Month: April 2026

Feeding the birds – 15 April 2026

Posted on by Zogman

Another wet day in Glasgow, but the lady feeding the birds didn’t seem to mind.

We got the bus in to Glasgow. Scamp was looking for a pair of sandals and I wanted to get my hair cut. We went separate ways to achieve our goals, but only I was successful. A Number 3 for the top and a Number 2.5 on the sides and back. Ten minutes later I was walking out of the barbers.

Scamp and I met up again on Sauchiehall Street and walked up the hill because she thought I should be looking for a new camera bag. Admittedly, the bag I use is a good age, and it does let in the rain sometimes, but for the most part, it works. Reluctantly I went to WEX, but I already knew I wasn’t going to find my ideal camera bag there. I’m pretty sure I’ve whittled it down to two models, neither of which are available in Glasgow. Empty handed we walked back down the hill again and dropped in at Waterstones, not for a book this time, but for a coffee and a shared cake.

Then instead of Scamp dragging me around, I dragged her for a change. She wanted to find a pair of sandals, so we went in to most of the shoe shops on Buchanan Street, but again, came away empty handed. I think it just wasn’t our day today.
Luckily as we crossed the road to the bus station, the doors in our bus home were just opening and we hopped on. The roadworks are still going on in Glasgow and the bus took us on yet another variation of routes round the city. I really don’t know how the bus drivers remember all these different routes on different days. Well done to the lot of them.

Back home I made Smoked Haddock & Leek Risotto for dinner and it was hailed a great success even although I’d forgotten to add the Crème Fraîche at the end. Maybe I should ignore it in future. Anyway, it’s too complicated to remember all the accents 😉.

PoD went to a lady feeding her flock of pigeons in Sausageroll Street, completely ignoring the rain.

Tomorrow we may be going looking for dance shoes for Scamp and we are hoping to go to the tea dance too.

Meeting Isobel – 14 April 2026

Posted on by Zogman

Scamp and I met Isobel for coffee in the morning and it was a lovely morning.

Blue skies and fluffy white clouds. What’s not to like. I had a cup of coffee with the ladies and listened to the stories Isobel was telling. I’d forgotten that she is well travelled in South America and further afield before she and her husband settled down in Scotland. She must have been a bit of an adventurer when she was younger.

Eventually she had teased enough information from us both and was ready to go back home, so we bundled her walker into the back seat of the wee Blue car and squeezed Scamp in beside it. Then we drove over to The Village and left her to make her own way up to her house. She wouldn’t hear of either of us helping her, she is so adamant that she can manage for herself, and I actually believe she can.

We drove home via M&S to get something for our lunch and we challenged ourselves in Wordle. I thought it was a goner when I realised there wasn’t a vowel in the grid! I suppose that’s not really true because there was a ‘Y’ in it and that sometimes takes the place of a vowel. Still, it was a strange grid that eventually formed although it was a common enough word that appeared.

After Wordle and its extras, and after lunch I was toying with the idea of going for a walk in St Mo’s, but then Scamp told me it was raining. I didn’t want to get the 24-105mm lens wet so I gave in eventually and took a few shots from the open back door. I also took the inside shot you can see here. It’s a couple of dried cut flowers in an old vase I like from the cupboard. That was the PoD sorted.

We watched a film Scamp had recorded about the dangers of allowing AI to control what’s happening in hospitals. Although it was based on situations in the US, it could possibly get a toe hold here too. Very thought provoking.

Tomorrow I may get my hair cut. It’s not quite a ‘Pure Affro’ yet, but it’s heading in that direction. While my locks are being shorn, Scamp ma be looking for a new pair of sandals. Then, if there’s enough time, she might buy herself a pair of dance shoes.

Garden Flowers and shopping – 13 April 2026

Posted on by Zogman

Too many showers to risk going out anywhere  to take photos.

Instead we drove to Stirling to do some shopping. On the way there, we passed a few warning signs of imminent road closures beginning today. No reason given, but I’m sure it would be “Essential Maintenance”, it always is. Three months of this on the M80 was what we were told we’d have to look forward to. Oh what fun.

When we turned off to go into Stirling town we had to suffer more roadworks. Thankfully we were, going IN to Stirling. The queue on the other side of the road coming out of the town was much, much longer. I think we’ll try to avoid Stirling for a few months.

