Author: Zogman

Out to lunch 2nd time lucky – 13 July 2019

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We drove in to town today to get some meat at a farmer’s market and to have lunch. We got the meat and had two lunches!

The first part was simple. We got the subway from Bucky Street to Kelvinhall and walked along to the Partick Farmers market. There were a few farmers there and a lot of would be marketeers. Got the meat I was looking for, it was Hogget. Older than a lamb, but younger than a sheep. Bumped into Louise with her mum. Louise looked shocked that we’d caught them in the act of buying some cider. Heavens, you’d have thought they’d been buying Buckfast or MadDog!

Got the subway back to Bucky Street which was thronged with weans parading before going to the TRNSMT festival. Scamp was not amused at the state of some of them. I didn’t mention that she, herself had had flowers painted on her arm at the Summer Ball a couple of weeks ago. But I suppose she was dressed more appropriately than some of the visions we saw.

Scamp offered me the opportunity to go to Paesano, but I knew it was a token gesture, she was looking for somewhere else, somewhere slightly posher. She chose Mediterraneo. We went in and got a seat right away, it wasn’t busy. As usual, before our bums reached the seats we were pestered for our drinks order. Told the waitress we needed a few minutes. A very few minutes later she was back. That gave us time to scan the menu. We didn’t need very long, because there wasn’t much that stood out as interesting. After a couple of sips of our drinks the waitress was back looking for our order. She didn’t get it. Scamp said we’d pay for the drinks and go. We have been there a few times in the past and the pizzas were really good. Today, all that was offered was Margherita with the option to add one meat and one veg topping. What were those veg and meat toppings? Who knows, because it wasn’t on the menu. Left, not intending to ever go back. Instead, we went to Paesano and had two excellent well-fired pizzas. Didn’t even have to guess what the toppings were, we just told them what we wanted and they arrived! That’s the way to keep folk coming back.

Drove home and while Scamp soaked up the sun in the garden, I took myself off to Fannyside to attempt some time-lapse shots. I got them, but the breeze wasn’t strong enough to make the clouds scud across the sky. Still, at least it worked. PoD became Remember Me rose from the front garden.

Another beautiful summer’s day. If it’s the same tomorrow we may go for a walk somewhere.

A day in the toon in the sunshine – 12 July 2019

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Today we’d decided to travel in to Glasgow on the bus and go to the Transport Museum on Riverside.

Got off the subway at Partick and walked along past the reconstruction that was going on by the Clyde until we came to the strange building that, from the air looks as if it’s been squeezed out of a toothpaste tube.  It looked very impressive with its glass frontage.  In the middle of July, it’s the middle of the Glasgow Beach.  Loads of weans building sand castles with pails and spaded on an area at the front of the building done up to look like a beach with tons of sand.  Everyone seemed to be having a great time, but we were itching to get in to see this wonderful new 21st century museum.

What a let down.  Yes, there were steam engines and tram cars, loads of tram cars and trolley buses too, but most of them were sealed off from the public by large perspex sheets.  This was a “Look, but don’t touch museum”.  One of the biggest selling points of the place, the revoloutionary Wall of Cars was the worst let-down.  Yes, there were a load of cars on shelves along a wall, like full size Dinky or Matchbox toys, but the problem was you couldn’t see into them.  They were too high up or too far away to see any of the detail.  The same was true for the Wall of Motorbikes.  Yes, they were there, but you could only see about two of the five layers of them. The rest were way up too high and you’d get a crick in your neck trying to see the details.  The bikes, especially seemed to be in a bit of a state.  Torn saddles and seats, suspensions not bolted to the frames.  It looked as if they’d just been placed there without any thought of restoration.  Worst of all were the cycles.  There they were, either sitting on or hanging upside down from a great circular wheel, hanging from the ceiling.  No description of what they were or why they were there.  Strangest exhibit was a Sinclair Cambridge Programmable Calculator.  I had one of those, away back in the 1980s.  At the time it was truly state of the art.  I bought it fully built and tested, but it was possible to buy it as a PCB with the components and build it yourself.  A friend of mine bought a Sinclair radio kit which was supposed to fit into a matchbox.  He got it built, but by the time he was finished it barely fitted into a suitcase.  But back to the Calculator.  Interesting though it was, what had it to do with Transport?

