Category: A Walk

The postman only knocked once – 6 November 2020

Posted on by Zogman

But that was enough, at 8.15am, to get me out of bed.

He was just walking away as I opened the door, having left my parcel on the doorstep. He gave me a wave as he headed back to his van and was off before the door shut. It must be really hard for delivery men and women these days, working such long hours and with tight schedules to keep. The parcel contained a used tripod head I’d bought from WEX in Norfolk two days ago. It’s a bit scuffed in places, but is a solid piece of kit, better quality than the one I was going to buy in Glasgow. Best of all, it cost a fraction of its value when new.

I made our breakfast while I watched two blackbirds, one cock and one hen, having their early morning bath in the garden. Took the breakfast back to bed and we read for a while, waiting for the day to brighten up. I’m now on my second last Slough House book, having finished “To be taught if fortunate”. It got four stars Hazy because of the ending and because of the inclusion of 30 pages of her first “Wayfarers” novel. Thirty pages too much padding.

After our dragging ourselves out of bed and having a cup of coffee, Scamp went out to tidy up the garden and I took the Sony out for a walk in St Mo’s. There was blue sky for a while and even some sunshine, but I had the feeling the weather just wasn’t trying too hard today. Nothing really struck me as interesting enough to make a PoD.

No lunch today, because we were heading out later in the afternoon for a late lunch at The Cotton House in Longcroft. Since we were booked for 2.30 we were eating off the a la carte menu instead of the lunch menu. We didn’t mind, because we realise that the lunch menu is a sort of loss leader, but the a la carte is where they make their main profit. Also, there would be things in there we’d never had before! as it happened we didn’t end up being all that adventurous. Scamp had Thai Fish Cakes for starter followed by Chicken Chop Suey with Fried Rice. I had Gyoza Dumplings as starter and then Salt and Chilli Chicken with noodles. Once you throw in the Prawn Crackers, this was a fairly substantial lunch and one we both enjoyed.

Drove home into a beautiful sunset that would have made an excellent photo if only I had brought one of my multitude of cameras. Besides, we’d had a lovely afternoon and it would be a shame to waste it by boring Scamp to tears with me wandering around taking sunset shots.

I’d ordered an adapter to allow the tripod head I’d received this morning to fit onto my tripod. It hadn’t arrived when we got home and when I checked, it was due to be delivered about 5pm, just about the same time the Tesco order was due to come. You guessed it, they arrived at exactly the same time.

Just to test out the combination of tripod + adapter + tripod head + Sigma 105mm macro lens, today’s PoD is an Alstroemeria flower taken with a 4 second exposure at f8. It’s not brilliant, I know, but it shows the combination works and it’s a lot better than any of the shots I took this morning. That probably tells you just how bad they were.

No plans for tomorrow.

A dull day in the morning – 5 November 2020

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Blue sky looking out the front window but really black at the back.

We decided to wait it out and see if the blue sky or the black clouds would win. Eventually the blues did win the day, but it was lunchtime by then and we stopped our cloudgazing to have a Bruschetta each for lunch. Sounds very posh, but the bread was going stale but would make good toast and the wee tomatoes were just past their sell-by date. A good way to use them up. Full marks to Scamp.

After lunch Scamp decided to make a chicken curry for dinner in the slow cooker and headed off to the shops to get a couple of chicken legs. I gathered my camera gear together and took a walk over to St Mo’s. Today I was mixing my cameras. I had my Oly with a macro lens and the Sony with the kit lens. I was fairly sure the Sony would produce the best landscape shot, and I wasn’t wrong. But I was equally sure the Oly would produce the best macro and again I backed the right horse. In fact, the Oly won the day with PoD going to a conifer trunk with a pattern looking like the flatworms from MC Escher’s lithographs. Google “Escher Flatworms” to see what I mean. I think the tree was a Larch because it was starting to shed its needles.

