Category: St Mo’s

Comings and goings – 19 October 2020

Posted on by Zogman

A busy day and a wet one, very wet.

Scamp was out in the morning with Veronica for coffee @ Calders. I was left to my own devices. I’d great plans for what I’d to do. Heavens I even left myself some To-Do notes last night. They didn’t take long to achieve and then there was still an hour or so left. I was waiting for two DPD men, they’re always men here, so let’s not have any complaints on that score. Take it up with DPD if you really want. Two DPD personnel, one who would hopefully be bringing my coffee order and one who would be taking away my Nikon D7000 to MPB who have agreed to pay me a fraction of what I bought it for many years ago. But as they say, all things must pass. The third person I had to wait for was the Amazon person carrying an 18mm lens for the Sony A7ii. That’s ultra-wide, but not fisheye for those who understand such things, all three of you. I sat down to struggle through a sudoku that had been bugging me since last week. Then the DPD man delivered my coffee. Life’s too short to drink bad coffee, so I was saved that ignominy. Postman delivered the news that I am booked for a flu jag tomorrow afternoon. With some time to spare, I phoned Fred for a wee chat and discuss the situation with flu jags. He got a letter this morning at 11am telling him he had a flu jag at 11.35! We’d no sooner started setting the world to rights when Scamp phoned to say she was on the way home and did I need anything for lunch. Sorted lunch and got back to sorting the world with Fred.

After lunch the second DPD man came to take away the Nikon. I was brave, I didn’t shed a tear. Scamp suggested I wait for a dry spell and go out for a walk. That’s what I thought I was doing, but I was no sooner out the door when the rain started again. I was out now and I was wet. No point in going back. Just go and get properly wet and get some photos too. I did get wet. I thought I’d got some photos too, but when I got back it looked like I’d about ten sets of three photos. Like trios, all the same, then another set of trios, all the same, but different from the first if you get my drift. Worse than that, they were all crap. All except the one you see here which I resurrected. (It’s a Larch branch with the needles starting to change colour before they fall.) Thank goodness for decent software. Think Silk Purse – Sow’s Ear. It took a while to work out what had gone wrong, but I think I’ve got it sorted now. This is the most awkward camera to get a handle on. Nothing is easy.

It was almost 7.30pm when the Amazon man knocked on the door. What hours to these people work. It almost makes me ashamed to buy things from Amazon. Of course you could argue that I’m keeping these people in a job, but at what cost? Lens looks good and does what it advertises. Ultra-wide and with autofocus and auto exposure but without the fish-eye effect. Means nothing to anyone but me and three other undisclosed photogs.

Sketch tonight was a really rough doodle that followed on from yesterday’s doodle. Not impressed with it, but what else do you draw to complete a prompt like ‘Dizzy’?

Tomorrow we’re hoping for a few dry spells. There will probably be one between 4pm and 5pm when I’ll be in the Town Hall. If there’s a chance of a dry spell earlier in the day, hopefully we’ll be out making the most of it.

Your parcel has arrived – 10 October 2020

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The message appeared on my phone and about ten seconds later on the computer.

I was cool, and calm before I collected. Had my coffee first then drove in to JL to pick up the parcel. Back home fairly sharpish on a beautiful SATURDAY, yes today was Saturday, morning. Unpacked it and it was a bit heavier than the A7 and maybe just a little bit bigger too, but it had more magic stuff inside it, so it was bound to be both heavier and larger. It was a Sony A7ii. Inevitably there was no power in the battery and the only way to charge it was in-camera with the adaptor and the cable provided. The A7 I’d owned for a few days came with a charger, which confirms my belief that it wasn’t just a display model. Someone had been using it for a fair amount of time. Don’t ever believe what the sales people tell you.

With the camera sitting charging I had time for a couple of slices of toast and a read at the manual, not the paper manual which had instructions in about 27 languages and was about 5cm thick. Instead I downloaded the PDF version which I can put on my phone, my tablet and my computer. I’d plenty time to read it, the charging process was going to take about 150 minutes. I think I counted each one. Eventually it was done and I could ‘play’ with the new toy. More buttons than the last one and a better button layout too. It was still a beautiful autumn day outside, so Scamp and I went for a walk … with the camera of course. I got today’s PoD on the walk, a Black Darter, one of the late hatching dragonflies. After that, Scamp went for a walk to the shops and I did another circuit of St Mo’s pond. The treeline was plagued with wee neds and nedettes today. Scamp felt sorry for them with a whole week off school and nowhere to go. I’m afraid I disagreed, having seen the other side of these poor children. Any excuse for a ‘bevvy’. Parents aren’t allowed to meet in groups of more than two households, but school kids can walk around in what one Principal Teacher once described as “tribes”. He was shouted down by many at the meeting, but secretly we all agreed with him. It’s all tribal at that age.

