Category: catching up

Dancin’ – 17 February 2024

Posted on by Zogman

Back in the old routine.

Drove over to Brookfield in that Saturday morning lull in the traffic. Thankfully not too many folk in today’s class, just the usual suspects and Margaret Maciver to throw the even numbers out.

First thing was the LA Swing which we didn’t really know. By “didn’t really know” I mean Scamp had seen it and had it stored in her memory, but it was a mystery to me. Add those two pieces of individual knowledge and divide by two and you get “didn’t really know”. Maybe that’s too mathematical and obscure for this time in the morning. The LA Swing turned out to be a Charleston type of 1920s thing with kicks, turns and lifts. The lifts were optional, thankfully. Simple but fast paced. That took me by surprise. I’m more used to a gentle start to the dancing day.

Just to make it worse, the next set was Quickstep. The teachers’ demo was like a blank page to me. Then, when we started, Scamp reassured me it was just the same quickstep we’d been dancing on and off for weeks, and that’s when the penny dropped and I relaxed a bit. It wasn’t so bad but the language is sometimes so obscure it hides a simple routine. How would you like to be told that the next figure is a Zig-Zag Back Lock Running Finish with optional Fishtails? Confused? I was, especially when they said that the zig-zag wasn’t really a zig-zag. Clarity, that’s what we need, Clarity. I won’t say we covered the quickstep really well, but we made a decent fist of it most of the time. Also, my breath was coming back when we eventually finished after two fast routines.

One short respite of sorts with the Ria Bachata which at normal bachata speed was fine, but was chaos for most when the tempo was increased. For once we were leading this silly wee dance.

The last routine just had to be the Samba. Not so much a dance as a shambles set to music. There is no way I’m ever going to learn this piece of nonsense. It’s a bit like Soca with fancy names for the different routines. The less said about it, the better. Let’s hope Jane had now got it out of her system. If they stick to the same timing next week, I’ll leave early for a walk around the bowling green while Scamp and the rest can dance the Samba.

Driving home was through more congestion, as I suspected it would be. Saturday’s are always a problem on the M8. However, once we were on the M74 it was just a case of following the flow. It’s a slightly longer drive, but at least we were moving at the legal limit.

We had a posh dinner at home to celebrate our 51st wedding anniversary. A big slice of trout for Scamp and a thick rump steak for me. It’s ages since I’ve had rump steak, but this one was exceptionally nice. Lidl at its best. A few glasses of wine, possibly a few too many on my part and I decided to leave the blog until Sunday. Don’t drink and blog. That’s my rule.

PoD was a photo taken from the front window of a poor Alec’s Red rose bud whose stem was broken in the winds. It had rained since we got home from Brookfield and there was no way I was risking getting the camera wet when I could take the shot perfectly well from inside.

Today’s prompt was Coral.
These are two small pieces of coral we found on a beach in Tobago many years ago. Broken but well rounded by the action of the waves and sand, they are more complex in shape than the coral that is to be found on the Coral Beach in Skye. We’d dearly love to go back to Tobago, but being realistic, it’s more likely we’d go back to the Coral Beach in Skye!

No plans for tomorrow.

All at Sea – 9 June 2023

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Things we’ll remember:

  • Dance Class in the morning with the “professionals”, Aka & Gvantsa.
  • Very impressive dancers, although their idea of “English waltz” was – nothing like ours.
  • As teachers they have a lot to learn.
  • Weather hot!
  • Found sun beds quite easily.
  • Dinner in the posh restaurant again.
  • Enjoyed a show in the theatre
  • Danced at night in the atrium with a reprise of this morning’s lesson.
  • Dancing was difficult without dance shoes and on marble floor.
  • Watched the sunset.
  • First of the towel animals appeared in the room!

PoD is a view from the balcony, the menu for today and the first of the towel animals.

Tomorrow we will arrive at Chania in Crete.

An early rise … – 8 June 2023

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… then off to the sun!

