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A haircut on a cold day – 3 December 2025

Posted on by Zogman

It wasn’t my turn to get my haircut, it was Scamp’s, but I think my turn is coming soon.

You know how it is when you’ve been reading a really good book and you are desperate to find out how it finishes, but don’t really want to rush through it? That was me today. I did finally give in and finish the book, and it was a satisfactory finish. I won’t spoil the final pages, but The Fathers is a great book. Well worth the time I spent on it. One of the top three books this year. I commend it to you.

Once I was recovering from the book, I dressed for the weather and walked down to the shops to get some bread and some fruit for Scamp who was almost ready to drive to the hairdresser’s. I took a camera with me, but didn’t bring it out of the bag. After lunch I walked round St Mo’s with the same camera and another lens or two hoping to get some shots of the geese on the pond, but there were none. Maybe I was too early or maybe too late, but the birds were otherwise occupied, so today’s PoD was a bunch of dried up brambles instead.

When I got them home they weren’t all that interesting, but after using an old preset, they began to look their moody best. I quite liked them. Not at all comfortably coloured, in fact they were the exact opposite and that was what I was aiming for today.

A knock at the door signalled the arrival of the man from Virgin who just switched on the V6 box and said it needed replaced, just as we’d suspected. It took him less than half an hour to replace the old one with a new one and tune it, then we were good to go and so was he. Poor bloke sounded like he was heading for a dose of the cold of flu.

At last we could sit and watch the programs on a real TV. No more crouching over a laptop, although the laptop had been a great idea of Scamp’s. It got us through what would otherwise have been a boring few days. Scamp has already loaded up our mainstay programs.

Tomorrow looks like a Tea Dance day. I don’t mind tea dances. There’s usually a lot of cheerful banter.

Beautiful blue sky but cold – 2 December 2025

Posted on by Zogman

When we had breakfast, made by Scamp, the sun was streaming in the front window. The back window wasn’t quite so interesting. Big heavy clouds away to the north. Thankfully they stayed there before disappearing over the hills, leaving the sun for us.

I sent Hazy a Happy Birthday message and it wasn’t long before she replied with her usual “Hello! Are you free?” Then we sang the “Happy Birthday To You” song which probably embarrassed her and had a wee chat catching up with what was going on down south. Glad she enjoyed the prezzies we sent her.

Later, I was browsing through what was on offer in the Apple App Store and found an App I was sure I’d bought, but which wasn’t on any of my devices. It looked interesting and wasn’t expensive, so I bought it. It’s called ‘Keysmith’ and seems to work with another app I use every day called ‘Keyboard Maestro’. Hopefully the two won’t clash with each other. I’m not going to explain what it does yet, but looks interesting.

Scamp was meeting Shona today to be a ‘listening ear’ when she (Shona) went to see the Dr Banerjee to find out about her recent blood test results. He’s been there for ages a really nice man who takes his time to explain things. Both Scamp and Shona seemed happy with what he said. He never “makes a drama out of a crisis” to quote an old advert.

While the ladies were out, I was making steak and kidney from kidneys out of the freezer and defrosted with a pack of much, much older steak chunks from Waitrose, hopefully only last year’s and no older! The steak was tough (chugh in Scotland) despite being in the slow cooker for ages. The kidneys were excellent. Scamp said put everything back in the slow cooker again cook them until you’re going to bed. I wasn’t convinved, but did as I was told. After another four hours in the slow cooker they were perfect. That’s tomorrow’s dinner sorted!

When we got back after dropping Shona off at Paul’s house we watched another episode of Highland Cops a surprisingly interesting fly on the wall documentary based in the north of Scotland … obviously! Worth watching.

Other than that we didn’t do all that much today. The bloke from Virgin Media is due tomorrow evening so, hopefully we’ll have the ‘Big Telly’ back in business, although Scamp’s laptop has kept us going for the best part of a week.