Messed about taking photos in the house until Scamp returned from the shops. I know I was just pushing the limits of the camera, putting it in situations that were far removed from real photography, but impressed when it passed the tests, one after the other.

Dinner was from Sim’s menu book again, Spinach Stuffed Chicken. It was lovely, served with broccoli and potatoes. Watched the qualifying for tomorrow’s GP from a cold Germany.

Sketch prompt was “Hope”. After a few false starts I settled on today’s subject, an almost empty whisky bottle and a glass. The link to Hope is in the sketch. Rather an abstract prompt and I nearly, just nearly gave up on it, but I liked the finished article.

May go for a walk tomorrow if the weather holds.

Temptation – 1 October 2020

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I warned you yesterday that I was going to do it and today I did.

I swithered, that’s a good Scots word, isn’t it? It means I couldn’t decide quite what to do about the camera. Eventually I settled for leaving it until at least the afternoon before choosing whether to go in to Glasgow or not. Last night as I was going to bed, ‘Not’ was winning. Today I swithered. I laid my case before that preeminent judge, Scamp and she listened impartially without giving any decision, because she knew I’d make my own mind up when the time came.

After lunch I made the decision to go in to JL and hold the camera if they still had it. That’s always been my way to assess the usefulness of a camera. You can read as many reviews as you want. Balance the Pros and the Cons, but if it doesn’t feel comfortable in your hot little hands, you’re not going to use it. Many, many years ago I picked up a camera, a Sony strangely enough, and knew it was worth having. That was a Sony F707 which I still have (Scamp will tell you I still have all of them and that’s nearly true) and it still feels ‘right’ in my hands. It’s just got a few problems now that aren’t repairable, but I still don’t want to part with it.

So now I have a Sony A7 full frame camera with a 28 – 70mm lens sitting not the table in front of me. It’s been used and taken back to the shop. There are a couple of scratches on it, but nothing serious. Tomorrow I’ll take it out for a walk in St Mo’s along with the Oly E-M1 which knows St Mo’s fairly well and we’ll see what they can come up with. Little and Large.

The new camera’s battery was charging this afternoon, so I took the Oly out to get some photos in the sunshine. There wasn’t much doing, but it was good to walk about without a raincoat or a fleece on. Cool in the shade, but plenty warm in the sun. I just found out about fifteen minutes ago that I picked up a tick on my travels. First one I’ve had in ages. Must be less blasé about them. I know our minds are on Covid just now, but there are other nasties out there, waiting for the unwary.

While I was out, Scamp was making mince ’n’ tatties with cabbage and carrots. She, of course, denied herself the pleasure of the mince and had the veggie version. Dessert was stewed apples and rhubarb with custard. Our own apples and rhubarb. All the apples have now been picked and the rhubarb too is finished until next year.

Today being the first of October is the start of Inktober. Today’s sketch is of one of the fish statues we saw in Corralejo back in 2016.  It will do to cover today’s topic of ‘Fish’. PoD was a bramble leaf from St Mo’s.

Tomorrow we have no plans, but the weather looks reasonable, so we may go for a walk somewhere interesting.

Coffee with Val – 28 September 2020

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Queueing for Costa coffee.

You’d have to be desperate to queue for coffee in Costa, but that’s what we had to do today. Costa didn’t open until 11am because today was a bank holiday. Nobody had mentioned it was a bank holiday. Even the banks didn’t know about it, because the bank across the concourse was open when I passed. Maybe it’s a secret bank holiday, one that only some people were told about. After we’d all queued until after 11, some wee ’jobsworth’ was in your face with his iPad taking your particulars for Track & Trace. We just told him we’d already signed in and he went away to bother someone else. Finally got sorted out with coffee and a bite to eat then got down to the serious business of discussing the technology we’d both been buying and playing with in the last month. Really enjoyed the natter, but soon it was time to go. Bid goodbye to Val as he headed to Asda and I drove home in the rain.

After lunch I did a bit of tidying up of the back bedroom. I did manage to chuck some stuff out, or at least bag it for chucking out. Undid a Gordian Knot of USB cables and sorted them by type into two lots. I’m going to test them next on the most exacting bits of tech to see if they are working perfectly or not. Pass the test and you can stay. Fail and you go in the bin. Marie Kondo eat your heart out.