Back home the chicken curry was beginning to scent the air in the living room, because the great thing about slow cookers is they’re portable. You can plug them in anywhere there’s a power socket and they’ll do their job as well as sitting on the kitchen counter.

For a while we watched the antics of a couple of 70-somethings arguing about who won and I thought: Would I really want either of them to run my country? Boris is a bumbler, but these two are zoomers.

Tonight was Guy Fawkes Night, but since he was a bit of a terrorist and it’s not the done thing to glorify terrorists, the celebration has been renamed Bonfire Night.  That’s what we used to call it anyway, so it’s obviously the right name.  Although we didn’t have an official fireworks display this year, or maybe because we didn’t, there were loads of rockets flying through the air and explosions all around us.  Certainly one of the noisiest Bonfire Nights for many years.

Tomorrow we go out for lunch, but still stay within the boundaries of North Lanarkshire.

The Chicken Curry? Of course it was beautiful. Tasted as good as it smelled!

On the yellow brick road – 4 November 2020

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… with masks on.

Today, you’ve probably guessed, we went to Ikea. That’s what Scamp suggested, and as I had nothing better to do, I agreed. Fairly long queue to get in, but it was moving quite quickly. One absolute numpty literally ran in front of us to get in the queue before us. I don’t know if she’d maybe never been in the Big Yellow House before, but I hope she found what she was looking for or I imagine she’d scream and scream!

We were looking for three things one of which I thought was on the upper floor. I was correct, but we had to walk all the way round the maze and found it at the very end of the upper floor. With Covid restrictions you MUST follow the yellow brick road where before you could double back sometimes. That is totally forbidden now. So two trays for my storage cabinet meant I accumulated about 1,000 steps. We came out with the three items we had gone for … and a few more.

Drove back into Glasgow, heading for Glasgow Green. I followed the map in my head and then missed a lane change and we had to drive right through the city rather than round the edge. It didn’t matter, Scamp knows the city well and told me the lane changes well in advance. As we were walking past the People’s Palace I saw what looked like two sword fencers practicing under some trees. Now, as I said to Scamp, there’s used to be a fair amount of swordplay down on Glasgow Green, but only on Saturday nights. This was in broad daylight. If it was London there would be van loads of polis armed to the teeth surrounding the Green within minutes. In Glasgow it’s just par for the course, apparently!

We went along to Parnie Street because I was looking for a fitment for my Benbo tripod. Unfortunately the didn’t have it. The nearest they had was more than double the price. I could get it from Amazon, but I’d have preferred to have bought it from a small independent shop. Never mind, they said they might have it in two or three weeks. I might wait that long. We walked back through The Green, the fencers were still there and there were still no police marksmen hidden in the bushes with laser sights drawing red dots on the fencers’ heads. Nobody shouting “Throw down your weapons and lie on the ground!”

After lunch I gathered together a collection of ‘small electrical and electronic’ gadgetry that was destined for the council skip. For once there was no queue to get in and I was waved through after showing my proof of ID to show that I was a bona fide Cumbersheugh resident. Junk dumped, I headed for Fannyside Moor where I was aiming to get some photos with the Sony camera and a fifteen year old Sigma lens. The test went well and you can see the result on Flickr. It nearly made PoD, but was just pipped by the fencers. Love that stance!

Scamp and I hung up more of her ball lights on the rowan tree in the back garden. They really do brighten up the garden with such a cheery light.

That was about it for today. No plans for tomorrow, but the weather looks good again so we might go out for another walk, this time in NL.

A busy day – 3 November 2020

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The Gas Man was coming today, but we weren’t sure when, exactly.

So we did what we usually do in a situation like this:

  • We got up early
  • We emptied the boiler cupboard
  • We waited
  • And waited
  • We gave up!

I went upstairs and started building the bookcase we’d got yesterday. It would never hold books, but would make a decent sized small cupboard to relieve give us some floor space in the ‘wee bedroom’. It was much easier to build than it looked and will probably hold enough stuff to make it a worthwhile investment. Scamp seems happy with it and that’s what counts.