PoD was a shot looking along the boardwalk as the sun set behind the trees at 2.24pm. Daylight doesn’t last long in Scotland in winter.

Scamp’s booked for getting her hair cut tomorrow and I may get my own locks shorn this week too, if I can find the time.

 

 

The first day of Winter – 1 December 2025

Posted on by Zogman

The first day of the month is always busy and it was no different today.

Photos to file and organise into external drives. Rejected photos to be removed from the catalogs to allow the new month’s photos to have some place to live. A time for careful checking that all the photos I want to keep are KEPT and not deleted by accident. This has been a terrible year for making mistakes and there are still more than thirty days to go!

After I’d worked out how to copy my photos onto my external drive for archiving, I decided to write a short explanation to self describing how I did it, because it’s so easy to say “Oh, I’ll remember how to do that. No problem.” It is no problem until you come to the beginning of a new batch and can’t remember the exact method that works. Belts and Braces may look clumsy, but it works. Hopefully I’ll remember where I put the explanation!

Scamp was out at midday to meet up with one of her old friends for lunch. That left me with the whole afternoon to play with. I went for a walk and struggled to find a decent photo anywhere in St Mo’s. The trees are all bare now apart from the conifers and they just stand like dark guardians behind the pond. I saw one photo that interested me, more a challenge than an interest. There was a bit of life in the sky, but the foreground was almost completely black. I set to and managed to produce a decent photo with a fairly dramatic sky. That became PoD.

When I returned, Scamp wasn’t far behind. We knew we were going out later to Kirsty’s dance class and neither of us were hungry, so we sat down and read for an hour or so. Eventually we had to move to get ready for the dance class. I struggled with the sequence dance Kirsty had ready for us three couples. The dance was Tango Sereda which Scamp says we’ve done before, but I couldn’t remember it. It’s an old fashioned sequence dance. Fairly short and not too complicated (Scamp says). After a good half an hour we almost had it in the bag. Kirsty says we’ll hopefully do it again next week. It was certainly much better than Samba, that’s all I’ll say.
We finished with another sequence dance, the Mayfair Quickstep which is right up our street. Almost every Tea Dance has a Mayfair Quickstep in it somewhere.

Drove home and got parked easily! Dinner was Friday’s soup and it tasted even better than when it was new.

Tomorrow, Scamp is out in the afternoon to be a supporter for Shona when she goes to see the doc.

A cold day – 30 November 2025

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I don’t think the car turned a wheel today.

We were eating out of the freezer today. I found a couple of Lamb Neck Fillets in the freezer and a couple of sausages. Scamp dug deep and found some Trout fillets. Both needed defrosting, but the sausages were the important ones, because they would be needed first. Lunch for me was sausages, egg and half a Tattie Scone (potato scone for those of you who are not Scottish). Scamp had the other half of the tattie scone with an egg for her lunch. Sausage wasn’t the best I’ve had, but it filled a space. Meanwhile, Scamp was watching Laura Kuenssberg trampling roughshod over anyone who dared to cross verbal swords with her.

In the afternoon I went for a walk in St Mo’s and found some Common Haircap Moss (Polytrichum commune) deep in the woods. The seedpods look like little trumpets. That made PoD. By the time I was coming home just after 3pm it was getting dark, but I had at least one decent photo in the bag.

Dinner was the meat for me and the fish for Scamp then we made plans as we often do on a Sunday evening. Finding places we’d both like to visit either before Christmas or soon after. We have a list of possibles now. All we need is the weather to go with them.

We watched the second last F1 GP of the year and it was a disappointing affair. The sort of race that failed to bring any excitement to such a prestigious event.

Spoke to Jamie and Scamp gave him a fuller description of her problems with the new meds and Jamie for his part explained how these pills work. We all agreed that she had made the right decision. Jamie also complained about the cost of absolutely everything in London. I well remember thinking I might need an extra mortgage to pay for a pint of beer and a glass of red wine in London.