The sun was coming out after I’d sorted the wiring and performed a cursory chuck out, so I took the Oly for a walk in St Mo’s. Lots of photogenic spider webs holding beads of water. Unfortunately there was a bit of a breeze which made photographing them difficult. One particular web was loaded with raindrops, it makes you wonder what weight is on these fragile strands and how the spider knows to construct using triangles. It wasn’t until I got home that I noticed on the screen that those particular shots had captured the spider as well as the web. A lucky! One of them made PoD. Of the 26 shots I took, only 6 survived the first cull. That’s not a good average.

It was pesto spaghetti tonight and I think I was too heavy on the garlic. Believe me when I tell you that although it tasted fine about 6pm, at 9.20pm it’s not quite so tasty!

Tomorrow we might be going looking for a small bookcase to assist in the further cleanup of the back bedroom. I don’t suppose that would fit with the ethos of Marie Kondo’s method, but I won’t tell her if you won’t.

Back in the old routine – 8 September 2020

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Going for the messages in Blue.

I drove to Stirling today with Scamp. We were heading for Waitrose ‘for the messages’. The sky was dull with occasional attempts at rain, but nothing that you could really call precipitation. Parked at Waitrose and walked in to Stirling town (it’s not a real city, even if Mrs McQueen says it is). I went to M&S and Scamp went to Debenhams both for different reasons. Met up again in the Thistle Centre and decided Nero was too busy and Costa was too dark and gloomy, so we went to HSBC to get some English money. I couldn’t tell you the last time I used a ‘hole in the wall’ machine. Some time in early March I think. Thankfully I remembered my pin.

On the walk back we stopped as we usually do to look in the picture gallery.  This shop usually has some good and some not so good artistic works.  However, we’ve neither of us seen anything to match the clumsy painting of a girl and a dog.  I think it’s downright dangerous to give a toddler oil paints to play with.  This ‘painting’ was priced at £450.  Unless, of course the decimal point wasn’t working on the computer used to print the price tag!

I think we did actually buy Waitrose this time. It was really just a test to see how much we could cram into the Micra boot. The answer was quite a lot, or maybe even Too Much! However, at least we got to walk round a fairly quiet shop pushing a trolley. Won’t need a Tesco delivery this week or next.

Came home and I tried to install the supposedly brilliant Nissan Connect Services which is a phone app that can do all sorts of wonderful things. I’d tried and failed to get the last one to work on the Juke. This one was no better. Got as far as creating an account, then things went belly up. You can scan in the VIN from the plate on the windscreen, but the app says it’s wrong. You can scan the VIN from the door upright, but the app says it’s wrong. You can type it in, but … Nothing I did worked, then I read the comments on this 1.2 star app. Almost everyone had the same problem, apart from the obvious ‘ringers’ who said it worked perfectly. With so many people having the same problem, you’d think a warning light would come on for the developers, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. Another lost opportunity, Nissan.

Took my frustrations out on St Mo’s with a couple of circuits of the pond. Not a lot of light at all by 4.30pm. My PoD was a sideways look at a spider on its web, getting bounced about in the breeze.

Beef burger for dinner. What Scamp had dubbed an Artisan Burger. I’d made it myself, with my own fair hands and a pound of mince. It needed salt, but otherwise it was fine. Scamp had a piece of salmon and we both had some of those Home Grown and Artisan Charlotte potatoes. So, a hand-made dinner.

Thought I’d have to de-coke the coffee maker. Orange steam light flashing away apparently means de-scale. I managed to get the light to go out by resetting the water softness setting. Hope that keeps the orange light at bay.

Tomorrow I’m hoping to meet John at Chatelherault outside Hamilton for a walk and a chat about photography and cameras. ‘Hoping’ because it’s torrential rain and high winds here just now.

The day that never really got going – 1 September 2020

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You know the kind of thing. Promised a lot, but didn’t deliver.

Yesterday I signed off with “Off to Larky tomorrow with a bit of luck to get Scamp’s new contact lenses.” I never like to predict how things will go. It’s rather like tempting fate, I feel. That’s why ’with a bit of luck’ is there. Just to say “This is how I think things will work out. My plan. However, things may change.” I’d planned to take Scamp to Larky to pick up her contact lenses and her new glasses, then I would drive down to Millheugh, park and go for a quick walk across the Avon and take some slow shutter shots of the Powforth Burn. Two things prevented that. The first was that although the lenses were at the opticians, the glasses weren’t. The second was the weather. It was dull, really dull and the name of this blog is “It’s all about the Light” and it is. For a decent photograph you need the right light. Not necessarily bright sunlight, but at least a bit of directional light to give some shadow detail. There was none today, so rather than make two trips we decided to wait until tomorrow, then we might go to Larky DV (Deo Violene – God willing).

