Month: June 2024

Back to Dancin’ on a Thursday – 20 June 2024

Posted on by Zogman

After a few missed Tea Dances and a few cancelled ones, we were back to the ‘normal’ grid for this week at least.

A lazy morning (again) and then the time seemed to disappear and suddenly it was time to get changed to go to Glenburn. The weather wasn’t anywhere as good as yesterday’s blue skies. Milky white seemed to be the sky’s choice today.

A fairly easy drive to Paisley for a change and after a dodgy first waltz, we got back in a groove. Not a great one, but I didn’t make too many mistakes. Actually, that was the story of today’s tea dance. Not perfect, but we danced almost every dance that came up. After tea, the teachers decided to introduce a lesson on a new jive routine. I think that is only the second time they’ve included a lesson in a tea dance program. This one was fine when we were walking through it, but when the music started it was a different story … and that was a fairly sedate jive track. We imagine the dance will be reprised on Saturday for those who weren’t at Perth last weekend and weren’t at the tea dance today. A real jive sequence dance!

The drive home was just as easy as the drive to Glenburn and when we got home I went for a walk in St Mo’s to see what was there to photograph. The milky skies of the morning had given way to blue skies and sunshine and although there wasn’t very much to photograph, the wildflowers were all looking good. A photo of a grass flower got PoD, mainly for the detail in the seedhead. Who knew that grass had flowers?!

Giovanni Rana potato Gnocchi with spinach and mozzarella filling was dinner tonight. I wasn’t greatly taken with it, but Scamp was. I felt the filling was a bit dry. I’m sure we’ll try it again maybe with a sauce the next time. It was different, that we agreed on.

No real plans for tomorrow. It all depends on the weather.

Doon the Canal – 19 June 2024

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This morning, Scamp was out for coffee with Isobel while I stayed home and finished my book.

The book is Edge of The Grave by Robbie Morrison. A story based in 1932 Glasgow. If you’re thinking it might be interesting, my recommendation would be to ignore it, and go straight to the second book in the series, Cast a Cold Eye, a much better read. I’ll write a review of EoTG on Goodreads soon, but don’t expect it to get five stars.

When Scamp returned from Costa, and after we had lunch, Scamp suggested we go for a walk. I agreed and chose Auchinstarry as the destination.

We got parked quite easily for a change at Auchinstarry, it’s usually a full house in the afternoon with folk parking there and walking or cycling along the canal. It was a very pleasant walk along the Forth & Clyde Canal, with around 25 photos taken. Favourite and PoD went to a landscape view across the valley to the Campsie Fells under a blue sky and for once I didn’t have to fake the sky!!

We turned at Twechar and walked back along the old mineral line, but about half a mile from the car, Scamp was complaining about cramp in her foot and I was constantly shifting my camera bag to a different part of my shoulder to ease the ache that had appeared. I think we were both happy to get a seat on the wall at Auchinstarry Quarry. Just five minutes made all the difference. Then we drove home and sat in the garden for a while to enjoy the sun. Scamp with a Pimms and me with a glass of beer.

Highlight of the day was watching a cow on the far bank of the Forth & Clyde Canal munching its way through the lush vegetation at the water’s edge.  It stopped for a while to stare at us and it reminded me of a poem:

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

Leisure by William Henry Davies.

Our own dinner tonight was a re-heated veg chilli and it had increased in heat since it had been put in the freezer a month or so ago.

Watched the second of Scotland’s matches in the Euros and decided that they almost deserved the 1 – 1 draw, but towards the end they were looking ragged. This is the opinion of two people who have only been to one football game in their lives!

Hazy, the Captain’s Grog was even better than Boozy Gladys. You can really taste the rum in the beans. Two very good choices!! Thank you.

Tomorrow is a Tea Dance day. Hopefully I’ll be able to remember which is my left and which is my right foot!

A deteriorating day – 18 June 2024

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The morning promised so much with blue skies and fluffy white clouds, but then then it started to cloud over and the promise of the morning was gone.

It didn’t stop us from getting out in the garden and doing a bit of pruning of anything that looked as if it was struggling, straggling or had lost all its flower petals. Scamp did the low roses and I did the high up ones. I think we do need to more brutal with the pruning of the roses this autumn to try to force more growth from the lower branches. The flowers at the top of the rambling rose are almost reaching the upstairs windows.

