Month: December 2020

The shortest day – 21 December 2020

Posted on by Zogman

We don’t get much light at the best of times, but today was dark.

When I started the car this morning to drive up to the town centre, the headlights came on. It was just after 10.30am. Today was the Shortest Day.  The Winter Equinox.  I was going to meet Val for coffee and a wee technology catchup. When we were waiting to be served one of the staff in Costa was a bit too aggressive, shouting at us to step back, step back. He seemed to think that the 2m distance measures on the floor were underestimates. I realise they are under pressure, but they have to realise that their customers are people and treat them appropriately. I didn’t shout at him, why should he shout at me. The rest of the staff were relaxed and treated all the customers with good humour. “One bad apple … “

We spent an interesting hour or so, catching up and discussing Val’s new electronics projects using Arduino kits which remind me of the electronics boards we used in school for a while in Tech Studies. He’s really getting into this area of experimentation which is not surprising with his electronics background and his programming skills learned from the Raspberry Pi.

After I left him I went to look for a pair of walking boots to replace the leaky Merrells. The only place in Cumbersheugh where you can get them is Sports Direct. None of the boots they had on display looked like they would be better than the Merrells, in fact one of them proudly displayed the fact that they weren’t waterproof. Really? What use are walking boots that don’t even claim to be waterproof? Are they only for wearing indoors. I could almost forgive them if they had been fashionable, but they just look like big clumpy brown boots, boots that would melt in the rain, though. I went home.

After lunch we headed back out again, this time to Tesco and got a turkey crown that didn’t cost as much as the Queen’s Crown. It was a bit smaller and didn’t have the bacon wrapping that the M&S offering had, but I’m sure it will be dressed up well once Scamp gets started.

After we got back and stored all the food away, I went for a walk in St Mo’s. It was already growing dark, but I wanted to take a photo outside on the shortest day of the year. I got a few candidates, but PoD went to an almost monochrome shot of reeds reflected in the still waters of the pond. A few ripples too to add some texture. If you look carefully you can see little green leaves showing above the water.

I made tomato soup for dinner and it was so good, Scamp, after finishing her first bowl, immediately refilled it. Having said that, it could have been the croutons that brightened it up. More left for lunch tomorrow.

We missed the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn tonight. It happened around 5pm and apparently would have looked like the Star of Bethlehem, except in the north-west not the east. Perhaps it did look spectacular, but we wouldn’t have been able to see it because it was raining at the time of the conjunction. The rain coming from the big black clouds that covered the whole sky. Gallingly, those clouds rolled away later, once both planets were below the horizon.

Tomorrow Scamp’s car is getting its windscreen repaired. It’s got a crack , down near the dashboard and that crack isn’t going to get any smaller, so she bit the bullet and paid the excess so that person from Autoglass would come to the house and repair it. Other than that, nothing else we need to do, except watch the days lengthen as we head towards Spring.

Lockdown Blues – 20 December 2020

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We’re not really there yet, but we know it’s coming.

I suppose I should get the pencils sharpened and the pens refilled for more lockdown sketches, because we are being condemned to at least three weeks of virtual lockdown as Nic puts most of Scotland into level 4 as a precaution. Yes, it makes sense, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

We were entertained by Andrew Marr this morning tearing at the poor health minister Matt Hancock like a demented Jack Russell. The poor man hardly got a chance to answer one question before another two were being fired at him by Marr. I think we both felt just a little bit sorry for him. He managed to parry a few of Marr’s thrusts, but I’m sure he felt punch drunk after doing down for the third time in round two.

It was a dull day weather wise too. A bit wet at times, but mainly just grey. However I got my boots on, grabbed the camera bag and headed off to get some photos. My first stop was the tree where the little ladybird had been hibernating before my too bright light disturbed it. At first I couldn’t see it, then I found it about 50cm further up the trunk. Grabbed a few shots, both with the old Sigma lens and also with the Sony. The Sony won hands down, but now I realise that the anti-shake wasn’t set to the correct focal length for the Nikon which is quite an old lens and doesn’t send all its information to the camera electronically. Still, I got a few shots to remind me of where it was.

The ladybird didn’t make PoD, but another spot in the woods gave me a pretty landscape type shot. It looks so calm, but beyond that fence there is a four lane motorway with all sorts of vehicular transport rumbling along it day and night, summer and winter. There’s hardly a ripple on that wee stream to distort the tree reflections. PoD, even before I processed it. I also grabbed a mono shot of some weeds which completes a full week of monochromatic images.

