Month: March 2017

Deepan’ Crispan’ Deevan’ – 21 March 2017

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It’s snow, of course and that’s what we woke to today.  Not that deep and not that crisp as the temperature was three above zero and very uneven.  In fact it was just a scraping of show, but then, as I was making the breakfast, the snow returned, blown along by Windy Willie’s wild westerly wind.  Now, that’s what you call alliteration!

Once we realised that we wouldn’t be snowed in any time soon, we decided to go to Falkirk to retrieve a ring, a substitute wedding ring, that Scamp had handed in last week for repair.  Not long after I retired we went to Ayr and Scamp tripped and damaged her hand.  I thought her finger was broken, but it was just badly staved.  So badly staved that the wedding ring had to be cut off because it was restricting the blood supply to her finger.  That was almost three years ago.  It took a long time to get the ring repaired, but today we picked it up from the jeweller looking as good as new.  Driving home was a challenge with torrential rain, hail and sleet driving straight towards us.

When we got home and had lunch, the wet stuff had stopped and the sun had come out again, so it was boots on and out to St Mo’s.  I took the Big Dog with the macro lens and the E-PL5 with a 20mm lens.  A nice combo.  Just waked into the woods and saw two deer grazing down the path.  They were crosswind to me, so didn’t sniff my deodorant I crept down the path walking on the grass, not on the broken twigs, so they didn’t hear me either.  It would have been better to have brought the 300mm Tamron, but the macro gives such good quality results that I wasn’t all that worried.  The landscape is from the 20mm lens, another good quality lens.

Got home and did a bit of messing around painting the hills with snow on them.  Four miniatures in different colour schemes and another four ready for finishing tomorrow.

Tomorrow?  Not got a clue.  According to the weatherman, the snow will be gone and the weather is set fine.  As usual, we’ll see.

Windy Willie – 20 March 2017

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Windy Willie was Scamp’s explanation for strong winds when the weans were wee.  No need then for Storm Agatha or Storm Benjamin.  No, when the house was shaking in the gusts, Windy Willie was out there, that was enough explanation.  Windy Willie was out today.

Scamp was singing again with Gems today.  This time in Stepps.  I had intended to go sketching in Glasgow to get back to more architectural subjects, but when I got there, the horizontal rain and hail put me off, so instead I drove to the Fort to get some cheap pens and not so cheap painting stuff.  I say *painting stuff* because Inktense sticks are difficult to categorise.  They are part pastel sticks and part aquarelle.  Aquarelles are usually in the form of pencils and these are just sticks of pigment in a binder and are like pastels, except when you add water to them they turn into watercolour.  Worth a few quid to try them out and see what kind of mess I can make with them.

I drove back past the old Gartloch Hospital, a scary looking ex asylum on the outskirts of Easterhouse.  I kind of want to photograph it, but it comes into the same category as graveyards for me.  I often feel uneasy about photographing graveyards and most times don’t get the camera out.  It’s almost as if I have to ask permission to take photos there.  I can’t really explain it.  Some day I’ll make time to go to Gartloch and get some images.  Whether or not I’ll keep them I can’t say.  I might just format the card after they’re taken.  I will say this though, it will be a bright sunny day I go there.

Only two photos worth showing today.  One of contrasting textures between the grey sky and the grey aluminium of  the M&S building at the Fort and another of an old knife with a couple of beads of jam on it (not blood!) sitting on the draining board at the sink at home.  I just liked them both.  PoD was  the knife.

Before salsa tonight, I was enlisted to help with beginners Bachata which Cameron was teaching, and teaching quite well.  He still needs to relax, but his voice control is much better and he also needs to realise that he doesn’t need to show off so much.  It all looks like a lack of self-confidence to me, but I’d never tell him that.  Enjoyed it.  Salsa was fast and furious.  New move tonight was Tresario Doble, I think.  Interesting and counter intuitive at times.  We need to practise it.  Also Cubaa Se from last week.  Good fun.

