesting sky than nature provided today. That’s what software is for. Ansel Adams reputedly said that “Making a photograph only starts with the camera.” A wise man.

Tomorrow Scamp may be grass cutting. I’m thinking I may be painting. All that may change, of course. It will depend on the weather.

Silencing the alarms – 17 August 2020

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Scamp was out for coffee this afternoon with the core of ‘Gems’. The ‘old guard’ so to speak, although I’d never call them that to their faces.

In the morning we watched and waited for the sun to break through the clouds, but we knew in our heart of hearts that it was never going to happen, but that didn’t stop us watching and waiting some more. We finally gave up and had lunch.

After lunch, Scamp drove off to collect Margie for their coffee afternoon with June. I had great plans to watch and listen to a bit of my new tutorial course on architectural sketching, but first I had to find out what type of battery our CO2 and smoke detectors used. They had been cheeping once or twice a day for about a week, but now they were becoming insistent, beep every hour. Then I’d to wrap up the belated birthday parcel for JIC and post it. The alarms were starting to grate on my nerves, so they were the first to deal with. The smoke alarm was the easiest. It took two AAA batteries and was fixed in a couple of minutes. The CO2 detector took a different battery of course, the only one of the common batteries we didn’t have, the 9v one. I’d get one after I posted the parcel. So, next I dealt with the parcel. With it safely addressed and sealed I walked out into what was now a dreary drizzle, stuck my big clumsy bluetooth headphones and was serenaded all the way to the post office. The architectural sketching would have to wait.

Got the parcel posted and was heading to the Spar shop to get the battery when I saw the little green island in the pavement. Here was my PoD. I called it ‘Island in the Sun’ as it wasn’t an island really and there wasn’t any sun, but at first glance it looked to me like a green tropical island in a rather murky sea. Maybe it was wishful thinking. Got the battery and walked home in a downpour, still being serenaded by Spotify’s Discover Weekly. When I got back, Scamp had returned from her coffee afternoon and seemed to have enjoyed it as much as my visit wit Val, last week. Fixed the CO2 detector and it’s now quietly flashing away every hour or so. Silent at last.

Watched the final episode of series 1 of Line of Duty and I still haven’t watched and listened to the sketching video. Maybe tomorrow.

Tomorrow we may get a new modem delivered. Otherwise no real plans.

Happy Birthday JIC – 16 August 2020

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I’m glad you got more sunshine than we did for your birthday.

This Sunday started dull, as so many other days have started recently. We had high hopes around midday when there was a fair glimmer of sunshine, but it didn’t last.

After lunch I made some bread. Unusually for me I made the dough by hand. Usually I bung everything into the mixer bowl and get the ‘Chef’ to do the hard work, all I do is adjust the water or flour proportions until it looks right. Today I did all the work and I really enjoyed it. Next on the food theme was a couple of burgers. I mixed 250g of steak mince with half an onion blitzed in the mini food processor, a small handful of breadcrumbs and half an egg to bind the lot together. Split the resulting mixture into two and made patties out of them. One went in the fridge to firm up, the other went in the freezer for a rainy day.

Hazy sent me a message to say that Amazon had reduced the price of all the books in the Slough House series by Mick Herron. I’d read and enjoyed the first four books, so here was a chance to get the last two for a quid each. Thank you very much Hazy! Two more books in the Kindle ready to read.

We finally gave up hope of a sunny afternoon around 3pm and went for a walk round St Mo’s pond with our rain coats on, just incase the wet stuff descended on us. It didn’t which made the walk a little more pleasant.

My friendly dragonfly posed for me on the boardwalk at St Mo’s. He didn’t make PoD because I guess everyone is fed up with so many macros of dragonflies and damselflies. Instead I chose a still life type shot of a little yellow leaf hanging on a grass stem. Very zen.

Dinner was new potatoes and roasted tomatoes with our choice of protein. Mine being beef burger, Scamp’s being salmon. Both were deemed fine. Washed down with the remains of yesterday’s white wine.

Spoke to JIC later on his birthday and promised him that the card is in the post and a small prezzy will be winging its way to him when I get myself in gear.

That’s about it for now. Scamp is booked for coffee tomorrow with Gems and I might start to watch a painting video I got yesterday.

Took the bike out – 15 August 2020

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Went for a walk in the afternoon, hoping against hope for some sun.

It worked! The sun arrived and blue sky reigned for a while, then the wind got a bit more fierce and blew all the warmth away. It was lovely to look out at, but not so nice to be in it. We went for a walk before the wind arrived. A long walk, to post a card that won’t be picked up until Monday and will probably be delivered before the end of the week, for a birthday that’s tomorrow. Just all at sixes and sevens these days. Normal for me, but a bit unusual for Scamp. Sorry JIC!

