Month: January 2019

Art Class – 21 January 2019

Posted on by Zogman

Followed by Music Class

Today I was encouraging Margie to draw a cube in two point perspective. Instead of me doing the drawing, Margie would be doing it while I watched her and gently pushed her back onto the right path when she strayed. I think it was a success because after three or four tries she was definitely getting the hang of it. After the class, she stayed for Scamp’s Music Class, but I didn’t.

I drove down to Cumbersheugh railway station and walk along the Luggie, upstream for a change. It’s a bit more interesting in that direction and not nearly as mucky. It was along that way I found today’s PoD. I think it’s a variety of Cladonea lichen, but I’m not sure what particular family it belongs to. I’m sure someone on Flickr will know, or at least have a good guess. It was cold and miserable, and I curtailed my walk and headed home.

Scamp and I have been dancing Salsa for about ten years and in that time have helped with a great number of beginners, some of whom have continued through the ranks and joined our advanced class, but I’ve never met anyone I knew outside the salsa circuit … until tonight.

The class were practising a couple of moves, old moves, but ones we’d partly forgotten when into the class came one of the teachers I used to work beside. She was in a different department, but our paths had crossed many times. Not such a strange thing to happen really. It was inevitable that, even in a place the size of Glasgow, I’d bump into someone I knew eventually. It still took me by surprise, and her too I imagine. If it had to happen, it couldn’t have been with a nicer person. If she enjoys the classes, we could even be dancing in the same group some day.

No plans for tomorrow, but I must start looking for a shirt for the Salsa Ceilidh on Friday.

A sew sew day – 20 January 2019

Posted on by Zogman

Woke this morning and we couldn’t decide whether to go out or not. Not won.

It was a late start and we thought we might go to Glasgow Green for a walk, but then Scamp reminded me that the people’s palace would probably be closed and the winter garden would definitely be closed, so there would be no chance of a Sunday roll ’n’ sausage and a cup of coffee. No point then. What I eventually did do was get the sewing machine out and repair the pocket in a pair of jeans. I’d repaired the twin of this pair back in December using Scamp’s method. I’d actually repaired this pair earlier last year, but made a real pigs ear of it, so last night I carefully ripped out all the stitches and today I was going to repair it using the Scamp method. It’s the most elegant and simple way to repair a pocket in a pair of jeans. I’m not going to describe it here, but maybe I’ll put it online some time (that means ‘never’). After a lot of huffing and puffing, a fair bit of talking to myself and just a smidgin of swearing, the job was done. One pair of jeans saved from the tip.

By the time I was finished, the sun was poking through the clouds as the weather fairies had predicted it would, so I grabbed my camera bag, put on my good boots and went for a walk in St Mo’s. I’d hoped to get some shots of the St Mo’s deer, but they weren’t to be seen today. Instead, PoD was the twisted hawthorn bush by the wee pond. I just love the shapes of the branches, but today I had extra help from the sun shining on the mossy trunk and the golden colours of the larches in the background. Didn’t see anything else worth photographing until I was nearly home. I turned round for some reason and saw the moon rising, the super ‘blood moon’. It did look quite big rising behind the pines. PoD was still the twisted hawthorn, but you can see the orange/peach supermoon here. I’ve just looked out the window and at 10.30pm it looks like a normal, if bright, ordinary moon. It will become a totally eclipsed moon some time around 3am, but I don’t think I’ll bother to get up for that.

Spoke to JIC tonight and found out what’s happening down south and was delighted to hear that they were suffering sub-zero temperatures while we were basking in 5ºc today. It’s now -0.1ºc here, so maybe they will be basking tonight.

Off to bed soon because I’m expecting to teach 2 point perspective to Margie tomorrow, or more correctly, get Margie to draw a 2 point perspective cube while I watch and correct her.

A day of calm – 19 January 2019

Posted on by Zogman

It’s been a busy week with every day being accounted for. Today we’d have a rest.

A lazy start to the day, re-reading the first of the Rivers of London series and beginning to put together the Peter Grant story from its early beginnings. After that we considered whether to have coffee at home or to go to Stirling as we’d intended and have lunch there. The ‘have lunch there’ option won. We drove to Stirling and walked in to town. Had coffee there and, as there was nothing else we wanted to do there, came back to Waitrose where Scamp started shopping and I went to bring the car round to the Waitrose car park where it would be easier to trolley the many bags into the boot.

