Month: May 2016

A walk on the canal side – 31 May 2016

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31 may bScamp suggested a walk along the canal this morning.  As it was so bright and sunny, it seemed a shame not to, so we drove down to Auchinstarry and headed off along the railway to Twechar.  Maybe it’s because we were talking all the way and maybe it’s because we were marching along quite sharply at Scamp’s usual pace, but I didn’t take a single photo all the way there.  Even on the way back I only grabbed two desultory shots of some backlit grasses, neither of which made the final cut.  The word ‘desultory’ always makes me think of A Simple Desultory Philippic.  It was a track on Simon & Garfunkel’s Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme album, and I never really understood it.  Liked it, but never understood it.  But to quote Dylan, “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”  It was just after the grass photos that Scamp said that this was what retirement was for.  It’s strange, but last Tuesday, a week ago, when I was out walking around St Mo’s about 5.30am I was thinking exactly the same thing.

Didn’t do much else when we got back other than cut front and back grass while Scamp went to a ‘Witches’ meeting.  Don’t ask, it’s just an opportunity to gossip!  No spells were cast.  Later, when the light was better, I went for a walk in St Mo’s, being careful not to go in to the wild wood for fear of little beasties namely ticks which I seem to be very prone to.  Got some decent shots of the baby coots and Mr Grey hiding in the reeds, pretending he wasn’t there.  Then, in one of the smaller ponds, I spotted a dragonfly.  It’s still May, ok the end of May, but still May and there are dragons out!  Unheard of.  I’d say that this might be summer starting, but I know from the weather forecasts that next week rain sweeps in.  Still, we’ll take all the sun we’re offered and say thank you very much.  This is what retirement is all about.

Keep taking the tablets – 30 May 2016

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30 MayWe went in to Glasgow with the stated intention of getting a tablet/laptop.  Apparently what I was looking for was a “2 in 1”, which I suppose describes it quite well.

Note to JIC.  
Please feel free to ignore this part as it’s almost all technospeak.
First stop was Staples where I saw the cheapo looking Linx 10.1″ tablet with a clamshell keyboard/lid.  Cheapo maybe, but it had 2 x USB3 ports and 1 x micro USB for power and doubling as a port if you have an OTG (On The Go) cable.  Even better, it was at a bargain price of £149.99.  Ok, one possible.
Ok, JIC, Technospeak over.

Next stop was John Lewis who on paper had a load of these 2 in 1s.  Unfortunately, if we ignore the very expensive Mickysoft offerings, there were only two.  One was an Acer with no price on it and no power in the battery, the other was an HP at £80 more than the cheapo Linx.  The spec appeared to be almost the same, in fact it only had 1 x USB port and 1 x micro USB.  So it looks like it’s back to Staples.

Before that, Scamp decided that lunch at Patisserie Valerie was in order.  Since she prefers to eat inside, we got a table no bother because everyone wanted to sit outside in the sun.  Had our order taken: Crayfish Salad for both of us and Apple Pie for after for Scamp, Pecan Pie for me.  Tea for both.
The tea arrived, and so did the manager to apologise, but there was no Pecan Pie.  No problem, I’d just have the Apple Pie.  A little later he arrived back to say that sorry, there was no Crayfish Salad.  He did offer alternatives.  Scamp went for Chicken Caesar and I chose Chicken Brochette.  We’d been sitting for 20 minutes by this time.  Half an hour later and still nothing had arrived although the manager had floated past about 15 minutes before to say that my chicken was just going on the grill.  I’d had enough.  We offered to pay for the two teas, but the girl on the till would have nothing of it and told us the manager “should have been dealing with it.”  If I’d had to speak to the manager himself, Begbie would have come out of the box again.

Back at Staples, I bought the Linx.  Unfortunately, when I got it home, I found that it looked nothing like what I’d seen in the shop.  Quick phone call and was told to bring it back and they’d exchange it for the correct one.  I did, they did and this time I checked it before I left the shop.  So far, it’s doing everything I expected it to do.  Pity the same can’t be said for Patisserie Valerie.

More sun promised for tomorrow.  Bring it on!