After lunch we got the call to say the man was on his way and he arrive about 20 minutes later. We got the usual warning that the boiler was running about 80% efficiency and there was a problem getting replacement parts. We’d been expecting that and we agreed to an online discussion of a replacement. He had a problem getting connected, but we have that too. It’s one of the annoyances when you live in the valley between phone masts. We’re not sure now his message to his HQ went through. Unfortunately we can’t access the British Gas website since we got our new superfast modem. We always get a DNS error now. Since we can connect perfectly well from our phone using our feeble 4G signal, the problem would appear to be with Virgin. I spent over an hour tonight trying to find a way to speak to someone there, on live chat or by landline, but they seem to have dropped the portcullis, raised the drawbridge and blamed Covid. I wonder how many other businesses will claim that same excuse.

We went out for a walk after the man had gone. It was still a lovely day although it seems to be getting colder now.  We walked down round Broadwood Stadium and along the boardwalk beside the loch. That’s where today’s PoD came from. It’s one of the pylons that circle the loch, looking like one of the Martian war machines from War of the Worlds with its deadly Heat Ray. On the way back I went for an extra circuit of St Mo’s and Scamp headed for home but bumped into Chris’s mum, Carolyn. They hadn’t seen each other for years and I was glad I’d chosen the St Mo’s circuit otherwise I’d have felt like the (actual) odd man out. Back home I’d left some stew on the slow cooker, but it turned out really tough. We’re not sure why. It might be the meat itself or maybe it wasn’t cooked for long enough or the temperature was too low. It’s had another four hours tonight, so I’d imagine it will be well cooked for tomorrow’s lunch.

Not sure what we’re doing tomorrow. We might make a big break for freedom and go in to Glasgow or we may be like little good mice and do what our mistress tells us. (Aye Right!!)

More junk goes – 2 November 2020

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Even more junk will arrive to fill its place, that’s inevitable, of course.

The junk in question was my Linx 12×64 laptop(ish) computer. The (ish) refers to the fact that it won’t sit comfortably on your lap, because it takes up a fairly large footprint with its kick down stand extended. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but like all ‘good ideas’ there were drawbacks. It was fairly light with a decent sized screen. It wasn’t fast, but I knew that at the time. It could run from an emergency phone charger battery quite happily. The killer was that it was Windows 10 and constantly wanted to ”Get you going again” only it didn’t. The downloads nearly always failed for some unexplained reason and with every successful download it got slower and slower. I finally decided it had to go and today was the day. Scamp was out having coffee with her sister in the morning, so I’d plenty of time to get it organised. I did my final check to make sure the battery was 100% and that it would charge if needed, polished the screen, swept the crumbs out of the keyboard (terrible keyboard) then packed it in its box, ready to go.

It was still looking good outside when I was finished, so I grabbed the camera and headed off to see how much water was in St Mo’s pond. The answer was really quite a lot of water. In fact, all the weeds and assorted rubbish in the pond had blocked the outlet and the pond was overflowing onto the path and cascading down the other side into the gulley that takes it out to somewhere else. I have no idea where. Didn’t get many photos because the trees were looking a bit bare after the buffeting they’ve had from our recent gales. I did try a few landscapes, but I wasn’t impressed with the look through the viewfinder.

Back home, Scamp had arrived just before me and we had lunch. My first look at the photos on the computer confirmed my suspicions that quite a lot of work would be needed to find anything worthwhile there. Took the Linx up to CEX which are the easiest company to deal with for small electrical and electronic gadgets. The next best, I’ve found, are the workers at the council skips, but CEX give you a few quid more for your unwanted electronic junk, and there’s not such a big queue. Left the Linx to be checked and GS23’d and came home to close down Inktober 2020 on Flickr. It hasn’t been such an easy job being admin for the group this year. Too many punters seem to think that slapping some coloured ink on a page is drawing/sketching. It’s not, it’s just being a poser and if you keep doing it, I will remove your ‘artwork’. That’s what happened to an irate Italian bloke last night who seemed to think that he could unload his entire back catalog into my Inktober site. He got barred.