That left half a dull day. We eventually got ourselves sorted and went for a walk to Condorrat to buy some eggs. Lovely eggs with bright orange yolks. Worth the money and the walk. We intended walking down to the shops to get some odds and ends to make tonight’s dinner which was a low cal pasta carbonara. Just as we were walking down the road past St Mo’s park, the school was coming out and Scamp opted instead to take the eggs safely home rather than face the hordes of ignorant ’children-and-young-people’ who are happy to push you out of their way. I don’t like them either, but they’re like dogs in that they can sense fear. I know that the safe way past is to push back. Sharp elbows and the occasional “Sorry!” with an insincere smile as one of them stumbles, works wonders too!

Didn’t need the sharp elbows today, so I must have met these C&YP before. Queues at the shops are much less frequent these days. I don’t know if the shops are becoming more complacent or if the customers aren’t quite so frantic as they were. Masks are still the order of the day and we’re still warned to keep 2m distance, which nobody does. It’s totally impractical in passageways that are less than 2m wide. What they need is one long travelator like they have in Yo Sushi. You’d just stand on your little pad on the conveyer and be transported round the shop at a sedate pace allowing you to select your items as you pass. I think I’ll suggest it to M&S.

When I got back I went for a circuit of St Mo’s and got today’s PoD on the way back. I called it Dangleberries, because there are berries and they’re dangling. Not for any other reason, of course.

Dinner tonight was inspired (copied) from last night’s Tom Kerridge repeat series Lose Weight For Good. I don’t think it will make me lose weight, but the pasta carbonara (without eggs, Hazy!) was interesting and tasty. Scamp accidentally bought the book on Kindle today and I think it’s worth the money. A few worthwhile recipes to take us in a new direction or two will be fun. I’ve spent half the evening trying to copy it, unsuccessfully.

Watched the end of series 2 of Line of Duty. It’s now our duty to start series 3 ASAP.

To reiterate: Tomorrow we might go to Larky DV. However the walk and the photos may have to wait because apparently it will be tipping it down.

A Sunny Spell – 24 August 2020

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Neither of us expected such a sunny day today, but we took it gladly.

Scamp was out this morning for coffee with her sister and her cousin. While they were out I completed my thumbnail sketch for my architectural painting and then worked on the light pencil sketch. None of the chunky sketch work of the Palomino Blackwing pencil, this was all done with a 0.7mm mechanical pencil. The groundwork is now almost finished, I just have to convince myself that the perspective at the front of the building is true. Once that’s done I can go on to the ink work. Phoned John and had a chat with him about the joys of retirement. Managed to finalise a date for them to come over for dinner. The last date was rather spoiled by a lockdown some time in March.

When Scamp returned with two plants from Isobel, we had lunch. After that we did a bit of gardening. Heavy duty pruning for me, using the loppers to get stuck into the big climbing rose at the back door. It’s now chopped down to head height and a bit straggly in places, but we’ll leave that until later in the year before we do the final tidying up, all being well. Scamp was finding places for the new plants to go.

Later in the warm afternoon we went for a walk round St Mo’s pond. Found two relaxed dragonflies and got a few shots. It turned out they were Common Darters, one male and one female. Just for future references, the male is smaller and red, the female is yellow ochre with red stripes down her back. They didn’t get PoD though. That went to a Harvestman which is not a spider although it looks like one. It’s in the order Opinions and joins the spiders in the Arachnid group. It’s amazing what you learn. If you look closely you’ll notice that it only has seven legs. It appears it sacrificed one, probably to save its life.

Dinner was chicken curry made from a Holy Cow mix and half the left over chicken from last night. It was hot, but tasty. Excellent flatbread, even if I say so myself with the additional secret ingredient of two dollops of coconut yogurt.

Tomorrow I’m intending meeting Val for coffee. Tried to phone Colin but it went to voicemail and Val hasn’t managed to get a reply from Fred.

Take the time to take a walk – 23 August 2020

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Even in the rain.

We were denied our walk yesterday because of the crowds at Coatbridge, but today we were on home turf and we were determined to get out for a walk. We set out to walk around our Broadwood route, then the rain came on and we thought we might have to revert to a walk as far as the shops, but we held fast and continued the walk. It did rain a lot, light at first and then heavier, but we got round the route with only damp jackets, not soaked to the skin. Dropped in at M&S for a chicken, and some veg for tonight’s dinner. Walked back up the road to have lunch.