There was some rearranging to be done too, especially on the Compte de Chambord. It was growing lop sided in its pot, with most of the buds facing a wall. I volunteered to pull it out of its place and turn it around so the rose buds got the benefit of the sunshine. It has the sharpest and shortest thorns in any rose I’ve seen. Some stems are completely covered in them.

In the afternoon, Scamp was about to head down to the shops when the rain started. It was a wise decision on her part to wait for the rain to go off, because it just seemed to get heavier and heavier for a couple of hours and then the rain clouds blew away and all was well again. Scamp got her walk to the shops and just after she returned, I went for a walk in the park. While we’d been pruning in the late morning, I grabbed some photos of the peony rose, Karl Rosenfield. It has only produced one flower this, its first year. Apparently that is quite common on Peonys and we’re hoping for more next year, all being well. Karl Rosenfield got PoD, but I got a couple of shots in St Mo’s, mainly wildflowers sprinkled with raindrops. Some are on Flickr.  Glad we did both go out for a walk, because later the rain returned.

We didn’t do much more today. I think the rain curtailed a lot of things. I messed around with the new version of ON 1 2024. It’s OK, but that’s all. Nothing like as good as the rave reviews the company were throwing around for the last couple of weeks. It’s really clumsy compared to Lightroom or Capture One. The only thing I use it for now its the excellent resizing app and its really fast denoising ability.

Hope you’re settling down now Hazy and hoping for a good resolution of the problems. BTW, Boozy Gladys was very, very nice. Lovely flavour. Tomorrow I’m intending to test Captain’s Grog!

 

Dentist – 17 June 2024

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Not for me, thankfully. It was for Scamp this time.

The nagging ache from the crown she had fitted a few weeks ago was keeping her awake at night, so this morning she phoned the dentist and got an appointment for 9:45 today. It didn’t take the dentist long to examine the tooth, but she explained that she couldn’t do anything other than look because her dentist chair had developed a fault and she was waiting for the engineer to arrive to fix it. She did say that it could be an infection and gave her a prescription for antibiotics.

We drove over to the chemist at Tesco and did our usual Monday shopping while we waited for the prescription to be filled. Back home with the messages, she took the first of four-a-day tablets and we had lunch.

One Thursday a couple of weeks ago Scamp got a box of solar powered lights, fifty of them. After lunch I was given the job of hanging them on the tall fence. Fifty seems an awful lot of lights, but it didn’t take long to clip them on to the fence and check that they worked. While I was doing that, Scamp was dead-heading the roses and pruning some of the plants in the back garden.

I’d no idea what I was going to photograph today, other than I wanted to use one of my less used lenses, an ultra-wide lens that gets some wonderful effects. Scamp was looking a bit down after getting the garden licked into shape again, so I suggested we drive somewhere for a walk. That seemed to brighten her up, so that’s what we did.

We drove over to Grangemouth and into Klondyke garden centre. The smile on her face when she saw all those flowers told me it was the right decision. We wandered round the roses and the flowers, before we settled on the Bargain Bench where we picked up a Foxglove and a Candelabra Primula for a fiver each. They’re a bit battered and bruised, but with Scamp’s green fingers they will come on a treat. She also got herself a couple of semi-circular metal plant supports that she has been looking for.

We stopped at the Kelpies on the way back and went for a walk round the Big Horses with a few hundred other folk. That gave me an ideal opportunity to use the ultra-wide lens to great effect. My favourite shot got PoD. I’d also picked up an ‘Explore’ award in Flickr this morning for the photo of the reflections of boats on the Water of Leith on Saturday.

The only down side to the day was driving home through the traffic jam that is the M876/M80 on the road home. I’d hate to have to drive those roads every day going and returning from work. Even when I was working, I was only fifteen minutes from my workplace.

Scamp said tonight that she thinks the meds are working. I hope they are and that she gets a good night’s sleep.

Tomorrow we may go out again if the weather fairies are correct and the skies are blue.

Fathers Day – 16 June 2024

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I remember complaining to my mum and dad that there were Fathers days and Mothers days, but when were the wee boy’s days. The answer came from both of them “Every day is wee boy’s day!” Funny how you remember these things.

Today Scamp was making breakfast in bed for me on Father’s Day. Tea, two Weetabix with blueberries and milk with a strawberry on top. Also on the tray was a glass of orange juice with a couple of carnations in a vase. Later in the morning I spoke to Hazy and thanked her for the prezzy which she always remembers and the card. I will enjoy some of the first packet tomorrow, hopefully, Hazy. We talked for a while about the books we’re reading and what’s coming up on our lists.