With Inktober sorted, Scamp and I turned our attention to additional storage space needed in the front bedroom. I suggested we get another bookcase and create an organised shelf system. That seemed to meet with her approval.

Back up at CEX the nice lady handed over the readies and I took some of them round to B&M where I exchanged them for a cheap chipboard bookcase. Strangely I met Emma, an FP (Former Pupil). I’d been reading last year’s blog the other night and had written about meeting her in the Beech Tree restaurant a year ago last week. She was one of my nicer FPs. I stopped on the way home when I saw what might just be a decent sunset forming. It got a few shots, and that’s what you see here. Sunset over the Pylons! Scamp approved the purchase of the bookcase. We’ll build it tomorrow.

Watched and interesting video on YouTube tonight that showed how to adjust lens adapters. The first one I bought was very loose. I fixed it tonight after watching the video. Very happy with it now. I’ll be able to use my Nikon lenses on the new camera until I save up enough pennies to buy Sony ones.

Tomorrow the Gas Man is booked to do the maintenance on the boiler. We know he’ll probably try to encourage us to get a new one. We may just let him make an appointment for us. Don’t know how that will work with Covid restrictions. We are now in Tier 3 of the Scottish system. England go into full lockdown later in the week for a month. Wales are just coming out of a ‘Circuit Breaker’. It’s complicated!

Today was a lovely day – 30 October 2020

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It was all that the weather fairies promised and we made the most of it.

So where would we go today? East or West, what was best? I chose East and Scamp refined it to South Queensferry.

We arrived there just after midday and walked down to the pier after finding a parking place on the hill leading out of the town. Cold blustery wind blowing down the estuary from the west. It might not look it from PoD but that was in the lee of the wind. The other side of the wall it was a very different picture with waves crashing over the sea wall.

We walked into the town proper from the harbour, passing a dozen or so folk fresh from a wedding ceremony at the Registry Office. They looked cold and unconvinced this was the best day of their lives. I couldn’t blame them. Walking along by the estuary in those “peery heels” as my mum would have described them with a gale blowing behind them couldn’t have been fun. One of the bridesmaids had decided that bare feet were better than wearing the uncomfortable posh shoes she was supposed to wear, and who could blame her?

I think the walk along the Main Street truly brought home to me the misery that Covid has caused to small communities. Shop after shop with either ‘Closed’ signs or ‘Everything Must Go’ in the window. Tiny wee ice cream shops reduced to selling tea and coffee to make some money, because realistically, who wants ice cream when it’s nearly November? Not one pub open. Not one restaurant open. I could almost hear the bell tolling the death knell of tourism in Scotland.

To cheer us up and to provide lunch, we had a portion of chips and a slice of really good tray pizza from a wee chip shop that was the only one doing a roaring trade on such a cold day. We sat on an uncomfortable seat eating the chips while we watched the waves crashing. The sun was shining, but the wind made it bitter cold. However, we were out of the house. The weather was dry. The sun was shining from a blue sky and we had chips. What on earth is wrong with that?

We drove home by a circuitous route provided by me and the sat nav. Eventually reached the motorway and basically came back the way we had gone a few hours earlier.

PoD was the view from the pier. No sketch yet because it took me too long to decide how to interpret ‘Ominous’ and because the gin was too strong. I’ll play catch up tomorrow, hopefully.

Rain predicted for tomorrow, so it will be a stay at home day I think. Still, we did get out in the sunshine today.

Christmas Prezzies … already – 28 October 2020

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Today we were off to collect some Christmas Prezzies that Scamp had ordered.

