Category: A Walk

Christmas Eve – 24 December 2020

Posted on by Zogman

We looked out the window and nobody else had moved from their parking spaces, so why should we?

I’d planned a drive over to the Carron Reservoir for a walk today, but with the prospect of sub zero temperatures all day I changed my mind I didn’t mind driving up the Tak Ma Doon road with its single track sections and the blind 90º bends. But the thought of all the recent rain we’d had freezing made me think “Another day perhaps”. With discretion the better part of valour on this occasion, it was walking boots on and a wander down around Broadwood instead, with the possibility of dropping in at the shops on the way home.

That’s what we did and I did get a chance to try out the Tamron at its 300mm length to grab some waterfowl pictures. Some goosanders and coots posed for me and I gratefully took their offers. However I forgot to check the aperture and good though the Tamron is, it needs to be stopped down a few notches to produce its best work. Although the temperature didn’t rise much above zero, it didn’t feel that cold, although, as Scamp reminded me, that was probably due to the lack of wind.

Back home and it was soup for lunch then, after I’d checked the photos and declared them wanting, I went out again to St Mo’s. I gave in to temptation and carefully placed my Sony A7M2 on the ice of the wee pond, set the timer to 10 seconds and the focus spot on a wee bunch of weeds frozen in the ice, held my breath and pressed the shutter. Over £1000 worth of camera sitting on a thin sheet of ice produced the shot. Was it worth it? Only because the ice held! Don’t try this at home kids. If you like you can check it out on Flickr. PoD was from the same spot, but looking the opposite way. It’s an old hawthorn bush, bent out of shape by the wind howling in from the west. I loved the rim lighting effect from the moss on the trunk and that little hole that allows the sun to shine through. Instant PoD.

Back home for the second time today and a parcel was needing wrapped. I knew I would get in a fankle with sellotape and crinkly Xmas paper. I was right, I did, but the parcel is now wrapped. And wrapped to my satisfaction too.

Sirloin steak for dinner 3 minutes per side in the new pan and then rested for another 3 minutes. Scamp had a nice looking thick slice of lightly smoked salmon. Both accompanied by our favourite potato wedges with Italian rosemary salt. Honestly that was the best steak I’ve had, possibly ever. It came from Lidl. I thought Aldi did the best meat. Lidl are hot on their heels. Nothing to do with the pan this time or the (lack of) skill my cooking brings to the final result. It’s down to the quality of the meat.

That was about it for today. The day before Christmas. In the past it was about trying to keep children occupied and tiring them out before bedtime while one of us was wrapping up bikes and dolls and even a garage that I just managed to finish before midnight. Now it’s a frantic fight with sellotape and wrapping paper followed by a G&T watching a documentary about Central Station. How things change.

Tomorrow is Christmas with all that entails. It’s still fun though!  Hope all my readers have a relaxing day tomorrow.

On the pan – 23 December 2020

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My new pan gets its first real test.

In the morning Scamp set to and iced the Christmas cake. It was much smaller than our usual one, but Christmas cakes are a bit like turkeys, in that you feel obliged to keep eating them days and days after they were cut on Christmas Day. We each got a chance to put some items onto, well really Into the finished icing. My choice was the Santa and reindeer and also the little corner house. Scamp chose the children on the sledge and the snowman who now looms over the little house! A tradition returns to the table.

I’d bought an interesting pan for roasting and also for other stuff. It looked like a bargain, but I hadn’t really had a chance to test it out properly, until today. Lunch was black pudding and haggis fried in a ‘normal’ pan and an omelette made in the new pan. The eggs were unused leftovers from this morning’s icing, and it seemed a good way to use them up.. I wasn’t sure if the omelette would work in a griddle, but I’d seen a video online and it looked easy. Surprisingly it was almost that easy and the omelette folded over perfectly, sliced up easily and went down satisfactorily. We have success.