My father’s day present from Wordle was a score of 3. Best I’ve had for quite a while. I also managed to get one of the two available Pangrams which is also an achievement for me. Nice to know we fathers are appreciated by the New York Times!

The main task for me today was to repot my Venus Flytrap and my miniature Sarracenia pitcher plant. They’ve been waiting far too long for new compost and a wee bit of Sphagnum moss to retain the moisture. It didn’t take long and I’m sure they will both feel the benefit of getting their feet wet in now soil.

PoD was taken from just outside the back door, because the rain had been on from early this morning and looked as if it was going to continue for most of the day. I’ll admit to being lazy today and not venturing out into the wide world, but I’d no wish to get wet for no reason and today’s photo of a straggly Campanula fitted the bill perfectly.

Wrote to Alex who seems to have picked up another virus (not a computer one) just as Carol is beginning to improve. Hope you both feel better soon.

Dinner for Scamp was Salmon fillet with Ratatouille (AKA ‘Rats’) and potatoes. If you substitute a steak for the salmon fillet, you have my dinner. Dessert was the other half of yesterday’s Tiramisu from M&S.

Spoke to Jamie in the evening and thanked him for his card. It seems the doc is not sure whether it is Whooping Cough that Simonne has, but they are treating it as that for now, just in case. Hope you feel better soon Simonne. Jamie and I also discussed what books we’re getting through and as usual, I didn’t really enjoy some that he suggested and vice versa. I think that’s quite normal for us.

Well, that was a lovely Father’s Day. I thoroughly enjoyed being pampered for a day. Great cards and prezzies. Thank you all very much. I don’t deserve you.

Scamp is going to phone the dentist tomorrow to get her new crown investigated, because it’s becoming more painful. Hope it gets fixed soon S.

Going East – 15 June 2024

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After a short discussion this morning, we agreed to take the train to Edinburgh.

Scamp was looking for a new bag. Not just any old Tesco bag, this was a posh, bright coloured bag she initially saw in Tiso – Glasgow last week. She wasn’t sure then whether it was right for her, but today she confirmed that she was in the search for a bright new Cotopaxi bag. It’s made from coloured sections of material all different, each bag is unique.

The train is quite convenient for travel in to Glasgow or Edinburgh and we were soon on our way. Unfortunately we had a trio of Zoomers in the same coach. They got on at Linlithgow and sat behind us, the head Zoomer didn’t shut up all the way to Edinburgh. He had an opinion, no, make that “A Sure and Certain Knowledge of EVERYTHING!” Cars, football, weans, everything you could name, he knew more than you about it. I’m not sure he stopped to take a breath all the way to the Capital. It was indeed a flow of consciousness, Man! Thankfully we got off a stop early as we usually do and left him to bore everyone on the carriage with his pointless knowledge.

We walked up to the Architectural Canyon and crossed over to Lothian Road, and Caffè Nero. From there it was down to Princes Street and over to Tiso on Rose Street to look at some bags. They looked good, but I suggested we take the tram down to Leith where there was another Tiso which might have a different selection. We did that and maybe there were a few different designs, but Scamp bought one and immediately stuffed her jacket into it to see how well it coped with actually carrying things. It worked. We found a wee market in Leith and Scamp fell into conversation with two ladies who where looking for like minded folk to knit or stitch together triangles to make squares to make the tallest knitted Christmas Tree. Scamp was quite taken by the enterprise, but unfortunately the knitting and stitching takes place on Fridays in Leith. A bit far for us to travel. We wished them well and moved on.

We walked on and found the stop for the tram that would take us back to the centre of Edinburgh. A wee man sat with us at the stop and was telling me about where in Edinburgh he had stayed. He listed a few places I remembered from when I used to come to Edinburgh with my mum and dad. Then he started telling us that cars weren’t allowed on the street the trams run on and was quite adamant that he was right. I don’t think he was.

There wasn’t much to do in Edinburgh. Neither of us was really hungry and we’d achieved our goal for the day, so we caught the train back home.

We got some chicken in M&S and Scamp later turned it into Chicken Curry. Driving home we were thinking we were running just ahead of a cloudburst, but for some reason it didn’t come.

Watched a confusing version of ‘Tinker, Tailor Soldier Spy’ that we couldn’t follow, but had some excellent acting.

PoD was a view looking down the Canyon at Conference Square in Edinburgh.