In Tesco you have to choose your parking space carefully to be sure you can get back out again and hopefully not collect a few (more) scrapes from the ‘grannies’ who will cheerfully bang into you and then deny any knowledge of it. And by ‘Grannies’ I mean dummies of both sex. In Waitrose it’s totally different. Firstly there are much fewer spaces and people are so much nicer about it. “After you”, “No, after you”. I don’t abide by these rules. “After you.”, “Ok, thanks very much and I’m into the space you were eying up. No use giving me that glare, you were being polite, I was being proactive. If you’re not fast, you’re last. Parked and found Scamp in the shop then after paying we headed back to the car and stuffed the boot with ‘bags for life’.

We stopped on the way home to get some cheap beer (and lots of other things) in Lidl in Kilsyth. Then we were on the final homeward leg. Just before the railway arches I spotted the back end of a white car sticking up out of the trees on the left side of the road. It was almost sitting on top of a black car that’s been parked in the ditch two metres down from the road level for at least six months. There must be some enormous electromagnetic field in that ditch that simply drags cars in. Tomorrow there will be a ‘police aware’ warning on the white car and it will gradually be stripped of any and all removable parts over the next few months.

Basically, that was it for the day. Dinner was Buttered Chicken from the Spice Tailor range and now the kitchen is reeking of fenugreek. PoD is a view of the Wallace monument through the mist, taken from the outside of Waitrose.

Tomorrow, we’ve been spared the problem of excusing ourselves from a ballroom dance night, because it’s been re-scheduled, presumably because Michael has the flu. Don’t know what we’ll do instead.

Out even earlier – 18 January 2019

Posted on by Zogman

Why is it when I set the alarm on my phone to make sure I wake up on time, I don’t sleep for more than an hour at a time?

Up and out for 8.20 this morning to go to the docs for a blood test at 8.50. I needed that half hour to scrape the car and get the temperature up to a reasonable level where your breath doesn’t freeze instantly in front of your face. Then I had to drive through the hosts of parents driving their children to school to make sure their little feet and knee joints didn’t wear out prematurely.

Got parked and grabbed today’s PoD of the sun colouring the sky and clouds above Carbrain. A bit of a misnomer, because everyone in Cumbersheugh knows there isn’t a brain in Carbrain. I walked a bit further and watched two women being terrorised by marauding feral seagulls behind Boots the Chemist. Great beasts of things, they were and squawking like banshees and the seagulls were almost as bad. By the time I got to the doc’s, the sun had broken free of the horizon and was lighting up the sky properly. Another shot in the bag which might have beaten the first if it wasn’t for the ugly flat roofed Carbrian flats with windows and no doors. “Blots on the Landscape”, could have been the title. Did my Tony Hancock impersonation (if that makes no sense to you, Google ‘The Blood Donor’, a Hancock classic) and then headed home for breakfast which on this cold, clear morning would be porridge and a cup of Assam. The best central heating known to man.

Scamp was determined to renew our passports online since she heard that you could take your own photo and get it validated immediately. It’s a brilliant system and I’m still not sure if it is a really clever algorithm (the word of the moment, don’t you know?) or an actual human sitting there giving thumbs up or thumbs down. Possibly this will be the ultimate Turing Test some day. Anyway, the upshot of it was we passed the test and ordered our shiny new passports. Then we’d to send our old passports off to be cancelled or redacted or simply have their corners cut off. Again will it be by machine or will it be by a minimum wage human? Who knows. Just so you know, you have to actually post the passport off, you can’t simply stuff it into the USB port in the back or side of your computer. That’s a pity. It kind of goes against the digital ethos of renewing your passport online. That said, the whole thing is much better than take the photo, fill in the form, post the lot away, wait a week, get a refusal because Gort says the corner of your mouth is slightly upturned and you might, just might be starting to smile. DO IT AGAIN PROPERLY THIS TIME. Yes, this is a big step forward, even if we don’t know if Gort is human or android.

Drove to Blantyre to Carrigan’s and had dinner tonight with Margaret and Billy. Food was good and plentiful. My roast gammon had been sitting under the heat lamp for a few minutes more than I’d have liked, but it was more than made up for with the dessert. Total silence while four of us struggled with our Tablet Ice Cream. Astounding dessert. Totally unnecessary, but total gluttony!

Managed to find my way back on to the M74 only to find the M73 turnoff was closed tonight, but then I navigated my way off and over the M74 and back on to the M73 turnoff on the other side. That confused the satnav.