Writing a blog takes a lot of time and effort, but I like reading the blogs from past years and little things that caught my eye or imagination. With that in mind, these two weeks of blogs will be in a different format, but hopefully they will just as interesting.

  • Flew to Dubrovnik then got a coach to the ship
  • Had to have our passports stamped more times than was realistically necessary.
  • After that we were on the ship and could have that all important first Holiday Beer.
  • Most folk were away to Dubrovnik old town, so we had the salt water pool, the unheated salt water pool(!) all to ourselves.
  • Dressed for dinner later, as was expected.
  • Even so, much more relaxed than P&O
  • Finished the day at a party on the pool deck.
  • Scamp had a Pina Colada! I had a G&T.

PoD is a collage of views of Dubrovnik from our wander round the decks of Marella Explorer 2.

A day at sea tomorrow.

Homeward Bound – 23 February 2023

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Took some photos of “Our Tree”, the big palm tree outside our balcony after breakfast.

Dragged our suitcases down to reception, got our ‘All Inclusive’ bands cut off and waited for our taxi which arrived early.

Quiet drive back to the airport. Different driver, no talk of Cuba or Salsa clubs. We were going home. Silence sometimes is golden!

PoD was a photo taken from the aircraft window of Mount Teide poking its nose through the clouds.

Collected our luggage at the other end and drove home. What more can you say about the end of a holiday.

The Pianist – 21 February 2023

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Sunbathing in the morning, all morning.

Walked down to the front after lunch and turned right.

Walked almost out to the paragliders landing area because Scamp’s ankle is improving and it’s a good level path for most of the way.

Just to contradict what I said about the weather here, this afternoon was lovely with white clouds in a blue sky and sunshine. We sat for a while watching the waves crashing and I managed some moody landscape shots. I also got a PoD which was an almost silhouetted group of folk walking along the path between palm trees.

In the evening the entertainment was a pianist and we feared the worst, the return of the disinterested woman. However we were pleasantly surprised to see a well dressed man, Rafael Montalvo who started with Einaudi and continued through the Beatles and Queen and had me in tears with his version of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. When he was finished, Scamp went and told to him how much we had enjoyed his recital.

Another evening discussing the day on the balcony with another G&T

 

Fifty years – 17 February 2023

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Fifty years ago we got married in a wee church in Shettleston in the east end of Glasgow. After the service we went back to Scamp’s mum and dad’s with a few friends and relatives for a Co-op purvey.

I hope you’re sitting comfortably because this is a long blog post!

Today we were blessed with sunshine. After we opened the cards we’d brought with us and had breakfast, we went for a walk. We walked down the slope to the coastal path and turned right. This would take us away from the commercial areas and out to pastures new, an area we hadn’t walked to before.

Scamp was feeling the after effects of yesterday’s longer than required stroll in the other direction and her knee was beginning to give her gyp, so we took it easy on today’s walk. Thankfully I was better dressed today with my baseball cap to protect my head and I’d remembered to put sun cream on before we left the hotel.

We walked for a fair distance out past the viewpoint for the blowhole where, if the tide is right, the incoming waves fill a hole in the rocks and blow up out of a fissure above. Quite impressive if you’re there at the right time. The tide wasn’t far enough in today, unfortunately. Further on we crossed a dried up river bed that’s now home to a host of balancing stone monuments, thousands of them. Then we found a viewpoint near the beach where the paraglider come in to land. That’s where today’s PoD came from. It’s a five frame panorama built in Lightroom to give a really wide view of the mountains and the hotels around here.

We decided to walk back and found a cafe that had some shade and a young bloke took about half an hour to make us a jug of sangria. He was working alone and was having a hard time keeping everybody refilled. The sangria was really good. Freshly made and full of fruit.