After lunch, Scamp went over to Condorrat to post a card and I fitted the dash cam back on her clean, new windscreen.  I didn’t linger in the car too long because it was pretty cold. When scamp returned I got dressed for the cold and went to St Mo’s to get some photos. The PoD was of the wee pond with ice crusting on its surface. I thought I’d allowed myself more time that I had and the light was fading fast, but the photo looked ok, if a little dark. Lightroom soon made it look a lot better. While I was out walking my two circuits of the big pond, I stopped a while to talk to a bloke I bump into there. He does lots more circuits than I do. I do two and occasionally three, he does up to ten at different speeds. Everyone has their own way of easing the stress of these lockdowns.

Dinner tonight was chicken breasts, red peppers, mushrooms and courgettes, all done in the new pan. They worked fine and there was just enough room for them all. Carbohydrate intake was a baked potato each.

The pan is a Whatever Pan by Jean Patrique ( or John Patrick as he’s know down the Barras). That’s me used it three times and I’ve not broken it yet, so it must be sturdy. It’s cast aluminium and let me tell you that it gets bloody hot!

Tomorrow looks good. Clear skies predicted. We may go for a walk, somewhere quiet. If there is such a place on Christmas Eve!

A walk in the rain – 22 December 2020

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Up early to get a new window in the Micra.

Not my Micra, this was Scamp’s. It had a crack on the driver’s side of the windscreen, just above the dashboard that looked as if it would increase in size after the first heavy frost. Today the man was coming from Autoglass to fix it. He phoned about 8.15 to say he was on his way. Scamp’s car was jammed into a fairly small space, so I took the opportunity to steal Scott the taxi driver’s space at the end of the row and give the bloke a fighting chance of getting the screens exchanged. I had to scrape the windscreen first after the first hard frost we’ve had in ages. I was a bit gentle with it, not wanting to make the crack any worse than it needed to be. He arrived on time and it took him almost exactly the 45 minutes he predicted and it looks a nice clean job. He said we should leave it for 30 minutes before driving it, but it was unlikely to move far today.

I’d cleared Scamp’s car’s screen, so I started on mine and drove up to Boots for our meds and Tesco for bread then back home with the air con blowing a gale, a warm gale. We wouldn’t go hungry today. Leftover tomato soup and croutons for lunch, then after letting that settle we got our boots on and went for a walk in St Mo’s.

We’d been in for most of the morning and then we’d waited for a while before we left on our walk. The weather in all that time had been beautiful. Cold but clear and clean. As we walked round St Mo’s pond for the second time we could definitely feel rain. We just continued on, hoping that it was just the edge of a cloud we were catching, but it wasn’t. We were wet by now, so we just walked home. We’d done our two circuits of the pond and on the last one I’d got PoD of the light through the trees with the rain falling.

That was about it. We checked the TV schedules to see if there any decent films to watch, but there were none, at least none that I wanted to watch. We switched to Netflix and were grateful that we did. Thank you Hazy for adding some films to our list. Hopefully that will keep us from watching The Snowman one more time.

Spoke to my cousin Margaret and heard about her troubled year.  Sometimes we forget about other people’s problems, constantly bemoaning our own.  Then you hear from someone who has overcome much more serious troubles and it puts your own life into a clearer perspective.  Thankfully she’s on the mend again and has avoided Covid-19.  As she says, she’s just battling on.

Tomorrow we have no plans. Hoping we won’t have an early rise.

The shortest day – 21 December 2020

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We don’t get much light at the best of times, but today was dark.

When I started the car this morning to drive up to the town centre, the headlights came on. It was just after 10.30am. Today was the Shortest Day.  The Winter Equinox.  I was going to meet Val for coffee and a wee technology catchup. When we were waiting to be served one of the staff in Costa was a bit too aggressive, shouting at us to step back, step back. He seemed to think that the 2m distance measures on the floor were underestimates. I realise they are under pressure, but they have to realise that their customers are people and treat them appropriately. I didn’t shout at him, why should he shout at me. The rest of the staff were relaxed and treated all the customers with good humour. “One bad apple … “

We spent an interesting hour or so, catching up and discussing Val’s new electronics projects using Arduino kits which remind me of the electronics boards we used in school for a while in Tech Studies. He’s really getting into this area of experimentation which is not surprising with his electronics background and his programming skills learned from the Raspberry Pi.