With the card safely in the big round red box, we walked down to the shops to get what was needed for today’s dinner. Back home I couldn’t decide what to do with the rest of the day and finally got the track pump out and inflated the Dewdrop’s tyres, dressed appropriately and took it out for a spin. Not a long run, just enough to blow away the cobwebs from me and the bike. Got today’s PoD which is a bunch of early brambles. Only one of them is ripe, but it’s early days yet. We need lots more sun and a little drop more rain. We’ll probably get those two necessities, except the quantities will be reversed. It was pleasantly warm as long as you were out of the wind. Otherwise it was a bit chilly for August.

Tonight’s dinner was Cod and Prawns with Fennel and White Wine. Sounds very posh, but it’s really easy to make. Well within my capabilities.

That’s about it for today. Tomorrow is still a mystery. No plans.

Out to Lunch – 14 August 2020

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Today we were booked for lunch at The Cotton House. Note the capitalised ‘The’. Not just any Cotton House, but The Cotton House!

Drove there and arrive just in time after a quick return to the house “Did I switch off the computer”. Yes, I had switched it off! When we got there, and got parked in an actual space, an event in itself, the restaurant wasn’t even open. Five minutes later the sign on the door was switched from Closed to Open and we were not quite first in the queue, but nearly first. Got a table and were told it was a one hour time slot. No problem. We could scoff anything they’d put down to us in an hour. Scamp went for her usual TCH standard: Thai Spring Rolls followed by Chicken Chow Mein. I decided to be adventurous and had Thai Spring Rolls (I usually have Chicken Noodle Soup) and Salt & Chilli Chicken, rather than the usual Chow Mein. Both starters were fine, although I’d have the soup next time. Scamp’s main was just as good as it usually is. I can vouch for it because she let me have some to taste. I’d definitely order my Salt & Chilli again, we both agreed the chicken was excellent (yes, I did let her have a piece to see what she was missing!) Neither of us was really bothered about tea or coffee and we just paid and left, feeling bad because we had no ‘real’ money to leave a tip and there was no facility in the card machine to do it digitally. They used to bring a wee dish of jelly beans with the bill and I was thinking that in these post Covid days that might pose a problem, but someone was thinking about that and there was a wee plastic disposable tub of multicoloured sugar-heavy sweeties with the bill. Great idea!

We left Longcroft and headed for Glasgow. I wanted to have a look at a camera in JL (no surprise there, say some) and we both wanted a wander round town. It was a great day for it. This morning it had been heavy cloud, but on the way to Glasgow the clouds lifted and the sun shone. We wandered round JL. I had a look at cameras, but the one I was looking for wasn’t there (surprise, surprise.) I heard one of the ‘partners’ (i.e. sales assistants) say to a couple of prospective customers that they “don’t have their full stock in the stores yet.” He added that they were hoping to have it in ‘soon’. That seems to be a problem these days everywhere.

Walked down Bucky Street which is where I got today’s PoD. It’s actually a cut and paste of two images, but Lightroom is so good at this stuff, it would take and expert to see the join. If you are an expert and you can see the join, keep it to yourself. Nobody likes a smarty pants.

After a coffee in Nero – I’m getting like Scamp and beginning to despise disposable cups – we headed up to the car, stopping to allow Scamp a retail opportunity in the Pandora shop. I think she deserved it for surviving Lockdown with me moaning at her about everything I could think of.

Back home and the sun was still shining. I did think of going over to St Mo’s to annoy some beasties, but I had a decent PoD and it was a rather warm and sunny afternoon so I planked myself in the garden along side an already ensconced Scamp and listened to some music. I even did a wee painting that’s available for your perusal on Instagram. I think I’ve inflicted enough pain on friends on Facebook! I also had a beer to accompany Scamp’s Pimms.

Tonight we travelled back a year and a few hundred miles to Venice to remember a sail-in we won’t forget in a long, long time.

Our WiFi died about half an hour ago, so this blog is getting posted late. Checked the state of the connection with Virgin and was given the surprising news that our modem is being upgraded!!! After umpteen phone calls and emails with no response, suddenly out of the blue they say we’re getting a new hub! I’ll believe it when I see it. Of course the signal came back, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this.

No plans for tomorrow and it’s too late to book another lunch out. Hoping for more sunshine. That will do instead.

Bob the Builder strikes again – 13 August 2020

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A slow day to start as far as the weather was concerned, but lots to do.

Got an email from the garage with my order form for the new Micra attached. Just a formality really, but at least I now have a proper breakdown of the deal.