The building itself is striking, but there is a design theory that “Form Follow Function”.  In the case of this museum it’s more like “Function Follows Form”.  You get the feeling that they designed and built the building, then just stuffed everything they had into it.  Not impressed and wouldn’t go back.  Typical Council waste of money.

What I did get there was today’s PoD.  Probably the best, certainly the most detailed Oor Wullie I’ve seen so far.  You can get a better view on Flickr because by some miracle it managed to get into the site.  I personally think Flickr is now dead.  Today after half an hour of attempting to install the three images I’d uploaded, I got  the message that they had failed to upload.  Only to find out later that they had actually loaded successfully.  Since May, the site has been almost unusable.  Literally hundreds of complaints on the “official” help page and nothing being done about it.  I refuse to throw more money at such a failed excuse of a photo site.

Anyway, back home we got an hour in the sun in the back garden before I phoned Golden Bowl and uplifted a collection of Chicken Chop Suey & Fried Rice for Scamp and Special Chow Mein for me.  A good way to end a day in  the sun.

Tomorrow, strangely enough, we may go back to Partick again to go to a Farmers Market.

Crossing Paths – 11 July 2019

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Today I was going for coffee with Fred and Val at 12.30. Colin was otherwise engaged.  Scamp was going for coffee with Annette at 1.30.  Inevitably our paths would cross.

Since we were both going to the same place at about the same time I offered Scamp a lift because her Wee Red Car needed two new back tyres.  That was also on the list of Things To Do today.  While she went off to window shop, I went to meet the boys.  As usual we had a wide ranging, free and frank discussion of topical matters.  That and a book exchange.  Found out from Val that John Walsh had died and his funeral had been yesterday.  Such a funny guy, John.  He gave me a lot of pointers when I was trying to be an author, away back in the late ’80s.  I never did sell anything, but it was good fun trying.

We were just getting ready to leave when Scamp and Annette arrived, so that put, as they say, ‘The tin lid on things’.  We left them to their toasted teacakes.  Val and Fred headed for home via Tesco and I went straight home to get Scamp’s car and drive down to the Village where I was lucky enough to arrive at a quiet time and got to be next in  the queue.  Took my camera away with me and went for a walk around Cumbernauld Old Church.  I really like this building and it has a very interesting history.  Just search for Cumbernauld Old Church on Google and be amazed at the history right on our doorstep.  I took some photos, but even the 14mm lens wasn’t wide enough to get it all in, so I had to resort to the tried and tested method of taking a bundle of shots and reassembling them in Lightroom.  Wandered back and found the mechanic just tightening up the wheel nuts on the Wee Red Car.  Parted with the £80 for the two tyres and was on my way after about 40 minutes from arriving.  Drove home and was walking down to  the house when Scamp appeared from round the corner.  “Inevitably our paths would cross”!

Switched cars and took the Red Juke out for a run up to Fannyside to look for dragonflies.  Didn’t find any, but it’s early days yet.  I just thought that the warm, clammy weather would have brought out the insects a bit earlier than normal, but that wasn’t the case.  Took a few landscape shots, but really wanted to do a time lapse of the passing clouds with the new camera.  I simply couldn’t find the setting.  I knew it was in the five menus and the eleven sub-menus.  Eventually drove to Tesco to buy today’s dinner which was Breaded Salmon on a Bed of Mash & Peas.  There was a fair bit of garlic in it too.  I hadn’t realised quite how much until Scamp opened the kitchen door a few minutes ago and the anti-vampire scent wafted through.  I’ll be amazed if you can’t actually smell the garlic from this blog post.  The dinner was really good by the way, although one of the ingredients looked a bit strange “A slice of crusty bread with the crust removed”.  Now, excuse my ignorance, but isn’t that just a slice of bread?

