Month: January 2023

Got a little bit of sunshine today – 11 January 2023

Posted on by Zogman

Scamp was off to Costa this morning to meet up with Isobel. June had a problem to sort, so she called off. I stayed home and did more tidying up of the back bedroom.

Actually I spent a lot of the morning poring over other folk’s photos on Flickr. I also read my blog post for 10th January 2022 and found great similarities with my thoughts on 11th January 2023, namely that the weather was awful and it was getting harder and harder to find a picture every day that would deserve the name of PoD. Then I glanced out the window and it was raining. There’s the reason. When the weather is so persistently bad, it’s difficult to find the incentive to get up of the sofa, get dressed for winter and head out into the cold to take some photos that look so dull they could be monochrome. What is the point? Then, five minutes later, the sun shines and lights up a patch on the hills and I just want to go out and capture it. A 365 isn’t an easy thing to do, but it does force me to get out of the house and find something interesting.

When Scamp came back we had lunch and then I took a big blue IKEA bag filled with broken or obsolete electrical stuff out to the council skips. As the light was still holding up, I drove up to Fannyside and parked in my usual spot in the shelter of the big Scots Pines. Then I walked down the road to see if I could get a close up view of the old ruined farm. Walking down the path I spotted a couple of sheep, sheltering from the cold west wind. I managed two shots of them before they headed off. That photo was to be PoD. I didn’t know that then, of course, so I carried on until I was nearly at the farm, but I couldn’t find a path to take me closer and to be honest, although it was bright and sunny, that cutting wind was making me think of a nice warm car, rather than a mucky tractor path to a ruined farmhouse. Maybe another day. That’s what I told a solo sheep that had come to interrogate me. I bade it goodbye and walked back to the car and drove home via Tesco.

Scamp was feeling a lot better today, but was still not completely free of whatever had upset her stomach, so she asked me to pick up some Kefir milk or yoghurt at Tesco. I also needed tomatoes for Friday’s starter. Last, but not least, we had no plain gin. Yes, we had raspberry gin, but no honest to goodness plain gin. That in itself needed remedying! Got the essentials and also filled up the tank of the blue car

Dinner tonight was Prawn and Pea Risotto. I’ve not had the courage yet to try the Magic Pot for risotto, so this one was hand made in a normal pot on the stove and it turned out fine.

Tomorrow looks a bit like today. If I’m going to get a decent PoD, I’ll have to be up and out early. That’s unlikely to happen, but we’ll see what transpires. Hoping to go dancing in the afternoon.

Wet! – 10 January 2023

Posted on by Zogman

It was raining when I went to make breakfast and it’s still raining tonight. It hasn’t stopped!

Scamp was feeling better this morning. Sometimes a bit dizzy, but not nearly as bad as yesterday. As the day progressed and it looked like we wouldn’t have been going anywhere anyway because of the weather we settled down to regroup and relax.

Lunch was scrambled eggs for Scamp which I messed up the first time. “How can you mess up scrambled eggs?” I hear you ask? I mean, the word ‘Scrambled’ in the name describes it perfectly. My excuse is that I added water to the eggs before I beat them, it should have been milk. Scamp corrected me and watched over me as I made this culinary delight, especially delightful if you’ve a dodgy stomach. I had the much more rustic piece ’n’ square sausage cooked medium rare, just the way I like it.

After lunch and after being assured that she was fighting fit, Scamp started the ironing and I parcelled up Hazy’s calendar then drove up to Tesco to post it. Drove back home in torrential rain again and not long after that, Hazy herself phoned. She’d read the blog and wanted to know how the patient was. I think she was relieved to hear the Scamp was feeling a lot better. We talked for a while about holidays to come and problems with planes, Neil’s surgery, which seems to be healing well and also cats with heart problems. All in all we covered a fair bit of ground.

Dinner was just a plate of the tomato soup we’d put in the freezer last week. It was ideal for today. Easy to thaw out and reheat, and gentle on the stomach. I do think that soup brightened the invalid up, because she was back to her old self after that.

I still hadn’t a photo of the day and it was a tube of Rowntrees Pastilles that gave me the idea, that and a torch I’d been playing with all afternoon. It’s a set of traffic lights made with the new Rowantrees Illuminated Pastilles which missed the Christmas shelves due to the train strike or the postal strike or any other strike you care to mention. It doesn’t matter, they’re fictitious anyway!

