Category: Dancing

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.

Another day, another busy one – 7 February 2024

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It snowed during the night last night and it froze afterwards, so it was a photogs paradise.

We were going out just after midday, so I booted up and went for a walk around St Mo’s to see what I could find to fill the PoD gap. The place is totally different in the morning to the afternoon which is my usual hunting ground. Everything looks or seems fresher. The light is coming from the south east, not the south west so most of my subjects look very different. The PoD turned out to be a dried out Hogweed plant from last year with its star-like flower stems holding little beads of ice that had been snow that melted to water then froze into ice. I liked the way the warm background contrasted with the ice.

I had a few in the bag when I walked home, but the usually trustworty A7iii was misbehaving today. First it decided not to take photos, then it thought better of that and took a dozen or more in motor-wind mode and by then I’d had enough of its high jinks. I’d already tried switching it off and then on again but that didn’t work – it rarely does with modern electronics, so it was the nuclear option. I took out the battery, counted to five and put it back in again. That showed it who was boss! Or so I thought. The sneaky camera had taken 50 shots on motor-wind and loads more besides. I’m hoping to look into the issue tomorrow. No time today.

Back home we had time for a quick lunch and then we were off with our dancing shoes to Motherwell to a church hall for a new(!) Tea Dance. Strangely, it’s just along from Alex’s house. It was a bit stressful going to a new hall with new people and a new teacher, but we survived. More than that, we both enjoyed it. The folk were friendly and welcoming and the dances were ones we knew for the most part and any ones that we didn’t know, we were tutored in by the more experienced dancers. Tea and cakes at half time, then a class tutorial on the Ria Bachata which we knew almost better than the teachers. The music wasn’t as interesting as S&J’s, but you can’t have everything. We both thoroughly enjoyed our afternoon and would be happy to go back. We even got invites to other tea dances in the surrounding area.

We drove back and just as we came on to the motorway my phone rang. It was Alex saying “Did I just miss you at the Loaning?” I laughed out loud. He had just been coming back from a walk into Motherwell when he thought it was me driving past. How strange it that. I’ll have a lot of explaining to do at the next photo walk!
One of the best things about this new hall is that it’s motorway driving almost all the way and there’s no Kingston Bridge to crawl over on the way home! That, in itself is a delight.

The prompt for today was “Tangerine”. So, another fruity one. Just the one tangerine, because I thought I was being a bit generous yesterday with my two and a half plums. I tried the old trick of using salt to create the skin texture of the fruit, but for once it didn’t work. The salt was difficult to remove too, so if you think the sketch tastes a bit salty, you now know why.

Tomorrow Scamp is booked for coffee with Isobel and I’ve some work to do in the house. I also need to get a card for Alex and post it. The snow is gone for now, but we’re expecting it to return on Friday.

Dull and wet but dancin’ inside

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Today was a day for driving to Glenburn and dancing for a couple of hours.

For the second time in a row, we drove to Glenburn, just outside Paisley and danced almost everything the threw at us. We both made a mess of some of it, but there was a quiet confidence to us that wasn’t there before. I don’t know exactly what was happening, but I’ve a curious feeling that I was leading for a while! Usually I rely on Scamp to tell me what comes next, but for some of the dances, I knew what came after what. It’s hard to explain, but there was definitely a difference to our dancing.

The afternoon started with a waltz and that led on to cha-cha and then an interspersing of ballroom or latin with a sequence dance. I’ve complained here in the past about Stewart’s plan to have, let’s call it formal dancing, in the first half and sequence in the second half. I don’t think that works well for everyone, but the mixing he and Jane were doing today seemed to encourage everyone to get on the floor more often. We covered usual trilogy of waltz, cha-cha and quickstep with lots of sequence dances. We even attempted a Gay Gordons as well, but stayed well clear of the Canadian Barn Dance, the music for which seemed never ending. It was good to see that folk were taking to heart Stewart’s recommendation to wear something tartan for Burns Night. He even ‘accidentally’ played Donald Where’s Yer Troosers because he said I liked it! Cheeky get!

