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A less frantic day – 6 August 2020

Posted on by Zogman

We were out earlier this morning and hopefully I’ll get to bed the same day I woke up.

We were out early to go for coffee with Isobel. Coffee in Costa no less, and in the Antonine Centre in Cumbersheugh and Scamp drove. We had to sign in to the Test and Trace system, but it was fairly quick and easy. The coffee, though, was the usual poor quality. Maybe I’m just getting used to my own (better) coffee or maybe it’s just Costa. Isobel kept us entertained for an hour or so and then we went our own ways. She to Tesco for the messages and us to go back home for lunch.

I’d intended to drive in to Glasgow in the afternoon to have a look at a camera in Jessops, but after checking, I found that the nearest Jessops that was open was in Gateshead. Just a wee bit too far to travel, so instead we walked down to the shops to get the requirements for tonight’s dinner, Chicken Legs with Potatoes and Cheesy Spinach. It was a lovely warm afternoon but by the time we got back to the house the clouds were gathering and it was looking like it might rain. I’d grabbed a couple of hoverfly pictures earlier in the afternoon, so instead of a walk I pruned the rose at the back door It was really needing cut back and I think today’s ‘Short Back and Sides’ will force some new growth. Scamp was also pruning and dead-heading some of the flowers. We both thought we felt the occasional spit of rain, but it never appeared.

I did a bit more research on the Micra, but found out very little of interest. Scamp’s dinner was deemed “Ok, but needing a bit more flavouring. More paprika and definitely more salt.”

A much less frantic day than yesterday, but a fairly full one too. The first time we’ve had coffee in a coffee shop (or Costa) since February! It felt a bit strange, but not as alien as it might have been.  One of the hoverfly photos made PoD.

Tomorrow we’ve to phone for a test drive and then the day is our own. What will we do? Where will we go? Who knows.

Where did the day go? – 5 August 2020

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It didn’t help getting up just before 11am.

After a cup of espresso to wake me up, I went out to clean the remnants of a six month old parking ticket from the Juke’s windscreen. Then there was some residue from electrical tape that was still showing on a door pillar. Sweetie wrappers stuck down the side of the seat were the next target for me and my Dyson. Finally there were the dust and debris in the inaccessible places under the seat and stuck fast between the seat back and the cushion, but the long nose of the Dyson proved that there was no place to hide. It looked much better when I was finished and as a bonus, I found a charging cable and a plug-in charger I’d lost months ago!

After lunch we drove through the rain to Stirling to see what the man would say about our now (almost) sparkling Juke and how much he’d want something to replace it. We arrived too early but the man was busy talking to other hopefuls. He apologised and we waited some more. My unspoken limit was 30 minutes, then we’d drive home and he’d lose a sale. Scamp’s unspoken limit was the same 30 minutes. With literally minutes to spare he finished with his two customers and he escorted us to his table, complete with the mandatory clear acrylic screen. We had a look and a seat in the new Juke. Neither of us were all that impressed. It was much bigger and clumsier looking than the Red Juke. The Micra was much smaller by comparison and the seat seemed much lower too. Finally we got round to the numbers. It wasn’t as bad as I’d anticipated. We were all singing from the same hymn sheet and the bottom line was a bit better than what we’d feared. In fact, the top of the line Micra was quite well appointed for a fair price. The Juke we looked at was above our spending limit. It’s not that we couldn’t afford it as much as we didn’t want to. I don’t think we need such a big car now.

We left with smiles on our faces, lots to investigate and talk about an a box of posh chocolates for taking part. We’ve to phone on Friday to arrange a test drive in a Micra. I’ve already driven one and liked it, although it was an automatic. Scamp has had a quick spin round the factories in the driving seat too. We both quite liked it.