Tomorrow, Scamp is going for coffee with Isobel and June. I’m sure I could come too, but not when there are three women all talking at the same time. I don’t think I’d fit in, nor would I be able to get a word in. Anyway I have work to do at home that will keep me occupied for an hour or so. If possible I’d like a dry half hour some time before the sun sets.

Out to Lunch – 9 January 2023

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Today Scamp was out to lunch with an old friend she used to work with. I wasn’t invited.

It was a dull morning with rain. Not much to recommend it and because it was Monday, nobody seemed to want to move from the car park at the house.

Since Scamp was driving to Calders I thought it might be a good idea to change the windscreen wiper blades. I’d had two new blades sitting in the boot of the car since before Christmas and they weren’t going to be keeping the windscreen clear if they were languishing there. Five minutes later they were on and were keeping the screen much clearer than before. Scamp drove off about fifteen minutes later in a downpour.

Left to my own devices, I started another clean up of my room. It didn’t last long. I chucked out a couple of magazines and ditched two exhausted basil plants. The plants went into the compost bin and the pots went into storage in the wee greenhouse. The greenhouse was a mess. Inside the walls were running with condensation and all the plants that had been put in there before the snow and ice came were well and truly dead now. One of the problems with wee plastic greenhouses is that there is no air circulation. I think the greenhouse will need a good hose down, inside and out, on the first dry day – if such a day ever comes.

I went for a walk in St Mo’s later to get some photos. I wasn’t very hopeful, but I did come home with some interesting macro shots of a clump of Cladonia lichen I’d never seen before. The PoD was a photo of a Knapweed seed head, looking like it was covered in little spiders. Actually they are the seeds themselves.

When Scamp came home I started to make some soup in the Magic Pot. Just a variety of “Just Soup”. A mixture of veg with some lentils and a couple of Stock Pots to add some flavour. Ten minutes cooking time and there was a pot of soup. That was dinner sorted.

An hour or so after dinner Scamp began to feel a bit unwell. Feeling sick, and then actually being sick. We both immediately blamed the soup, although I didn’t seem to be affected. Even after she’d been sick, she wasn’t much better, feeling light headed and just not right. She went to lie down for a while and although that helped, she still felt queasy when she got up, so decided she’d have an early night. She and Denise had had sandwiches at Calders, Scamp’s being Tuna. I just wondered about what Jamie always said about not trusting mayonnaise in cafes and restaurants. Maybe that was the culprit and not the soup. Time scale was about right, at 7 hours. Maybe …

I decided I too would have an early night, so this is a catch-up. Scamp is feeling better this morning and is going to risk scrambled egg and toast. The soup went down the toilet this morning.

Today we’re having a lazy morning and probably a lazy day. It’s raining!

What!! No Coffee!!! – 8 January 2023

Posted on by Zogman

The orange warning light was flashing on the coffee maker this morning, indicating that its innards needed cleaning and I had no cleaning solution. Oh my! What would I do without coffee?

Well, the answer, of course was to look on Amazon. Ah the relief, they had the descaled, but it wouldn’t be delivered until TUESDAY!!! That would be three days before I’d get my 11am fix. What other options were there. Thankfully JL came to the rescue. John Lewis had them in stock and actually cheaper than Amazon too, so I could get them today. We just dropped everything, jumped in the car and drove to Glasgow where I picked up the life saving liquid. Scamp was looking for tops to go with skirts, but I had the important stuff paid for and in my bag. We’d nothing else to go for today, so we just drove home.

After lunch I started the long winded cleaning routine. It takes a good half hour to descale the boiler of the De Longhi 685 and then another fifteen minutes to wash it out. Life is tough when you’re a home barista.

While I was engaged in this delicate operation, Scamp was out pruning the roses and tidying up the plants in the back garden. She came in to tell me she’d found a Snowdrop, the first one of the winter, and a sign that spring wasn’t too far off. The flower was growing in a rose pot, surrounded by vicious looking thorns, so I was extra careful getting its photo, but I did get it, more than once. We compared the photos I’d taken and Scamp chose her favourite. She’s becoming really good at spotting the good shots and sidelining the poorer ones. I think she chose the best one to be PoD and I started work on it.

She was almost finished when I thought I’d broaden my photographic horizons and went over to St Mo’s to see if I could capture some of the reflections of the setting sun from the boardwalk. I managed a good dozen shots of various formats and angles and then quite suddenly, the light was gone. It was like the sunsets you get in much warmer places, when the sun sets and fifteen minutes later it’s almost dark. It’s not something you find very often in more temperate zones. It didn’t matter all that much, because I was on my way home by then.