After I left him I went to look for a pair of walking boots to replace the leaky Merrells. The only place in Cumbersheugh where you can get them is Sports Direct. None of the boots they had on display looked like they would be better than the Merrells, in fact one of them proudly displayed the fact that they weren’t waterproof. Really? What use are walking boots that don’t even claim to be waterproof? Are they only for wearing indoors. I could almost forgive them if they had been fashionable, but they just look like big clumpy brown boots, boots that would melt in the rain, though. I went home.

After lunch we headed back out again, this time to Tesco and got a turkey crown that didn’t cost as much as the Queen’s Crown. It was a bit smaller and didn’t have the bacon wrapping that the M&S offering had, but I’m sure it will be dressed up well once Scamp gets started.

After we got back and stored all the food away, I went for a walk in St Mo’s. It was already growing dark, but I wanted to take a photo outside on the shortest day of the year. I got a few candidates, but PoD went to an almost monochrome shot of reeds reflected in the still waters of the pond. A few ripples too to add some texture. If you look carefully you can see little green leaves showing above the water.

I made tomato soup for dinner and it was so good, Scamp, after finishing her first bowl, immediately refilled it. Having said that, it could have been the croutons that brightened it up. More left for lunch tomorrow.

We missed the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn tonight. It happened around 5pm and apparently would have looked like the Star of Bethlehem, except in the north-west not the east. Perhaps it did look spectacular, but we wouldn’t have been able to see it because it was raining at the time of the conjunction. The rain coming from the big black clouds that covered the whole sky. Gallingly, those clouds rolled away later, once both planets were below the horizon.

Tomorrow Scamp’s car is getting its windscreen repaired. It’s got a crack , down near the dashboard and that crack isn’t going to get any smaller, so she bit the bullet and paid the excess so that person from Autoglass would come to the house and repair it. Other than that, nothing else we need to do, except watch the days lengthen as we head towards Spring.

Lockdown Blues – 20 December 2020

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We’re not really there yet, but we know it’s coming.

I suppose I should get the pencils sharpened and the pens refilled for more lockdown sketches, because we are being condemned to at least three weeks of virtual lockdown as Nic puts most of Scotland into level 4 as a precaution. Yes, it makes sense, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

We were entertained by Andrew Marr this morning tearing at the poor health minister Matt Hancock like a demented Jack Russell. The poor man hardly got a chance to answer one question before another two were being fired at him by Marr. I think we both felt just a little bit sorry for him. He managed to parry a few of Marr’s thrusts, but I’m sure he felt punch drunk after doing down for the third time in round two.

It was a dull day weather wise too. A bit wet at times, but mainly just grey. However I got my boots on, grabbed the camera bag and headed off to get some photos. My first stop was the tree where the little ladybird had been hibernating before my too bright light disturbed it. At first I couldn’t see it, then I found it about 50cm further up the trunk. Grabbed a few shots, both with the old Sigma lens and also with the Sony. The Sony won hands down, but now I realise that the anti-shake wasn’t set to the correct focal length for the Nikon which is quite an old lens and doesn’t send all its information to the camera electronically. Still, I got a few shots to remind me of where it was.

The ladybird didn’t make PoD, but another spot in the woods gave me a pretty landscape type shot. It looks so calm, but beyond that fence there is a four lane motorway with all sorts of vehicular transport rumbling along it day and night, summer and winter. There’s hardly a ripple on that wee stream to distort the tree reflections. PoD, even before I processed it. I also grabbed a mono shot of some weeds which completes a full week of monochromatic images.