Then we met The Man from Salzburg. Scamp wanted to have lunch at a wee restaurant we’d eaten at the last time we were here, and was partly the reason for our walk today. There was queue and we waited patiently (impatiently for me) for a table to become free. Eventually one of the waiters pointed to a table and told us to go there. But there weren’t any empty tables where he pointed. Then the bloke who was smiling at us from a table waved us over. It seems that he was happy to have someone else to talk to while he finished his Barraquito (like a Cortado, but with added condensed milk and Liquor 43). He seemed a happy bloke and when we told him we were from Scotland he explained that he’d travelled all over Scotland on holiday. The only thing he didn’t seem to like was haggis after someone had told him what was in it! He said that he was from Saltzburg in Austria and was on holiday in Tenerife for four weeks. He scoffed at our one week and said “That’s not enough!” After a while he said he had to go and left us to our lunch which was a Chicken Milanese for Scamp and Thai Chicken Curry for me. Service was slow at this restaurant too, but we weren’t in a hurry. When we left we passed the table over to another man, German this time. It’s a strange way to run a cafe.

We were walking back towards the hotel when we noticed the paraglider were all coming off the mountain and we turned round and found a place to watch them land. Some of the landings were a bit clumsy and some were downright scary. Then there were the tandems where the poor person in front had to bicycle his or her legs to keep from falling when they landed on the rough sand of the beach. £100 for a flight!

Back at the hotel, it was ’School Dinners Food’. Not one of their best days. But we did have our photos taken by the one of the hotel resident photographers who would have taken more photos today if we’d let her, than we had taken at our wedding, fifty years ago! We chose a small selection from the ones she took.

We listened to the worst singer ever in the Piano Bar. He was playing guitar and ‘singing’. However, it was when he attempted to ‘sing’ What A Wonderful World while mimicking Louis Armstrong. That was creepily awful and, that’s when we left. I think he went to the Billy Connolly school of music where he lampooned country and western singers. The difference was this bloke was serious. We played Rummikub in a different area of the piano bar.

We’re sitting on the balcony of the room now drinking G&Ts and reviewing the day.

My Fitbit says 17,900 steps, 8.05 miles, 153 floors.

 

5.05am wake up call – 16 February 2023

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Today it was a quick cup of tea and then off.

The bags were packed yesterday which only left a morning drive to Glasgow Airport and the usual nail biting passage through security, although this time an organised approach and copious amounts of Tesco’s finest clear resealable plastic bags made light work of getting through unscathed.

The usual overpriced breakfast in Frankie and Benny’s and it was almost time to fly through the air in an armchair in an aluminium tube for four hours, listening to three tubes in front of us on their way to a 60th party bash. Thankfully they weren’t going to our hotel.

After we landed we had the mile long walk through the labyrinth to be inspected by the polis and have our passport stamped then the interminable wait for bags before we walked out into the sunshine and the heat. Clever Scamp had organised a personal transfer to the hotel rather than sitting in a bus that took another hour or so to drop off passengers at their hotels. Been there, did that, didn’t enjoy it one little bit. Paying the extra was worth every penny. Our driver came from Cuba and was happy to recommend the best Salsa club to go to in Tenerife. He seemed a genuinely nice bloke and reminded me of the constable in Death in Paradise. Must have been the accent.
Booked in at the hotel, but our room wouldn’t be ready for another half and hour, so we had lunch and our first Holiday Beer.

Once we got rid of the cases and got changed into tee shirt and shorts we went for a walk in the sunshine. We walked down to the front and turned left past all the cafes and restaurants. It looked fairly familiar, although bits of it had changed and there was a lot of new accommodation everywhere. We walked for miles and I foolishly hadn’t brought a hat. A lesson learned.

After dinner we went to see what entertainment was available. We danced an embarrassingly bad salsa. Don’t drink and dance – it’s not a good image. We quickly decided to stick to soft drinks for a while and sobered up enough to dance much better, later. The girl singer was good and there were quite a few people dancing.

