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Admiring my handiwork – 19 March 2024

Posted on by Zogman

Surprisingly, no aches and pains, no pulled muscles either from yesterday’s tentative return to home decorating.

In fact, we drove up to the local B&Q to see if they had the paint we’re intending to use in the front bedroom. They didn’t have it in stock. It wasn’t a great surprise, they never have what you need in this store. Scamp agreed and said that you don’t see crowds of people shopping for anything in this store. It’s usually joiners and builders we see in this B&Q. I’m guessing they get a good trade discount, paid for through the full price the general public have to fork out. I’m amazed it’s still in business.

So, it was in and out again as quick as possible today and then on to Tesco for the weekly shop. No problem with the general public there. Tuesdays are usually busy and the shelves are usually full. We avoid Mondays when the bakery department seem to take the day off en masse.

Back home and after lunch I had a quick discussion with my brother on WhatsApp about where we’d go this week. I put up a good case for Stirling which has architecture and the occasional grand church which he likes and what can be gorgeous view along the carse to the Lomond hills which suits me.

With that settled I went out for a walk in St Mo’s, but I could just have returned home after a five minutes walk because I found today’s PoD not a hundred metres from our front door. Just a wee daisy that had made its home in a crack in the pavement next to an inspection plug for the wireless cable. A shot in the bag is always a great thing.

Wandered round St Mo’s anyway since the photowalk is not just about taking photos, but also about keeping moving, getting some exercise and increasing my daily step count.

When I got home, I was just going through today’s 17 photos when Scamp started cheering. I thought we’d won the lottery before I remembered we had just torn up Saturday’s failed chance to become a millionaire. No, it was the early arrival of Laura & (Big)Ross’s baby girl and John & Marion’s first grandchild. Three weeks early. Good luck to them all.

Dinner tonight was Paella a family favourite that I hadn’t made for months, and it showed. A bit soggy, but apart from that it was fine. It filled a space as we say.

Tomorrow Alex and I are off to terrorise Stirling. Scamp has nothing planned apart from cleaning and ironing.

Painting – 18 March 2024

Posted on by Zogman

Yes more painting, but no sketching first. Straight into the painting.

Not watercolour this time, nor oils. This was plain old fashioned decorating and the mess that follows. Scamp was out in the morning having coffee with Isobel, so that gave me about two hours to get the painting done. That was my secret plan. We’d discussed the possibility of painting our bedroom, but thought it would be better to start with the hall. The hall is a fairly small area to paint, but with a few hard to reach places tucked away in corners, so it had its challenges. It only took about an hour to get most of it done, then another half hour to get the ‘tricky’ bits finished. By that time, Scamp had returned and between us we got the kitchen tidied, but not before I took a couple of photos just to record the work. One of them became PoD. The walls in the hall have now dried and look better for their fresh coat of paint. The colour, just in case you feel inspired, was Apricot White.

I don’t know if it was something I ate, or the smell of the paint lingering in the house, but I felt a bit sick in the afternoon. I suppose I should have gone for a walk to clear my head, but instead I had a long hot shower because I knew I’d be aching tomorrow and the hot water might just stave off the worst of it.

While I was showering, Scamp was out in the raised bed, chopping down the remaining kale stalks that had gone to seed. Now we have to decide if we’re going to have a raised bed again or if it’s worth the bother. I’m not sure if it is worth making a new one, or even buying a purpose made one. For all I put into it, it’s a fair expense and maybe the space could be better utilised. The old one certainly won’t last another year. It’s about 10 years old and rotting away. We’ll have to discuss the possibilities and make a decision soon.

No plans for tomorrow for either of us, whether secret or not.

Just another Sunday – 17 March 2024

Posted on by Zogman

A dull day with some rain and some sun. If you hit it right, it was good and if not you got wet. I, for once hit it right.

Scamp was desperate to get stuff cleared out in the garden. She cut down the Hydrangea because there were new shoots starting to appear at ground level and she wanted to encourage the growth. Next on the chopping list was the Penstemon which got a quick haircut because it was getting untidy and needed the crop.