Drove home through the usual 5pm traffic and sat down to look at the details of what we were about to commit to. Looked at the clock and it was 7pm! Where did the day go? Dinner was pasta and tomato sauce (with meatballs for me). More talking about money and cars afterwards and then we raided those posh, Lindt chocolates. Took today’s PoD in the fading light in the garden. It’s rain on a pea leaf. Peas are looking very good this year. May pick some at the weekend. While Scamp watched a documentary, I processed and posted the PoD. More talking after that and finally got round to writing this blog just before midnight.

Tomorrow we’re booked for coffee in Costa with Isobel. Hoping to go and look at a camera in Glasgow in the afternoon. It’s looking like a better day tomorrow. Today was dry in the morning and wet in the afternoon.

I think it rained today – 4 August 2020

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It did rain today, in fact it didn’t stop raining all day!

It was raining when we woke. It’s still raining now at just about 11.30pm. It hasn’t halted all day. The furthest I’ve been today was a drive to Tesco for ‘the messages’. We had intended walking down to the shops, but that would not have been a sensible thing to do. The smart money was on using a car for what it was bought for, making life easy.

I did manage to get a photo outside today in one of the spells of light drizzle when the weather was catching its breath. Out, grab four quick photos of the rose at the front door and back in again before I got properly soaked.

Schoolgirl is a beautiful climbing rose. I’ve photographed the buds, the opening flowers, the full flowers and what’s left after all the petals have fallen. I think the last one is my favourite stage. Great for a sort of studio setup with plenty of lights and a low ISO to minimise digital noise.

I was amazed by the number of views Schoolgirl got. The highest view count so far is from 2010 with 31,695 views, 0 comments and 0 faves. None of my other flower pictures get near that amount of attention. Could it be something to do with the name, he innocently suggests?

There was nothing else worth noting today apart from the weather forecast. According to the weather fairies, there may be a little less rain tomorrow. Hoping not to get washed away going to Stirling in the afternoon.

Confusion Reigns – 3 August 2020

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Confusion may have reigned, but there wasn’t much actual rain. A bit, but not much.

I’d promised to clean up the inside of the car and that’s what I did first this morning. It’s not sparkling clean, but it’s not nearly as dirty and messy as it was. Not quite in the JIC category, more … lived in!

With the future of the Juke in mind, I phoned Nissan to check if I was actually booked in for a meeting tomorrow (not Thursday as I’d reported in yesterday’s blog). I seemed to confuse the receptionist because I didn’t have a department or a sales person she could transfer the call to. She eventually just passed it on to the first available sales person. I then proceeded to confuse him too. Eventually I cut to the chase and asked him: “Do you have an appointment scheduled for me to visit tomorrow?” He said “No.” Not the answer I wanted, but at least we were getting somewhere. He now wanted to hand this confusing and possibly confused customer over to someone else. He opened my file and found the salesman I dealt with three years ago when I bought the Juke. He said he’d contact him and get him to phone me later. I think he went out to have lunch then and left his phone deliberately in the office. Locked in a drawer, no doubt.

Scamp wasn’t feeling so good today. She had been feeling sick during the night and hadn’t slept much. For those reasons, she had a light lunch, and so did I because I was still trying to get my head round what had happened. To clarify things we started looking at options for loans or money transfers, basically working out what was the easiest way to deal with the offloading or keeping of the Juke. With my head spinning in a different way now I suggested we take a run to Bishopbriggs to buy a 2 Terabyte removable drive to let me back up the MacBook Pro and the iMac using Time Machine. It’s an old but reliable way of backing up your entire Apple computer with more options than there are with Carbon Copier. Don’t roll your eyes JIC, I’m not going deep into the technicalities. Carbon Copier is a disaster recovery tool. Time Machine is a file recovery tool. Anyway, we drove to Bishopbriggs and bought the cheapest one I could find with a reputable make.