What they call ‘local spirits’ in the hotel are free to all inclusive guests , but are just not worth drinking. We agreed we’d buy a bottle for the room tomorrow.

PoD was a shot of Adeje, looking back from Puerto Colon.

Fairly early bed, after a long day.

Dancin’ in the Evenin’ – 28 January 2023

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That was the focus of the day really. The light that would brighten our day. Would we go to the dancin’ in the Evenin’ or not?

It was a bright start to the day with sunshine streaming in the front window and it was when it lit up the wee bowl of roses that sat on the coffee table that I grabbed my camera and took the first photos of the day. I discovered that if I angled the shot in the right way I could frame the flowers with the black screen of the TV. In fact, if I chose to use the long lens of the 105mm macro, I could make the TV screen appear bigger and therefore give a bit more of a background than if I used any of my other lenses. Too much information? Probably. Anyway, it worked and I’d a shot or fifteen in the bag.

Scamp had already decided yesterday not to go to today’s dance class on the grounds that she might still pass on her coughs and sneezes and as it takes two to tango or quickstep or even waltz, that meant I didn’t go either. I didn’t mind, because I’m a lazy so and so and another hour in bed suited me fine.

After she took her final meds for the week, she began to feel better and the coughing reduced in intensity and volume. It looked as if we might go to the ball tonight after all. We didn’t have any cans of juice or lemonade to take to the Saturday Social and it’s not a tea dance, so we walked down to the shops to get some. On the way back I took a detour through St Mo’s and the best I got was a couple of shots of golden light on the trees across the pond. It didn’t matter, because I was sure one of the shots of the roses would fill the bill for PoD.

It turned out I was right. With a little Photoshop jiggery pokery I had a decent shot of roses bathed in sunlight, contrasted against a black background. The shots of the trees across the pond just looked dull and uninteresting by comparison.

Dinner was Easy Chicken Curry from a recipe I’d read about in last year’s blog post where I’d written about the previous year’s blog post, (January 2021) and it was back in 2021 I found the recipe and instructions. It was messy to make up with half a dozen spices mixed by hand into the chicken, but after that and with yellow fingers from the turmeric I fried the chicken and added tomatoes. Basically that was the curry made.

After dinner we dressed for the social and drove to an already busy Brookfield where we got seated with Barry & Cath and Niahmat & Audrey. No holds barred in that crowd, everyone got a slagging for one reason or another. Also Niahmat and Scamp shared notes (no pun intended) on singing with the SNO chorus.

We danced almost every dance we knew, but I drew the line at quickstep. I really didn’t think Scamp was fit for that kind of dancing. We did one of every dance, remembering the nurse’s message not to overdo things. We left just before the end because we were both tired out.

How nice it was to travel over the Kingston Bridge at a gentle 40mph when we’re usually stuck to a stop/start 4 or 5mph on a good day.

Tomorrow we’ll do a self assessment to see how much energy we expended doing the most intensive exercise we’ve had all week. No plans for going anywhere.

Out to Lunch – 9 January 2023

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Today Scamp was out to lunch with an old friend she used to work with. I wasn’t invited.

It was a dull morning with rain. Not much to recommend it and because it was Monday, nobody seemed to want to move from the car park at the house.

Since Scamp was driving to Calders I thought it might be a good idea to change the windscreen wiper blades. I’d had two new blades sitting in the boot of the car since before Christmas and they weren’t going to be keeping the windscreen clear if they were languishing there. Five minutes later they were on and were keeping the screen much clearer than before. Scamp drove off about fifteen minutes later in a downpour.

Left to my own devices, I started another clean up of my room. It didn’t last long. I chucked out a couple of magazines and ditched two exhausted basil plants. The plants went into the compost bin and the pots went into storage in the wee greenhouse. The greenhouse was a mess. Inside the walls were running with condensation and all the plants that had been put in there before the snow and ice came were well and truly dead now. One of the problems with wee plastic greenhouses is that there is no air circulation. I think the greenhouse will need a good hose down, inside and out, on the first dry day – if such a day ever comes.

