Category: A Walk

Happy Birthday Jamie – 16 August 2021

Posted on by Zogman

Hope it was just as good a day as you hoped it would be.

As for us, a man was coming go give us giant cotton buds to stick down our throats and up our noses. Always that way round, never the nose first! Once he’d taken the swabs back and asked us our twenty questions we were free to go.

Today we were off for a spin. We drove off in the general direction of Loch Lomond, basically following our route to our dance class on a Saturday. We reached and passed that turnoff and headed further north west past the end of the airport and were just about to take the slip road for the Erskine Bridge when we saw the queue and the warning about a breakdown on the bridge, so instead of turning off, we continued straight on through Port Glasgow, Greenock and parked for a few minutes at Gourock. We sat in the car, eating Dolly Mixtures and watching a Royal Navy ship and a yacht cruising around the estuary.

From there we drove down past Cloch lighthouse and stopped at the garden centre we’d both been heading for. Had a bite to eat there. Not a very posh lunch, think more School Dinners. Steak and Sausage Pie cut from bit tray for me and a couple of dollops of Macaroni Cheese for Scamp. Both served with chips, so yes, very reminiscent of School Dinners. Having said that, it was wasn’t expensive and my steak & sausage was lovely, just the puff pastry didn’t have enough puff left. Scamp’s was a bit congealed.

We walked round the plants and bought an Echinacea we both liked and a terracotta pot to put it in. Scamp bought herself a top in an Edinburgh Woollen Mill shop and I got some photos.

The photos came from across the road from the garden centre where there were views across the estuary to Dunoon on one side and on the other side the remains of the the pier at what had been Hunterston Power Station. Those were just the middle ground props for the star which was the sky with it’s great cloud patterns. Well, it was for me anyway. PoD was a picture looking from Cloch towards Dunoon.

When we’d walked across the pebbly beach and on round a headland, we headed back to the car and drove on to Inverkip, then took the road over the hill to bring us back to the motorway and home.

Spoke to Jamie in the evening and found out he was intending to test his baking skills on a Swiss Roll.

Not quite the day out we’d planned, but a breath of fresh salt air and a walk along beside the Clyde estuary. Loch Lomond will have to wait for another day.

Tomorrow, Scamp is out for coffee with Isobel and I may just put pastel to paper if the weather is inclement, as seems likely and if not then I may go for a walk to see some dragons.

Just another Sunday – 15 August 2021

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Sunday is a lazy day. That about summed it up.

In the morning, Scamp cut some of her sweet peas which have not been nearly as prolific as in previous years. If I was to hazard a guess at the reason, I’d say it was the container that was the problem. Scamp used to plant her sweet peas in an old orange box. That wasn’t the colour of the box (it was painted blue) it was previous use of the container. It was a wooden box that used to hold oranges. As you can imagine, it was fairly old, dating from a time before cardboard boxes. It was falling apart and she made up her mind last year to take it apart and replace it with a plastic trough. I think the sweet peas prefer the traditional orange box. I have no proof of this, it’s just my opinion, based on a life eating oranges.

While she was gathering the flowers I started making a loaf, just an ordinary loaf, nothing fancy. Left that to prove after messing up the proportions of water to flour. You’d think by this time I’d have a better idea of how much water to use, but my excuse is that I haven’t made a loaf for a long while.

After I’d tidied up the kitchen and Scamp had arranged the flowers in a vase with an extra bloom from her rose, Troika, I offered to photograph it. An old piece of crushed velvet became the backdrop and the whole thing sat on the draining board of the kitchen sink. One of the images became PoD. We went for a walk in St Mo’s in the afternoon and I collected a few more photos, but nothing as good as the flowers. I did get a dragon or two, but they weren’t really all that successful.

Back home I got busy preparing my dinner main course which was going to be Lamb Tagine, using two lamb neck fillets. Pan fried the lamb with spices, dates and a chopped onion. Added orange juice and water and transferred the lot to the slow cooker to chug away do its work for a couple of hours. Then it was time to get the bread ready for its second prove, which I did and then went for a second walk in St Mo’s looking for beasties this time. I found a grasshopper and a shield bug that was striding out along the kerb of the boardwalk. The grasshopper almost beat the flowers to first place, but I liked the colour combinations of the flowers.