Spoke to JIC in the evening and found out that both he and his sister are in level 4. That’s the whole family in it! Have we been bad or something? Is it because I called the respective leaders Bumbling Boris and The Littlest Witch? If so, I’m sorry, but they both deserve it. The leaders, not the siblings, that is.

Dinner tonight was Haggis, Neeps and Tatties. What a brilliant brightener for a dull day. Just as long as you don’t ask what was in the haggis. You don’t want to know.

That was about it for today. Hoping to meet Val for coffee and some technological chat tomorrow and then Scamp and I might visit Tesco to look for a turkey, a small one, if such a thing exists.

Priority Pass – 19 December 2020

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Scamp had a spot booked at M&S. A spot for one!

We drove to M&S and Scamp waltzed to the front of the queue, showed the pass on her phone and walked in. I joined the rest of the proles out in the cold. We’d intending to have a look for a small turkey crown for Christmas Day. I’m afraid was look. Prices ranged from around £40 to around £70. Just a bit more than we’d intended paying. We did buy a fair load of stuff though, just to make our visit worthwhile. I got a couple of those big fat dumpy sausage rolls that used to be all the rage a year or so ago. Got them for half the price of one single Christmas version. Scamp picked up a bottle of wine too with an interesting label I’m sure we’ve seen on our table before.

We could have gone to Tesco, but it would have been jumping, I’m sure so we just drove home. Sausage roll for me for lunch and Scamp had an egg on a tattie scone. It was a bit fatty, full of breadcrumb and overall simply tasteless. I’d probably have been better getting the single Christmas version of the sausage roll. In fact I’d probably have been better with the egg on a tattie scone! What we did find was where M&S hide the Milk Chocolate & Cinnamon Tortillas, recommended by Hazy.  No, don’t make that face you lot out there. I didn’t think it would work either, but Hazy is a connoisseur of chocolate things and she said it worked. It does. Half a packet later tonight, I can vouch for that.

It was raining after lunch and we waited a while before committing to a walk. Usual fairly short walk down to the loch, back along the boardwalk and the long way round the exercise machines. One of the machines found its way on to Flickr after it had been converted to B&W, but wasn’t PoD. On the way home, Scamp suggested that she was going back to the house, but if I wanted I could do a lap of St Mo’s pond. I did two laps but it was on the first one that I found the PoD. It had been raining on and off when we were walking round Broadwood, but when I reached St Mo’s the sun came out and gave a beautiful light show on the trees of the far bank. Knew I didn’t have time to switch lenses to capture the whole scene, so took a series of shots to be made into a panorama later. That panorama worked well and became PoD.

While I was re-heating the leftover curry from last night I was half listening to Nic laying down the law for the next three or four weeks. I’d previously listened to Boris’s bumbling and at times incoherent ramblings that pretended to be a press briefing. At times I think that Nicola is too cautious and too quick to shut things down, but oh my, I’m so glad we have her sensible approach rather than what has been described as Boris’s “Battle of Britain rhetoric”. The man simply does not inspire confidence. She does. So, basically from the end of next week we’ll almost all be in lockdown again. You can give it a number if you like, but basically it’s lockdown again. I suppose it has to be done. For England, to control the virus. For Scotland, to prevent the virus spreading north. You know it makes sense (unless you’re listening to Boris).

Tomorrow the weather looks wet again. We may go out for a walk.

Coffee with the family – 18 December 2020

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Today we were out early (10.30am) is early, to have coffee with Shona, but more of the clan were already there.

I wasn’t going to go, then I felt bad about it and changed my mind at the last moment. Scamp said she was going to take the blue car anyway, because her red micra has a crack in the windscreen. Not a bit crack, but enough to put her off driving it, just in case. When I agreed to come, I told her she was driving. We weren’t going far, just up to the town centre. Got there almost on time (my fault for my procrastination) and found that not only was Shona there, but Isobel was too. I wondered if Scamp had got her days mixed up, but no, it was Isobel who had her time mixed up. She got there for 10am to meet one of her friends and it turned out she should have been there for 11am. She didn’t mind, she said, she’d just wait. And she did. Because of the Covid rules in Scotland, she wasn’t allowed to join Shona, Scamp and I as that would have made an outlawed 3 families at a table. It gets so complicated with all these rules, not to mention the fact that all four nations in the UK have their own rules and none of the four seem to have a common ground. That’s what happens when you have headless chickens and Bumbling Boris in charge. Chaos!