Spoke to JIC in the evening and found out that both he and his sister are in level 4. That’s the whole family in it! Have we been bad or something? Is it because I called the respective leaders Bumbling Boris and The Littlest Witch? If so, I’m sorry, but they both deserve it. The leaders, not the siblings, that is.

Dinner tonight was Haggis, Neeps and Tatties. What a brilliant brightener for a dull day. Just as long as you don’t ask what was in the haggis. You don’t want to know.

That was about it for today. Hoping to meet Val for coffee and some technological chat tomorrow and then Scamp and I might visit Tesco to look for a turkey, a small one, if such a thing exists.

Priority Pass – 19 December 2020

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Scamp had a spot booked at M&S. A spot for one!

We drove to M&S and Scamp waltzed to the front of the queue, showed the pass on her phone and walked in. I joined the rest of the proles out in the cold. We’d intending to have a look for a small turkey crown for Christmas Day. I’m afraid was look. Prices ranged from around £40 to around £70. Just a bit more than we’d intended paying. We did buy a fair load of stuff though, just to make our visit worthwhile. I got a couple of those big fat dumpy sausage rolls that used to be all the rage a year or so ago. Got them for half the price of one single Christmas version. Scamp picked up a bottle of wine too with an interesting label I’m sure we’ve seen on our table before.

We could have gone to Tesco, but it would have been jumping, I’m sure so we just drove home. Sausage roll for me for lunch and Scamp had an egg on a tattie scone. It was a bit fatty, full of breadcrumb and overall simply tasteless. I’d probably have been better getting the single Christmas version of the sausage roll. In fact I’d probably have been better with the egg on a tattie scone! What we did find was where M&S hide the Milk Chocolate & Cinnamon Tortillas, recommended by Hazy.  No, don’t make that face you lot out there. I didn’t think it would work either, but Hazy is a connoisseur of chocolate things and she said it worked. It does. Half a packet later tonight, I can vouch for that.

It was raining after lunch and we waited a while before committing to a walk. Usual fairly short walk down to the loch, back along the boardwalk and the long way round the exercise machines. One of the machines found its way on to Flickr after it had been converted to B&W, but wasn’t PoD. On the way home, Scamp suggested that she was going back to the house, but if I wanted I could do a lap of St Mo’s pond. I did two laps but it was on the first one that I found the PoD. It had been raining on and off when we were walking round Broadwood, but when I reached St Mo’s the sun came out and gave a beautiful light show on the trees of the far bank. Knew I didn’t have time to switch lenses to capture the whole scene, so took a series of shots to be made into a panorama later. That panorama worked well and became PoD.

While I was re-heating the leftover curry from last night I was half listening to Nic laying down the law for the next three or four weeks. I’d previously listened to Boris’s bumbling and at times incoherent ramblings that pretended to be a press briefing. At times I think that Nicola is too cautious and too quick to shut things down, but oh my, I’m so glad we have her sensible approach rather than what has been described as Boris’s “Battle of Britain rhetoric”. The man simply does not inspire confidence. She does. So, basically from the end of next week we’ll almost all be in lockdown again. You can give it a number if you like, but basically it’s lockdown again. I suppose it has to be done. For England, to control the virus. For Scotland, to prevent the virus spreading north. You know it makes sense (unless you’re listening to Boris).

Tomorrow the weather looks wet again. We may go out for a walk.

Old lens – Old camera – 17 December 2020

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A lazy start to the day, but nobody was going far today. Not one car moved from our parking area before midday.

I drove up to Tesco to get some fish and a few odds and ends for tonight’s dinner. I thought of taking a detour to St Mo’s, but part of the odds and ends was a box of ice cream and it would surely have melted or be in the process of melting by the hour or so I’d allowed myself. Besides, I wanted to try out the Sigma 105mm macro lens on the little toadstool I’d found yesterday. That lens was in the house, so I drove home. A few people had ventured out in their cars by the time I got back. I think we must live on the lazy side of the estate.