Dinner was Chicken Milanese (battered flat and dipped in breadcrumbs before being pan fried) with a baked potato each. Beautiful. It was followed by coffee from the sparkling clean and descaled coffee maker. I’d say the coffee was better than normal, but it was probably something to do with the extra glug of Kahlua that went into each cup.

Spoke to Jamie later and heard that he’s got ‘Mallet Finger’. I was telling him that my pal, Fred has ‘Hammer Thumb’ which sounds similar and that I get a less painful version of that. Then the strangest thing happened, my thumb (always my left thumb) went into spasm and folded across my palm and refused to come back out. How strange is that.

Tomorrow Scamp is out in the morning for coffee with one of her, recently retired, work colleagues. I’m tidying up the living room table of all the calendar junk that’s been living on it for the past month. If it’s dry I may go and take some photos in St Mo’s.

Not the best day – 7 January 2023

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“Disappointment lurks” as Neil Young sang.

Flushed with our recent success we had a short list of three cruises we wanted information on, so Scamp phoned P&O to find out the situation with flights before we made a final decision. After a bit of a wait, she was told that there were no more flights available from Glasgow or Edinburgh, in fact there were none available from Scotland. However, she could offer us a flight, not with their usual Jet2 provider, at £490 EACH! She did seem surprised when Scamp said a decisive “No thank you”, but was quickly back on the script when she asked how we’d like to be contacted by P&O in the future. I’m glad it was Scamp who was speaking to her, because I’d have given her the standard ‘two word answer’. The second word is “Off”. Almost £1000 for the flights alone.

That put a damper on the day, but after lunch we went for a walk to the shops to get something for tonight’s dinner that actually turned out to be tomorrow’s dinner. It was quite pleasant walking down to the shops with the warm coloured sunlight glancing across the trees. After we walked back, I took the camera for another walk round St Mo’s, but although I got a lovely sky shot, there was nothing else in the tank.

The reason that tonight’s dinner became tomorrow’s dinner was because, after some discussion, tonight’s dinner became a Golden Bowl standard. Chicken Chop Suey with Fried Rice for Scamp and Special Chow Mein for me.

After dinner, I still had to find a Picture of the Day. I’d seen a bloke in Flickr doing some interesting monochrome shots of dried leaves and when I found our poinsettia had lost another two leaves I decided a photo of the one remaining desiccated leaf would fit the bill. Instead of reducing it to mono, I kept and enhanced the magenta colour of the leaf, photographed against a black neoprene background. It worked very nicely, and I had a PoD!

Tomorrow looks like a good day, maybe even better than today. We’ll see if the weather fairies are correct.

At last, a walk in the sunshine – 6 January 2023

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Today we managed to go for a walk. It was cold, but it didn’t rain.

We drove to Drumpellier and went for a walk through the woods. Lots of folk out doing just the same thing, although to be honest most of the folk were doing circuits of the pond. Not our idea of fun, now that we’ve discovered the variety of paths through the woodland. Some are official paths, but there are a lot more that are just paths trodden by walking feet and although many are mucky and slippery, they are more interesting than the official paths.

I took a few photos in the woodland, but the best by far was just where we were parked. It was the Whale’s Tail with two gulls landing and one just taking off. Another two gulls were taxiing before take off. The low sun you get at this time of year helped add a bit of contrast to the scene. The finished shot was almost as it came out of the camera.

We need a large wall calendar for the kitchen and when we left Drumpellier we drove to The Fort to see if we could find one. But we came home empty handed. I’ve an idea where we might find one tomorrow.

Back home I was trying to work out how to use mail merging in MS Word to create a Word document from an Excel sheet. I’d already tried to do the same thing on Pages in the Mac, but it’s really just a toy. Very little practical use. I’m still trying to do it and it still evades me. I know I used to do it regularly in school, but then I was using a PC every day. Macs in general aren’t used for this sort of thing. I found the Avery app really useful for it last year, but that facility is no longer in the app or is so deeply buried that it would take me too long to find it. I’ll keep looking, it’s in there somewhere.

Scamp was ploughing through the holiday companies on the computer looking for somewhere warm for February. After a fair bit of searching and evaluating, I think we can say that we may be going to somewhere warm for a week, all being well. Still nothing booked for the summer, but we have a few possibilities that just need some things confirmed before we make a final decision.