Back home again, I was just about to go on a ‘beastie hunt’ when my phone rang and it was the salesman who sold me the Juke trying to unravel the mess. The phone call I got last week from Renault finance was actually telling me about a discount event that runs from Wednesday 5th until Saturday. They had got their wires crossed and had also been booking people for the event from today and causing a lot of problems as a result. To simplify things I agreed that we’d to to the VIP event which will also feature an extra discount (probably less than 1%). So, I have until Wednesday to get rid of the remaining seagull crap, dust the inside of the car. Wash it down and tidy up the boot. I might get the seagull crap removed. The rest? No chance!

There were no beasties posing for photos today. The bees were too busy, the beetles were beetling about, the ladybirds were lazing, even the flowers were fading. I came home almost empty handed and with no quality work.

Scamp was feeling better by dinner time and had some light tomato spaghetti. After dinner I was making my coffee when I spotted him. There is a Cyberman in my coffee machine! It took me a few seconds to prise him out and half an hour to get a tripod and camera positioned so that I could record his existence. What you see above is living proof that Cybermen exist!

Later we found that series 1 episode 1 of Line of Duty was on BBC 1 (also on iPlayer). It’s a totally believable storyline about corruption in the police and must be the best cop series on TV. I think we started watching it from about halfway through series 2 or maybe we started at series 3. Worth watching if you haven’t seen it before.

Right, so we aren’t going to Stirling tomorrow. In fact, by the looks of the weather we won’t be going anywhere tomorrow. Certainly not without a good Goretex jacket. It’s going to be wet and windy.

F1 Frolics – 2 August 2020

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First and perhaps only Live F1 broadcast this year.

Weather before that was mixed. A bit windy, a bit cloudy and the occasional splash of rain on the window just to remind us that it’s never far away in Scotland. Scamp was reduced to watching the build up to the GP because Andrew Marr was on holiday, so no political cut and thrust today. I’m sure some politicians would be breathing a sigh of relief. If you haven’t watched the GP then I won’t spoil things for you. All I’ll say is watch the first five minutes and the last five minutes, but just fast-forward past the other hour and a bit, unless you want to set the alarm and have a wee snooze.

With that done, and with nothing else to do, I took an old camera, the almost pensioned-off Oly E-M10 out for a spin round St Mo’s. It’s only when you return to an old classic like this that you realise why you sidelined it in the first place. The E-M1 has a much quieter IBIS system (image stabiliser) and a more reliable focusing power. The GX 80 has a much quieter shutter. I think the E-M10 can go back in the box for now. It’s smaller than the other two, but smaller isn’t always better. I have plans for it, so it won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. It managed to take today’s PoD with a little help from me. They are the seed pods of the Meadow Cranesbill (Geranium pratense ).

Dinner came courtesy of Holy Cow curry mixes. The only place we’ve found them is Waitrose, but they are worth searching out, and, of course, Amazon has them. Today’s variety was Delhi Tikka Masala and it was just as good as the rest, just a little milder. A decent curry made in around 10 minutes without the faff of cooking from scratch. You can probably tell that I was cooking tonight – always looking for the easy life.

Spoke to JIC and pondered the modern way of going through an interview. First a telephone interview followed by a Zoom interview and maybe a third virtual interview. Then if you are lucky enough, being offered a position in a company you have never seen outside of a computer screen. Changed days from when, one morning, I dressed in a suit then put on waterproof trousers, waterproof jacket and motorcycle boots and set off from Larky to ride about 100miles to an interview in Creetown on a motorbike with a bag of my architectural drawings on my back. Rode back the same night. I got the job though and our family started on a big adventure in the south of Scotland. Changed days indeed.

Tomorrow I simply must hoover out the car because we’re we’ve got a meeting in Stirling on Tuesday to speak to a man about cars and money.

Not as oppressively warm as yesterday – 1 August 2020

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That was my first thought this morning.

Not as warm. A bit fresher perhaps? Yesterday was just a bit too unScottish on the temperature scale. Today was going to be more down to earth.