After dinner I fed the six frames of Cumbernauld Old Church into Lightroom and it made an almost perfect panoramic shot of the building and that became PoD.  I also found the setting for the time lapse.  Just in case you ever need it, it’s in menu 1, the last item on the list.

Tomorrow we may go visit the Riverside Museum in Glasgow.  Travelling on the bus.

 

Muggy – 10 July 2019

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Uncomfortably hot and clammy today.  Not something I usually complain about.

Gave myself a sore back again today marking out and cutting more linings.  I hate this shiny, slippery fabric.  That’s most of it done now.  Still got some cutting to do and then it’s on to the stiffening stuff that’s not so difficult to cut.  It’s the height of the table that’s the killer.  It’s not really a table.  It’s the frame of an old card table with the bedroom door laid on top.  That gives me a massive 2.5m x 1.2m area to lay things out on.  The trouble is the table is just too high to sit at comfortably and just to low to lean over to cut the fabric.  I need an adjustable height table.

After the Fabric & Fashion course and also after lunch we drove in to Glasgow for more back ache in the ballroom.  Anne Marie was taking the class because Michael has a sore arm, or so he says.  We covered Jive with a new move, the Cross Over and then the Sway into the Pendulum, in Quickstep, but didn’t get as far as completing the double lock chassis.  If this means nothing to you, I’m probably describing it wrong.  I’m also probably dancing it wrong too.  It was an ok session and we both felt we were getting somewhere with it.

Getting coffee in Nero afterwards I was talking to another old guy who was telling me that the English school holidays are based on the hop picking times, so that entire families could leave London to go the Kent to pick the hops.  It made me think that probably  the Scottish school holidays were based either around  the Glasgow Fair or the fruit picking around Dundee.  Just a short conversation, but I’ll probably look into the possibilities of the theory.

Back home I took the Oly 1 and a macro lens for a walk around St Mo’s.  Really, I had a good shot of a delivery biker doing a running repair on his tyre – seen in Merchant City in Glasgow.  What I really wanted to do was rattle off a few more frames to completely flatten the battery of the camera.  I managed it, or near enough after 150 shots.  That’s 381 shots in total from that battery.  Very good indeed as the Oly battery which costs about 5 times as much only does 300.  I did get the PoD in the process, it is the tiny little hover fly you see above.

Salsa tonight was in almost unbearable heat in the STUC building.  Two fairly busy classes, but only because there were a lot of us helpers doing our bit.  The actual class sizes were poor and the second class, Improvers, will not be continuing.  Unfortunately there is nowhere for them to go as there are no other improvers classes they can merge into.  That’s a problem for the manageress to deal with, not the teachers, but it doesn’t show good management.  Tomorrow I’ve got coffee with Fred and Val at 12.30 and Scamp has coffee with Annette at 1.30.  Seems like bad use of time, but I don’t think it would do to merge these two classes!!

So coffee for both of us tomorrow and I’ll maybe take Scamp’s car down to the Village to get two new rear tyres.  Heavens, tyres don’t last well these days, they’re only 9 years old and the side walls are cracking already! Thunderstorms on  the horizon as well.

 

The day the rain came back – 9 July 2019

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It had been away for a long time, but today the rain made its triumphant return.

In a way it was good to see the rain.  It was like an old friend you haven’t seen for some time.  It also meant we wouldn’t have to water the garden tonight.  It was a gentle soaking rain that seeped into the soil and made sure the roots of the plants got properly wet.

It took the opportunity to use it as an excuse to get started on cutting out the lining of the waistcoat.  The Not-Quite-Satin I was writing about yesterday was really slippery today after I’d tentatively ironed it with Scamp’s super-zoomer steam iron, but I persevered and got three pieces cut out. One for the outside of the back and one for each for the inside of the front pieces.  That leaves three to be cut out still.  One for the inside of the back and two that will make the belt up the back (No jokes please).  It really is so difficult to work with fabric that is so slippery.  Even the scissors didn’t seem to want to cut it properly, or maybe I’m just not doing it right.  I tried the wee Olfa rolly-cutter (technical term), but it didn’t want to touch it either.  I thought this bit was going to be easy.  Now I’m dreading the sewing up that comes next!  Hoping against hope for a good day tomorrow so I can go out and take photos instead of firing up the sewing machine.