No plans for tomorrow.  Snow and ice forecast with Windy Willie around too.

Macros – 19 March 2017

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Now, before I get started on macros and stuff, I have to make one thing clear.  My skin is old, I’m comfortable in it, and most of all it is, like me, quite thick.  So the the ‘Tramp’ comment by Scamp yesterday was like water aff a juck’s back.  If you don’t understand that, then sorry, life is too short for me to teach everyone the meaning of everything I say.  I accepted that the ‘Tramp’ comment was made in jest and although it might have appeared that I took offence, that wasn’t the case. Ok.  Can we move on now?

The photos above were the best I got today.  If I’d realised that the weather would stay clear and sunny all day, I might have been encouraged to travel further afield to make more of the conditions, but the weather men and women assured us that it was going to be torrential rain all day.  Give them their due, it did rain heavily during the night, but hardly a drop fell all day and for that I give thanks.  I went for a walk along the Luggie which was a raging brown torrent after the overnight rain.  It was treacherous underfoot.  Very slippy and slimy with mud moving about under my sole pair of boots.  Unfortunately, the old boots had developed a hole in the upper, just where it met (or in this case, didn’t meet) the sole, so after six years of exceptional service they had to go in the bin.  The new ones, just over a year old now are great for waterproofing, but not so good on grip.  My bargain walking trainers are great for grip and waterproofing, but are only trainers.  They don’t give support or keep you ankles dry.  I expect they’ll be fine in  the summer when that day comes.  I liked the detail in the green blobs (moss fruiting bodies) and the desiccated rose hip.  Both were taken with the Sigma 105mm Macro.  Such a good lens.  Never lets you down, always bitingly sharp.  Slow to focus, but I can put up with that.  Doesn’t have anti-shake, but doesn’t seem to need it either.  Comes into its own when focusing closer than about 150mm from the front element.  Truly a gem.

The sketch is an edited view of the bathroom window ledge.  I’ve removed half the junk and obviously a bathroom window wouldn’t have clear glass, but artistic license is a wonderful thing.  It’s not the best sketch I’ve done for my one-a-week, but it’s done and on time (must be done by Sunday).  We were both a bit clumsy to start with, but by the end we were getting much slicker.  Must go and practise our moves for tomorrow’s class.

A Tramp – 18 March 2017

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A Tramp, that’s what Scamp described me as today.  Just because my Bergy jacket is a wee bit untidy and maybe needing a wash.  Apparently it totally transforms me into a tramp.  I wonder how many tramps today, real tramps that is, the ones who wander round the countryside, sleeping rough, not the beggars on the city streets, I wonder how many of them have given up the luxuries of home because somebody called them a tramp.  I did consider doing it myself today, but who would drive Scamp home, because she can’t (won’t) drive my car, and besides it was raining.

The above conversation happened in the carpark in Stirling.  We should have been going to Embra today, but Scotland were playing somebody Italian, I think, at Murrayfield so the trains would be packed.  Also, we didn’t get to bed until after 1am last night (or this morning to be perjink), so we had a lazy morning after tidying up after last night’s meal with Crawford and Nancy, with June of course, eventually deciding to go to Stirling as a second choice.  We wandered round the soulless Thistle Centre whose only redeeming feature, in my opinion, is Waterstones.  Saw a couple of books worth adding to my ‘Must Read’ list.

When we got home, I messed around with a new painting before deciding that there was just enough light left to have a walk around St Mo’s.  I didn’t really need the photo, I had one in the bag from the morning.  Beautiful light on the stems of some carnations in a glass on the bedroom window sill. So, it was more a walk than a desperate attempt to get a PoD.  Bumped into an FP on the boardwalk round St Mo’s.  I don’t know who was more surprised, her or me.  Got the other two shots in the failing light at St Mo’s and on the walk back.

Hopefully we’ll be earlier to bed tonight, especially if I get this blog posted.