I was more adventurous and went for a walk through the woods down by the main road and found some cherry blossom on the trees. I thought I was going too early, but it turned out I was almost too late as the petals from the flowers were covering the ground. I did get some photos, but I was kicking myself that I hadn’t taken the LensBaby 35 because the distortion it produces works well with blossom. Maybe tomorrow. Startled two deer on my walk too, but they saw me long before I saw them. PoD turned out to be a Larch Pineapple with a raindrop right on top!

Spoke to Jamie later in the day and heard about the progress on the house. It seems to be going well, despite the best efforts of English Heritage. Good to hear that the roof is now on and it’s mainly the internal plastering that need finishing.

No real plans for tomorrow. Well, I have a secret plan and Scamp is out for coffee with Isobel.

 

 

Foxtrotting – 16 March 2024

Posted on by Zogman

We drove over to Brookfield hoping for a new start in the ballroom dance class, but were pleasantly surprised by the appearance of an old friend or two.

The dance that was chosen to get us on our feet and started was Mambo Marina. A very old favourite that we learned a long, long while ago. It was buried deep in my memory and the first dance was a bit of a struggle, but after the second track most of the wrinkles were ironed out and it flowed like it should … almost.

Next was the Foxtrot, the old foxtrot we’d learned yonks ago. At first, like the MM it was a bit of a blur, but gradually with help from Scamp the figures fitted together and even the Continuous Hover Cross which was my nemesis in dances gone by was recovered from muscle memory and we went through with hardly a mistake by track three or five!

The Mayfair Quickstep was next. Two tracks to dust off the cobwebs of this well known and oft dance sequence and we were almost two thirds of the way through the class. Jive was next on the agenda and it was a refresher course on figures we’d already dances and which were fairly fresh in our memories as they were similar to some of the jive routines from many years ago.

To finish off, we were invited to dance any Waltz. We started on the Spring Waltz, but fumbled our way through it before we changed to Kirsty’s Waltz Nioli. It’s shorter and simpler and we did manage to finish it and then restart it again.

That was it for the ballroom class. Drove back home feeling that we’d accomplished something today.

After lunch I went for a walk in St Mo’s and just as I left the house, the rain started. I was concentrating on getting some photos of the Larch Pineapples I saw the other day. I found them and although the light was a bit low, so was the wind and that allowed me to get some sharper photos. One of them made PoD.

Dinner came courtesy of Golden Bowl and it was delicious. Lovely and fresh for both of us. Mine being a Special Chow Mein and Scamp’s was her usual Chicken Chop Suey and Fried Rice. Amazingly it was still light and about 5.15 when I went to collect the food.

That was about it for today apart from trying to send some photos to Alex and them bouncing back to me. Similar to my previous Google problem, but not the same. I’ll worry about it tomorrow … or the next day.

No plans for tomorrow apart from worrying about things that cannot be fixed.

A day of two halves – 15 March 2024

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Rain in the morning and a bit of sunshine in the afternoon

The morning had light rain to start with but soon that turned to heavy persistent rain. Scamp was out to go to FitSteps, only to return half an hour later because nobody appeared. No teacher, now FitSteppers, nobody. We can only surmise that Kirsty, the teacher, had a hospital appointment to check her wrist was setting well. I’d just started reading the last few chapters in my latest book “To The Dogs” by Louise Welsh, but now it was put to the side.

Lunch was the remaining half of yesterday’s Ginsters pasty, baked in the microwave. That sounds awful, but with a combination of microwaving at ‘warm’ setting and convection heating at 220º is part microwaves, part bakes the pasty. An hour after lunch the rain stopped, but it was still cloudy. Half an hour after that, the sun shone. I’d been processing some of my favourite holiday photos to pass on Alex, but I knew the sensible thing to do was to put my boots and get out while the going was good.

The frogs that had been so busy making babies a couple of days ago seemed to have left en masse. I did find a small group at the far corner of one of the small ponds, but the biggest contingent had gone. I probably missed the big love-in when we were on holiday. It didn’t matter, because I did get some shots during the week, so I didn’t miss it all.