No plans for tomorrow, although I should pot up my Venus Flytrap and my miniature pitcher plants with fresh compost.

We wuz Robbed – 14 June 2024

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Scamp was off to FitSteps this morning I was staying home.

It wasn’t the brightest morning and it didn’t look as if the day would brighten much. However I was feeling quite happy. Yesterday, I’d ordered a two day rental of a lens, an expensive one, but after sleeping on it, I decided this morning it wasn’t for me. It wasn’t the cost of the lens so much as the weight of it. Approximately 840gms. That’s a heavy load to lug around along with a big camera and another lens. I was wondering how I was going to extricate myself from the trial, when I got an email from the company apologising that the lens couldn’t be delivered to me in time. I’d read somewhere that the lens was coming from Edinburgh, but it was actually coming from Vauxhall and would have taken two days to be delivered. Relieved, I enjoyed my coffee.

When Scamp returned from her class, she brought the rain with her and that rain stayed with us for the rest of the day. We had both considered going to Brodens for lunch, but neither of us were really all that bothered and instead had a light lunch at home.

During one of the lighter rain showers I strapped an old Nikon fit Tamron zoom to the A6500 with an adapter. Then shot some flowers in manual mode as neither the autofocus, nor the anti-shake work on the old Tamron now. One of the photos made PoD. It was the best shot of the dozen or so I took.

Dinner was Arancini which are little balls made from left over cooked rice ( we used yesterday’s paella),  coated in flour and dipped into beaten egg, then into breadcrumbs. They are left in the fridge for an hour or so before being deep fried.  Crunchy and delicious, they don’t last long.  We had ours with a home made tomato sauce.  Val assures me they should have a bit of mozzarella pushed into the rice balls before they are coated in flour.  We generally don’t bother.

Later in the evening we watched the buildup to the Euros football competition and weren’t surprised when Scotland were beaten 5-1 by Germany. Now I know next to nothing about football, be even I could see they were completely outclassed. I imagine there will be sore heads in Munich tonight.

No plans for tomorrow, but the weather looks as if it will be the same as today’s … wet!

Mixed Messages – 13 June 2024

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The second day when things didn’t go right.

I was on the phone, my phone, to Fred in the morning. He had some spare time while Margo was in at the doc’s and he thought we should have a chin wag. Then the house phone next to me started ringing with a mobile number. I was upstairs and knew that Scamp, downstairs, would answer it. After a while I noticed that the phone was still showing “Connected”, so broke off my call with Fred and went to see what was going on. Scamp had been talking to her pal, Mags who was wondering why Scamp wasn’t at Wetherspoons for lunch as agreed … except there hadn’t been an agreement!

Last week Scamp phoned Mags to find out if they were both meeting for lunch, only to discover that Mags was on holiday in Benidorm! After a bit of discussion they agreed that they’d meet when she and her husband came home. It would appear that Mags assumed they’d meet today and was waiting at Wetherspoons. To make things easier I drove her up to the town centre to meet up and everything turned out ok. Two days in a row when confusion reigned!

I dropped in at Tesco on the way home to get some chicken and veg for tonight’s paella. I intended using Orzo instead of rice, but once I got home I realised the recipe wasn’t as simple as I’d assumed, so I reverted to our usual paella rice base.

After lunch the rain appeared. It had been threatening all morning, but finally it got organised and decide it should be a wet day today. I still hadn’t a photo to turn into PoD, so I took some shots of a straggly Campanula plant with pretty lilac flowers in a hanging basket beside the back door. With a bit of editing it became PoD. It wasn’t a day for trailing over to St Mo’s getting wet for nothing, so, if all else fails, there’s always flowers.

When Scamp returned she explained what she thought had happened with the mixed messages that had crossed and recrossed the ether between her and Mags. Thankfully I’d got the right Messages in Tesco, even remembering to get yoghurt for Scamp!

The paella turned out fine and Scamp has the remains put aside in the fridge for tomorrow, maybe Arancini for lunch. Other than that, we have no plans for tomorrow. Scamp intends to go to FitSteps in the morning, but the weather looks like it will be another wet one.

Dancin’ – 12 June 2024

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A lovely day as far as the weather was concerned, but we did very little.

Spoke to Hazy in the morning and heard about Neil’s recent illness which turned out not to be kidney stones, but the docs don’t seem to know exactly what it is. He’s been given another course of stronger antibiotics to see if that improves things. Hazel also filled us in about Penny’s cancerous tumour. It isn’t operable, but Hazy says the cat is eating better and that’s a good thing.