We got parked in Waitrose car park quite easily for a change and we filled our trolley nearly to overflowing, but not quite. As usual we bought lots more stuff than we really need, but it’s a comfortable place to “go for the messages in”. Our small Tesco doesn’t have a great selection and if we go to the big Tesco at the town centre it’s always mobbed. Anyway, we got what we wanted and drove home by avoiding the Three Way Traffic Signals and instead drove through the outskirts of Stirling, heading roughly north and then joined the southbound carriageway of the M80 and got home in half the time. Wild weather again with heavy rain. It didn’t feel like April at all.

The rain was on and off most of the rest of the day. I did manage to get a few shots when the sun was shining and my favourite was a deep purple Hellebore called Viv Mirabella. It has been flowering all through the winter and into spring without showing any signs of stopping any time soon.

Not much to say about the rest of the day. We went to Stirling. We went for the messages. It rained. There, that about sums up Monday for us.

Sprouting Cosmos – 12 April 2026

Posted on by Zogman

Today I was hoping for a resolution of problem.

I think it worked.

I’d spent a couple of hours, a week ago, trying to work out how to reissue an SSL. You don’t need to know what that it, just be aware that it’s a bit of computer technology that controls lots of things like sending and receiving emails and stuff. You might have read about it in yesterday’s blog.

I thought I’d fixed it a week ago, but yesterday there was a new message in my inbox telling me I had only 15 days left to reissue an SSL that I thought I’d fixed last week. After a lot of questions forward and back on-line, I finally ( I hope ) got the all clear from a couple of clever folk on the interweb who said my SSL was installed properly and the reissue was ok. I could ignore the message that had appeared in my inbox, at least until October, when I’ll need to do a real reissue.

I’m sure SSLs never used to be as complicated as this, but apparently an update last year had changed things, making it more difficult than it needed to be. If I get any more messages like this one, I’m going to ignore it and pretend it didn’t happen.

It was a cold day today. I went for a walk to the shops, that’s as far as I got. I took some photos of some horse chestnut flowers starting to burst in the trees, but the PoD went to a tray of Cosmos seedlings, Scamp had planted in a tray on the kitchen worktop. That made PoD.

Spoke to Jamie in the evening and heard about his own plantings. I liked the idea of his automatic watering equipment that will water the seeds when he’s at work. We don’t need an automatic watering equipment. We have rain, usually on tap.

No real plans for tomorrow, but we may go out shopping.

 

Dancin’ – 11 April 2026

Posted on by Zogman

Today we drove to Brookfield after I’d spent about £1,000 on half a tank of petrol!

Well, it certainly felt like £1,000 when I was half filling the tank. However, we were passing through the Straits of Glasgow where your speed is limited to 40mph for quite a few miles. We managed to avoid most of the potholes and all of the mines. The 40mph restriction kept the fuel usage fairly low, but I wouldn’t want to drive like that all the way every day.

Again, we weren’t the last folk to arrive at Brookfield, although we were among those who were given the evil eye by the Teachers.

The order of dance was:

House of Bamboo – A 1958 song by Andy Williams. Just a bit of fun.

Britannia Waltz – A waltz made up by the teachers that I haven’t mastered yet.

Tango Sereda – A tango, obviously, that we’ve both almost managed to get working for us.

Quickstep – A quickstep that I don’t think I’ll ever master. It seems to change every week!

Blue Angel Rumba – I’m getting there, but it requires pushes and shoves by Scamp to remind me of the steps.

Sally Ann Cha-Cha – A silly wee dance where the leaders get a chance to shout “O!” at the end of each sequence with the option to high-five anyone nearby.

An energetic morning for all concerned.

As usual there were new roadworks on the way home with neither workmen or vehicles to be seen. Talked a good game but no work being done. Time wasters, all.

I did take a walk in St Mo’s in the late afternoon after Wordle et al had been conquered.

Scamp made dinner tonight, a prawn risotto. Long time since I’ve had it and it was a nice surprise.

Something is still wrong with the SSL in Namecheap. I’ll need to find out what tomorrow. More time wasted.

Off to bed now. No real plans for tomorrow.

Posted on by Zogman

Dancin’

Today we drove to Brookfield after I’d spent about £1,000 on half a tank of petrol!

Well, it certainly felt like £1,000 when I was half filling the tank. However, we were passing through the Straits of Glasgow where your speed is limited to 40mph for quite a few miles. We managed to avoid most of the potholes and all of the mines. The 40mph restriction kept the fuel usage fairly low, but I wouldn’t want to drive like that all the way every day.