Sitting in the Sun and Begbie Returns – 29 May 2016

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29 MaySunshine again!  Today we went to Loch Lubnaig, just north of the ‘Geriatrics’ Sunday Favourite’ Callander.  We were late leaving and I just knew we were going to run into queues along the route.  First bottle neck would be Dobbies garden centre just outside Stirling – It wasn’t too bad for a change.  Next on the list would be Blair Drummond Safari Park.  It was just as bad as I expected.  All these families eager to see the wild animals.  The queue was quite long, but as I drove past I glanced right and that was where the queueing really started and went on as far as the eye could see.  Maybe it’s the passengers in the cars that would be wilder than the animals by the time they got parked.  I wished them luck.  Strangely, the rest of the journey was uneventful, even Chronic Callander and we got parked at the new lochside parking at Lubnaig without any trouble.  An hour later, things were a bit more frantic in the carpark with cars abandoned everywhere.  People just seemed to park wherever there was a space long enough and wide enough for their car, with no thought of how other drivers were going to negotiate their exit.  They were in their space and that’s all that mattered.  Dobbers!

Lunch was a roll ‘n’ sausage for me and a roll ‘n’ egg for Scamp.  That was the last of the rolls and the last of the eggs.  We got ours and that’s all that mattered!  Loads of people there.  Must have been well over 100.  That’s what happens when you build a carpark at a scenic spot, provide facilities and catering.  If you build it right, people will come.  Think on this NLC.  After a couple of hours sitting in the sun, we decided to head home.  Scamp to do some gardening, me to cycle.  However, a pair of numpties were parked right behind us and didn’t look like moving.  No problem.  I put on my Begbie voice and they shifted sharpish.  Maybe it’s because I’ve just finished ‘The Blade Artist’ which is the story of how Begbie, the psycho from Trainspotting’s life has panned out.  Anyway, homeward through the legions of Grey Hairs out for ice cream and chips in Callander.

Got a few photos of a little red damselfly while out on my bike and Scamp got her pansies planted.

Swallows are flying lower today which means the weather may not be as good tomorrow.

When is a laptop not a laptop – 28 May 2016

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28 May wWe drove into Stirling today for lunch at the Indian and not a lot else. The lunch was good and instead of nan bread we had chapatis. Scamp and I don’t like this new idea of chopping up a nan bread and serving it in a basket. I suspected that unscrupulous restaurants could be collecting uneaten nan pieces from previous diners baskets and using them to pad out new ones. Just a suspicion, but Scamp agreed that it was an unsavoury possibility, so we decided it would be better to get chapatis which are served whole.

On the way to the restaurant, I dallied in Stirling’s computer shop. I’d been looking for a laptop to take on holiday and I’d had a few bargains in the past from Computer Depot. Years ago, Ali, the owner, sold me a little MP3 music player that has a massive 64MB memory and also took extra memory in the form of SmartMedia cards. This probably means nothing to most people these days, but back at the turn of the century (that sounds such a long time ago, doesn’t it) they were very high tech and could be had in sizes up to 128MB. With a 128MB card in the player, you could have almost 3 hours of music at your disposal. I still have the Diamond Rio music player, and occasionally it will work. Anyway, there were no laptops that were in my price range. What they did have was one of the new (well, new to me) 2 in 1 tablets with a clip on keyboard.

<TechnoSpeak>
It only 32GB storage and 2GB RAM, but the processor was a quad 1.33Mhz with the ability to run at 1.83Mhz in burst mode. It had one USB 3 port and a micro USB 2 which, as well as being used as a charging port, could double as an import/outport device with an On The Go (OTG) cable. It was running 32bit Windows 10 which is a lot better than I thought, now that I know how to ‘refresh’ the install. The 32 GB wouldn’t be nearly enough storage for holiday photos, but if I used the USB port to connect an external hard drive it would be a neat solution to the problem. Almost as neat as the old HP netbook but much faster. Certainly worth considering. I didn’t dive in and buy the one he had on offer, mainly because I couldn’t find any reviews of it on the net, but I’m looking at alternative versions. In the words of Facebook, “A lot has changed in laptops since you last looked.”
</TechnoSpeak>

Today was a good day weather-wise and tomorrow is meant to be even better. We’ll see.