Tomorrow I believe we may be going to Stirling to Waitrose for food. Hopefully we won’t be getting up early and I’m not setting my alarm, so I should sleep less fitfully than last night.

Out early – 17 January 2019

Posted on by Zogman

Not very early, just after 10am, but much earlier than usual

Scamp was off to see Isobel for coffee at 10am and I was up and out a few minutes later. Just a walk over to St Mo’s to see if there was anything worth taking the camera out of the bag for. I’d put some beeswax on to my old Lafuma boots which are about twenty years old now. Not the best boots in the world, but they’ve a Goretex lining and they’ve a decent sole, so they’re better than my Clarks boots, just as long as I remember to wax them.

I was just walking towards the woods when I saw the three deer I was hoping to photograph, running away. Oh well, hopefully there will be other things to photograph. Despite the blue skies and the ice on the ponds, there was nothing that fired my interest and I was walking back home when I saw the opportunity to take another low level shot by resting the camera on some thin ice. It’s a view I couldn’t get any other way. The Nikon was out of the question. Too heavy and wrong lens selection. It had to be the Teazer today and it performed quite well. I’d cleaned it last week by using the Dyson to suck some of the dust from the lens. I hadn’t believed this would work, but it did. Best of the shots is above after a fair bit of work in ON1 2019 and Lightroom.

Got home just before Scamp and then we went out to recce tomorrow’s venue for dinner with Margaret and Billy. Their treat, their choice of restaurant. They’d chosen John Carrigan’s in Blantyre. Now I know where Blantyre is and I know how to get there, but just in case, I punched the postcode into the satnav and blindly followed it. It was a strange route that eventually took us within 100m of my Auntie Mary’s house. The last time I was there was easily 45 years ago, but I still remembered the geography of the place. Really strange seeing the changes that had taken place. Even stranger was when the satnav said “turn left then immediately turn right”. That’s when I saw a pub that I used to pass on my way to work 50 years ago!! It looked exactly the same and I don’t think it had been painted since. Despite the strange route, the satnav did bring us exactly to the restaurant. I decided to follow my nose to find our way back home rather than take the twisty turny road we’d come. My route took almost the same time, but was much easier.

Back home, there was just enough time for a cup of tea before I was out again to the doc’s. The doc hadn’t been happy with my last blood test and wanted another one now that a month had elapsed since the previous one. Unfortunately, just before it was my turn, he was called away on an emergency. I hate waiting for the doctor or the dentist but I dare say emergencies happen and must take priority. I was dealt with fairly quickly and then was ‘lucky’ enough to get an appointment tomorrow. So, after a busy day today, I’m off to the health centre tomorrow for a blood test at 8.50am no less!! I don’t usually surface until 10am! What are these medical people thinking, getting a pensioner up at that time of the morning?

Well, if I’m up that early, I might as well take my camera with me and hopefully get some early morning shots of those deer before they have fully woken up.

Back in the old routine – 16 January 2019

Posted on by Zogman

Back dancing again.

Down to Blackfriars again to begin year two of our ballroom and jive dancing. Thoroughly enjoyed it, even if I couldn’t remember Spin No 5 and then got the sequence wrong too! Waltz was good, not perfect, just good. Even Quickstep was recognisable as a dance. That’s the first class over and we survived it. More importantly, the dances survived it. Lots of folk there. Four couples which is an improvement in what we had before Christmas. I was beginning to wonder if the class would survive with so few people on the dance floor during the class.

Coffee and a discussion afterwards and Scamp agreed that we’d been ok. Room for improvement, but we hadn’t lost too much ground with our three week lay off. I tried to grab a shot outside the GOMA, but with the zoom on the Teazer at maximum and a shutter speed of 1/15th, it was doomed to failure. Luckily I’d taken a couple of shots of clouds banked over the cityscape earlier when we were leaving the car park. What you see above is the PoD which came from one of them. I’d half intended to go out early over to St Mo’s to get some ‘banker’ shots. I wish I had. Maybe tomorrow I’ll do that, because tomorrow will be a busy day too. Hopefully not as busy as today, but still busy enough.

Drove in to Glasgow tonight and for once, the 6.30 class had too many men, so Scamp got an extra half hour’s dance and to refresh her memory of Vacilala Con Paseo. In the 7.30 class we covered Estrella Complicada and the Rueda move, Bocadillo

Tomorrow, Scamp has a meeting with Isobel in the morning and I’ve got a meeting with the doc in the afternoon.

