Yet another wet day – 3 January 2024

Admittedly, the rain wasn’t constant. We did get some respite in the short dry spells.

There may have been dry spells, but there wasn’t much light to go with it. I know, I should be grateful for the fact that the rain wasn’t constant like it has been, but just a little bit of sunshine would help a lot to relieve the awful dullness. That’s the thing about January, it is terribly dull.

Scamp was out in the morning to visit Isobel. She had done something to her front door and couldn’t get it to lock, but the maintenance man was coming to fix it and Scamp went to have a blether with her while she waited. The door was easily fixed and the bloke showed Isobel what she was doing wrong. It’s sometimes the simplest things that trip us up.

While she was out I was fighting with the printer. I was working my way printing out the calendars and everything was going well until it suddenly failed to pick up the paper and reported a paper jam. The paper wasn’t jammed, it just couldn’t find it. I told it so umpteen times, but it just wouldn’t listen. Printers are so cantankerous and so pig headed they just refuse to accept that it’s THEIR fault, not ours. Eventually I got fed up arguing with it and turned it off. When I started it again, instead of loading a dozen sheets I only gave it six and asked it to print pages 1 to 6 inclusive. It did that. Good, it was seeing sense and behaving. Then I loaded another six sheets and it went on strike again. This time I read the riot act to it, warning it that I’d been looking in Amazon for a new, better behaved printer and if it didn’t mend its ways it was going in the skip. That finally got through its thick plastic skull and it printed off three lots without a whimper. After that I gave it a pat and allowed it the rest of the day off. I might return to the fray tomorrow.

After lunch I wandered round the house looking for things to photograph, but couldn’t find anything until after dinner I remembered the teasels that were drying out in the back bedroom. I don’t know if you’ve ever lifted a teasel, but if you do feel the need, wear thick leather gloves because those thorns on the stem are lethal. Anyway, after a fair few test shots of the jaggy seed pods, I took four shots of the teasels with the camera on a tripod and with the magic of Photoshop managed to get almost all of the apprentice porcupine in focus. Technically it’s called focus stacking, but you don’t need to know that, do you?

We watched the New Year Bakeoff, Hazy, and we enjoyed it. We had already watched the Christmas one. I think the New Year one was better. Also, Hazy, I opened the tin of coffee and made a cup of espresso with it. Very nice indeed, and no need to grind, either. Thank you both for that.

Oh yes, and on the subject of coffee, if the weather improves tomorrow we may go in to Glasgow, just for a walk and maybe a coffee and a cake.