Tomorrow, Scamp is meeting a friend for lunch. I’ve got some tidying to do on the computer. End of the month stuff.

Dancin’ – 29 November 2025

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Out early as usual on a Saturday, heading for Brookfield and our weekly dance class.

The class started with House of Bamboo which is Stewart’s idea of a warmup. I suppose that’s what it is, but a very gentle one – sometimes a good thing, sometimes not.

Next was the first real lesson and it was the Christmas Waltz. We managed quite well at it and by the end of the lesson we were almost there.

Next was the Feta Foxtrot. Most of it was ok, but there is a reverse turn at the end where the man dances round the lady and the lady dances round the man without either of us tramping on each other’s toes. We’ll get it done, but it will take some time.

To give us bit of a break from dancing, dancing, dancing the complicated stuff, we did a couple of well worked sequence dances beginning with Shivers by Ed Sheeran, then the Tina Tango to Annie Lennox. That gave us the chance to cool down.

Next was Samba, my nemesis. I hate this fast, shambles of a dance. In fact I wouldn’t even dignify it with the word ‘Dance’. I first saw it danced with Kirsty years and years ago and didn’t like it then and my attitude to it hasn’t changed. Jane, the teacher, didn’t even attempt to interest me in it. I think she knew it wasn’t going to work. I clock-watched all through the 25minutes I wasted on trying to learn these steps. Scamp did her best and to be honest, after the time was up, I was getting most of the steps right, but nowhere near the speed of the rest of the class. I will say no more.

We didn’t drive straight home, but we navigated our way through Glasgow’s streets and eventually found a way into Buchanan Galleries carpark, parked and walked down to The Briggate to go to a Pot Fest in one of the big galleries there. A Pot Fest is where potters come to sell their ceramic pots, bowls, mugs and other hard-fired glazed clay pieces. Scamp bought herself a lovely big fruit bowl, decorated with leaf imprints.

That was about all we did in Glasgow itself, but walking back past Paesano (my favourite pizza shop) the light was lovely just catching the light on the old sandstone buildings. I took a few photos. PoD was that street with the sun shining on it.

We parked at the house and unpacked the new bowl which looked just as good as it did at the show. Then I walked over to St Mo’s to get two small fish suppers – one each. That was lunch and dinner combined.

We’ve just finished watching the F1 GP pre-race.  Strange to watch on Scamp’s laptop, but it will have to do until we get our old V6 box fixed.

No plans for tomorrow.

Another cold windy day – 28 November 2025

Posted on by Zogman

Not a day for going far.

However, Scamp was out early to meet Isobel and Shona for coffee. I was glad to sit at home and struggled with Virgin Media who must be one of the worst companies to get help from. I got so frustrated with their so-called Media Support. I eventually got so fed up with going round in circles, I gave up and went to make a pot of soup instead.

Needless to say when Scamp came home she just typed in the answers to the questions the bot asked and within minutes was speaking to a human, Asif, who, fifteen minutes later had checked our V6 box, diagnosed the fault and arranged a repair for next week. I was in a huff! Ok, ok, I admit I have no patience, especially with Bots, but Virgin are hopelessly bad at giving out help. Asif excepted, of course.

Later in the afternoon I took a parcel to the post office in Condorrat and posted it to an address just outside London. Hopefully it will arrive soon and be magicked away almost instantly.

I’d hoped to get a photo on my walk to Condorrat, but the lashing rain and the high winds made me glad to get back home instead of wandering around the paths or the ponds today. Back home warm and dry was a good enough result for me.

The soup I made, Butternut Squash, wasn’t the best. Both Scamp and I agreed that it wasn’t the best. I’ve made it loads of times and every time it’s been just like the last. The only thing I didn’t add today was chilli flakes and I don’t add very much, so I doubt if they could have made the difference.

A late PoD was a vase of Freesia I quite liked. A tabletop lifesaver at the end of a dreary day.