Friday Bank Holiday – 27 May 2016

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DSC_5883- flickr--148Today is the second May Bank Holiday. Why do we have two bank holidays in May? It could be because we usually enjoy some good weather in May. It might be because the bankers need an extra day or two to spend their exorbitant wages. Wages they earn by screwing more money from us by investing our money and then creaming off the majority of the interest and leaving us with the odd penny or two for our efforts. I was thinking about this when I closed my old pocket money account with Santander or Abbey National as it was when I opened it many moons ago. It’s not been used for years and recently I got a letter to say that it was being made dormant. As part of my ‘tidying up’ day on Wednesday, I closed it and pocketed my £14 and some odd smash. My interest had remained the same for the last seven years, 1p per annum. Before that it had been at the heady heights of 11p p/a. If it hadn’t been for that 10p drop, I would have been a rich man today and could have retired on my profits much earlier. I admit I would have had to pay capital gains tax, but I wouldn’t have minded. That’s the effect the credit crunch has on my life.

Gym and a swim for us today. Scamp was being very cautious and only attempted leg exercises but didn’t swim. She did soak up some heat in the sauna and steam room plus, of course, she had to have her 10 minutes in the jacuzzi.  A good place to be on such a dull day.

Today’s photo marks the start of the strawberry vodka season.

Haircut – 26 May 2016

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26 MayAfter yesterday’s repair regime, today my last task in this realm was to get my hair cut.  I enjoy going to the Nile Barber, so named because it’s on West Nile Street in Glasgow – I’m ashamed to say I only realised that about a few months ago.  I’ve been going there for years.  The shop has always kept its name, but has been owned and run by a variety of people over that time, all of them individuals, always interesting.  Every one a character.  Today’s barber was the Politico.  He’s always worth listening to.  I don’t know which party he supports – or hates the least, but he’s definitely not a Labour or Tory man.  Today’s topics for discussion ranged from “Scotland is becoming a Police State” to “The BBC is an Organ of the Government”, taking in his usual gamut of conspiracy theories.  I never knew about Russia Today, but I do now.  I didn’t realise that Saudi Arabia is forcing the US to reveal the truth about 911, but I do now.  Always entertaining, always thought provoking and always a good haircut.

I’m reading a Kindle book just now “The Knife Artist” by Irving Welsh.  Maybe it’s the writing style that doesn’t appeal (yes Hazy, it’s now degenerated into the same type of writing as Trainspotting).  Maybe it’s because it’s a sort of sequel, but with just too big a gap to the original.  I don’t know, but I’m not enjoying it.  Maybe that’s why I went to a bookshop today and bought my holiday reading: “The Cloud Atlas” and “The Reader on the 6.27”.  Both physical books made from paper and printers’ ink.  I’ll take my Kindle with me on holiday too, just in case, but it’s an interesting turnaround.

Tidying up – 25 May 2016

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25 May bA day to get things sorted out.  Not actual tidying up, no, this was tidying up loose ends in my life

This morning I had my test results from the doc, well, the sister actually.  All was good.  In particular she was impressed with my weight loss.  After that I got some financial stuff sorted out.  It should have been done in February, but today it was sorted.  In the afternoon, I had my checkup with the dentist and that also went well.

In between, we had lunch which was a duck egg each, courtesy of one of JIC’s friends.  I’d forgotten just how good duck eggs are and these ones were really, really good.  Thanks Ali and thank you ducks!

I didn’t have any PoD, so I went out for a drive later, but couldn’t settle on anything in particular, so I did what I usually do and took some flower shots in the wild.  That’s the one on the left.  I wasn’t all that happy with that, so managed to get some shots of the garden aquilegia then cropped four wee sharp pieces from them and then assembled the four in Potatoshop.  I’m better pleased with that, but it was a fair bit of work.

Dinner was some of the meat from Baldock, but no dinosaur bone yet, I’m keeping that for the weekend.

A lot done today, but still a lot to do.  Hopefully tonight will see the blog up to date.  Another loose end tidied.

An EARLY start – 24 May 2016

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May 24 bDrove in to Glasgow just for a walk and to get some stuff for the hols.  Didn’t even go to the art shop!