Saint Paddy’s Day – 17 March 2017

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It rained.  Scamp started cooking almost as soon as she rose this morning.  That meant the kitchen was off limits to me, so I had a more leisurely start to the day, but after that she decided we should go out for lunch *somewhere*. The *somewhere* turned out to be Dobbies at Milngavie.  What a bad decision.

<rant>As one of the Cumbersheugh Foodies, I have to say that this will be the last lunch I have in Dobbies.  We paid £9.90 for a ‘miserable’ tuna toastie and a ‘crap’ turkey and cranberry toastie.  I’ve never been a great fan of Dobbies, but since it was recently sold by Tesco, it has plumbed new depths in food preparation and presentation.  I can’t speak for the tuna toastie, but it did look ridiculously thin. What I will say is that two wafer thin slices of reconstituted turkey on a bed of pink jam, sandwiched between two pieces of doughy bread do not constitute a turkey and cranberry toastie.  Please Dobbies, get your act sorted out or get out of the kitchen.</rant>

Drove back via M&S to get more food for tonight, then Lidl to get even more food and also, importantly, beer for tonight.  Then it was back home and both of us started cooking.  Scamp making Pineapple Snow and me making bread preparing the roast veg and checking the venison casserole.  Then Scamp back in the kitchen making fruit crumble.  Maybe we should take over the food section of Dobbies, we couldn’t do any worse.

Today’s photo is of the Ninjar in the jungle (AKA downstairs toilet).

It’s still raining

Dull Day – 16 March 2017

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Macros, that’s what saved the day.  Macros.  Macros, technically, are extreme close-ups where the subject is recorded life size or larger on the film.  At least, that was the definition when everyone used film.  Now that so few photogs use film and the ones that don’t, use a recording element that varies from less than the size of your little finger nail to about 65mm by 45mm, the old definition is worthless.  Let’s just say that it’s an ultra-closeup.  That’s what I went out to photograph today with my trusty D7000 and a Sigma 105mm Macro lens.  The results are above and constitute about 45 minutes of shooting. I was quite pleased with them.

Earlier, Scamp was out singing with Gems and, as predicted yesterday, I slipped the leash for a couple of hours to sketch for a while before going in search of ice cream for pudding tonight.  Other than that, it was the dull day of today’s title.

After dinner (paella, since you’ve asked) I started preparing for tomorrow’s main which is venison casserole with roast root vegetables.  Thank you JIC for giving me the method and timings for that.  They’ve been in for an hour now at gas 5 and are beginning to smell nice.  In fact, I’m just going to check ……… Ok, back now and yes they are done.  Nice and tasty, even the celeriac.  I recommend it to you.  And that’s about all I can say about today.  I should have gone to the gym with a swim afterwards, but I didn’t.  I enjoyed the sketching and so the gym can wait for another day.

I imagine we’ll be busy all day tomorrow preparing the feast and it’s unlikely that the blog will be done on time, so Saturday may be catch-up day DV.

Deer, Deer, Deer – 15 March 2017

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Drove Scamp in to Falkirk this morning. Went to the bookshop, but didn’t see anything of note. Had lunch in Tea Jenny’s. Does everyone have to have a tattoo and/or piercings before they can work in this place? I’ve yet to see anyone male or female in this otherwise old-fashioned tea shop who doesn’t have inking or stapling of some sort in a prominent place. I began to feel quite inadequate and not properly dressed as I looked around.

Back home, the weather wasn’t too inviting looking, but I needed something for the 365, so I drove down to Auchinstarry and walked along the railway. I spotted a group of about five deer quite far away on a little rise and tried to get some shots of them, but I couldn’t get close enough and there was too little cover to hide my approach. I was so intent on the deer I didn’t notice a cock pheasant right in front of me and only grabbed one shot as it glided away into the bushes. At that, I gave up and headed home.

I’d spent half the afternoon tracking that group of deer and still hadn’t got a decent shot of them. Then, walking home three deer appeared from the undergrowth and proceeded to walk along in front of me! I got four or five shots before they decided I just might be a threat and ran off.