We sat for an hour listening to Shona telling all her news and there was lots of it too. You don’t realise how lucky you are until you hear someone explaining all the tangled web of their own life. After about an hour we were all up to date with what had happened recently and we had a few laughs too. Shona always finds something to laugh at. We said our goodbyes and Scamp drove us home. When we left the carpark at around midday, the automatic headlights came on. That will tell you how little daylight there is in Scotland in mid December.

After lunch two parcels arrived in quick succession. One from Hazy and, we think, one from Canute. The light, which had improved when we arrived home was failing at around 2pm, so I packed my camera bag and went for a walk in St Mo’s. I wanted a mono shot to continue my week of black & white photos. Then I got talking to one of the two guys who was running RC (Radio Control) cars on the BMX track and I took a few photos of the car running over the jumps. One of the photos made PoD.  The mono shot didn’t quite make the cut, but it’s on Flickr.

Back home I’d volunteered to make a veg curry from scratch and got started with the flat bread dough before I made the curry. It took longer than I thought (it usually does!) but by 7pm we were eating a fairly decent veg curry with potatoes, butternut squash, courgettes and chickpeas in it. Like I said, it was a bit hot, but not too hot … just! More left for tomorrow, but it will need some yoghurt to cool it down I think.

That was about it for today. Looks wet for tomorrow and we’ve nowhere to go. Scamp has booked a slot at M&S, so we may do some shopping.

 

Old lens – Old camera – 17 December 2020

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A lazy start to the day, but nobody was going far today. Not one car moved from our parking area before midday.

I drove up to Tesco to get some fish and a few odds and ends for tonight’s dinner. I thought of taking a detour to St Mo’s, but part of the odds and ends was a box of ice cream and it would surely have melted or be in the process of melting by the hour or so I’d allowed myself. Besides, I wanted to try out the Sigma 105mm macro lens on the little toadstool I’d found yesterday. That lens was in the house, so I drove home. A few people had ventured out in their cars by the time I got back. I think we must live on the lazy side of the estate.

Walked back to St Mo’s carrying the macro lens. It was remarkably easy to manually focus the Sigma once you take your time and get the right buttons pressed. I found a little daisy closing up for the night as well as the toadstool. I’ve never seen daisies flowering so late in the year. No Santa watchers today!

It had been dry almost all day, cloudy but dry. I’d only been out about 45 minutes and the rain came on. The light had disappeared by that time anyway, so I headed home. I stopped at the Adventure Playground on the way to take a closer look at one of the bouncy toys. It looks like a wooden caterpillar with big bug eyes. I think they are just the advertisements for the company who made the attractions. I’d seen it many times and tried a shot with the Sony, but it didn’t work out the way I’d planned. Instead I used the old TZ70, the Teazer I’d brought with me today. I’m intending to use it until I get the TZ90, its replacement, hoovered out to remove the dust in the lens and probably on the sensor too. It looked fine. Later after I’d had a good look and a quick cull of the useless shots, I decided the Teazer shot would be PoD.

Tonight’s dinner was Simple Fish Stew. It was quite a favourite in the house for years, but it’s months since I made it. Tonight it tasted even better than I remember it.

Scamp is off to have coffee with Shona tomorrow. I might go or I might stay and fix the TZ90 and do some more work on the calendar.

 

Man in the red coat – 16 December 2020

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But not the one you might think off at this time of year.

Spoke to Hazy in the morning. Covid seems to be on the rise in London, especially in the schools where both staff and pupils seem to be the badly affected. Thankfully, they will be on their Christmas break from Friday, so that might give things a chance to calm down. We exchanged updates on parcels and Hazy suggested we might like Chocolate Tortillas from M&S. I’m not sure it’s quite my sort of thing, but I’m willing to have a go because there is chocolate involved.

My first task was to get the Christmas cards organised with the “Our 2020” sheets. Scamp had agreed to post them for me. That left me free to start my email to my brother and select some photos to go with it. I’d been getting on quite happily with my task when Scamp returned from posting the cards, carrying a big cardboard box of chips. The chip shop had been open she said, as if that was reason enough. We shared them and they were lovely, and definitely not fattening, because they were our lunch.