Hopefully tomorrow will be calmer both weather wise and also for my temper, and we may go to the dance class too.

A disturbed night for Scamp – 27 November 2025

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When Scamp woke this morning she told me about the wild night she had last night. It seemed to be caused by strange dreams, presumably brought on by the new meds the consultant gave her. Once she woke completely, she was fine, but it was a strange morning. But all was not lost, because I managed to sell some of the meds outside the ‘Masonic’ in Condorrat Main Street for a few quid each and we have just less than a hundred of the little pills! Just joking!!
Scamp phoned the consultant’s office to be told that she was on holiday this week, but the secretary she spoke to said she would pass the message on when the consultant returned next week.

We were up fairly early in the morning with quite a few things needing done:

  1. Drove to Boots for more (normal) meds.
  2. Tesco for milk, and wrapping paper I can’t divulge why we needed wrapping paper.
  3. Drove over to the Town Centre and wandered down the ramps that took us down into the bowels of what used to be Phase 4. It’s now just Argos and not much more. We were buying a replacement one-cup water boiler. The one we have has now developed Alzheimer’s, poor thing and can’t remember if it’s switched the hot water off or not and fills a second cup just in case.
  4. Drove from the Town Centre to M&S for lunch stuff and jam doughnuts for me.
  5. Finally we drove home and decanted all the stuff we’d bought.

After lunch I walked over to St Mo’s. It was dark and gloomy there by 3pm. It was wet and windy. Strong winds and heavy showers. A typical dreich Scottish day. I came home with a view across St Mo’s pond that ended up heavily processed, but reasonable looking PoD.

The final annoyance was discovering that the Virgin Media box wasn’t working. It’s not the modem it’s definitely the box. I’ve spent the last couple of hours ‘talking’ to the bots that are rapidly becoming the worst invention this century. You can’t even swear at them!

Tomorrow Scamp is intending meeting Isobel for coffee and a blether. I’m hoping to get this Virgin debacle sorted out and then make some soup.

Rain, Rain go away – 26 November 2025

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… come again another day.

It was a really wet daytime. To begin with it was just a drizzle, but then the clouds got heavier and so did the rain.

Scamp was out at midday for a lunch with the rest of the ‘Witches’ at Borden’s in Condorrat and then the rain was fairly light. I intended to walk over to Condorrat later to get some meat at the local butcher, but one look out the front door told me it would be more sensible to stay at home for a while because the rain was a lot heavier.

I retired to the back bedroom and investigated the possibility of retrieving the Day One data I lost when the old computer had a massive crash nearly a year ago. After a lengthy search I did find parts of the lost data. Hopefully, now I’ll be able to get about a quarter to a half of the data back, including text and images.

By the time I was finished the search, the sun had all but disappeared and I still had nothing for my dinner, so I dressed for the weather and walked over to Condorrat, (passing the restaurant that Scamp and the witches were in on the way!) I bought mince, sausages and beef olives in the butcher’s and plodded on home. Used the vacuum bags to seal most of the meat while keeping half the mince for tonight and possibly tomorrow’s lunch.

On the way back from the butcher’s I got today’s PoD which was the row of exercise machines on the path from Condorrat. It looked like the weather was preventing the fitness fanatics from using using them today.

Scamp trotted home about an hour later after getting a lift from Moira. I got the sign of approval from Scamp for managing to cook the mince properly. She suggested I use up two potatoes that had been cooked a couple of days ago by mashing them then heating them in the microwave before adding some diced butter and a splash of milk. All in all it was an almost perfect dinner. Sadly I forgot to add some sliced beetroot to the mix. I know you are such a fan of the red finger-staining vegetables that you too would be sad to hear that!!!

We watched another episode of Shetland and the plot thickens even more. Unfortunately it was marred by some really poor acting. Most unlike their usual standard.

Tomorrow we may go out to get a new One-Cup water boiler. The one we have is getting a bit forgetful and causing the cups to overflow if we don’t watch it.