Scamp started working on a pile of ironing and I felt I should do something too, so I measured up the new mirror for our bedroom and managed to get it sitting level at the second attempt, then had to move it just a centimetre or so to get it into the best position in our congested floor space. It’s up now and steady. I do hope it doesn’t go bump in the night, with it being the 13th of June after midnight tonight!

Scamp was heading out tonight to a dance show in Denny High School. The only dancing there would be today, because Kirsty had cancelled tonight’s class due to lack of numbers. Jeanette was meant to pick Scamp up around 6pm, but when it came to 6.30pm and after Scamp had texted her, we decided that I should drive her there. We were just getting to the motorway when Scamp got a message from Jeanette to say that she’d forgotten all about it and would be with us in 20min. But by then we were on the motorway and heading east. We managed to get to the school just before 7pm, she got her ticket at the door and went away, relieved. I drove back home at a bit more sedate speed, enjoying the beginnings of lovely sunset.

I had been out in St Mo’s earlier looking for the evasive damselflies and dragonflies, but there were none to be seen. Lots of bees of various colours and patterns and I took what I could get. Bees, insects, wild flowers, I’m not fussy, well not very fussy. PoD went to a little red fly on top of what I believe is a Sorrel plant. “The pretty little Sorrel with the fly on the top!” Ask your mum if you don’t know what that’s all about. Something to do with Oklahoma, I believe.

Scamp did get a lift home from Jeanette who just made it to Denny in time to see the curtain go up. Glad they all managed to get a seat together.

Tomorrow looks wet. At least we won’t have to water the garden.

 

Out to lunch again! – 11 June 2024

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This time we were going all posh with a lunch in the Citizen in Glasgow.

We got the bus in to Glasgow and were surprised when it took a different route than normal. It turned out that the westbound dual carriageway that leads to the motorway was being dug up and resurfaced. The work will until the end of this week. I’m assuming the eastbound carriageway will get the same treatment next week. Poor bus driver had a dreary long drive through the many traffic lights in to Glasgow.

The Citizen is an old established restaurant in Glasgow. It’s located in the old offices of The Glasgow Citizen Newspaper on St Vincent Place. Scamp had an Itison voucher for lunch for two. We got seated at the back of the restaurant, which is where most of the diners were.

Menus looked good and Scamp ordered Haggis Stack for her starter and Fish and Chips for her main. I had Mackerel Pate for starter and Steak Pie for main. Scamp’s haggis was lovely she said and I can verify that, having a wee fork full to taste. The batter on her fish, though, was a bit oily she said, and the chips appeared to be not twice cooked, but more like four or five times cooked. My starter was fine, although the mackerel pate had a bit too much cream in it, but the steak pie had been in the oven for too long and the meat was dry and hard. We had a cocktail as part of the deal and we both chose the gin version. They certainly weren’t stinting with the alcohol in the cocktail. Maybe a bit sweet, but certainly packing a punch.

All in all, we weren’t all that impressed with The Citizen. Oily batter and a pie that was baked to death are not what you expect to get in such an illustrious restaurant. We’ve had better examples of both food choices in Brodens in Condorrat. Maybe it was because we were on a voucher meal, but that shouldn’t matter. We were still paying customers. I don’t think we’ll be back.

I’d noticed the photos on the wall when we went in, lots of them and I recognised the work as being from Charles Hamilton’s camera. We correspond quite often on Flickr and I remembered that I’d read that he had been asked to produce a set of Glasgow Faces for the restaurant. Good to see that they are still there.

We had a walk around Glasgow. Up Sauchiehall Street to see the renovations being done there. Scamp laughed at a sign that advertised the shops that would be “Coming Soon” to the street. Among them was Watt Brothers which closed about three years ago!

Got the bus back home and thankfully it was just the normal route. Later we watched the second episode of Bake Off: The Professionals. Just as good as the first one.

PoD was a shot I took outside the GOMA of two ladies having a laugh. I don’t think they knew each other, or even spoke each other’s language fluently, but a joke is a joke in everyone’s language.

Tomorrow Scamp is intending to go to see Annette’s granddaughter’s dance show, so she has given her apologies to Kirsty. I was half intending to go to Kirsty’s class by myself, but someone must have warned them and it seems like everyone is giving it a body swerve. Am I really that bad? NO! Don’t answer that question!!