I went for a walk in St Mo’s later to get some photos. I wasn’t very hopeful, but I did come home with some interesting macro shots of a clump of Cladonia lichen I’d never seen before. The PoD was a photo of a Knapweed seed head, looking like it was covered in little spiders. Actually they are the seeds themselves.

When Scamp came home I started to make some soup in the Magic Pot. Just a variety of “Just Soup”. A mixture of veg with some lentils and a couple of Stock Pots to add some flavour. Ten minutes cooking time and there was a pot of soup. That was dinner sorted.

An hour or so after dinner Scamp began to feel a bit unwell. Feeling sick, and then actually being sick. We both immediately blamed the soup, although I didn’t seem to be affected. Even after she’d been sick, she wasn’t much better, feeling light headed and just not right. She went to lie down for a while and although that helped, she still felt queasy when she got up, so decided she’d have an early night. She and Denise had had sandwiches at Calders, Scamp’s being Tuna. I just wondered about what Jamie always said about not trusting mayonnaise in cafes and restaurants. Maybe that was the culprit and not the soup. Time scale was about right, at 7 hours. Maybe …

I decided I too would have an early night, so this is a catch-up. Scamp is feeling better this morning and is going to risk scrambled egg and toast. The soup went down the toilet this morning.

Today we’re having a lazy morning and probably a lazy day. It’s raining!

A toy off the rack – 30 September 2022

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Waiting, waiting, waiting.

Scamp was out in the morning in the torrential rain to go to her FitSteps class. I offered her a lift, but she wouldn’t hear of it. I think she was glad to get out of the house for a while

The expression “A toy off the rack” came from Skye. When one of my nieces was quite young, she’d accompany her mum to the shop.

Notice, shop, singular. There is only one shop in Staffin. One shop and one post office.

Or when she went with her mum to the ‘Big City’ of Portree. She would pester her mum for “A toy off the rack”. That meant she wanted something, anything, a toy. And all the toys were kept in those rotating metal racks. Since then it’s been synonymous with somebody in the house wanting something. Today it was me. I’d just spent a considerable amount of money on a phone which was coming today, but now I wasn’t satisfied because it looked like there wasn’t enough storage on it and I was moaning that I should have bought the bigger one. That’s why Scamp was so determined to get out for a while.

I got the message that the phone was coming around 4.30 and it was just 12.30. There was nothing for it but to wait. Eventually the DPD van stopped outside and there was a knock at the door. The man photographed the parcel and left. It must have been a horrible day for driving with all the water that was pouring out of the sky. I sliced open the box with an old bone handled knife that must be older than me. Probably wearing on for 90 years old, and here was I using it to open up a piece of tech that would look like black magic to the person who made that knife. There was a black slab of glass and metal in the black box. I took it out and plugged it into its black rapid charger with its black cable and it lit up with a blue light. Were you really expecting the light to be black?

I knew it was going to take about half an hour to charge, even with a rapid charger, so I took my camera out to have something to talk to when I went for a walk in St Mo’s. There wasn’t much to see today, but thankfully the rain had stopped and there was even a chance that the sun was coming out. PoD turned out to be a shot of two women walking home along my favourite path through the trees. It was good to see that some brave folk were out for a walk through the woods without a care, or an umbrella. I had my Goretex jacket on. I know just how fickle the Scottish weather can be.

The phone was charged and it was big and maybe a bit clumsy, but it was fast. Once it had done all the things that new phones do, I transferred almost all of my apps from the old phone and then set about tidying thing. Chucking things out and found that that 128GB will probably be enough for the present moment. I eventually got to be just after mindnight after winning a lengthy fight with Spotify, but having scoring draw with WhatsApp. I’d had enough of phones. I went to bed. That’s why this is a catch up.

No plans for tomorrow. If it’s good we’ll go for lunch somewhere.