Instead of walking round the pond, I went looking for frogs in some of the tiny wee ponds in the woods, but didn’t find any, nor did I find any frogspawn. What I did find was a couple of sixteen spot orange ladybirds (Halyzia sedecimguttata). They were still hibernating, one tucked under some moss high in a birch tree and the other in a crevice from a broken branch in another birch. I hadn’t seen any earlier in the year, so maybe the recent warmer weather had tempted them out and then the colder weather had sent them back under cover. One of the ladybirds got PoD.

Dinner tonight was an old fashioned home made stir-fry made by Scamp with what we had in the fridge. It was really good. I’d forgotten how good Scamp’s stir-fries were.

Tomorrow we’ll probably be driving to Brookfield for a dance class. No confirmation that the class is on yet, but we’re hopeful.

 

Out to lunch for some, but not for all – 14 March 2024

Posted on by Zogman

Scamp was out to lunch with her pal today. I had stuff to do at home.

I drove Scamp up to the town centre and then came home via Tesco for my own lunch and to pick up some meds that had arrived in Boots while we were sunning ourselves in foreign climes. Then it was back to working out what we did, when and what new sights we’d seen since the last time we were in Fuerteventura. Actually not a lot had changed overall, but of course there were new developments as there always are when you haven’t visited a place for four or five years.

It has been a dull wet day with no real chance to grab much in the way of photos. What I did do was wrap the 24-105mm lens in clingfilm to keep it fairly dry while still being able to access the focusing controls as I took some photos of the changes that were happening in the plants in the garden. Because it was so dull, the ISO was quite high and that meant more digital noise than I had been used to in the last week, but with help from Lightroom and ON1 Photo Raw I think I’ve minimised it. POD turned out to be new buds on the old James Grieve apple tree. It really needs another stake to shoulder the increasing weight in its boughs. Something else to add to the ‘To-Do list.

Watched the unveiling of the winning painting from this year’s Landscape Artist of the Year and was impressed with the way the artist dealt with the landscape of Orkney, but didn’t think she rendered the clouds in a meaningful way. They looked too heavy and almost abstract. Also, for something that was intended to emphasise the importance of low carbon energy, the wind turbines looked like an afterthought.
It’s true that you can’t please all the people all of the time!

Scamp and I agree that this is the first day when we’ve felt ‘normal’. It’s strange that a relaxing holiday takes so much out of you!

Starting to get back to normal – 13 March 2024

Posted on by Zogman

Whatever ‘Normal’ is.

Task for today was to purchase a new SSL which as you probably know is the bit of code that turns HTTP into HTTPS. I remember the mess I got into trying to install it. This time, all I needed to do was hand over a few quid to someone at my hosting company and they installed the software for me. I’d been dreading going through all that rigmarole again and according to my receipt, it’s solid until 2025.

The next thing to do was to put fingers to keyboard to flesh out the notes I’d made during last week about where we went and what we did. That took up most of the morning and half of the afternoon. It’s still a work in progress, but there has been progress in the work, if that makes sense. If it does, it will be a first.

As the afternoon wore on and the sun was shining, I thought it would be a good idea to put the boots on and go for a walk in St Mo’s. It was indeed a good idea because the frog influx had started in earnest and two of the ponds were full of them and their jelly frog spawn. That gave me a potential PoD. Further on in my walk I found some Alder catkins glowing in the sunshine and they just beat the frogs to the first place and PoD.

Dinner tonight was ‘red Pasta’ or Pasta with a Tomato Sauce. I used some strange round pasta I found in a cupboard and it took a long time to soften, but it was voted a success by Scamp. I wasn’t so sure.

First night dancing at Kirsty’s class for almost two months since her tumble just after Christmas. Tonight it was Foxtrot and when I settled in to it, most of the figures that made up the dance were fairly well known to me. It was just a case of fitting them together like a jigsaw. Of course, as with all jigsaws, there were pieces missing. Hopefully I’ll find them by next week.