Dinner tonight was a half a pizza each. Actually it was more like two thirds for me and just a third for Scamp. It was washed down with a nice glass of red. Dessert was Scottish Tablet Ice Cream!

Tonight looks wet, but tomorrow, for the most part may remain dry during daylight hours. That’s the best you can ask for. It was good to be out in the sunshine today somewhere that isn’t Cumbersheugh!

What a delightful day – 5 January 2023

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Yes, that was sarcasm!

Dry early in the morning, but after that the rain came and forgot to leave. Also the rain slid in quite quietly, but got stronger and heavier as the day progressed.

I suggested that we go to The Bothy near Stirling for lunch and Scamp readily agreed. It’s a nice wee cafe/restaurant at the foot of the Ochil Hills. We’d been there before and I had great memories of the Sri Lankan Lamb Curry. Maybe I’d have something different this time.

The place was busy when we arrived and they were handing out buzzers which isn’t really a good sign. We were told a wait time of about fifteen minutes. Half an hour later our buzzer buzzed and we were shown to our table for two. A quick glance at the menu while Scamp was looking for her glasses confirmed my choice. There it was on the menu Sri Lankan Lamb Curry. My day was going to be fine and hang the bad weather. Scamp chose Mac ’n’ Cheese, her second favourite on the menu. We weren’t disappointed.

After our I grabbed a few photos of the Ochils with the rain clouds misting them and a massive flock of geese in the field at the bottom. A panorama made in Lightroom from three of the frames got PoD. I had another try at photo of the Wallace Monument without the irritating electricity lines catching the eye, but it didn’t work, so I went with the geese on the grass at the foot of the hills. Then it was time to drive through Stirling because Scamp wanted to visit Dobbies. However, the shop was doing its Twelfth Night changeover from Christmas to Valentine’s Day, so it was, in a word, shambolic. We drove home.

For a three cylinder car the Micra fought its way through torrential rain and standing water to get us home safely and in good time. We stopped off at Tesco for a bunch of flowers for Scamp (it was Thursday, remember) and to see if the rum tanker had made it through. Flowers were bought, but no sign of the rum yet.

We watched the first episode of The Apprentice tonight, but it was more of an advert for Antigua than the usual contest, but the usual n-hopers were there and one of them got fired.

It’s a windy night tonight, but it might be a dry afternoon tomorrow.

Another day Another walk – 4 January 2023

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A slightly different start to today’s walk, but basically the same route. There are limited variations in this area.

The day started with the usual struggle with Wordle and Spelling Bee, but they weren’t all that difficult today. Just before lunch I got a message from Alex to say that the family were almost all down with what sounded like a Norovirus variant, so we wouldn’t be going for a photo walk this week. Hopefully they will be over it by next week.

After lunch we went for that walk round part of Broadwood Loch and then up the path beside the exercise machines. Then it was back through the underpasses and on the path to home. While Scamp walked home, I went for a circuit of St Mo’s. Instead of the usual circuit I went up through the woods behind the main pond and got some photos of the smaller manmade pond near the motorway. I could see streaks of blue sky through the clouds and waited for a while to see if those streaks would get bigger, but I was disappointed. They just faded away as the sun started to drop to the horizon. I walked straight back to the path through a shallow bog. I am sure I lost the lens hood from the Samsung 18mm lens in that bog in the spring and I was hoping I might catch a glimpse of it in among the grasses, but again I was disappointed. I trudged home thankful for good boots and dry feet. The boots aren’t too clever on ice and slippery leaves, but are (touch wood) waterproof and comfortable giving a good grip on dry ground.

Today was the day we’d agreed to take down the tree.  No matter how careful you are with taking all the ornaments off first,  there’s always one more you find.  Also there are always one or two decorations left on the wall and you don’t notice them until the rest are packed away.  The place always looks really bare once the decorations are packed away and the tree is also in its old cardboard box that Scamp says is more parcel tape than cardboard now.  However a bunch of flowers in a vase will add some colour again.

Dinner tonight was the remainder of the fish pie from yesterday for Scamp and a piece of bacon joint for me. Using up stuff that was near its ‘best before’ date made good sense after the excesses of the last couple of weeks.