Bread baked well and tasted fine. Tagine was great, but needed three hours slow cooking, not the two in the recipe. Scamp had a piece of trout and we shared calabrese and some of our potatoes. All were deemed good.

Tomorrow we may go out for a spin somewhere scenic!

Out early for a dance or five – 14 August 2021

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The new normal for a Saturday. Up and out by 10.15.

Drove to Johnstone, flying solo. I did have a radio operator, but didn’t have the backup of sat nav. You have to fly solo some time. You can’t always be relying on instruments to guide you, besides it was a fairly easy route to follow.

Started with a couple of sequence dances and finished with a line dance! Oh No! I’ll be buying a Stetson hat and a pair of cowboy boots soon! In between there were more additions to the Foxtrot to contend with and more detail in the Sweetheart Cha Cha. We managed it, but with a bit of difficulty for both of us.

Came home and had lunch then we lifted our second, and last “tattie bag” and got a fair amount to tatties for tomorrow’s dinner and a few more days besides. Then Scamp wanted to do some pruning and I went to the butchers to get sausages for tomorrow’s breakfast, stew for a steak pie and free range eggs. On the way home I stopped at St Mo’s and nabbed a little dragonfly, a Common Darter, for today’s PoD. Still shooting with the new A6000 which is so much lighter than the E7m2. Image quality is a bit lower than its big brother, but not so much that it is getting sent back. The kit lens is one of Sony’s failures, but I’ve enough lenses to go round without having to use that bit of plastic. It’s a keeper.

Dinner was from Golden Bowl and was our usual selection: Chicken Chop Suey for Scamp and Special Chow Mein for me. Both up to the usual high standard. Watched one of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise which was just mindless entertainment, no thinking required.

Tomorrow we may go for a drive somewhere scenic if the weather is as good as today.

Friday the 13th – 13 August 2021

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Not that I’m superstitious of course.

But first there was a funeral to attend. We’d driven the road yesterday and the sat nav had found the place. Today we were going to be brave and go sat nav free. I only made one wrong turning which was amazing in itself. After the service we drove through what used to be Burnbank to what used to be the Zambezi Hotel but is now the Villa Hotel for the traditional tea after a funeral. Apart from John, Marion and their offspring we knew nobody at the tea. We sat and talked to John and Marion for a while, then took our leave.

Drove home and changed before driving out again to get The Messages at Tesco. I needed to fill up the tank of the Blue Micra and then realised I couldn’t remember my pin. I tried two and was on my last attempt when I cancelled the transaction. Thankfully you have to input your pin before you fill up or I’d really have been in trouble. Of course Scamp could have paid with her card, but I just took my card and drove off, in a blazing huff. Back home, and after I’d cooled down, we drove to the BP garage and Scamp paid for the petrol. Then I drove back and requested a new pin from the bank feeling stupid. How could I forget my pin? I’d used it just last week to pay for the camera! I know I’ll remember it tomorrow morning.

In the afternoon we went for a walk in St Mo’s and that’s where today’s PoD came from. We’d been discussing the blue flower and trying to work out what it was. I though I’d just take a photo of it and find it on Google Images Search. Then I was photobombed by a hoverfly that just flew in and wandered over the flower. I got the photo, but I still didn’t find out what the flower was.

Back home it was a Tesco pizza for dinner and humble pie for me, forgetting my pin. Friday the Thirteenth? Indeed it was unlucky for me!

Hopefully dancing in the morning tomorrow, but no plans for the afternoon. It’ll be a surprise.

Driving, Walking and Raining – 12 August 2021

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With a few sunny spells too.

We’ve promised John and Marion that we’ll be at her dad’s funeral tomorrow in High Blantyre at 10am. We were up fairly early today, so we left the house at 9.30am to do a trial run to the crematorium to check out the traffic at about the time we’d leave tomorrow. We arrived almost at 10am, so our intended leaving time of 9.15 tomorrow looked ok.