Later I went back to my epistle and after finishing at a reasonable juncture, I grabbed the camera bag and took a walk in St Mo’s. There wasn’t much to photograph, but I liked the absurdity of a M&S shopping trolley (without Chocolate Tortillas) standing at the starting gate of the BMX track. Is this a new dangerous sport? Shopping trolley BMX? That might just do for a fun picture. Further on I walked along the outlet burn of the pond. I was looking to see if there was any prospect of a slow shutter speed shot of the moving water. There was, but it would need some careful descending to get there without sliding on my bum down the steep sides of the burn. Then I found a tiny wee toadstool, slightly the worse for wear poking through the leaf litter. That would make a challenging photo with only a kit lens. The burn is virtually on the edge of the school fence and as I was kneeling down trying to achieve focus on this wee toadstool I heard someone, definitely a child and probably a boy, cry “Hey!”. Then “Hey! Man in the red coat.” Then the sound of running feet before I could shout “Aye, but not the one you were thinking of.” Maybe he thought I’d been out warming up the sleigh and had fallen out into the muck beside the burn. He’ll probably go home tonight and say “Mum. Guess who I saw today …”

Well, I did get focus on the wee toadstool and it became PoD. Santa was never found and My brother’s email winged its way off to Motherwell soon after I got back.

Tonight we were disappointed with the judges choice of Portrait Artist of 2020. We were equally disappointed with his portrait of Carlos Acosta. I suppose it was fitting because 2020 has been such a disappointing year in so many ways.

Tomorrow we may go out for a spin, although we need to be back for a Tesco order that’s due to arrive around 5pm.

The Ladies – 15 December 2020

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Parcels to send today. Going down south by different routes.

Parcels loaded into the car this morning and off to post them. One going by Royal Mail because the postman knows where our son and his wife live. One going by DPD because they are cheaper. It’s a race then. Which one wins. Which one gets there quickest. We’ll find out later in the week, hopefully.

With the heavy posting done, it was time for a drive into the wilds. The wilds of Fannyside Moor. It was a beautiful morning with blue sky and just a little cloud or two. Once we got there we just sat in the car and listened. Listened to nothing. Just the distant sound of the occasional car running across the moss. That’s the peat moss, the moorland road across the peat moss. A single track road with passing places in the middle of the Central Belt in Scotland. Not ten miles from Cumbersheugh and it’s a single track road with passing places. This is the 21st century isn’t it. Anyway, we sat and listened to the radio for a while and then let the silence rule us. Perfect peace.

When we got out we found a bunch of ladies standing watching. Lady sheep, that is. Some black and some white, but all waiting and watching. Sheep have this disturbing way of looking at you that makes you think you should really turn round because something may be creeping up on you from behind. They also look as if they’re sizing you up, challenging you. Actually, I think they were just waiting for the farmer to bring their lunch. I took some photos and we walked down the road a way. Took some photos of an old ruined farmhouse and then came back. They were still there, the ladies. Still watching. Still waiting. Took some more photos and they all drifted away, bored with the show.

Drove home for lunch and Scamp went to visit her sister while I filled my birthday pen and started on the pile of unwritten Christmas cards. I got halfway through them when Scamp returned. I’d had enough of that for now, so I grabbed my camera and went to bolster my collection of photos. I needn’t have bothered. It was too late and the rain came on. I get the feeling it just waits for me some times. Came home and had a look at the photos, but as I suspected, they weren’t worth the bother. Went back to finish off the cards.

I don’t usually approve of the ‘one size fits all’ catch up ‘what we did this year’ stories that used to be all the rage at Christmas, but I decided that this year had been such a momentous one it was worthwhile cataloging it. If for nothing else, it showed our friends that they are not alone. We’ve all had a terrible year. Some worse that others, but nobody got away lightly in 2020. I’ll include it in some of the Christmas cards, just to keep folk in the loop.

Tomorrow we pay another whack of money to Royal Mail when we have to buy the second dose of stamps for this load of cards.

Tomorrow looks wet for most of the morning and early afternoon. What fun today was, though. I wonder if those sheep are still standing. Watching, Waiting.

Back to my old self – 14 December 2020

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I felt a lot better when I got up this morning, thankfully.

Scamp was out early to meet Isobel for coffee. Although I feel fine, I didn’t want to risk spreading my cold germ with Isobel and anyway, you probably know my thoughts on Costa coffee. With some peace and quiet, I managed to tweak some of the settings on the Synology NAS to make it run a bit quieter while still doing its technological housekeeping. Now I just have to work out how to get it to clean the shower and empty the dishwasher.

When Scamp came home she brought with her half a dozen rolls and a packet of square sliced sausage. Well, that was my lunch sorted. Actually I was a bit more careful than normal and only had the one roll and one sausage. The rest of the sausages I’ve frozen and bagged. After lunch the sky was clearing from its usual featureless milky white. Scamp was getting herself organised to start packing boxes for delivery down south. I was getting myself organised for taking photos.