Adding up the numbers – 15 January 2019

Posted on by Zogman

Highlight of the day was a visit to Falkirk.

First things first. Before we went our exciting trip, I fixed a dodgy wire on the plug that supplied electricity to the light in the loft and that allowed me to clear out some more junk. As a result, we had a place to store the Christmas decorations and that’s what we did. The decorations are now in their storage area and the spare room is a lot tidier.

Time to get ready to meet Andrew, the FA. Nothing to do with Football or Associations. Everything to do with numbers. The numbers were good. Some tweaks had been made and were explained, graphs were demystified and the bottom line was a very acceptable number. Andrew threw in his usual deliberate mispronunciations, today best one was Angela Meerkat, thrown into a serious discussion of global finances in such a deadpan way that you wondered “Did he really say that?”. It’s just one of his eccentricities, that and his shirts. Today’s flamboyant example was covered in large wine coloured roses. His prediction that the pound would rise tonight after the vote for/against Theresa May’s Brexit bill no matter what the result, has just been proven correct. An astute man with a wicked sense of humour. Always worth listening to.

A quick visit to Morrisons for essentials, but no strawberries and churros today. Real essentials, for a change. Then it was home. The headlights came on as we left Morrisons and it was just before 3pm. It was a dull, drizzly day, but the clouds were thinning as the light was disappearing. I decided to drop Scamp off and go for a quick drive down to Broadwood Loch to grab a shot or two. As it turned out it was nine shots, and the best one was what you see above. I liked the ball sitting on the great expanse of dirty concrete under a gloomy sky. The curved railings are due to the shot being taken with the Samyang fish eye lens.

When I got back, there was a message on the phone from Pest Control at NLC to check if we still had a problem and I told him we did have last night.  He then set out the steps the council would take with the council houses one either side of us and said that we would be advised what repairs needed done to our house.  No date was given for the examination, but I think sooner rather than later given the MSP’s email.  We’ll see.

So, Theresa has lost the vote by the biggest majority in history. Will it make any difference to the price of fish? Maybe, but we’ve got enough fish in the freezer to see us through for a week or two. Interesting times ahead.

Tomorrow we may be dancing in the afternoon if Michael is fit. He texted Scamp to say he has the flu. My heart goes out to him.

A day that starts with a dentist visit – 14 January 2019

Posted on by Zogman

… Is a lost cause!

Well, not totally lost because I was out within about fifteen minutes, £33 lighter, but with a front tooth that was back in business. Drove home, solved the ‘Mild’ Sudoku and had a cup of coffee.

Then it was almost time to go for Gems, but first Scamp and I cleaned out the smelly fridge once more, but still it smells. Can’t work out where the smell is coming from. We’ve taken everything out, chucked out half of it, only put back stuff we both agree we’ll use. We washed all the jars before putting them back. Washed the shelves and today we washed the walls of the fridge just to be sure we were covering every base. Still it’s there. My only thought is that the drain at the bottom of the fridge is leaking into the insulation of the box itself and that’s where the smell is coming from. Tomorrow I may put some disinfectant down the drain hole.

Went out for a while in the early afternoon to get some photos while the sun was shining and Gems were singing. Got some interesting macro shots of a lichen I’d never heard of before. It was Dog Lichen (Peltigera canina) so called because the fruiting bodies resemble a dog’s teeth. You might be able to see why from the photo at the top. There wasn’t much else to see today so I wandered back home to make the dinner.

We were going early to Salsa tonight because Mhairi and Robert were going to a new beginners class at 6.30. Wow, what a big class. Scamp and I helped out as there weren’t enough leaders (as usual). Our own class was remarkably small again. Where have all the leaders gone, I wonder? We covered Akia (that’s how you spell it apparently), Erato, Titanic and just for fun at the end, Roulette, the Rueda move.

Heard our first little scuttling noise from the ceiling tonight when we got home. First one in about four nights, but still disappointing. Stared to keep a record so we can pursue the issue (and the rodents) further.

Tomorrow we go visit Andrew in Falkirk.

Will you? Won’t you? Will you? Won’t you? – 13 January 2019

Posted on by Zogman

Will you join the dance?
Today we were going to Mango for the first time in many years to go to a Sunday Social, at least that’s what the plan was last night, and tentatively this morning, but plans change sometimes.