Instead of coming straight home, Scamp suggested we go to Drumpellier for a walk round the loch. She hasn’t really been out of the house since Monday, so a walk in the park would do her some good, and do me some good too. This is the last week of the school holidays with teachers going back to work today and tomorrow and those lovely children (yes, that was sarcasm!) going back on Monday. There were quite a lot of children making the most of their last few days of freedom accompanied by mums, dads, grans and grandpas, all glad to see them going back to school. Add in the usual pensioners getting in their daily exercise and you can imagine, it was a busy place.

We walked the usual “travelator” circuit for a bit and then took one of the paths into the woods just to get out of the crowds. We walked through the Peace Garden which was looking a bit sorry for itself with long grass, weeds and overgrown bushes. Such a shame that the council doesn’t do more to keep these places tidy. Yes, I know they are strapped for cash, but it isn’t until you work for a council that you see the money that’s wasted every year. I guarantee there are ways the council could redirect some of that wasted money to make these places look better. However, in doing that, they’d be admitting that the money was wasted in the first place, so it’s never going to happen.

We left Drumpellier to the mums, dads, grans and grandpas, plus the weans, of course and headed for Morrisons at The Fort. Just messages today. No time for essentials like gin or whisky, so no fun either. From there it was back home.

After lunch I spoke to Fred on the phone for about an hour and heard his news.

Up until then it had been a fairly pleasant day although the clouds were gathering now. I was just putting my jacket on to go for a walk in St Mo’s when the rain started and it was heavy rain. The shower lasted about half an hour before it dwindled away to just the occasional spits and spots. I took that as a sign that I’d get a second walk of the day. I was walking over to St Mo’s when I saw a woman waking her dog on the footpath through the trees. Once I’d retrieved the Wee Dog from my rucksack and focused I had a chance to get three decent shots. In one of them the woman was standing in a patch of sunlight. That became PoD. A bit of ‘shopping’ to get it from the raw image to the one you see here.

Some recipes are fickle. You make one mistake and the whole thing turns to a tasteless mush, or a bitter inedible mess. Carrot and Lentil Curry isn’t like that. I used the wrong seeds. Should have been fennel and I used cumin. I used double the amount of lentils. I missed out the garlic that should have gone in. I even allowed it to burn dry. However, it turned out really alright! In fact it tasted better than alright and that wasn’t just my description, Scamp agreed. That’s a good standby recipe, one you can work with.

Quick dance practise tonight because I really need to concentrate a lot more on steps and frame and a hundred and one other things. Tina Tango was looking better after some help from dance maestro Scamp.

Tomorrow a funeral in the morning and then the rest of the day will, hopefully, be our own.

Out early again – 11 August 2021

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Another fairly early rise, but not for photography this time.

Scamp had had an uncomfortable night with what seemed like the beginnings of a urine infection. She phoned the surgery just after 8am and they referred her to the pharmacist. We drove up there after it opened and when she had discussed things with the pharmacist, they recommended a course of antibiotics. I’m sure the ten minute wait for them must have felt like ten hours. Back home she was feeling better by lunchtime and I made some soup for lunch, well, I opened the tin and heated the soup. That’s the same thing as making some soup! It must have been good soup because she looked and sounded better after that.

I had intended going out this morning to test run the new camera, but the foregoing put paid to that and now that the patient was on the mend, the rain started. The weather fairies suggested that it might go off around 4pm. It was fairly thumping down. Not quite a thunderstorm, but not just light rain. I had found some repair patches that would fix the tear in my raincoat, so I spent an hour or so cutting them to the right shape and ironing them on. Since I had the iron on anyway, I ironed the elbow patches on to my old ‘Dennis’ rugby shirt. I’ve been meaning to do it for ages and now it’s half done. I’ve just to stitch them on and I’ll be happy with the repair.