Again, we weren’t the last folk to arrive at Brookfield, although we were among those who were given the evil eye by the Teachers.

The order of dance was:

House of Bamboo – A 1958 song by Andy Williams. Just a bit of fun.

Britannia Waltz – A waltz made up by the teachers that I haven’t mastered yet.

Tango Sereda – A tango, obviously, that we’ve both almost managed to get working for us.

Quickstep – A quickstep that I don’t think I’ll ever master. It seems to change every week!

Blue Angel Rumba – I’m getting there, but it requires pushes and shoves by Scamp to remind me of the steps.

Sally Ann Cha-Cha – A silly wee dance where the leaders get a chance to shout “O!” at the end of each sequence with the option to high-five anyone nearby.

An energetic morning for all concerned.

As usual there were new roadworks on the way home with neither workmen or vehicles to be seen. Talked a good game but no work being done. Time wasters, all.

I did take a walk in St Mo’s in the late afternoon after Wordle et al had been conquered.

Scamp made dinner tonight, a prawn risotto. Long time since I’ve had it and it was a nice surprise.

Something is still wrong with the SSL in Namecheap. I’ll need to find out what tomorrow. More time wasted.

Off to bed now. No real plans for tomorrow.

Under the weather – 10 April 2026

Posted on by Zogman

I wasn’t feeling great this morning.

I’d been feeling a bit sick last night and thought I was better today, but an upset stomach told me that I wasn’t all that good. Scamp was meeting Shona for lunch and a blether around midday, but I stayed home, not wanting to pass my dodgy tum on to someone else. The usual copious amounts of tea and toast wasn’t making things any easier, but at least the sick feeling had disappeared.

It seemed a waste to just sit there drinking tea, so I dug out my new potato pot and planted another three potatoes. Most of the work is done for you with these fancy planting pots, so I wrote a label for the pot and went back into the house. A bitter wind had appeared from nowhere and I didn’t want to linger outside, so I came in and read for a while.

I had a wander around the front garden after that and noticed a bee on one of the Snake’s Head Fritillaries that Scamp had planted last spring. This was the first bee I’d seen in the garden this year, so I grabbed my camera and got its photo. I’m still not sure what kind of bee but Mr Google insists it’s a Common Carder Bee (Bombus pascuorum) I’ll take his word for it. Itseemed quite interested in a few of the flowers in the front garden before buzzing off to tell all of its Carder Bee pals where the good flowers were. The place will be buzzing with them tomorrow. I must be feeling better tonight because the jokes are getting worse.

When Scamp returned she made a lovely dinner with Cod, mashed potatoes and cheese sauce. It was excellent.

In the evening we sat and watched Gardeners World. Not a program I often watch, but this one was particularly interesting with lots of good advice.

I’m off to bed now because Scamp thinks I need the rest. PoD did turn out to be the Carder Bee.

We may go dancing tomorrow if my stomach will take it!

Off visiting – 9 April 2026

Posted on by Zogman

This time we were visiting a solicitor.

Nothing underhand was happening, just a visit to a solicitor to get some advice. I was a bit concerned about it, I admit, but I was more worried about finding a place to park. Thankfully in this posh one-way street there were quite a few places where we could leave the Blue car for an hour or so at no cost.

On the way home we stopped at a local garden centre for lunch and a cup of coffee for me and a cup of peppermint tea for Scamp. I wanted a potato pot to get my next batch of potatoes planted. I’d used one of the two part pots before and they worked well. They have an inner pot and an outer. The inner pot has large holes cut in it, almost the height of the pot itself for drainage. The outer pot is slightly larger than the inner pot and has channels for the inner pot to fit into. Much easier to see than to describe. Just take my word for it, that the whole shebang does its job well. Scamp found herself a new pair of gardening gloves. Her old ones had lasted for ages and she found the exact same gloves. For once, we didn’t come home with more plants!

We drove through a couple of heavy rain showers, what Scamp calls the Cumbersheugh Cloud. There were plenty of clouds too, so I decided to work on the computer for a while until the weather improved. Meanwhile Scamp was doing a bit of cleaning. About an hour later the sky cleared and I went for a walk in St Mo’s and got a few shots. It wasn’t until I got home, I saw a better subject than I’d found on my walk. Just a Tiarella plant hanging over the edge of a pot in our garden. A few photos later I was happy with my results.