Walked back to St Mo’s carrying the macro lens. It was remarkably easy to manually focus the Sigma once you take your time and get the right buttons pressed. I found a little daisy closing up for the night as well as the toadstool. I’ve never seen daisies flowering so late in the year. No Santa watchers today!

It had been dry almost all day, cloudy but dry. I’d only been out about 45 minutes and the rain came on. The light had disappeared by that time anyway, so I headed home. I stopped at the Adventure Playground on the way to take a closer look at one of the bouncy toys. It looks like a wooden caterpillar with big bug eyes. I think they are just the advertisements for the company who made the attractions. I’d seen it many times and tried a shot with the Sony, but it didn’t work out the way I’d planned. Instead I used the old TZ70, the Teazer I’d brought with me today. I’m intending to use it until I get the TZ90, its replacement, hoovered out to remove the dust in the lens and probably on the sensor too. It looked fine. Later after I’d had a good look and a quick cull of the useless shots, I decided the Teazer shot would be PoD.

Tonight’s dinner was Simple Fish Stew. It was quite a favourite in the house for years, but it’s months since I made it. Tonight it tasted even better than I remember it.

Scamp is off to have coffee with Shona tomorrow. I might go or I might stay and fix the TZ90 and do some more work on the calendar.

 

Man in the red coat – 16 December 2020

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But not the one you might think off at this time of year.

Spoke to Hazy in the morning. Covid seems to be on the rise in London, especially in the schools where both staff and pupils seem to be the badly affected. Thankfully, they will be on their Christmas break from Friday, so that might give things a chance to calm down. We exchanged updates on parcels and Hazy suggested we might like Chocolate Tortillas from M&S. I’m not sure it’s quite my sort of thing, but I’m willing to have a go because there is chocolate involved.

My first task was to get the Christmas cards organised with the “Our 2020” sheets. Scamp had agreed to post them for me. That left me free to start my email to my brother and select some photos to go with it. I’d been getting on quite happily with my task when Scamp returned from posting the cards, carrying a big cardboard box of chips. The chip shop had been open she said, as if that was reason enough. We shared them and they were lovely, and definitely not fattening, because they were our lunch.

Later I went back to my epistle and after finishing at a reasonable juncture, I grabbed the camera bag and took a walk in St Mo’s. There wasn’t much to photograph, but I liked the absurdity of a M&S shopping trolley (without Chocolate Tortillas) standing at the starting gate of the BMX track. Is this a new dangerous sport? Shopping trolley BMX? That might just do for a fun picture. Further on I walked along the outlet burn of the pond. I was looking to see if there was any prospect of a slow shutter speed shot of the moving water. There was, but it would need some careful descending to get there without sliding on my bum down the steep sides of the burn. Then I found a tiny wee toadstool, slightly the worse for wear poking through the leaf litter. That would make a challenging photo with only a kit lens. The burn is virtually on the edge of the school fence and as I was kneeling down trying to achieve focus on this wee toadstool I heard someone, definitely a child and probably a boy, cry “Hey!”. Then “Hey! Man in the red coat.” Then the sound of running feet before I could shout “Aye, but not the one you were thinking of.” Maybe he thought I’d been out warming up the sleigh and had fallen out into the muck beside the burn. He’ll probably go home tonight and say “Mum. Guess who I saw today …”

Well, I did get focus on the wee toadstool and it became PoD. Santa was never found and My brother’s email winged its way off to Motherwell soon after I got back.

Tonight we were disappointed with the judges choice of Portrait Artist of 2020. We were equally disappointed with his portrait of Carlos Acosta. I suppose it was fitting because 2020 has been such a disappointing year in so many ways.

Tomorrow we may go out for a spin, although we need to be back for a Tesco order that’s due to arrive around 5pm.

The Ladies – 15 December 2020

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Parcels to send today. Going down south by different routes.

Parcels loaded into the car this morning and off to post them. One going by Royal Mail because the postman knows where our son and his wife live. One going by DPD because they are cheaper. It’s a race then. Which one wins. Which one gets there quickest. We’ll find out later in the week, hopefully.