I usually complain about the condensing of the year. You know the sort of thing. After the schools go back in August the first Xmas cards start appearing. We’ve hardly got Christmas and New Year out of the way and the Easter Eggs are on the shelves. However, Christmas prezzies in October is just good planning, Scamp says. We found the place, just a normal house in an everyday street where the maker lived. That’s the way things are now. Ideas are seen online. Discussions are done and prices agreed on Messenger. Purchases are made online and items are collected from the maker’s home. I suppose it’s better than using Amazon, and at least we are supporting small businesses, which is a good thing.

With that done we drove up to a retail park in Bishopbriggs. Probably as close as you could get to the diametric opposite of the small business we had just left. I attempted some visual retail therapy in Currys, which was a waste of time because there were so few pieces of tech on the shelves. Another loser to the online market place. The problem with that approach is where to you find someone to advise you on a purchase? Where is there a salesperson you can trust to give you sound advice? The other question you should ask yourself is “Would I buy my item from that salesperson, knowing that I can get a better deal by logging on to Amazon?” It’s the old chicken and egg quandary. Scamp got what she wanted. I got what I deserved. Then we went for coffee in Costa and drove home after using up our allocation of 30 mins.

Soup for lunch, then I went out to St Mo’s to get some photos in the two hour window the weather app said I’d get. The sun almost came out and the Larches shone in the unexpected light. They surprise me every year with their bright yellow needles. I also has that strange vision of snowflakes, walking down the avenue of trees with the yellow needles blowing in the wind and looking just like snow. A branch of a larch with its bright needles still attached and a pinecone too made PoD.

Just before dinner while I was working on the PoD and Scamp was reading, someone knocked on the door. It was the Tesco delivery! We’d completely forgotten about it. Rushed to empty the crates and let the driver get on his way. Dinner was one of Scamp’s specialities, Stir-fry. This was a Chicken Stir-fry with all the fancy veg. Quite delicious.

Sketch of the day was Float. I’d decided about a week ago that today’s drawing centre around a fishing float. It looked a bit dull, just a view of a fishing float from below, so I searched for sort of cartoon drawings of fish and adapted one of them to add to the sketch, then added a few rocks and sand on the bottom of the water. That brightened it up. I’m happy with it.

That was about it for the day. These autumn days are so short now. We really should get up and out early to make the most of them. We watched the first episode of Roadkill. We’re both still undecided about it. We’ve another episode recorded and we may watch it tomorrow. Tomorrow however we are booked for a full day of wind and rain, which seems to happen about every second day just now.

MOT – 26 October 2020

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The red car lives to fight another day!

Out at 8am to take the Red Micro to the garage for MOT. Since we’d driven down to the garage, and had nothing else planned for the rest of the day, we went for a walk, since it was such a clear, dry morning. We walked down and round the stadium, then back home for breakfast. Like Scamp said while we were out, we should do this more often. Lie in bed reading on the cold, wet mornings, but on decent days we should be out and enjoying what little sunshine we get now that the days are shorter. It’s a plan. Whether it turns into action is still to be seen.

After breakfast we did sit around for a while and basically ‘footered’ for what was left of the morning. Just after lunch we got a call from the garage to say that the car had failed MOT because of a broken coil spring on the driver’s side. I’d guessed that might be the case, because I’d noticed during the week that it seemed to be listing a bit to that side, and said as much to JIC yesterday. Not too expensive to fix and they had one in stock, so it would be done today. With that dealt with we went for a walk around St Mo’s with a bit of a spring in our steps. Because the light was good and also because the car would be fixed today, we went round the pond twice! On the way back I grabbed today’s PoD of leaves beside the path to the Adventure Playground. Later in the afternoon we paid our dues and picked up the car. MOT’d, repaired and serviced. Scamp had a smile on her face. We drove home in the dark. First time driving in the dark since about February!!

Sketch topic today was “Hide”. I was tempted to put in a signed blank page to the effect that everyone was hiding, so I couldn’t draw them. Instead I drew a bit of a face peering round an open door. The ‘Hide’ part of Hide ’n’ Seek.

Scamp cut the last of her roses today and they were sitting in a vase on the coffee table. With such good light streaming in the window I couldn’t resist the opportunity. Look on Flickr and you’ll see them.