Dinner was a pizza with anchovies a fairly familiar light dinner for us. Then I stared in earnest to look through today’s photos. The Tiarella plant’s hanging leaf got PoD.

No plans for tomorrow yet.

Happy Birthday to me – 8 April 2026

Posted on by Zogman

I had a lovely day today, waited on hand and foot.

Breakfast in bed and lots of cards and prezzies to open, of course, it was my birthday.

Scamp said she was well enough to go in to Glasgow, to Mowgli, a restaurant we found because it looked interesting, almost three years ago. I’d asked for it as my birthday prezzy and Scamp had booked it.

We drove to Croy in the morning and took the train in to Glasgow, after leaving the car in the furthest place in the car park, because there were very few other spaces available. I’d wondered about having a coffee in Glasgow, but Scamp said we didn’t have enough time to search out a Nero and I agreed. Instead we went for one more walk to look at the old Union Street building. It’s still as scary as ever, just thinking about what it could have been like without the work of the fire fighters. It never ceases to amaze me that nobody was killed.

We walked round the boxes that make up the streets in that area of Glasgow and eventually went in to Mowgli. I can’t remember what I had, but I’m sure Scamp will have a note of it somewhere. Since it was my birthday, I asked for the swinging seats. Wooden seats without cushions suspended from the ceiling by ropes. Just a bit of fun. The food was good and I really enjoyed it all, but I ate too much, in fact I can still feel a bit stuffed, hours after we finished our meals. I liked the fact that I had an Old Fashioned (whisky) and a chocolate brownie with ice cream, free because it was my birthday. It was a great meal, just as good as the last time, I can recommend it to you, the next time you’re up our way.

We walked up to Sauchiehall Street when we were done and I got the book, Hazy. Ink& Sigil in Waterstones. I think I’m well stocked up with books now and I’ve still got a book token to spend when I’ve finished this lot.

Scamp drove us back to the house because she hadn’t been drinking anything alcoholic and I had a snooze on the couch! Too much of everything, but that’s what birthdays are for!

Thank you all for making my birthday great. I don’t deserve you lot, but I’m glad you’re there.

PoD was a grab shot of a branch of blossom I took when we got off the train in Croy.

Tomorrow we’re out in the morning and it’s back to “Auld Claes and Purrich”

A walk in the park – 7 April 2026

Posted on by Zogman

Scamp was feeling a bit under the weather this morning.

She had a touch of cystitis and had been quite uncomfortable during the night and morning. She managed to get to speak to a nurse practitioner who gave her a prescription for some pills. I was meeting Alex for a photo walk at midday and said that I could easily cancel, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Once I was sure she was serious about it, I packed my bag and went out to get the bus to Glasgow.

Today I was carrying my new 24-105 lens on a Sony A7iii with a Sony A6500 in my rucksack. That’s just to remind me what I did on this day!

My bus arrived early in Glasgow and that allowed me some time to go for for a walk on my own in the sunshine, around Glasgow city centre. Did some candid photography with the shutter on the camera set to silent. The secret of candids is to wear dull clothing that doesn’t draw attention and also to not look at the person you’re photographing. I don’t really like the sneaky approach, but sometimes it is fun.

I met Alex and we went for a coffee and to discuss where we were going today. Neither of us had a firm plan in mind, so I suggested wandering around the business area across the Clyde and off we went. We were photographing some graffiti artists on the banks of the Clyde when I suggested we cross the river and walk upstream for a different view. Neither of us had been in that direction before, so that would make a change.

We both found a lot of possibilities and new paths that I knew were there, but hadn’t walked. When we reached the second of the two suspension bridges on the river we crossed over to Glasgow Green to see what was happening.

An Easter Fair was what was happening and it looked like it was going “Like a Fair”, literally. Unfortunately we’d need to pay up-front to get in and we weren’t desperate, so we just went for a walk over Glasgow Green. After that we wandered in the general direction of Paesano for lunch.

When we left Paesano we wandered round to see the burned out building in Gordon Street, because Alex had never seen the damage that had been done a month or so ago. Another cup of coffee in Nero and we were heading for the bus station and home. Except, Cathedral Street was closed for road works and there was a collision further along from there. Long story short, what should have been a 45min bus journey turned out to be a two hour slog through homeward bound traffic.

PoD was a candid shot of a man in a soft hat just like my dad used to wear. Taken in the Buchanan Bus station.

Tomorrow Scamp and I are probably going back to Glasgow again. Gluttons for punishment!!