Salsa tonight was a bit of a let down. Jamie G should have had a beginners class and we were half intending to help out. Only three people, not couples, people turned up. I felt really sorry for him. I felt even sorrier for myself when I had to help out with an improvers class. Not a lot of fun. Our own class was good. Doing Malecon which is an old move we learned two or three years ago.

Scamp’s singing with Gems tomorrow afternoon, so I may slip the leash for a wee while!

Visitors – 14 March 2017

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So, what of today then?  Jackie was coming down from Skye to stay for a night before going to Embra tomorrow for a meeting, so the painting room/sewing room/back bedroom had to be cleared of extraneous junk, so that would take up most of my morning.

Got stuck in and was doing quite well until Hazy phoned and then I just had to talk to her, so the clearing up was put on the back burner for a short while, but only for a short while, then I decided to hang some of my recent paintings, so that meant some of the older ones had to be removed into storage, ie hidden behind painting board or anything else I could find.  After a few hours work with extra time for phone calls and gallery reconstruction, it was done.  Well, not so much done as there was now room for anyone to walk into the room, find the sofa bed and possibly, only possibly make it to the window without tripping over some essential piece of tech.  That’s when I found that the steam iron had still had some water in its reservoir when I put it down on my PC laptop which was sitting on my printer.  Now both had dripping pools of water.  Oh dear.  The main thing was it was a PC and therefore expendable.  If it had been the MBP it would have been a totally different matter and I wouldn’t have been sitting here typing this.  With the aid of a few cloths and some kitchen paper the disaster was averted – I think.  It still works, but the fan is making some strange noises now.  I’ll leave it to dry out properly before I investigate further.

After lunch which was soup from a Tesco recipe, good, but not great, I floated around waiting for decent weather to arrive and entice me out to St Mo’s to grab some photos. I did get a couple of shots of bluetits on the bird feeder, but they were little more than grab shots. There was a blustery wind and fleeting sun splashes with heavy rain showers in between. Finally, I decided to brave it and just go out into the wild weather and do it.  As you would expect with such blustery conditions, there wasn’t a lot to photograph.  Some ducks and swans on the pond and a couple of deer – too far away to be any use – there was little of interest.  I did get a shot of some trees against an interesting sunset sky, but that was it.  What I did do was a stupid thing.  I ran out of shots on the SD card, so had to delete some of yesterday’s frog pictures.  In doing that, I accidentally deleted the bluetit pictures from lunchtime.  Unfortunately the D7000 does not have and ‘undo’ function.  Thankfully when I got home I found a demo of a data retrieval prog – Diskdrill – that allowed me to retrieve the JPG versions of the shots and save them to disk.  You really need the full version of the app, not the demo, to do it properly, but I still managed it.  Thankfully because they were high resolution images I got some editing done.

Jackie and June arrived and we had Trinni stewed chicken and Scamp’s Pineapple Snow for pudding with chilli sauce.  Delicious again.

A good night after a wild day.  No plans for tomorrow.

Shoppin’ Photographin’ Swimmin’ Dancin’ – 13 March 2017

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Out in the morning to get ‘the messages’.  Met Fred by accident and discussed art and stuff in Tesco carpark, where else would you do it?

Back and had lunch.  While Gems assembled, I took the opportunity to grab my camera and get walk over to St Mo’s to see if I could get any more frog foties.  Still a lot of the wee amphibians busy making even more, but the star attraction today was the plethora of clay faces on the trees.  Much more than Friday and this time they were on traditional red clay.  Real imagination there.  I presume it’s two classes in competition.  Had to make a composite to get all the images in neatly.  As you will see, I startled a couple of ducks.  Mallards trying to find a nesting site.

Walked back and drove to Westerwood to have a swim.  No hoards today and no nosebleeds either.  Not a Manic Monday then, just folk swimming.