The two hours went quickly and then it was time to go home, have a cup of tea and a biscuit before getting ready to drive Scamp up to The Link to get her Shingles jag. That didn’t take long. Probably about 15 minutes maximum, then we were heading home again for Haggis Neeps and Tatties. Standard fare for a Burns Night. I don’t know why we call turnips ‘Neeps’. Burns was born and bred in Ayrshire, but Neeps is a north east coast word. How did it get inveigled into Ayrshire dialect? I blame the Aberdonians. Or better still, I blame Boris who was a bit of a turnip heid!

With the traditional Burns Supper meal and a wee dram to toast it, the excitement for the day was all but over. Today’s PoD was a photo of a bouquet of cut flowers, well, it was a Thursday. The flowers weren’t “arranged tastefully, in a vase” as D.P. Gumby used to demonstrate on Monty Python, but laid down on the kitchen worktop, but the little light that filtered in through the clouds lit them perfectly.

Tomorrow we may drive somewhere for lunch or we may walk somewhere local for it instead. As usual, it depends on the weather.

Dancin’ – 20 January 2024

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Last Brookfield dancin’ class for three weeks at least.

Scamp doesn’t think she’ll be able to go to next Saturday’s class because she’s intending to sing the Verdi Requiem (with a few others) at the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow and I certainly won’t be going there, or to the dance class in Brookfield if I can at all avoid it. Far too shouty in both venues.

For some reason, the road to Brookfield was quite busy today. Either everyone was heading to the Monster Truck show at the SEC or there was football somewhere, maybe even both! But we’d been out early and made good time after we left the city centre and got past the 50mph restriction. We had about ten minutes to collect ourselves while the little darlings in the ballet class were ushered out of the room with their ‘mummies’ – no ‘daddies’ were in sight. Smart daddies!

First track was Melody Foxtrot with Robbie Williams’ Go Gentle. I don’t like him, but I do like the song. The rhythm and timing go so well with this gentle song. I can’t remember what track two was, but it obviously wasn’t a patch on Go Gentle.

Next we were in to Waltz Time with what we’re going to call the Spring Waltz. Christmas is so last year. After a few fumbles of the feet, I was beginning to enjoy the dance. Stewart did steal Scamp away to explain something technical about the dance, but strangely Jane didn’t steal me away to do the same. Maybe I’m so good there’s nothing they can teach me. Maybe pigs do fly? Anyway, once she’d been returned, we danced a few tracks of the waltz. Actually I’d have been happy to spend the entire 90 minutes just going through that dance, but after another sequence dance we knew that the leisurely dancing was over and we were going to be forced into the Samba.

I really, really, REALLY don’t think I will ever get to like, far less love this dance although Stewart says I will. It is fast, confusing and furious at times and totally outside my comfort zone. I’m still at the second part of it, having successfully managed to make a decent fist of the basic steps at the start. This is after three weeks of teaching. Sometimes you just have to accept that this doesn’t fit in my head, apart from Jamie’s oft times quoted complaint that: “Scottish hips don’t move that way”. That, is an excellent get-out clause for not knowing what the hell you are doing, and I thank you for that, Jamie.

Eventually the Samba ground to a halt and another cool-down sequence dance finished off the torture. We were done for today and, hopefully for three glorious weeks.

We drove home, almost in silence, letting the music from Spotify’s random Discover Weekly guide us along the M8, M74, M73 and then home. Lunch for me was a roll ’n’ cheese and for Scamp, a roll ’n’ egg, with both of us having a dessert of roll ’n’ bramble jam.

It was a dull day. The sun had threatened to break through the clouds, but didn’t really have the energy, so the clouds covered it and tucked it in. I did manage a few shots in St Mo’s, but none of them were award winners. PoD was a sepia toned discarded swan’s feather.

Dinner tonight came from Bombay Dreams and it was quite poor by their standard. Probably would have been better walking down to M&S and bringing back a heat-in-the-oven curry. I think we’ll let Bombay Dreams rest for a while to see if they can improve their recipes.

It’s raining quite heavily as I’m writing this and it’s expected to rain all through the night. Strong winds forecast for tomorrow. I may go out early(ish) to avoid getting blown away.

 

 

A slow awakening, then Samba – 13 January 2024

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It was a slow climb out of the depths of sleep to the reality of morning.