After lunch I did take the plunge, grab my cameras and go for a walk in St Mo’s. In spite of the rain, I did enjoy  the walk, but came back with three photos.  Then I looked out the kitchen window and saw the hanging basket with fuchsias dripping with rainwater.  Surely there was a shot or two to be had there.  Actually there were 41 shots to be had there.  Most disappeared onto the cutting room floor after they went through my rigorous selection procedure, but a (very) few remained and from them, two went to Flickr and PoD became the little raindrop fish-eye lens you see here.  It’s a bit of a cliché, but even clichés have their place.  I’m just showing off now that I can do that acute over the ‘e’ like this é.  Right, that’s quite enough of that.

Scamp was making dinner tonight.  The rules of the game are that it has to be a new recipe and it has to come from the most recent food magazine.  Tonight it was Spicy Chickpeas with Sea Bass.  Except she mistook Haricot beans for the Chickpeas, but I thought it tasted great the way it was.  With a green chilli and a spoonful of chilli flakes it was fairly fiery.  I didn’t mind at all, because it was very tasty.  A choc ice afterwards went a long way to cooling down our overheated tongues!

Tomorrow we’re hoping to go dancing in the afternoon and at night, because next week with be Salsa free 🙁  Monday is a local holiday, so the STUC will be closed and Jamie G is off on his travels again on Wednesday, so we won’t be making the pilgrimage to Glasgow in the evening.

 

Sweet Peas, Cameras and Bonking Beetles – 8 July 2019

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A late night last night and a late rise this morning finds you chasing your tail all day.

Scamp decided that it was time to cut the first of her home grown sweet peas this morning.  They looked so lovely just sitting there, I couldn’t resist the temptation to take a few photos. I needed a background, so rather than use my usual sheet of cartridge paper, today I found a piece of burgundy crushed velvet.  Probably not real velvet, but cloth with a fair amount of man-made fibre in it that gave the appearance of velvet.  It fitted the bill perfectly.  After a few failed attempts at getting the exposure right, I finally found the setting on the Oly 1 that made the EVF (Electronic ViewFinder) give me the view that the exposure settings were actually producing, not the one optomised for viewing.  The Oly 1 is such a complicated beast with so many settings, it’s easy to forget how to achieve things.  You have to work on the assumption that someone, when they were designing this camera, had indeed thought of every single thing that a prospective user would need.  Then they built that facility into the camera and buried the switch that turned it on, deep in that labyrinth of a menu.  After about five years, I’m almost certain I can find everything I need in the Oly 5 and the Oly 10, but the Oly 1 has some of its settings in another dimension, discoverable only if you know the magic phrase1.

The result of my work with the Not-Quite-Velvet and the Oly 1 is the PoD seen above.

All this was done while Scamp was out ‘getting the messages’. When she returned and after we had lunch, she went to wash her car and I went to puzzle out  the next part of the jigsaw puzzle that may one day become a waistcoat.  I was just getting to grips with the logistics of cutting the lining pieces from a wrongly shaped piece of Not-Quite-Satin when my phone reminded me it was time to get my Blood Pressure checked at the Doc’s.  Nothing really wrong with it, it was just a precaution because part of my medication had been changed.  BP was deemed ok and I was set free to go for a walk down the Luggie.  Lots of Bonking Beetles (Soldier Beetles) doing what they do best, but not a lot of other beasties.  One dragonfly circled me a couple of times before deciding that I was probably too big to be his dinner and anyway I’d be too heavy to carry away.  Saw a couple of hover flies pretending to be white tailed bees, but they were too skittish and flew off as soon as the big man came near them.  Ended up hot, bothered and disillusioned.  Drove home through some sporadic rain showers.  I think the rain was just practising for the big rain event that the weather fairies tell us is coming in the next two or three days.