After lunch I stitched up two masks, one for Scamp and one for Shona. Shona’s was fairly easy to make and was based on the one Lucy made for Scamp and me. Scamp’s one was the basic one from a pattern Hazy gave me and was a nightmare to stitch today. Elastic slipped out of the stitches, thread broke in the middle of stitching a straight part and pleats slipped out when I was stitching them, but now they are done and I’m relatively happy with them.

Later I took a camera for a walk in St Mo’s because I’d got nothing on this morning’s walk. I managed to slide down a steep muddy bank on my hands and knees. Thankfully nobody was there to see me and I managed to clean my hands and remove most of the muck from my jeans with some wet grass. How are the mighty fallen! I did get two photos that were worth the walk, and the indignity. PoD went to a low level shot of a buttercup on the boardwalk. It was a close thing, because the next best was a tiny hoverfly sheltering beneath a grass stem.

Dinner tonight was the chicken we got in the morning, served with roasted veg. Then Scamp suggested she’d make a fruit crumble with some of the frozen fruit I’m putting into my porridge in the morning. I had to tell her that I’d planned on making that for tomorrow’s pudding. Annoyed, but Scamp’s version would always trump mine for taste, texture and just about everything else.

The rain continued on and off all evening but there was a lovely golden sunset after all that wet stuff.

Tomorrow Scamp is intending going for coffee with Isobel and whoever else turns up!

The Explorer – 20 August 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The test and the result – 8 August 2020

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If, like me, you can’t be bothered about the details of the test and just jump straight to the result, here is the test in that order.

I phoned The Man in Stirling about 4pm and confirmed that we’d like to take the “Power Blue” Nissan Micra, and if the one we’d test driven this morning was available, that would be just fine.  He agreed that the one we’d road tested was available and that the paperwork would be in our hands by Monday.  You’ll note that most of our responses were in the plural.  We both liked the car and when Scamp said, after we’d road tested it: “I like it”, the deal was all but sealed.  After about an hour of driving round Stirling, Scamp and I were happy with the Micra.  Scamp said she felt quite at home with it.  I was happy with it.  Maybe not as powerful as the Juke, but not as heavy on fuel either.  Lots of lovely stuff to play with and at last, a digital speedometer display on a Nissan!  Something I’d really missed when moving from the old Megane to the Juke.  Good sound from the radio courtesy of Bose speakers and less road noise, if a little more engine noise when travelling.  Overall, it’s a car that we can both drive with confidence, and that’s what I was looking for.  Sold!

After our stressful morning we left Stirling to drive to Perth in the Juke. It was a beautiful day for the drive up to Perth but  when we got the Fair City, we found that the carpark was now an online parking carpark run using the Ringo app.  I’d read a few scathing reviews of it and decided it wasn’t for me, so promptly exited and parked across the road in a pay (using coins) carpark.  That was much better.  Maybe Ringo has improved from where it was a year or so ago, but I’ll read a few reviews first. In Perth we had our second coffee in a coffee shop this week, Nero this time just to balance things out, then while Scamp went looking for trousers in M&S, I went to get some much needed coffee beans in The Bean Shop.  Nearly maxed out the £45 ‘touch’ card limit just managing to sneak under the line.  I felt it was needed because I’d been reduced to drinking decaf coffee for a few days.  Actually ‘good’ decaf isn’t all that bad.  Perfectly drinkable and it doesn’t give you that  ‘Buzzzz’.  Bad decaf is just awful.  “Death before Decaf.”  Never a truer word spoken, Hazy!  Scamp didn’t find the trousers she was looking for and I thought I’d get my hands on the Sony camera I’d been searching for, but the bloke in the camera shop only had one which was 1p away from £1000.  I said “No Thanks”.  He didn’t look all that interested and didn’t even try to interest me in the purchase.  Perhaps it’s getting near the end of the line for small independent shops.

Drove home through the same beautiful countryside under the same beautiful blue skies.  Back home, Scamp wanted to work in the garden.  I went for a walk in St Mo’s.  Lovely big blue dragonfly flying over the small pond, but not resting on anything.  Gave up on it.  Nothing else really interesting, so came home.  PoD turned out to be a pic on my phone taken in Perth outside a toy shop.  Good to see a bit of Covid-19 humour.  Dinner tonight was a salad which we ate outside in the sunshine.  Chicken and Prawn Salad.  All washed down with a glass for white.  What’s not to like.

So, the car problem looks as if it’s on the way to being solved and the sun was shining all day today.  It’s been a good day.  Let’s hope that’s a sign for  the future, for everyone.