It certainly took me a long time to clear my head enough to realise that it was morning. Too much to eat and too much to drink. I’m usually careful when I know I’m going to be driving in the morning the next day, but I’d so enjoyed the company last night that I’d kind of overindulged.

Once I was showered and dressed I felt better and we drove in to Brookfield in good time. Beautiful blue skies with white fluffy clouds all the way. First dance was a Blue Angel Rumba which I’m coming to terms with. Next was what, before we joined this class, was called the Christmas Waltz, but which has now been renamed the Spring Waltz. Again, I was a lost soul to start with, but I’ve grown to realise it’s not as complicated as I thought, even if it does have a Back Corté. Whatever that is.

Next was the Samba. I used to hate the Cha-Cha until I realised I could dance it fairly competently. Now the Samba is my most hated dance. It doesn’t help when one of the teachers seems to be more critical than is really necessary when ‘helping’ us. She really needs to remember that we are giving her money each week to be taught, not to be criticised for everything we do. Not the most friendly person I’ve ever met. Maybe I just have a thing about some dance teachers. Anyway, I much prefer anything in the Cha-Cha to the Hopalong Cassidy ‘Voltas’ that seem to delight everyone in the Samba. I honestly do not see myself ever dancing this in public!

Drove home under blue skies and white fluffy clouds again, just the same as yesterday and spent the early afternoon clearing up the living room and the kitchen. I went for a walk to St Mo’s later for some photos with the intention of coming home with a loaf. I actually came home with a bit more than that, but with a potential PoD or two.

In M&S I bumped (almost literally) into a former colleague who is now deputy head in Glasgow and commiserated with her because her school is being inspected soon. Right now the big news is the Post Office postmasters and mistresses who have been accused of stealing money. It wasn’t really stolen, it was a dodgy computer program called Horizon that went ‘ape’ for a while. But when I heard about those folk being accused of what amounted to theft by the investigators, I remembered how I felt when the HMI (Her Majesty’s Inspectors) came to interrogate us. These people should be ashamed of themselves.

On the way home I was watching a big swathe of pink/white cloud stretching up behind a bunch of Scots Pine trees and trying to find the best angle to shoot them from. Finally found it and that became PoD, relegating a photo of the setting sun to “almost a PoD”.

That was about it for today. Dinner was much more restrained than last night and was a pizza with a glass of wine.

Hoping to get out for walk tomorrow.

Dancin’ – 11 January 2024

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It was going to be a busy day, so I took the opportunity to go for an early walk in the woods.

The sky was clear and the sun was shining, but it was cold when I was walking over to the park just before 11am. That’s early enough for me, these days. There was a time when I was driving to work just after 7am. Thankfully those days are gone now and in the past they will remain. Fewer dog walkers in the morning, although there were some. Mostly it was couples or single walkers unfettered by canine accomplices. Although the weather was good, there were very few opportunities for photos. I took a few, but when I got home and inspected them, there wasn’t much of interest. Anyway, time was marching on and we were going to Glanburn just after midday for the first tea dance of the year.

The hall was filling up nicely for today’s dance. First up was a waltz and we opted for Kirsty’s Waltz Nioli. First track was a bit of a mess, but in the second track I found my feet or more likely, my feet found the script and it turned out fine. In fact, the Rumba, Cha-Cha and even the Quickstep all fell in to place today. I hope it’s not an isolated instance.

It seems that Stewart & Jane have started a new regime where the first half of the dance is devoted almost entirely to Ballroom and Latin. After the tea break, the second half is now almost all sequence dances. I’m not sure I like that approach, I prefer mixing the styles, but I don’t run the show and possibly that’s for the best. All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed today’s dance and it’s not often I say that. I think it was that I’m beginning to become more confident in the routines and a lot of that is down to the work Scamp and Kirsty put in pointing me in the right direction. Short routines that can have extra parts added to them or awkward ones removed. After all we are doing this so that we can dance, not so that we can blindly follow the teachings of others.

Drove home feeling that we’d achieved something today. Then when we got home, Scamp got a text from Kirsty to say that she’d fallen today and broken a bone in her wrist and would be in plaster for at least two weeks! Poor Kirsty will be distraught, and so will we! One day back in her class and disaster strikes.