Dancing at STUC tonight, but for once there were too many men in the level 3 class we were helping with.  I made the decision after 20 minutes to sit out the rest of the class.  Our own class were doing Cubaa se <sic> eleven bars long (!) and a variety of rueda moves which will be easily forgotten, I hope.  Good fun.  Before class we went sourcing veg for tomorrow’s dinner.

Don’t have any plans for tomorrow, other than Jackie coming down for a couple of days.  Dinner in our house for the sisters.

A walk down The Green – 12 March 2017

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We decided, well I suggested, last night that we go for a walk down Glasgow Green today.  It fitted with the new regime of getting up that wee bit earlier, especially if we were to miss the hoards of ‘Billys’ and ‘Dans’ who would be heading for Celtic park for a local derby, AKA a punchup, because that’s what usually happens.  Actually, although Celtic park is close to Glasgow Green, I’d rather drive there than Ibrox which is the Rangers park.  Both Scamp and I know lots of short-cuts we can take to avoid most of the Parkhead traffic, but if Rangers are playing at home, the motorway becomes one big car park with all the maddies desperate to get there before anyone else.  I imagine living near Ibrox must be a nightmare, no matter which team you support.  I can just imagine all those cars parked everywhere.

So we drove through the green and white hoards to The Green and got parked without any problem.  Walked down to the McLennan Arch at the far end, then back along the side of the Clyde past the rowing clubhouse.  The high flats on the far side of the Clyde always impress me.  They seem to catch the light so well, especially in the winter and spring.  I took some pictures of them, but preferred the shot of the washing drying behind the perspex screens.  Lots of rowers out today and an unusually large number of ‘8s’ with the self-important looking coaches cycling along beside them shouting through tannoys.  Stood on the suspension bridge watching the coming and going of the different boats with their varying skill sets.  Then went up the hill to the People’s Palace.

Went for the usual lunch of Roll ’n’ Sausage for me and two rounds of Toast for Scamp.  My sausage was inedible.  That’s the first time that’s happened to me.  I think it must have been left over from New Year’s Day and had been ‘nuked’ in the microwave once a week since then to heat it up and kill of the bacteria.  I left it on the plate.  I value the few teeth I’ve got left and wasn’t going to risk damage to the expensive crowns.  Maybe I should have complained, but, like I said, this is the first time it’s happened, so I’ll cut them some slack.  Did a quick sketch of the inside of the Wintergarden.  It’s still got its emergency sheeting in place to prevent any further risk of falling glass panels.  I expect that sheeting will become a permanent feature, which is a shame, because it does detract from the look of the wrought iron trusses, but safety before beauty, I suppose.  I am quite pleased with the sketch because the perspective is fairly correct, but also I managed to include a couple of people, something I must practise.  Walked round the plants and took a few shots.  Smiled when I saw a wee girl with her wee sister and a point-n-shoot camera. Talking into it as if she was conducting an interview, finishing with “… and that’s it for this visit to Glasgow.  Handing you back to the BBC in London.”  Imagination.  That’s what it’s all about.  The camera wasn’t even switched on.

Came home and dumped my photos, then the sun came out.  It had been raining on and off all morning, but now the clouds had rolled away and the sun was coming out.  Scamp was ‘Tidying Up’ and I didn’t want to get involved in that, so I too the ‘Big Dog’ out to St Mo’s to see if there was anything interesting there.  Some coots building nests, but they were too far away to make anything of.  A cormorant, but it flew away.  No deer to be seen, but load of frogs.  Spent a wee while watching them, watching me.  I took some photos of some of them, but didn’t notice them photographing me.  Maybe they did and have posted them on FrogFlickr.  Maybe they’re writing in their blog about the BigBloke with the BigCamera who they saw today.  Who knows.  We are not alone in this world.  Might go back for some more photos tomorrow.

Dinner tonight should have been Tuna steak, but neither of us were impressed with it.  It just didn’t taste right, so we ditched it.  It looked so nice too.  Last time we’ll go to that fishmonger – it wasn’t even Tesco!

Hoping to go in to Salsa early tomorrow to get some ‘messages’.