About 5pm the rain did turn off and after checking that the patient had everything she needed I went for that walk in St Mo’s. I think I must have been the only person to risk a walk today. There was very little activity out in the park, but I did see a little snail hanging upside down from some wild flowers, choosing the best ones to eat. That was done with the Big Dog and got PoD, but the Little Dog got a quite good shot of fallen leaves. That was a strong contender. Both are on Flickr.

Scamp seems a lot better tonight and she’s already gone to bed to catch up on the sleep she missed last night.

Tomorrow we will see how the land lies before deciding what we’re doing. It looks like another wet day.

One out, One in – 10 August 2021

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Hopefully moving forward in the process.

It was a lovely morning after all that rain yesterday. Scamp encouraged me to go out for a walk and I’m glad I did. She was feeling a lot better, but had things to do in the house. Also, we didn’t know when DPD were coming to pick up the GX80 camera I was selling to MPB, so someone had to stay in the house.

I was hoping that yesterday’s rain and today’s sun would have freshened up St Mo’s pond to the extent that there might be some dragonfly activity and that’s exactly what had happened. Not one, but two pairs of dragonflies doing circuits of the pond. One pair were blue and big and they never stopped to rest. They just kept flying round and round. The other pair were much smaller, probably Common Darters and they were much more relaxed, stopping to rest every few minutes on the kerb of the boardwalk or sometimes even on the boardwalk itself. I grabbed a few photos just incase they flew off and, like those big blue beasts, started flying circuits. I’d just found a little Leafhopper when a gang of chattering women came down the path from the woods. We said our “Good mornings” and then I recognised one of the last to pass. She was the librarian at the school and had retired the year before me. We asked each other if we were well and I found out that the ladies were in a walking group and did this walk every Tuesday morning. I replied as my mum would have said “Half kiddin’ and hale earnest” that I’d have to avoid coming this way on a Tuesday morning. We parted, both saying “Not missing It a bit”. The ‘It’ in question didn’t need to the explained.

I wandered on into the woods and tried to find the wasps nest from yesterday. There was still some activity there, but a lot less than yesterday. It looked like a lot of the hexagonal cells had been closed up since then and only a few wasps were still working. I’d read a bit about wasps and their nests and found the entrance and exit holes quite easily, but was amazed at the distance they were away from each other and from the excavation that had uncovered the nest. The triangle they formed would have fitted into a circle about a meter in diameter. That’ was a big nest that nobody had noticed until a badger got hungry one night. I took a few shots of rowan berries that are now colouring up nicely before I headed home to drive in to Glasgow to pick up a new Sony A6000. A compact little camera that would take the same lenses as the big A7m2.

I drove in to Glasgow and picked up a very small box which contained the camera. Surprisingly it has almost all the facilities its big brother has, only the sensor is not quite as big. It’s an APS-C sensor which, without getting the technospeak that at least one person hates, is only two thirds the size of the one in the ‘Big Dog’, so images are a little bit grittier than the ones from a full size sensor. Most of the cameras I’ve owned have had an APS-C sensor or smaller. It’s not such a big deal these days. One big deal is the weight. This camera tips the scales at about half the weight of the A7M2. It should be easier and lighter to carry around for day to day photos. I’m still testing it out, but in a quick shoot in the late afternoon it did not a bad job.

By the time I got home, the DPD man had come and gone with the parcel. Now I just have to wait to see if MPB agree with my evaluation of the camera and lens.

Dinner tonight was Katsu Curry from a ‘kit’ with the Wagamama name on it. We both agreed that the chicken done in panko breadcrumbs and even the rice were good, but the sauce. Oh, the sauce! It tasted bitter and a bit spicy, but that was the end of the taste test. It wasn’t a gravy, it wasn’t a curry sauce. It lacked body. Basically it added nothing to the taste of the meal. Scamp has had a Katsu Curry in Wagamama and says this brown liquid is nothing like the curry sauce you get in the restaurants. I don’t think we’ll bother with another ‘kit’ with Wagamama’s name on it.