We had no bread, very little fruit and no fancy little cakes, so I wandered off down to the shops in the morning. Got enough stuff to feed us for today (and a few days more if the truth be told) and a bar of chocolate for going, which I thought was very fair. Lunch was a roll ’n’ cheese for both of us, but not just ordinary rolls, no, these were Ciabatta rolls that had come all the way from Iceland, the frozen food shop, no the northerly island nation. Then we sat and wondered what to do until the live British F1 GP qualifying was due to start. We were then glued to our TV until the end of the qualifying came to a nail biting finish, or at least that’s what we were told. It was the usual faces in the usual grid slots. No nails were bitten in this house.

Later in the afternoon, I took myself and a camera out for a walk in St Mo’s while Scamp waited at home, deciding what to wear for tonight’s Zoom Dance. To be fair to her, she also prepared the “mise en place” (food and dishes preparation) for tonight’s dinner which was Smoked Salmon and Broccoli Quiche. We’d made it before, but it was really good to walk into the kitchen and find everything laid out for me. The actual cookery was easy after all that. It tasted really quite good. Not as good as Jackie’s, but a fair stab at it. Plus, of course she uses the old fashioned shortcrust pastry base while we have a new super fast method which must remain a secret!

After dinner it was a bit of a rush to get the living room rearranged in time for the dance. It’s really a good way of having a socially isolated dance without the need for face masks and all that faff. Just a computer and a space in your own home to dance. It’s amazing the amount of stuff we’d (read “I’d”) forgotten since the last one. It took me one whole track before I got the steps for the basic waltz anywhere like a dance and not just staggering blindly around the living room. The Social Foxtrot is all about dancing in never ending saw-tooth formations, even I can manage that. Salsa was … let’s say it wasn’t as smooth and faultless as it should be. All in all, it was an exercise in not falling over and no, I’d not had anything stronger than a bottle of beer at that point. However, it was great fun and good exercise too. Don’t know what the couple next door in their Jacuzzi thought! I kid you not, they have a jacuzzi in a gazebo in a garden the same size as ours. What is Westfield coming to? I think they have just too many Zs in their heads! When the Zoom dance ended we had to have a wee seat in the quiet just to allow our muscle groups to return to normal. Next one is in a couple of weeks time unless Lockdown finishes before then – we should be so lucky!

Today’s PoD was wee fly on a cow parsley head.

Tomorrow we may be aching so much we won’t be able to go out anywhere, or maybe we should just to ease those dancing muscles.

27º in Scotland? – 31 July 2020

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That just can’t be right, surely? Yet, that was what the thermometer in the car read. The outside temperature this afternoon was 27ºc.

We knew it was going to be hot today, but although we’d been warned, we just didn’t believe it until it happened. We’d decided that we would go out somewhere for a walk. We’d considered and rejected a few places. There was no point in going to the seaside because everyone would be going there. We finally settled on Chatelherault which was once the hunting lodge of the Dukes of Hamilton. Now it’s a country park in South Lanarkshire. Every time I go there I think it’s obscene that one family should have owned such a house in an enormous tract of land while others, the workers, were living in slum conditions with a tiny postage stamp of a garden to grow basic vegetables if they were lucky. Thankfully this building and its lands are now owned by South Lanarkshire Council and are open to everyone, even the scruffs from North Lanarkshire!

We chose a walk that we’d been on before, down through the gigantic pine trees with the Avon Water flowing below us. At the end of the walk we saw this view and it became PoD. It was good to see the ordinary folk staking their claim to some space in the sun on such a bright and sunny day. Actually it wasn’t all that sunny, but it was bright and warm and a clever bit of software changed the sky from milky white to summer blue with fluffy clouds. That’s the way it should have been anyway!