Made a chicken and potato thing for dinner that seemed OK, but had fried crispy capers in it.  I wasn’t impressed with them and neither was judge Scamp.  Her turn tomorrow.

No dancing tonight as Jamie G is off somewhere sciency.  Tomorrow we have no plans, but like I say, the weather doesn’t look good.

 

 

  1. It’s “Izzy Wizzy Let’s Get Bizzy”.  At least, that’s what Sooty told me. ↩

Dancing and New Shoes – 7 July 2019

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Not Dancing IN New Shoes. That would be torture.

It was another of those strange days we’ve been having for some time now.  In the morning the sky is clear and blue, but then before midday the clouds roll in and obscure the sun.  The afternoons are warm but sunless with those same milky white clouds covering all the blue sky.  In the early evening the sky starts clearing and by about 9pm it’s blue sky again.  It happens over and over.  But we shouldn’t complain because at least it’s dry and that in itself is unusual for a Scottish summer.  It looks as if it’s not going to stay that way all week, though.  Heavy rain and the potential for thunderstorms later in the week.  Ah! that’s more like a Scottish summer.

We were going dancing today.  First Sunday in the month is a Sunday Social day and for just now it’s in  the Record Factory in Glasgow and it’s big selling point is the wooden dance floor.  Not exactly a sprung dance floor, but wooden, which is much kinder on the feet and legs than concrete with tiles.  But before that there were photos to take.

I took a walk in St Mo’s in my new Merrell Moab 2 GTXs.  I hadn’t noticed the GTX when I bought them, but they’re alright even if they are cut a bit lower on  the heels to give that Gran Tourismo feel.  Actually, GTX stands for Gore Tex, or so the InterWeb tells me, and it’s never, well rarely, well actually quite often wrong.  Anyway, the decision was made this morning that the label gets cut off and the shoes are free to travel untrammeled across the length and breadth of the country, or at least over to St Mo’s.  Got some pics of beasties there.  Fifty Four photos to be exact, but acutally they were reduced to Nine by my swingeing cuts to the not-so-good ones.  Still, tonight the icon showed the first signs that the battery was starting to become depleted and would need refilling with electrons soon after taking over 130 shots.  That’s pretty good going for a non-OEM battery.  I’m impressed.  One of the final nine, a Large Red Damselfly became PoD.

Went dancing in The Record Factory and actually got asked to dance by three, yes, THREE ladies.  Now that might have been because there weren’t a lot of men around, but I think it because of my stylish moves and dashing good looks.  Believe that if you will!  It was a good night, although there weren’t many dancers of either sex strutting their stuff.

So tomorrow I’ve a doc’s appointment to check my new medication (Cheapo pills) are working and the rest of the day is our own to do with as we will.  Hoping to bag some sunshine while it lasts!

 

 

Stirling today – 6 July 2019

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Settled on Stirling for today’s visit.

Managed to convince myself that the Merrel Moab trainers were worth the money. Even in Sports Direct they were still expensive, but as Scamp says, you sometimes have to pay the money for quality. Vibram soles and Goretex uppers should see me sure footed for the summer.

Got some photos of folk mirrored in the ceiling of the Thistle Centre and with a bit of jiggery pokery, that’s what became the PoD. Back home the parking was ridiculous. Cars and vans everywhere. Finally got a space away up the top of the road, hoping to get a place nearer hand later, but that wasn’t to be. Too many cars. I blame all these two car families.

Be brought back a Gypsophila plant from Waitrose in Stirling. You quite often see annual gypsophila, but my mum had an enormous gypsophila in her front garden and it was  a perennial plant, growing bigger and flowering better every year.  Lots of tiny little white flowers.  I’m glad we’ve got one too. Hope it grows as well as her’s did.

Watched a young crow trying to get a drink from the bird bath and it seemed to having a terrible time getting to it, so Scamp decided it was time to rearrange the plants so that the birds could get easier access to the water. I think it works now, but we’ll have to interview the birds to see if it’s a real improvement.