PoD was taken with the new camera, but that’s not why it got that position.  PoD is awarded on merit, not on the hardware that is used.  That’s what I say, anyway.  The PoD is a couple of Dead Nettles (Lamium purpureum) which are not related to stinging nettles, but may have evolved to look like stinging nettles as a protection against being eaten by animals.  Y’see, every day is a school day (Sorry Neil D!)

Tomorrow we may go out for a drive in the rain.  I may even take the Little Dog.

 

Well, we asked for rain – 8 August 2021

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Never happy. We needed rain for the garden, but now we’ve got it we want it to stop.

This wasn’t a day for going out. Scamp wasn’t feeling too good anyway and the poor weather put the tin lid on it. What I did do was pack up the Panasonic GX80 that I’m selling to MPB. All the bits are there and even the users manual is still in the box. Well, who reads users manuals anyway. Users only read them if they get stuck and there’s never an answer to your problem in there.

After lunch I was getting fractious, so despite the fact that it was still raining I put on my raincoat and shorts (Raincoat to keep most of me dry. Shorts because there’s less to get wet!) and went for a walk in the woods. Managed to get some photos of hoverflies on the wing using the Sony with manual focus. Quite impressed with the results. While I was out I found a wasp’s nest (called a ‘byke’ in Scotland). It was in a hole between two tree roots and looked as if it had been dug up, probably by a badger. Loads of wasps working hard to move the grubs and close up the torn walls of the nest. I got a few photos, but then the wasps were taking an interest in me taking an interest on them, so I left them too it. It’s the first time I’ve seen a wasp’s nest under the ground.

Dinner for me was two lamb chops cooked under supervision from Scamp who was feeling a bit better by then. I was also cooking her trout fillet and we shared some cabbage and the last of our first lot of potatoes.

Thankfully today was the closing ceremony of the Olympics so now the TV schedules might get back to normal again. We haven’t watched much of it. There’s so little that interests us.

I’ve signed up for a five day course on portrait painting using pastels. It’s free on a private Facebook page, but the pastels they are recommending amount to around £100 plus a further £30 for paper. I might watch the videos, but I’ll be using my ten quid pastels and my five quid paper!

PoD was a pretty wee hoverfly, but the wasps are on Flickr too.

Tomorrow looks slightly better than today, but I don’t think we’ll be going far.

Going to the dancing – 7 August 2021

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At 10.45am!

Ballroom dancing class in Johnstone, the posh end of Paisley. The class started with a fairly relaxed Tina Tango just to get us going, then we segued into the Foxtrot which we made a decent enough job of, we thought. We got round the floor without too many mistakes and increased our confidence in dancing around people. I picked up a couple of tips from Stewart about posture and its benefits and also how to better direct my partner by using my hand on her shoulder blade. Jane ironed out a flaw in Scamp’s Heel Turn that had been bothering her. Finished off with a Rumba One.

Next was the Sweetheart Cha Cha, the one we’ve been trying to get to grips with this week. It was much better than last week’s disaster. We’ve managed the first part of it (the Front End). The Back End is still a mystery to me, but Scamp will sort it out. We also filmed some of the demos the teachers did and we can work with them once we slow them down and cut them into manageable chunks.

We had a bit of rain going to the class and a heavier bit coming home. The road was really busy coming home. We just dumped our stuff and headed off again, this time to Stirling to go to Waitrose. We got a fair amount of things. Mainly things you can’t get in Tesco or Morrisons. I got a couple of lamb chops that are earmarked for dinner tomorrow and Scamp got some fish, also probably for tomorrow. Didn’t go in to Stirling proper, just came home because it looked as if the town was busy.

Later in the afternoon I went for a walk in St Mo’s, in the rain. PoD came from there. Dandelion clocks are a bit of a cliché, but if they get wet they hold little beads of rainwater and become a bit bedraggled too which makes them more interesting, I think. There wasn’t much else that came from the walk.

Dinner tonight was a Charlie Bigham Thai Green Curry which was plenty hot and really good. Expensive, but worth it, because it is Saturday and neither of us wanted to cook.