I did a couple of circuits of the pond at St Mo’s, then I had a walk into the woods to see if the ladybird was still there. It was, but when I turned on my portable LED light it started moving, maybe the light was just too bright. I decided enough was enough and took my leave. PoD went to an initially dodgy shot of a couple of trees. Initially dodgy, but with a bit of work in Lightroom it turned out ok. It’s mono, but that ticks the ‘Mono Monday’ box in my Flickr albums. Next time I might remember to check my settings BEFORE taking the shot, rather than after. It’s a bit like the snooker player’s maxim, “Chalk the cue before you take the shot.”

Although I feel a lot better, I’m going to have another early night with extra vitamin C and maybe a couple of paracetamol.

I’m just watching the weather forecast as I write this and it looks set fair for us tomorrow. We might get out for a walk somewhere it it keeps dry.

A lost day – 13 December 2020

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It rained all day. I think I’ve got the cold.

It rained all day today and there was no point in going out. The furthest I went was out to the garden bin to dispose of an old basil plant that had died and a chilli plant that was on its last legs.

Other than that, we watched the final F1 GP from Abu Dhabi. Verstappen won today to the delight of Scamp. It was a fairly pedestrian race. A pedestrian race at around 125mph! It’s easy to forget that these cars are really upside down aircraft as Coulthard describes them with aerofoils that produce downforce rather than lift, but at speeds that equal some aircraft.

We watched the even more pedestrian Strictly which is running quite happily to its pre-programmed script, the winner having been decided months ago. I do believe that if the ‘winner’ was to fall down halfway through the ‘dance off’, they would still win. Its name should be changed to Pointless, if that title hadn’t already been used.

Spoke to JIC and heard of his woes. Hope the dentist isn’t too painful for you. Both physical pain and financial!

I went to bed early because I’d been feeling the approach of a cold. That’s why this is being written on Monday. Feeling better this morning, but now that I’m up I need my shot of caffein, so the coffee maker is on.

PoD is the newly refurbished fairy on the tree.

Fishing – 12 December 2020

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Now, before you get the wrong idea, I wasn’t wearing waders and freezing my backside off by a river. No, I was only watching.

We were sort of curtailed by the Littlest Witch’s banishment of us to North Lanarkshire. Only sort of, because we’d both agreed that we didn’t really want to go to Glasgow at the first weekend when lockdown wasn’t in force and the place would be full of mad Xmas shoppers. Also, the sun was breaking through the clouds and it looked like it was dry outside, so we headed off in the general direction of Broadwood Loch to get some fresh air and possibly some foties. We walked down and over the boardwalk and that gave me a chance to warm up with some shots of Tufted Ducks (commonly called ‘Tufties’). It was when we had crossed over the boardwalk that we found the fisher. It was a female Goosander with a fairly big fish in its mouth. I’m guessing it was a perch, but I couldn’t be sure. The bird was struggling:

  • A to swallow the fish whole
    and
  • B to avoid all the other goosanders who wanted their share of the catch.

Eventually after a few minutes and a few shots from the camera, the fish was no more than a lump in the Goosander’s throat. Then off it swam in search of other fish to catch.

We walked on round part of the pond and on to the dam. Then it was down and round to go to the shops. It was a fairly pleasant day to start with and improved all afternoon, for a change. I was almost tempted to take a detour into St Mo’s on the way, but that would mean leaving Scamp to carry the heavy shopping home, besides I was fairly sure I’d a couple of shots in the bag.

We weren’t long home when there was a knock at the door and a woman handed me a parcel addressed to me. At first I thought Scamp had ordered something for my Christmas and forgotten to warn me, but she said no. Then she said that it would be my pan! Yes, I’d forgotten my pan. I ordered a cast aluminium non-stick griddle pan a week or so ago and this was indeed it. It’s a solid piece of metal and I got the chance to try it out tonight to cook my two venison burgers for dinner. Scamp was making crumbled curried cauliflower bhajis and we were sharing potato wedges to go with both our mains. She’d also made coconut pyramids. I know that’s not the correct name for them. It’s basically desiccated coconut, sugar and eggs made into little balls and baked in the oven. We usually get them at the Christmas Market in George Square in Glasgow, but of course, not this year.
The pan cooked the venison burgers perfectly. The first lot of Scamp’s coconut pyramids were a bit light coloured. The second lot were a bit darker. I liked the first lot, she preferred the well fired ones. The cauliflower bhajis were too spicy and the potato wedges just disappeared as soon as they hit the plate. A good dinner.

Watched Strictly which was dull. So was the final qualifier for the final race of the F1 GP season.

Tomorrow looks wet, so we might not get out for a walk.