Category: A Walk

Big Dogs – 26 December 2017

Posted on by Zogman

Today was Boxing Day, but there were no more boxes to open, so, as it had snowed during the night and it looked ‘Deepan, Krispan, Evin’, I got dressed and took the big dog for a walk.

We walked through the snow and found that the pond was covered in mist as the sun hadn’t risen to warm it up. I just missed catching Mr Grey who was fishing next to the path, behind a bush. He flew off squawking at a couple of swans that were in his way. I walked into the trees and saw the sun rising above the tops of the pines. It’s not often I’m up before the sun, these days!

Walked down through the pine trees and didn’t see a living soul. Got a few shots of the little man-made pond near the road and then followed a fresh fox’s trail through the woodland until it crossed the burn. It wasn’t my great tracking skills that let me to believe it was a fox, it was the smell that was quite strong on the snow.

I walked through the deciduous woods and by carefully choosing a point of view, got a shot of the second burn with some clean reflections and avoided both the street lights and the motorway signs. The mist helped, but it did need some ‘spotting’ in Lightroom later. It was on the way back with my ‘big dog’ that I was joined by another couple of real big dogs. I just caught a glimpse of something behind a bush and assumed it was a deer, then it formed itself into a big, and I mean Big Dogs. Two fairly heavy built Alsatian types. I’m not good on dog ID, but the other thing I was pleased to see was that they both had expensive looking harnesses on and looked well fed and looked after. I tried to ignore them and walked on when I heard one behind me. Never let a dog get behind you, someone once told me. As I turned round the second one bolted away from me towards some silent signal, presumably from the owner. My own shadow gave a high pitched yelp as if to say “Wait for me!” and ran to follow the first dog. I breathed a sigh of relief. Luckily I was wearing my brown corduroy trousers, so there would be no outward sign of my panic as I walked on.

Got home without meeting any more Big Dogs although I did manage to get a low down PoD shot of a new Weeman that Scamp bought me as a Chrissy Prezzy. I’d have looked a proper Charlie if anyone had seen me crouching on my knees, photographing a Lego Minifig™.

Lunch was a light wrap with cooked meat and salad veg, plus some Jalapeños. Afterwards we discussed tonight’s dinner and it resolved itself into Minestrone soup. Not difficult to make, but lots of chopping up of veg as preparation. We didn’t have any cabbage, so as Scamp wanted to go and stretch her legs, we walked down to the M&S shop at the petrol station. We didn’t really need anything apart from cabbage which they didn’t have, but I got some more cold ham and Scamp bought some Satsumas. It was more for the walk than for anything else. Stuck in the house all day yesterday makes you yearn for the outdoors.

When we got back, Madeleine started a video conversation using WhatsApp. We’d never used it before, and it was really good. Much better than Skype. Skype used to be good, but since it’s been taken over by The Dark Side, it wants to run things its way. Interrupting a call to install an update. That’s just typical Microsoft. Anyway, the Whats App call worked well and Scamp got to see Ori the wonder dog as well as everyone else in the Trini house.

I got a sketch done and pre-dated it to the 24th. A lie, but a little white lie, well, a black and white lie actually. Not drawn, but painted with black Indian ink. I quite like it, but I’m not letting you see the usual big image, so don’t bother to click on it. It looks better small, I think, and it’s my blog!  The title from the lyrics of ‘The Curious Crystals of Unusual Purity’ by Bridget St John.

Today we made the move to go out. Tomorrow we may go even further! Provided the weather is kind to us.

The day before the next day – 24 December 2017

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I hope Jaime doesn’t mind me paraphrasing his ‘day after the day before’ saying.

Maybe you could remind him of it JIC. It was the day after the wedding in Trini.