Shona had sent a text late in the afternoon, yesterday. Ben had broken the lock on the bathroom door. He likes to play with the water in the bath, but doesn’t realise that it’s running through into the flat below. It was mid June when I was last called to the fix the door and I screwed a hasp on to the door frame and a staple on to the door itself. It seemed ok at the time, but as I predicted at the time, the now twelve year old Ben has demonstrated that he can tear those screws out. I went to B&Q to get a couple of bolts. That meant a bag of bolts, of course. A bag of washers too. As I’d left the house without a screwdriver, I had to add one to the list as well. Unbelievably, the bag of washers which are simple steel discs about 15mm diameter with a hole in the centre was nearly twelve quid! Outrageous, but I needed them for the job. Back at the flat it was a simple job to drill the door, then drill out the staple itself to fit the bolts. Then I assembled the whole thing with a couple of those expensive washers in place and tightened one nut and a lock nut to keep the other nut from breaking in to the bathroom again. If this doesn’t work I’ll have to source a manacle to fit a twelve year old.

Back home the coffee maker was on and my roll was already buttered for me to fill with corned beef. Quite delicious and washed down with a nice strong espresso. Scamp is so good to me. While I’d been out being Bob the Builder, she’d done some washing and had thrown out some stale bread for the birds. Instead of birds, there was a Peacock butterfly perched on the slice of what had been nice Italian bread. I can’t imagine that butterflies eat bread. I took a few pics with two cameras “belts and braces” style. One of them became PoD.

After lunch we walked down to the shops, because Scamp wanted a new stiff broom to sweep the paving stones, because as we all know: A New Broom Sweeps Clean. She seemed happy with the brush and because I was in the mood for drilling holes and driving screws into things, I fixed up a hook on the fence to hold it.

No slide show tonight. This will be a long one, it’s Venice. The main reason we had a balcony cabin last year if the truth be told, and the reason we’d have had one this year if Covid-19 hadn’t reared its ugly head.

Tomorrow we may be going for lunch – to a restaurant!

A hot day after a fiery night – 12 August 2020

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Wild night last night with thunder and lightning around 3am.

As well as the Donner and Blitzen, torrential rain fell for most of the night I’m led to believe. “I didn’t see that, I only heard, but just to be sociable I took their word” (Today’s lyrical poetry comes from Ned Washington & Oliver Wallace). I heard the thunder and saw the lightning but was only vaguely aware of the rain thumping down. That rain though, did a lot of damage all over Central Scotland and even worse in the north east. Train derailed outside Stonehaven with three dead. The weather has not been blamed, but it hasn’t been completely ruled out.

Once the clouds had cleared here it was a lovely sunny day. Humidity was still a bit high, but nothing as bad as yesterday. I met Val up at Costa only to find that there were no seats. All the Yummy Mummies were there with their screaming weans. We decided to walk down to the other Costa, but it was just as bad, but like a dungeon because they thing using the lights will spoil the ambience. Ambience? It’s a coffee shop in Cumbersheugh. Nowhere in Cumbersheugh has ambience. Saving on electricity more like! Walked back towards the first Costa, but actually thinking about going to Calders new restaurant instead. The coffee can only be better than Costa. Surprisingly, there were plenty of seats. Most of the mummies and their weans had disappeared. Val solved the problem of the biz in the coffee shops. “Eat Out to Help Out” applies Mondays to Wednesdays and you get 50% off a meal. We found a seat and ordered £5 for two coffees and two toasted tea cakes. Bargain. Talked about everything from miniature computers to old cameras. Nearly everything we talked about was tech based, as usual. Walked back down the mall then Val said he was going for a walk to waste some time because his wife had girlfriends in and he wanted some peace and quiet. I said we’d meet up later, hopefully all four of us this time.

Back home and after lunch I took myself out to get some photos in St Mo’s. PoD was a picture of a spider I’d taken in the garden in the morning. Liked the pink/red background. Nearly PoD was a shot of a dragonfly resting in St Mo’s. I’d watched it return again and again to this perch, but simply couldn’t get the TZ90 to see it. Finally gave up and used the nuclear option (4K video Post Focus). When I got home I isolated the frame from the video that was as sharp as I was going to get, and here it is! Is this the future of photography?

We watched a couple of slide shows from Hvar last year at this time. It’s amazing the things you forget and then remember when you get the stimulus of a picture or a short video. Hvar is a lovely place. We’d love to go back there some time.

Tomorrow I may have to go and see what damage Ben has done to Shona’s bathroom door. I don’t know what else I can do to reinforce the door. Possibly a manacle round his ankle and fixed to a bolt in the living room floor would do the trick. Other than that, no plans.