It was a windy night last night and the wind continued this morning, giving us good reason, we thought, to stay in bed and read for an extra hour or so. Then we needed to formulate a plan for the the day.

I dug out some meat to make the stew for my dinner and a piece of salmon for Scamp’s. The sky was clearing, helped by the strong westerly wind and it looked like a bright, if cold day. The temperature was theoretically 12ºc, but given the wind chill factor, it was just creeping up to about 5ºc, but like I said, it was bright and that’s good enough to encourage me out to take some photos in the wide (and wild) world after yesterday’s desktop shot. I reckoned I had enough time to grab a few photos, look for my lost Manfrotto tripod screw down by the Luggie Water and get back in time to make my stew before we went out.

The photos were slow in coming. I got some macro shots of what I think are Cladonia, but I could be wrong and a few desultory landscape shots. It was only when I started processing them that I realised the dreary landscape shots had some serious PoD potential. It took a fair bit of work in Lightroom to get them working, but it was worth it, I think.

I did have enough time to make the stew and under Scamp’s careful teaching it was turning out well. Unfortunately I’d spent too long scouring the Luggie pathways for the now admittedly lost screw to allow enough time for the stew to cook before we were intending to go out. That’s when the “Will we? Won’t we?” questions started. Did we really want to go? Well, maybe. Did we actually know if the Sunday Social was on today? Well, maybe we could check? Eventually I did some research on Facebook and found out that categorically the Sunday Social was on today from 6pm until 9pm. Now it was back to the first question, “Did we want to go?” I made the decision, yes, let’s go and check out this alternative and regular venue for dancing at a time we would be happy to attend. We are both glad we did!

Got parked just off the building site that is Sauchiehall Street and walked round the corner to Mango. Got there about 6.15 and found that there were people already on the dance floor, which is a good sign. It was looking good. We joined in and danced for an hour and a half almost no-stop. Met old friends we hadn’t seen for years and new friends we see every week at class. It’s now going to be on our calendar for the foreseeable future.

Came home and heated the stew, cooked the salmon and the veg and shared a bottle of wine. Spoke to JIC on the phone and the world seemed brighter than it had for weeks, at least for me it did.

Will we? Yes, we will.

Tomorrow it’s the dentist for me in the morning. Oh what fun.

The dug’s away tae Hamilton – 12 January 2019

Posted on by Zogman

Tae buy the wean a bell.

It was a dull morning, but it didn’t matter.  We were off to Hamilton.  Not “Tae buy the wean a bell”, but to have a curry in the Bombay Cottage.  We hadn’t been there for years and then my brother mentioned that he and his wife were going there and we decided we’d try it again to see if it still retained its former high place in our memory.  It did, and it still does.  Surprisingly, even after twenty odd years some of the original staff are still there!

After that, we were driving home when I suggested we go for a coffee at Robroyston, and that’s what we did.  Two flat whites and two pieces of sweet stuff, because it was the weekend.  When we were driving home from there I could see the light on the hills starting to shape up nicely, but knew that if I chased it, I’d be too late.  Sometimes it’s better just to watch it than try to capture something that doesn’t represent it at all.

Back home, Scamp started to tidy out the “Towel Cupboard”,  although it holds more electronic bits and pieces now than towels.  That’s where we found the film canister with some processed slide film.  Three short 12 exposure strips which I’ve now scanned and stored in Lightroom.  Lots of memories.  Some of places that are no longer there.  Some of people who are no longer there.  Some of people who’ve grown up.  All of them interesting to us.  Glad I found them.  One of the images found its way into today’s PoD, along with the film strips and an old Zenit 12 SLR.  Quite a lot of work creating the finished image, but I won’t bore you with the details.

I used the small Manfrotto tripod to shoot the basic shot.  I had to make myself a new tripod screw because I lost the last one during the week down the Luggie Water.  Tonight’s was made from a 1/4″ Whitworth bolt and a small piece of a brush handle.  Quite proud of my work!

Tonight’s entertainment was “Sing” from Netflix, because there was nothing else worth watching on terrestrial TV.  What a find it was.  Just a bit of fluff, really but the animation was quite excellent, much better than some of  the crap that was on over Christmas.  Really enjoyed the music too.  It’s not often we both laugh out loud at something on TV, but we did tonight!

Tomorrow if the weather is bad (and it’s forecast to be) we are booked to tidy out the entire “Towel Cupboard”.  That will be a difficult one.