I’m sitting wearing my new Moabs tonight as I’m writing this, wondering if they are comfortable or not. It’s not always easy and it may take a day or two wearing them in the house to be completely sure.

Tomorrow we’re hoping to go dancing again at the Record Factory. Just a normal Sunday Social this time.

Out to lunch – 5 July 2019

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Dull again with the threat of rain. A Scottish Summer.

Didn’t have a lot planned today, in fact we both had nothing planned. Did a bit more to the waistcoat in the morning. Stitched the welts up and then stitched them on to the waistcoat front. Such a lot of faffing about just to make two fake pockets. I ask you. Do these designer people have so much time on their hands, they just make tricky things like this simply to make the sewing difficult? What’s the point in taking an hour to make a pocket that you can’t use? Nonsense! Ought not to be allowed, if you ask me. Anyway it’s done now and they do look good even if it’s just a place to keep your you odd 20p. If tomorrow is as inviting as today, I’ll start the belt up the back, if that’s not a rude expression!

Went out to Milano Express for a lunchtime pizza each. I had a ’Meat Feast’ and it was good, but got a taste of Scamp’s veggie pizza and it was really nice. May try that some time. Very tasty. Dropped Scamp at home and took the Juke for a drive looking for a view I’d seen from the motorway one day. It was burned in my memory. A yellow field on a hill with a small stand of trees at the top. Took me ages to find it and by that time, what good light there had been had disappeared and there was rain in the wind. Took the photo of course, but will try again on a better day, DV. Today’s shot is on Flickr.

Today’s PoD was taken on a walk around the block to get my 250 steps per hour done. It’s a dog rose (Rosa canina) or what’s left of it once the petals have fallen. I always think they look so much more interesting and ‘graphic’ with just the bare bones of the flower showing.

Highlight of the day was those pizzas in Milano Express. Cheap and cheerful.

Tomorrow we may go in to Stirling or Glasgow. Not too far anyway.

A Stitch in time – 4 July 2019

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Today was dull. No sunshine. A very short sprinkle of rain. Nothing for it but to get the needles and pins out.

After breakfast I took the scissors and cut out the front of the waistcoat complete with all those strange wee triangles that stick out of cut out patterns. After consulting with Scamp and also after watching a few YouTube videos I was prepared to mark the darts with needle and thread. I’d also seen a video that recommended using a chinagraph pencil to mark out the lines. What it failed to mention was that when you iron the darts flat, the heat melts the marks made by the chinagraph pencil and they disappear. Numpty. I forgot the three rules of watching YouTube videos:

  1. Don’t believe anything you see here.
  2. Don’t try this at home.
  3. If you must ignore Rule 1 and Rule 2, test it on a scrap piece first.

Luckily the iron wasn’t quite hot enough and I could see the marks faintly glowing on the dark material. Then I used tailor’s chalk to complete the marking.
Later in the morning, I fired up the sewing machine and after a bit of jiggery pokery with Thread Tension, Stitch Width and Sweary Words, I’d stitched the darts to my satisfaction. Later I made a Welt (No, I don’t know what it is either). Exhausted, that’s where I left it today.

The DPD man came to deliver my new batteries for the new toy. Hopefully they’ll be more successful than the other lot and I set them to charge while I took the old Oly 5 for a walk around the pond. Not many beasties about, but I did get a moody shot of an old apple tree growing all by itself in the park. After a bit of work in ON1, that became PoD.

Dinner tonight was a delicious piece of smoked haddock with chips. Watched the tennis, well it was on everywhere by the look of things, and eventually managed to get the TV to respond to the Red Button to allow us to watch Andy Murray and his partner win their doubles match. Doubles is so much more interesting than singles. No long tedious grunt punctuated rallies. Much faster and good fun wondering what they were whispering to each other between shots of banging the ball over the net. Probably just deciding who’s round it is in the bar after the game.

Hoping against hope for a nice sunny day tomorrow to brighten up the end of the week and for a chance to take the OM D E-M1 (Now renamed Oly 1) out for a few shots of somewhere nice.