I think I might have pulled a muscle in my arm. I didn’t get much sleep last night and I’ve been dosing myself up with paracetamol all day. I’ve also used some Ralgex tonight. I don’t think it does much good. I’m pretty sure the massaging it in does more to encourage blood flow, but it’s worth trying.

We had some thunder again today and a few heavy rain showers. More of the same predicted for tomorrow, so I doubt if we’ll be going far. Maybe a bit of dance practise.

Only available in silver – 6 August 2021

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Not only that. Silver was twenty quid more than black.

We had a rather lazy morning with me reading Merlin Sheldrake’s book on fungi. I never knew they were so devious and also interesting. The section I was reading today was about lichen. Amazing things. I already knew about they really were a symbiotic relationship between fungi and algae, but I didn’t really understand what that meant. Now I do. I also found the word “mitochondria” and I wanted to shout out “Hey! My son knows about them!” This Merlin bloke treats this whole book like a thesis with all the references that entails. Heavy science for me, but absolutely absorbing in a literal sense. Who knew that lichen can absorb rocks!

Finally I had to leave the world of lichen, fungi and other things of that ilk and get up and face the day. We’d said we’d go in to Glasgow today and that’s what we did. As we were driving along the M80 in the general direction of Glasgow, we saw the CITRAC signs warning about surf water. Now the CITRAC is notorious for getting things wrong, so we ignored the warnings. Hmm, then we saw the spray on both carriageways ahead. A few seconds later the rain hit us, literally hit us. I did consider turning off and going back home, because the wipers weren’t really clearing the screen and cars on the outside lane were leaving wakes from the wheels. Then as quickly as it had come, it stopped.

Parked no problem in Buchanan Galleries and I walked into JL while Scamp went off to Boots. I was looking for a camera, but they only had it in silver. I wanted it in black, and I was going to take the black one when the bloke said that the silver one was twenty quid more expensive. Twenty quid just for a silver camera and lens? I think not. I ordered it and paid for it. It will be available for collection on Tuesday.

Met Scamp and we walked down to Paesano for a pizza lunch. She had Tomato sugo No garlic, oregano, Evoo (Extra Virgin Olive Oil) plus Spinach and Mushroom. I had a basic number 5 which is Prosciutto with mushrooms, tomato sugo, mozzarella and Evoo. Both were delivered double quick and mine had that lovely, slightly burnt crust. Delicious! The next time you are in Glasgow, you but go!

I walked round to Cass Art for a browse. Scamp found a dress shop to investigate. When I came out of the art shop it was bucketing down, absolutely hammering it. Scamp had texted me to say she was trying on a dress or two and I agreed to meet her there. That meant I’d to try to get into some shelter first before I got soaked. I found a lot of folk sheltering under an extended roof of an office building that gave me a good view of others sheltering under the portico of the GOMA. Instant photo that became PoD.

Found Scamp and we agreed the first dress was a possible but the second was a definite no-no. She wanted to leave it for a day or two to think about the ‘possible’ and I suggested she join me when I go to collect the camera on Tuesday, all being well. After that we found the quickest and shortest way from Queen Street to the Buchanan Galleries, but we were both still soaked by the time we got there.

By the time we were leaving the car park the rain was almost off, but traffic was jammed up everywhere. That’s when Scamp’s knowledge of Glasgow came to the rescue as she directed me back on to the motorway. I didn’t think we’d missed the rain. I was almost certain we were going to drive right into it again and I was right. A few miles out of Glasgow City we drove through it again, and again, by the time we arrived home it was almost dry. The rain did catch up with us again once we were in the house and we had some thunder too, but no lightning yet.

In what was left of the afternoon I found all the bits and pieces of the camera kit I’m going to sell to help pay for the new camera. We’d always agree that this was a ‘One in, One out’ deal and I’m happy to stick to that.

A short practise tonight, then a study of the video before another shorter but more useful practise almost prepared us for tomorrow. Hopefully we won’t look as if we’re totally lost this time.

Tomorrow’s weather looks much like today’s, so it will need to be another early rise to be there for 11am.