Just before 9pm someone knocked the door and there was a bloke with a big parcel that wasn’t due to arrive until tomorrow. It’s been on the road for about a week now and was a bit battered, but secure and everything inside was intact. Prezzies for Scamp, June and me from Hazy and Neil. Scamp got a pair of fancy earrings and a pair of cleverly up-cycled gloves. Mine was a book I was considering buying and a badge with ‘bad words’ on it that brought a smile to my face. My Bergy jacket was getting washed and I’d worn my old, and I mean OLD Bergy today. It has a badge on it and that badge also has ‘bad words’ on it. Needless to say it came from Hazy and Neil, but I think Hazy was the prime mover there. We got a box of high octane boozy chocolates to share. My Mojito had a fair kick to it! I can’t remember what Scamp got, but she could walk after it!

PoD was a shot of a branch with two pine cones on it, sitting on a mossy stone. It was taken in the woods at St Mo’s. 11,359 steps today!! First time I’ve broken the 10,000 this year.

Tomorrow we may be going to a garden centre, it being Thursday. We may have a spot of lunch too.

Dull and Wet – 3 January 2023

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Yesterday was cold, today was just miserable.

Dull and wet. That sums up today. After our counter-clockwise walk yesterday, neither of us really wanted to go much past the door today. However, to prevent us starving we did have to drive to Tesco to get the bare essentials. The ‘Bare’ essentials means No Alcohol. New Year is past and Christmas is only a vague memory, so that means back to working week abstinence. I can’t say I’m delighted, but it does make sense.

I swear there was more water on the inside of the car windscreen than on the outside. Apparently it’s because modern cars are so well sealed that the water we give off in our breath and sweat condenses on the cold glass and that’s what causes wet windscreens inside the car. I’m not so sure I believe that, but if it’s true someone must live in the headlight housing of the car, because it mists up too, quite often. Thankfully Nissan has installed a heavy duty blower to get rid of the last remnants of moisture once we’ve wiped up the worst of the water and it was used with a vengeance today.

After lunch and in the rain, I went out into the garden wearing a raincoat to keep me dry and with a towel wrapped round the A7iii to keep it dry and I snapped a few photos in the back garden. My favourite subject is the hanging basket at the back door. It’s falling apart and covered in moss, but there are always a wide variety of leaves and almost dead strawberry plants to photograph in it. It created the PoD although it was an untidy looking subject.

Early in the evening a mist descended, and looked like it might be quite photogenic, but by then it was far too dark for even the most intrepid photographer to venture down the dark lanes of Cumbersheugh and that includes me. Instead, Scamp and I made a Salmon and Prawn Pie in a Pan. Of course, Scamp did most of the work and I just helped chop some tomatoes, but those tomatoes allowed me to claim my share of the glory if it worked. It did work. Lovely crunchy Filo pastry, slices of salmon and juicy tomatoes with some couscous to soak up the juices. Jamie Oliver isn’t as stupid as he looks! We may try some more recipes from his vastly overpriced book.

Entertainment on the TV was Paddington 2 which was a delight. That’s our kind of film, I think. No complicated plot lines to follow and everything turns out fine in the end. I hope I’m not spoiling the film by giving away the ending! If I am, just ignore this paragraph.

Tomorrow looks a bit drier than today, not that that would be difficult. We may go out for a walk if it is.

A walk in the cold – 2 January 2023

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It was a bit cool this morning. We were definitely in the sub zero realm.

It was a good morning for a walk, so we got booted up and went for a walk. It was not only cold, but frosty and just a wee bit slippery. I stuck to wearing boots, but Scamp wore her Yaktrax for that extra bit of security. We walked round the machines in a counter-clockwise direction! That’s the opposite direction to our normal walk. It was a bit worrying for a while, but once we calmed down the unusual walk was quite enjoyable.

I got a few photos, but nothing really worthwhile, so while Scamp walked home, I went for a circuit of St Mo’s and got a few more photos. My favourite, and PoD was a view looking down through the trees to the boardwalk. I know I’ve taken it before, but it just looked so pretty!

Later, after dinner, we had a free and frank discussion that led to the creation of a toilet calendar. It’s not really a calendar because it doesn’t have any dates in it. It doesn’t have cherries or apples in it either. It’s just twelve photos, six from each of us and each with a month. If I get it printed off, it will hang in the downstairs toilet. If you hang it in the toilet, everyone who comes into the house gets a chance to see it.

It was a very cold day today, but hopefully it will thaw a bit tomorrow, but it looks like we’ll be getting a lot of rain tomorrow, so probably not a walk, clockwise or otherwise.