Weather looks really wet tomorrow. That might be a good thing because it will let me get on with fleshing out the remainder of last week’s blog posts.

Scamp is out to lunch tomorrow and I have work to do.

Trying to get back to normal – 12 March 2024

Posted on by Zogman

It’s the little things you notice after you get home, like the fact that there’s nobody to take away your dirty dishes, and the lack of a table length of fresh fruit for you to pick your way through.

Today was about shopping and coming to terms with single digit temperatures.

We’ve all probably been on a foreign holiday and had to come back to reality. It’s not a pleasant prospect, so I won’t labour it. However, at least you get to sleep in your own bed again.

Today’s PoD was a couple of daffodils in the garden to welcome us home.

Tomorrow we start getting back to ‘normal’ if we can find it.

Flying Home – 11 March 2024

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It always comes to this.

Today we had breakfast and then it was time to drag those cases out, but not before we had a last wee dose of Vitamin D. Then we lugged the cases over to the pickup stall in the hotel where a lovely lady from Jet2 checked them and checked that we were who we said we were and with the minimum of fuss the cases were gone to be loaded on to the plane at the airport. The next time we’d see them would be in a cool Glasgow. Would that all companies were as helpful as this.

About fifteen minutes later our coach arrived at the door and we were taken on a mystery tour around, what seemed to be, all the hotels in Caleta de Fuste. From there, through the roadworks, to the airport where we could legally bypass check-in and advance to Security where I did remember to remove my belt before passing through the terrifying scanning archway with no alarms sounding. Scamp had to be scanned twice. Each time she triggered the flashing lights and the beeps. When she set off the alarms the second time, the security man shrugged his shoulders and waved her through!

From there it was an easy walk to the gate and we boarded ahead of time. Four hours later we arrived to a rather cool Glasgow. The flight was only slightly longer than the wait for the baggage carousel to fire up, but for once our cases were in the first lot to arrive.

Drove home after making a wrong turn exiting the airport and arrived home safely, crossing the Kingston Bridge without stopping. A most unusual occurrence. Back home just about 8pm.

PoD was the standard view from an aircraft window looking down on Puerto del Carmen on Lanzarote.

An early bed tonight and tomorrow will be unpacking day.

Mother’s Day – 10 March 2024

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Mother’s Day in a warm place.

In the morning after breakfast, we went out for a walk along the promenade because the sun was shining and the breeze was light. The walkway was busy, probably because it was Sunday and the walkers were mostly families relaxing on the weekend. They go to the beach like we go to Drumpellier separated by about two thousand miles and about 15 degrees centigrade.

By the time we got back it was lunch time and Scamp had replied to her Mother’s Day messages. We cleared both the beds and started sorting out the clothes that would need to be packed in to the cases tonight in preparation for going home tomorrow. Just a rough arranging everything into bundles, nothing too serious at this time.

The sun was still shining after lunch, so Scamp went for a seat by the pool while I went for a last walk in the wilderness. I didn’t see anything very interesting, but I took my usual photograph of shells on a raised beach metres above the high tide mark. How they got there is a mystery. Presumably the land I was walking on had been under the ocean thousands of years ago and these little wee shells had survived the changes since then.

When I got back, Scamp was ready to get dressed for dinner and it was my time to relax on a saggy sunbed. We had been arguing about the exact placement of our balcony in the hotel and when my phone rang, it was Scamp to tell me that she was waving to me from the balcony. Brilliant idea. I took a few photos that solved the problem of where we had been living for a week! Later we did that final pack before we went for dinner.

After dinner we had a couple of drinks from the bar then adjourned to the balcony to finish off the last of the bottle of gin we’d bought at the start of the holiday. Sitting on the balcony without coats watching the stars and listening to the waves.

PoD was a photo of someone, a stranger, relaxing on the beach under a couple of coconut matting sunshades.

Tomorrow the tension will be high. Cases will be taken away and we’ll be waiting for the bus to the airport.