Actually, that’s only half the story.  I woke about 4.20am and couldn’t get back to sleep.  I think it was all that sitting around on one train, then on another train, then on one more train.  Hardly walked anything at all, so I just wasn’t tired, so I got up and dressed and went over to St Mo’s to grab some of that early morning light.  It was a good decision.  Got some nice captures of closeups with that lovely light.  There was a bit of mist on the pond, but if I’d been just a little bit earlier, it would have been better – never happy.  Used the macro lens for the closeups and as usual was impressed with the sharpness.  See if you can spot the reflection.  You might have to go to the Flickr feed to spot it.

In the town I was listening to the bloke playing the sax.  When a photog started taking his picture he began to ham it up and I decided I’d have a piece of that too.  I liked the close cropped shot.  When we walked through the St Enoch’s centre there was a boxing promotion with a ring set up.  Ricky Burns did a bit of shadow boxing and I managed about 6 shots of him.  The mono was the best.  I liked the gritty feel of it.  I felt he looked like a boxer.

So that was a long day, but even now I don’t feel tired.  It was a great start to the day and the rest wasn’t all that bad either.
Repairs day tomorrow.  Doctor and Dentist – a glutton for punishment!

Walking in the Sunshine – 22 May 2016

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22may bIt’s a sunny Sunday and after breakfast we headed off over the fields and far away.  Luckily Sim is friendly with the farmer and we got permission to walk through the horses’ fields to the right-of-way.  I’m not that happy walking in fields with actual horses in them.  Sim calls them ‘ponies’, but these aren’t anything like the ‘My Little Pony’ my daughter had when she was wee.  These are big brown monsters, much bigger than me, but I treated them like I treat anyone bigger than me – don’t make eye contact, pretend they’re not there and everything will be fine.  I did, and it was.  we reached the relative safety of the road.  Relative safety because this is a narrow single track road, but the drivers seem to think it’s their own personal autobahn.  In other words, they think there is no speed limit.  That said, we survived the killer ponies and the madskull drivers and started on our walk proper.  Like yesterday it was mainly between fields of wheat and also yellow rapeseed.  I synched the camera with my iPhone to allow me to geotag the photos.  I knew it would only work with the ’10 and not the ‘5, but that wouldn’t matter because at least I’d have a record of the walk that I could plot on a map when I got back home.  Checked the first one and all seemed to be well.  We walked for an hour or so.  Probably more than an hour because although JIC and Scamp were charging on ahead, Sim and I were constantly stopping to get some photos.

When we got to the top of one of the hills, gentle hills. This is Engerland, not mountainous Scottishland remember.  They don’t do real hills here.  Anyway, when we got to the main road at the top of one of the hills, there was a debate as to whether we should return by the same route or do a round trip.  The round trip would mean walking on the grass verge at the side of the road and, since we’d already seen the stock car racing that was being done on the narrow road, we didn’t fancy our chances on the main road, so it was back the way we’d come.

On the way back we got a really good view of the ‘Chicken Prison’ or battery hen farm.  If you’ve seen one of these travesties you will know why Scamp won’t but the cheapest chicken, but rather the free range ones.  At least they had a slightly better life.  We also got to see how a lovely vista across the green fields is destroyed by a solar panel farm.  Just to complete the trilogy, there was a wind farm behind us.  I’m all for being ‘green’, but just how efficient are these blots on the landscape?  Wind farm windmills are white (white = pure) and generally now they are painted green at the bottom (green = natural).  It’s all colour psychology, or kidology might be a more accurate description.  During the first two weeks in April in Scotland almost no wind energy was generated as the wind wasn’t strong enough.  It is not a viable alternative to traditional methods of generating electricity.  Enough of the rant.

Back home after passing the demon ponies again, we had ice lollies and Pimms for lunch, then watched JIC starting the barbecue that would provide our supper.  What a supper.  Chicken kebabs for Scamp. Pork burger and sausages for the carnivores.

Dumped my photos and oh, oh, it looked like only one photo had been geotagged!  Bummer.  Then when I got them all in there were 40 tagged photos.  Only one session, but forty photos in the session.  All was good.  Just as a finale, a woodpecker arrived at the bird table.  I’ve never managed to get a photo of one.  This one was a bit twitchy.  Every time I went near the window, it went and hid in the big tree at the side of the garden.  However, I managed about four good shots from a sitting position on the couch!

Back home tomorrow.  I’d love to have stayed longer, but all good things must come to an end.  We had an excellent day and an excellent break.  Three days with Hazy and N D’Ag and three days with Sim and JIC.