With the heavy posting done, it was time for a drive into the wilds. The wilds of Fannyside Moor. It was a beautiful morning with blue sky and just a little cloud or two. Once we got there we just sat in the car and listened. Listened to nothing. Just the distant sound of the occasional car running across the moss. That’s the peat moss, the moorland road across the peat moss. A single track road with passing places in the middle of the Central Belt in Scotland. Not ten miles from Cumbersheugh and it’s a single track road with passing places. This is the 21st century isn’t it. Anyway, we sat and listened to the radio for a while and then let the silence rule us. Perfect peace.

When we got out we found a bunch of ladies standing watching. Lady sheep, that is. Some black and some white, but all waiting and watching. Sheep have this disturbing way of looking at you that makes you think you should really turn round because something may be creeping up on you from behind. They also look as if they’re sizing you up, challenging you. Actually, I think they were just waiting for the farmer to bring their lunch. I took some photos and we walked down the road a way. Took some photos of an old ruined farmhouse and then came back. They were still there, the ladies. Still watching. Still waiting. Took some more photos and they all drifted away, bored with the show.

Drove home for lunch and Scamp went to visit her sister while I filled my birthday pen and started on the pile of unwritten Christmas cards. I got halfway through them when Scamp returned. I’d had enough of that for now, so I grabbed my camera and went to bolster my collection of photos. I needn’t have bothered. It was too late and the rain came on. I get the feeling it just waits for me some times. Came home and had a look at the photos, but as I suspected, they weren’t worth the bother. Went back to finish off the cards.

I don’t usually approve of the ‘one size fits all’ catch up ‘what we did this year’ stories that used to be all the rage at Christmas, but I decided that this year had been such a momentous one it was worthwhile cataloging it. If for nothing else, it showed our friends that they are not alone. We’ve all had a terrible year. Some worse that others, but nobody got away lightly in 2020. I’ll include it in some of the Christmas cards, just to keep folk in the loop.

Tomorrow we pay another whack of money to Royal Mail when we have to buy the second dose of stamps for this load of cards.

Tomorrow looks wet for most of the morning and early afternoon. What fun today was, though. I wonder if those sheep are still standing. Watching, Waiting.

Back to my old self – 14 December 2020

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I felt a lot better when I got up this morning, thankfully.

Scamp was out early to meet Isobel for coffee. Although I feel fine, I didn’t want to risk spreading my cold germ with Isobel and anyway, you probably know my thoughts on Costa coffee. With some peace and quiet, I managed to tweak some of the settings on the Synology NAS to make it run a bit quieter while still doing its technological housekeeping. Now I just have to work out how to get it to clean the shower and empty the dishwasher.

When Scamp came home she brought with her half a dozen rolls and a packet of square sliced sausage. Well, that was my lunch sorted. Actually I was a bit more careful than normal and only had the one roll and one sausage. The rest of the sausages I’ve frozen and bagged. After lunch the sky was clearing from its usual featureless milky white. Scamp was getting herself organised to start packing boxes for delivery down south. I was getting myself organised for taking photos.

I did a couple of circuits of the pond at St Mo’s, then I had a walk into the woods to see if the ladybird was still there. It was, but when I turned on my portable LED light it started moving, maybe the light was just too bright. I decided enough was enough and took my leave. PoD went to an initially dodgy shot of a couple of trees. Initially dodgy, but with a bit of work in Lightroom it turned out ok. It’s mono, but that ticks the ‘Mono Monday’ box in my Flickr albums. Next time I might remember to check my settings BEFORE taking the shot, rather than after. It’s a bit like the snooker player’s maxim, “Chalk the cue before you take the shot.”

Although I feel a lot better, I’m going to have another early night with extra vitamin C and maybe a couple of paracetamol.

I’m just watching the weather forecast as I write this and it looks set fair for us tomorrow. We might get out for a walk somewhere it it keeps dry.