Month: November 2015

Sitting in Cafe Tabou waiting for our starter listening to an absolute prick shouting across the table to his friend who may not have been deaf to start with, but certainly was now. He also regularly interspersed his monologue with laughing “A HA HA” as if he had read about laughing, but hadn’t actually have heard it before. I think he may have been, or is, a lawyer or some other worthless bastard, but obviously (self)important. The Art Critic quote from Monty Python sprung to mind “… clever people like me, who talk loudly in restaurants …”  Lunch itself was good.  Salad de Chef with kippers and loads of other good stuff followed by Hake for Scamp and Rabbit and Chorizo Ragu for me.

When we left, we went to WH Smith to win our fortune with a couple of Thunderball tickets and bumped into Duncan and Heather.  It’s ages since I’ve seen him and it was really good to catch up.  Twelve months catchup in 30 minutes as Duncan said.

We had already finished our shopping – coffee, tea and cheese, with a trip to M&S for Scamp to pick up any Black Friday Weekend bargains.  She did get one, of course.  We had also stood and watched a trio of youngsters playing on the outdoor stage.  Unlike last year’s, this lot brought a lot of enthusiasm to the gig and didn’t seem at all fazed by it.  At least not until they tried to give out their Facebook website address to the crown, then they became a bit tongue tied.

It was now time to head home through the pouring rain.  Driving home wasn’t much fun through driving rain and sleet, but at least we were warm and dry in the car.  It was one of those occasions when the car was better than the bus.  I couldn’t imagine sitting in a wet jacket and jeans on a cold bus for an hour and a half, then waiting in the rain for another connection.  Nah, driving might have been a pain, but it was better than public transport tonight.

I got up early today, soon after Scamp left for work.  I couldn’t get on to the blog site last night because the server in the US was borked.  When I switched on the computer this morning, everything was back to normal.  The next task was to start getting the pictures organised for my 2016 calendar.  Unfortunately, my hazel (lower case for the prog – Upper Case for the person) skills were lost on the task.  Yes, it worked, but it would have taken until the end of 2016 to get the images arranged the way I wanted them.  I put the rules, because that’s what hazel calls the scripts it uses, on the back burner and went for a walk.

The last time I walked along the old railway I got soaked.  Today started much better, but by the time I got to my usual turning point the rain had changed from an irritating drizzle to a soaking driving rain.  Thankfully, on the way back I had the rain behind me.  Even so, by the time I got back to the car, I was soaked again.  I had intended to go straight in to Glasgow after my walk, but I decided to go home and change.  There’s no point in being uncomfortable when you don’t need to be.

When I got home, I knew exactly how to write the hazel rule.  Of course I didn’t write it down I have found and elegant solution etc as did Fermat before me.  One of these days I’ll learn from my mistakes … maybe.

I parked at the station (which in itself was a minor miracle on a weekday) and got the train in to Glasgow.  The light, while low, was interesting. I bumped into Steve Mooney in John Lewis where he was booking his Black Friday bargain.  We had fallen out before we both retired, but for the five minutes we talked, we were very pleasant to each other.  Meanwhile holding down our real feelings.  That’s how we got on with people isn’t it.  That was about it for the day.  Other than visiting the tiny Laboratorio Espresso for a flat white.  Lovely coffee in a lovely artistic cup.

Today started at 7.00am when I got up to wait for our new dishwasher to be delivered.  These days stores are at pains to offer you an exact delivery window.  Most carriers, like DPD, delivering from the south of England, will give you a 60 minute time slot.  John Lewis, delivering from 15 miles away, give you a 7 HOUR window.  That’s not a delivery window JL, that’s a whole shift I’d lose if I’d been working.  Not really acceptable in this day and age.  As you might have guessed, the delivery was not here until 1.30pm, SIX AND A HALF HOURS after the start time.  I’m beginning to think that JL is living in the past and resting on their laurels (if that isn’t mixing my metaphors).  However, the dishwasher was fitted, tested and the old machine taken away in double quick time.  It’s been tested and it washes dishes.  All is good.

After I had my lunch, the good light was fading and I hadn’t had time to take any photos.  So, it was boots on and a quick walk to St Mo’s in the late afternoon.  I thought I’d missed all, the good light, but luckily there was just a little bit left.  In the gloaming you get some nice reflections on the pond if there’s a decent cloudscape.  I’d brought the Nikon with the 70-300mm today and I thought I also had the ultra-wide 10-20mm Sigma with me, but it turned out I had the kit lens instead.  One of the many great things about Nikon is the quality of the kit lenses.  I read so many people complaining about the poor resolution from their kit lenses and thank the salesman in Jessops (when it was a REAL photo shop, staffed by photographers) 15 years ago who convinced me that it was worth paying that little bit more for a Nikon D70.  He was right, but of course, I always wanted a Nikon from away back in the ’70s when I bought an Olympus OM1 and should really have bought a Nikkormat FT2.  I think from that day on, I aspired to a Nikon.

There was a fair bit of post-processing on the ‘Golden Pond’ shot.  It’s a sort of HDR process, but one that’s done completely within Lightroom.  I found it by accident on the internet in a tutorial by Serge Ramelli. He also has a fair amount of video tutorials on YouTube.  It’s a simple technique and so much better than using progs like Photomatix because it’s infinitely adjustable and seems to produce less digital noise than other ‘real’ HDR progs.  Anyway, it works for me and it also works with Jpeg format files, which Photomatix doesn’t do.  Technospeak rant over.

The day broke to a bright, if cold sky. Cold, as in -0.3ºc according to the weather station. Just below freezing. A temperature drop of nearly 25 degrees from yesterday morning according to the temperature display outside the hotel. It seemed a shame to get up and go out today in the cold, but we needed food for lunch and dinner tomorrow and we had the knowledge that the food would be better than we had to endure for the last week in the hotel. Restaurant and café food was so much better.

We dined out for lunch today at The Stables. Chicken and leek pie for me and fish and chips for Scamp. Lovely, except the barman tried to con me by trying to palm me off with coke from the dispenser rather than the bottled Coke I’d asked for. The waitress changed it for me telling me my drink was flat because there was too much ice in it! Aye Right.

Tomorrow’s dinner was bought from M&S and Lidl (top and bottom of the range). Unfortunately, I missed the good light this morning and since daylight was fading by mid afternoon, there wasn’t much choice of subject. I ended up with a mono shot of the first snow on the Campsies. A missed chance this morning.