Just for a change I decided to go for a swim this morning. No gym, just a swim. Up and out early, just after 8.00. Got a few lengths in before the inevitible Waterbabies™ and their mummys (yummy or otherwise) and a token daddy or two arrived.
<oh, oh, I feel a rant coming on> After that the pool was cordoned off to allow the ‘little ones’ (how I hate that expression. We are Scottish. They are ‘weans’) to go through their swimming antics while we, the older and wiser ones have to put up with half the pool to actually swim in. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve not got a gripe with weans learning to swim. My concern is that the leisure complex is being paid by Waterbabies™ for the use of their pool to run these classes. The leisure company and Q Hotels lose nothing by it, but we, the paying customers are the ones that lose out. </oh, oh, I feel a rant coming on>
In the afternoon, I took the bike to Auchinstarry and did a round trip of 
Dumbreck Marshes, Queenzieburn (pronounced Queenieburn for some reason), Twechar, Smithston (pronounced Smeeston according to my dad), back to Dumbreck and then back to Auchinstarry. Got some lovely shots of a couple of dragonflies that were sitting on opposite sides of a bridge, just across from one another like a grumpy old couple who weren’t speaking. Next to them was a really nasty looking fly. To the casual observer it just looked like a black fly, but up close, the red eyes and that face looked quite evil. Evil 
or not, it got its photo took too. Previously I’d found the red flowers shown here. The Oly doesn’t handle reds very well. It seems to over saturate them 
and over expose them too, so some judicious downgrading had to be done in Lightroom.
When I got back to Auchinstarry, the old blokes were fishing again at the quarry. If you’ve been reading this, you’ll remember that I took some shots of them the last time I was there. I’d printed off one of the photos and recognised the angler in it, sitting on a bench watching one of the other old blokes casting. I walked over and asked him what they were fishing for. He gave a guarded reply that they “were only practising with different lines and techniques” I’m not sure I believed him. I asked him if he had been fishing there last week. He replied “No, not me, not last week.” “So this wouldn’t be you then?” I asked giving him the photo. “No, that’s no’ me.” Then “Fuck’s sake it is me. Fuck’s sake. Look at that, for fuck’s sake it IS me right enough. Who took that?” I told him that it was me and I hoped he didn’t mind. He certainly didn’t seem to and I left him to show off my work to his pals.
One small act of kindness.