Tomorrow Scamp is meeting Annette who is coming to Cumbersheugh to get her Juke MOT’d. How is that for synchronicity? I may go for a walk.

Oh Summer’s gone – 25 October 2020

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Early in the morning, too early for us to know about it, the clocks silently went back an hour. Summer’s gone and winter’s in the meadow.

Because we’d had an extra hour in sleep, we took the lazy approach to the day. So lazy that we did hardly anything. The furthest we went was a walk down to Broadwood Loch after lunch. We continued down to Blackwood and up past the stadium. Dropped in at the shops for essentials, milk, a bag of mixed veg, a packet of sticky buns, a box of Turkish delight (mine) and a bag of chocolate raisins. Essentials, like I said. By the time we were heading home it seemed to be growing dark and it was feeling a bit cold in the strong west wind, even with my big ‘Bergy’ jacket on.  Connolly was right. “Nights are fair drawing in.”

Spent an hour afterwards playing a brilliant new time waster I’ve found, called Numbers Game. Deceptively simple concept but totally engrossing. Lost a couple of hours already to it. After dragging myself away I worked on PoD which is a view across Broadwood Loch. This isn’t the photo that came out of the camera, it’s the view from my mind’s eye. I know it’s a bit fake, but I like the lighting.

Topic for sketching today was “Buddy”. I’d roughed out a face on portrait of Buddy Holly that looked ok. Today I inked it in and it looked, not quite as good as the rough pencil sketch, but Scamp said it was a decent likeness and that’s good enough for me.

Watched a boring first competitive episode of Strictly. Well, actually I watched half an episode before giving up and posting the photos for today. It really was that riveting.

Spoke to JIC and heard about chlorine in a hot tub and rodent saboteurs. Not both together. The mice weren’t in the hot tub, just in case you were wondering.

Tomorrow Scamp’s car goes for MOT, so it’s an early rise to drive down and either walk back (if it’s dry) or drive back in the more likely event that it’s raining. Then we have to wait for the phone call.

Better than we expected – 24 October 2020

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It was raining this morning as predicted by the weather fairies. Then, surprisingly, it brightened up!

I wasn’t feeling at my best this morning. I think I’ve got a cold hanging over me. For that reason I was quite happy to sit and watch the rain on the window with nothing really to go out for. I was also waiting for a parcel to arrive for Scamp, one she didn’t know about and thankfully it did arrive on time. It got the reaction I was hoping for.

After that I sketched out my version of today’s prompt “Dig”. I was quite pleased with the result because it was drawn from my imagination. Not sketched from a Google Images photo.

After lunch it brightened up and the rain stopped, so with some vitamin C in me, Scamp and I went for a walk round St Mo’s, but the tribes were holding a convention there that involved getting bevvied and swearing. They really do drag the area down. I’m pretty sure the polis know about it, but it doesn’t tick any boxes for them, so they aren’t interested. At least until something more serious happens and that does tick a box, then, too late, they’ll react. Might give St Mo’s a wide berth at weekends for a while.
Continued or walk down to the shops and came back with stuff for tonight’s and tomorrow’s dinners. Grabbed a few photos on the way and one of them made PoD. It’s my favourite plant, the Cow Parsley against a bush of brambles.

The highlight of the day was tonight’s Zoom dance with, at it’s height, sixteen, or was it seventeen couples participating. One of Stewart’s great ideas. Dancing in your living room, or sitting watching others dance in their own houses no problem with bumping into others or avoiding the “Thick Couple” who insist on stopping every time one of them makes a mistake and enter into a “That was your fault. No, it was your fault.” discussion. No flamboyant show-offs to dance around. Just two and a half hours of dancing. Absolutely brilliant. Made us feel human again in these surreal times. We’ll ache a bit tomorrow, but it will be worth it.

Tomorrow I think it’ll be more of the same weatherwise. Rain and sun. We may go out for a walk.