Once we’d walked “round the policies” as Colin would say, we drove home leaving a parking space for one of the eagle eyed visitors. Drove home and had lunch, then sat in the warm air of the garden for a while reading and listening to weans with their Drum ’n’ Bass ‘thumpy tunes’ as they walked along the footpath behind the house. Were we like that once? I suppose we were. Rebels without a clue. Found a little neon blue weevil in the grass and took its photo before it flew away to its next modelling assignment. Still don’t know exactly what it was.

Dinner tonight was a freezer raid for me. Butcher’s burger from January, butcher’s sausages from May, Waitrose liver from yesterday and an egg from a different butcher and half a portion of fried potatoes. A very mixed grill, but delicious. Scamp had trout fillet with the other half portion of fried potatoes. It was clouding over and attempting to rain by the time we were finished dinner and on to pudding (blackcurrant jelly and ice cream) and soon after that came a flash of lightning and the rumble of thunder. The rain became torrential and I think you could say the heatwave was over, but we did get 27ºc on the way home from Chatelherault.

Tomorrow the temperature is predicted to be a more reasonable 17º to 19º. Warm, but not crazy warm. We’ll see.

Rain in all its forms – 30 July 2020

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Today was wet, really wet, soaking wet in fact.

It was that typical Scottish summer day. Every form of rain you could imagine falling incessantly from the sky. It didn’t come as a surprise, we knew from the weather reports that today was going to be a washout, so we’d planned for it. We went for the messages!

We drove to Waitrose in Stirling in the morning. We needed shopping and there was no point in wasting the warm sunny day that had been promised for Friday, so we thought it made sense to use up Thursday wandering round Waitrose filling a trolley. When we got to the till I thought we’d actually managed to buy Waitrose. We nearly did.

Coming back, the rain was even worse and the spray thrown up by the cars was like diving through fog. I was amazed at the number of drivers who chose not to use lights. The ones who had no rear lights were bad enough, but it was the ones who didn’t even daytime running lights who were the worst. A grey car driving through heavy spray on a dull day without lights is almost invisible from front or rear. Rant over.

The rain continued into the afternoon and as I didn’t have a photo, I took a walk in the rain to see if I could find some moody raindrop pictures. Instead I found some Yarrow plants. One shot of them became PoD.

After dinner I settled down to paint a wee jam jar of lavender flowers. Scamp had cut them yesterday and I’d dropped them into an jam jar of water to stop them wilting. Today that jam jar and its flowers became the subject of a wee watercolour. It’s up on Instagram, but I’ll let you have a look at it here too. I’m quite pleased with it.

Tomorrow is forecast to be the best day of the week with predicted temperatures in the mid 20s here in the Central Belt. Down in London it’s going to be over 30º. Too hot for me! Hope you enjoy it Hazy and Neil-D. Hope the Cambridge pair have a more sensible temperature.

We may go for a walk somewhere if tomorrow is going to be Summer!

Old Friends – 29 July 2020

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Today we went to see a couple of old friends.

Scamp and I went for a wee run today to see a couple of old friends. One with his head always down. Some folk say he’s watching you. The other one has his head high. Some think he’s in pain, I think he’s laughing out loud at all these little folk around him. It’s ages since we’ve visited the Kelpies, not been there for months and I think Scamp was looking forward to seeing them again. I must admit I was too. Because of the Covid-19 restrictions, the Visitor Centre was closed, but there was an ice cream van and it seemed a shame on quite a sunny day not to have one each. We walked around them and then followed our noses to the lock that allows boats access to the River Carron and thence to the Forth Estuary and the sea. We were waiting to allow a couple to cross the narrow walkway over the lock gates when I recognised them. One was a teacher in the school when I started and the other was his wife. We stood and talked for a while about our respective families. We also talked about folk we’d known and worked with, some of whom are no longer with us. Eventually we had to go, but as usual when something like that happens throughout the afternoon little snippets of memories drop into place. A nostalgic meeting. They walked back to their car and we carried on with our walk on the far side of the canal.