Shopping – 25 November 2025

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Despite last week’s shopping bonanza, there were still some things we needed ( for Needed, read Wanted ).

We drove to Morrison’s at The Fort and bought a few bottles, mainly wine, but I admit I did collect a couple of beer bottles too, just to be up sides with Scamp. Morrison’s is so much more down to earth than Waitrose. Now, don’t get me wrong. I have no problem with Waitrose, it’s just that I tend to be more restrained in Morrison’s than in Waitrose with all its enticing and intriguing offers than you get in Morrison’s or Tesco. Still, we spent enough to take us from “just tap your card” to “your PIN number is required”. I think the problem was I couldn’t find a ‘normal’ sized trolly and settled for the big deep one. I should have thought it through and searched further afield for a ‘normal’ one. My fault.

Instead of driving straight home, Scamp suggested we stop at Drumpellier Park and go for a walk round the loch. It’s not a big loch, but it’s big enough to give us a chance to stretch our legs. Underfoot the paths were a bit icy and to get better purchase we could walk on the grass. It gave better traction, but then you risk crunching through the thin skin of ice and sinking into the mud beneath. A ‘no win’ situation. We took the hybrid route. Walk on the path if it doesn’t look icy and if it does, keep your fingers crossed and walk on the grass.

I’d brought my A7c with me and with frosty patterns on the ice and a beautiful sky that graduated from blue to creamy yellow over the pond, I did take a few photos. The “Whale’s Tail” made and interesting subject, but it wasn’t until I caught sight of two swans cruising past on the loch that I got PoD. One definite in the bag.

It had been a cold day with the temperature not rising much above 2º and I was glad to get parked and settled. Dinner was Fish Risotto. One of the easiest risottos you can make. The oven does all the hard work.

Scamp seems to be a lot more comfortable now that she’s had a couple of doses of her meds. Good to see that.

Neither of us were interested in going out again today, because you could feel the cold returning. As I write this, the outside temperature is – 0.7ºc and I’m off to bed.

Scamp is intending to meet the other witches for lunch at Borden’s in Condorrat tomorrow. I’m sure I’ll find something to do.

Out of sorts – 24 November 2025

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It was Scamp who was a bit out of sorts today.

She phoned the doc’s and after a bit of a wait, got a prescription which I went to collect for her. That seems to have put her mind at rest for a while. Scamp is rarely ill, I’m usually the one with the aches and pains in this house.

We spoke to Hazy in the morning and she and I discussed a problem I was having with Spotify. It’s still not entirely fixed, but since  I hardly use Spotify on the iMac, I’m not all that bothered. Hazy and I discussed books and for once I got to recommend a book to her! Most of the talk was between the ladies, but we heard about a visit to India by the extended family.

After lunch I read a bit more from The Fathers and as the light was beginning to fade, I took the A7c out for a walk in St Mo’s. There wasn’t much doing today, although while I was walking in the woods, I spooked a Woodcock in the trees. Unusual because it’s largely a wading bird. Maybe I mixed up my species.

PoD went to a few Yellow Rattle seedheads that survived the high winds from a month or so ago and the ice from a couple of days ago. The dried, seed heads of the yellow-rattle plant (Rhinanthus minor).
When the seeds are dry and mature, they rattle inside the inflated, papery calyx, which gives the plant its common name. By feeding off the coarse grasses, it eventually allows more delicate, traditional species to push their way through.

I was glad to get back to the house after my walk, because my feet were cold and I do believe they were a wee bit wet too. A cup of coffee warmed me up and then it was time to start the dinner. Pasta with tomatoes, some thinly sliced bacon and a couple of frozen spinach cubes. It seemed to go down well with a miniature ice cream lolly to finish it off.

The forecast is for warmer, wetter weather for the next few days. It’s a pity we can’t split it and only use the warmer part. Then we could store up the wet weather for when we need it for the gardens.

I don’t believe we have anything planned for tomorrow.