Since Scamp was going to be busy getting ready for Crawford and Nancy on Friday, I suggested an M&S curry might be best for dinner and the suggestion was accepted.

I eventually settled on a picture of a path through the woods at St Mo’s for PoD. It was the best of a bad lot, but not really all that bad.

Tonight the prep for Friday started for Scamp, but tomorrow I’m intending to make my half of the bargain, the main course.

Shopping – 10 January 2024

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We were off to Waitrose today for some (for some, read a lot of) shopping.

I felt the wee blue car squeal when I put the message bags in the boot after we left Waitrose. There were a lot of bags in there and quite a few of them were full. Despite that, I challenged the wee car by driving up the back road from Stirling to the top of the Tak ma Doon road. It’s a long and sometimes quite steep climb, but before we reached that, I gave it a rest at the entrance to Loch Coulter where I wanted to take photos, not of the loch, but of the wee farm across to the north-west. It’s a favourite place of mine to photograph and today the mountains off behind the farm were covered with snow, which was even better. Two or three photos of the landscape were enough in the cold breeze that was coming in from the north, so we drove on past Carron Bridge and on to the Tak ma Doon road, the twisting single track road with few passing places and great craters where NLC can’t be bothered to fill them in. But at the summit it gives a great 180º uninterrupted view from the Forth estuary in the east all the way to Glasgow in the west. Except, not today. It was too cold to take advantage of the views, even if they were stunning. We had reached the highest point in the road and it was downhill all the way now and I’m sure I heard the wee blue car give a sigh of relief.

Dinner tonight was Haddock Chowder. It’s one of those recipes where you have to have everything prepared in advance because once you start you’ve just got to keep going until you serve it in bowls after about 45 minutes of constant stirring and mixing. It wasn’t my best today, I admit that. Too much flour in the roux we think. However, as Scamp said “It’ll stick to yer ribs”. Very Scottish!

We were going dancing to the first dance class with Kirsty this year. After everyone had quietened down, Kirsty announced that today’s dance was to be a Foxtrot. As usual, she demonstrated the men’s part then the women’s part and after that we were pitched into the dance. I admit that I was flummoxed at first, but then realised I’d done all this, or something very like it with Stewart & Jane. After that, when things were baffling me, I just let muscle memory take over and while it wasn’t perfect, it was near enough.

Later we watched the first Landscape Artist of the Year with Dunnottar Castle in Aberdeenshire being the subject. For once, Scamp and I were in agreement about today’s winner.

PoD was a photo of that wee farm.

Tomorrow we might be going dancing. First tea dance of the year.

Dancin’ – 6 January 2024

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Scamp was out first to defrost the car. We were driving to Brookfield for the first dance classs of 2024.

The temperature was hovering around zero when we drove out to Brookfield, but the sun was almost blinding, shining from a bright blue sky. Thankfully we got there without any roadworks apart from the usual 40mph drag through central Glasgow.

First surprise was that the tiny dancers, who usually take ages to leave the hall, had already gone! Maybe someone had complained. I should have asked Jane if it was her. Only four couples ready and waiting to go dancing. Last in were Peter and Gillian who travel almost the same distance as us.

First dance was the Blue Angel Rumba which we’ve almost mastered and was the gentle entry into this years dances. Next was the, new to us, Christmas Waltz. It looked complicated, but taken in bite sized pieces it wasn’t so bad, although there were a few unpronounceable and complicated bits to it. In retrospect, I think we managed not too bad in it, but it will need some practise during the week to cement it into my head. Finally a fast and frantic Samba with Samba Walks, Botafogos and Voltas. Voltas were described by Jane as “Like kids pretending to ride a horse”. A sort of “John Wayne dance step.” Google it and you’ll see what I mean. By then, my little brain was full to bursting and I was glad to change my dance shoes for clumpy black street shoes and drive us home.

Lunch was two bits of bread with a slice of square sausage between them. Scamp had similar with an egg substituting for the square sausage.

I struggled for a while trying to work out what was going wrong with the 2024 catalog on Lightroom. Eventually I gave up and as the sun was still shining I went for a walk in St Mo’s. The road and paths were quite slippery, but the boots coped with it. The sun was low by the time I was walking along the path behind the woods and I got a few decent shots of the trees and the shadows they were casting. One of them became PoD.