For all the times we’ve visited the Big Horses, this is the first time we’ve crossed the canal and seen them from the other side. You get a completely different view of them from the other side and best of all there are no pylons or power lines to erase from the resulting photographs. Today’s PoD came from the bridge further back upstream, if you can have an upstream is a canal. I’d never photographed them from that viewpoint before and it’s such a natural choice with the Ochil Hills in the background.

Back home after lunch, Scamp wanted to prune back the blackcurrant bush in the hopes that she can get rid of the virus or insects that are damaging it, I don’t think either of us is really sure that it will work, but if we don’t try, we’ll never know. I got my hands dirty planting some more carrots and kale into pots to go in the greenhouse. The kale should be ok, but I’m not sure if the carrots will work. I’ve never been successful with transplanting root crops. I also bit the bullet and spread slug pellets in the raised bed. I don’t like using them where I’m growing stuff to eat, but I reckon it’s the slugs that have taken all the carrot plants I had there. There are definitely traces of slugs on the well eaten kale leaves. I checked them and there are no signs of caterpillars, so slugs are the best bet. Let’s hope they like their last meal of blue slug pellets.

That was about it for the day. A day at the Kelpies is always uplifting, but meeting another couple of old friends just made it extra special.

Tomorrow rain is forecast, so we may ‘Go for the Messages.”

Off the leash – 28 July 2020

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Scamp was off to a Witches housewarming and I was off the leash for a couple of hours.

Did a bit of shopping while Scamp was getting ready. Just the usual essentials, bottle of Prosecco, box of chocolates and a box of fancy biscuits, oh yes, and a box of Wheetabix, that was for me. The rest, or at least part of it was to go to the Witches party. Lunch for me was one of yesterday’s rolls with some cooked ham. Ham was lovely, roll was dry and cheuch (that means tough). Scamp was off to afternoon tea and Champagne. How the other half live, eh?

When Scamp was safely driven off to the party I settled down to clear up the painting room again. Hoovered most of the scraps of cloth from the floor, picked up all the little bits of black thread that get everywhere. Read a painting book to give me some inspiration – that didn’t help. Put away the sewing machine, started filling a bag with rubbish. I just couldn’t settle down to do anything. Finally gave up and went downstairs to fight with Luminar 4, a piece of software that’s main claim to fame is that it can fake a sky into a picture to persuade all but the most ardent pixel peepers that it’s real. Well, that’s what it did up until the last update. Now it’s become an expert beachball spinner. In other words, as usually happens with clever apps and even clever app designers, it has become top heavy in bloat and can produce really good effects if you’ve got the time to sit and watch the pointer turn into a spinning beach ball for five minutes every time you move the mouse. I’d have thought it would be easy to uninstall it and just reinstall the previous version, but apparently you can’t do that losing all your previous work. Emailing Tech Support doesn’t help, perhaps because they’re inundated with emails from people like me disgruntled at this ill thought out upgrade.

Now there’s a thing. The word ‘disgruntled’. The ’dis’ part usually means ’the opposite of’ as in disassembled or disagree. If that’s the case, is ‘gruntled’ the opposite of ’disgruntled’? Answers on a postcard please to the usual address.

Eventually I had to drag myself away from the computer and go for tonight’s dinner requirements. Walked down to the shops after leaving Scamp a message. Hoping afterwards that here eyesight wouldn’t have been too seriously damaged by a surfeit of champagne and cocktails to be able to read it. It wasn’t, she was back when I returned. Back with stories of the beautiful house with carefully colour matched walls, carpets, curtains and dog. If she changes the colour scheme for the house will she need to change the dog too, I wondered. Dinner was Chicken and Chorizo Jambalaya and it was good!

Actually did a fifteen minute sketch of a guy we used to meet at Salsa. Pencil sketch which was deemed pretty good by Scamp. PoD was a bunch of rowan berries on the back door tree.

Tomorrow looks like a reasonable day, so we may go somewhere interesting.