Dinner came from a cold walk over to Condorrat to Golden Bowl. As I was coming back I could see the mist lying about a metre above the grass. Quite creepy looking. I tried to photograph it, but failed to get the impression I was looking for.

Later in the evening I tried again and almost managed to repair the damage to the catalog. I gave up and left it until tomorrow when hopefully a night’s sleep will make things clearer

Temperatures around zero predicted for tomorrow. That will decide what we do.

 

Dull day that brightened up later – 5 January 2024

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It started off misty and cloudy, but later in the day the sun came out and it was fairly bright.

The task for today was to take down the decorations, pack up the tree and get everything ready to go up into the loft later in the week. Scamp was in charge of operations and as usual she was organised. Cards were taken down and left in a pile for checking later. Tree decorations went into their box and then into their bag. Batteries were removed from lights to stop them corroding. I took the lights down from the wee tree outside and from the fence. They are still drying out, hanging over any vertical surface that will carry them. It really was a military operation.

By lunch time it was all done and I’d had enough time left to go for a walk in St Mo’s. Today’s PoD turned out to be fern fronds glowing in the sunshine. There wasn’t much else to photograph today. I should have taken a macro lens with me, but I forgot. After that it was computer time.

One of my SSD drives that power the iMac now has a dodgy connector socket, which means that if I’m not careful, and it gets nudged, I lose everything I’ve been working on. Most annoying. What I wanted to do today was transfer the data from the drive to a replacement that doesn’t seem to have the connector problem. It’s a fairly easy procedure to do, but even with the super fast SSDs, it takes time. That means there’s a lot of sitting about. Thankfully I could check the progress on my laptop as I was following an instruction video on YouTube that I’d used before and it worked. It worked again today, but took most of the afternoon to complete. I’ve now got it running fairly well, with just the occasional blip to fix.

It was late when I finally turned the computer off and had dinner which was baked potato with veg chilli. The chilli had been in the freezer for a few months and was really needing used up. It tasted fine, so being frozen for months hadn’t harmed it much.

We did manage a quick practise dance tonight. Part of Joy’s Waltz, part of the Quickstep routines from Stewart & Jane and also from Kirsty, then Kirsty’s Waltz Nioli to finish off.

Tomorrow we’re intending going to dance class in Brookfield, hence today’s practise. Other than that, nothing much planned.

Dancin’ – 21 December 2023

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We were back to a tea dance today after a long lay off.

First, earlier in the morning I went for a walk in St Mo’s to get a photo or two while Storm Pia was still giving Scotland a severe buffeting. It was gradually powering down, but it was taking quite a while. I was glad I hadn’t been there when Pia was at full strength.

I saw a blackbird fly into a tree and I’m sure he saw me too, but he turned away and tried the “If I can’t see him, he can’t see me” trick. As I took a few steps towards him, he caught me and flew away, but not before I had one more shot. How can birds navigate through that maze of branches? That final shot gave me a PoD. One in the bag on a morning walk. That’s good.

By the time I walked home, I had just enough time for a quick lunch before getting dressed for dancing and then we headed off to Glenburn for the last tea dance of the year. Despite the weather, it was a fairly easy drive to Paisley. The hall wasn’t very busy when we arrived, but the dancers gradually trickled in and the dance started with a waltz. I stumbled through the first track, but by the second it was flowing better. We danced Waltz, Rumba, Cha-Cha and three or four sequence dances. Really, the only one I completely messed up was the Quickstep which I knew I could do. Just not today.

As usual we left a few minutes early to avoid the schools coming out. However, it appeared that the traffic was light on both the M80 and the M74, also, thankfully, the wind had reduced to a normal breeze.

We watched what I thought was a tedious Celebrity Sewing Bee tonight. It was probably the worst of the ‘Christmas’ specials foisted on us these days in the name of entertainment. It’s just a bunch of has-been and never-was ‘celebrities’ getting their faces on the TV again. Bah Humbug!

Tomorrow I believe we need some shopping and there’s a chance we may have a pub lunch later.