Not the brightest day, mainly because it rained almost all day. Scamp forced herself out to buy what was left of Tesco – which wasn’t much. After lunch which was a Full Scottish:

  • Fried Black Pudding
  • Fried Pork Sausages (2)
  • Steamed Haggis – the healthy option
  • Fried Clootie Dumpling
  • Fried Egg

It’s sometimes called the Heart Attack Special, but that’s really only when served with fried bacon and fried, not steamed, haggis! I survived it, but afterwards decided to go for a walk to allow my stomach to digest this fat-O-rama. I walked down to the petrol station to get some more stuff for tomorrow’s lunch, because Tesco would now be closed for re-stocking and awaiting more food being helicoptered in to feed the starving thousands on Boxing Day. On the way back I got today’s PoD which was a wee garden on the top of a rotting fence post. I liked the little look-alike fir trees that were really moss. To disguise the grain of the ISO 6000 image (and because I could with a new bit of software) I added a texture screen made from a photo of some pine needles I saw further along the walk. Soooooo much easier than using texture screens way back in the days of darkroom printing.

I was looking forward to having a Denver Steak for my dinner tonight, but after a freezer malfunction the other day it had defrosted and when I opened the package is was a Smelly Denver Steak and was promptly consigned to the bin. Hopefully the other stuff in the freezer is OK as it was vacuum sealed and hadn’t been as badly affected as my steak. Luckily I’d bought a couple of steaks last week and one of them provided my protein intake for tonight.

Watched ‘Home’ tonight. A pointless bit of cartoon fluff that entertained perfectly. Hazy, it took me a while to work out that is was Jim Parsons voicing ‘Oh’, the Boov fugitive. Funny film when there’s nothing else worth watching. But that’s what Xmas is all about, isn’t it? Watching films you wouldn’t otherwise consider worthwhile. It’s also about ignoring the abominable ‘Muppet Movies’ that appear at this time of year. Would you believe that STV are actually advertising ET as a movie this Xmas season? It was first shown in 1982!!! It should be in black & white and have a piano accompaniment.

Anyway, by the time I get this posted the witching hour will have passed and I wish you all a happy Christmas. To those who are in cold climates, tough. You have to be to live here. To those who will spend Christmas on the beach, you lucky, lucky people. Have a Bake & Shark washed down with a Sorrel Shandy for me!

Circling the square – 17 December 2017

Posted on by Zogman

We looked out this morning and decided today was going to be an inside sort of day.  It was raining and the clouds were low.

I hauled out the old HP computer from the cupboard in the back room and proceeded to plug things like a keyboard, a mouse and a monitor into it. It looks very complicated at the back of an old desktop. The back of the iMac has a few USB ports, a couple of Thunderbolt sockets, an Ethernet port, a headphone socket and a card reader aside from a kettle plug socket. They all sit in a neat row. Not so the old PC. It’s got two monitor sockets, four USB sockets a Firewire 400 socket and RS232 port an Ethernet port, a socket for an aerial for WiFi, mouse ports, speaker sockets, keyboard sockets. That’s only the back. The front has even more USB, Firewire and other ports for plugging in a toaster, a microwave oven and a thing for taking the stones out of horses hooves. Is it any wonder that the power supplies fail fairly often? Well, here’s the most surprising thing about the whole shebang. I plugged in the keyboard, the mouse, the monitor and the power supply. I switched it on and it worked. First time. It loaded WIndows XP and was ready for business in about five minutes. I was astounded. It takes longer than that for my Win 10 laptop to get past the POST screen and I’m not kidding. Most of the rest of the day was spent investigating all the files I’d stashed away in this leviathan. Its pair of massive 250GB hard drives were loaded with software, files and photos that hadn’t seen the light of day for about nine years. HP should use this as a new marketing campaign. HP Old Tech “It Just Works”.

The Snowman™ table cover had to be cut down to size today. Today we weren’t ‘squaring the circle’. We were ‘circling the square’. Actually Scamp decided that she’d rather have an octagonal shape rather than a circle. I was happy with that, because it’s easier to cut four straight lines than one circle. At least, if you want it to look reasonable. It was put in place after that and it’s sitting right in front of me as I type. I have to say it looks really good. Super glad I bought it now.

The rest of the day was just spent lounging around, well for me at least. Scamp had ‘busy’ things to do and I was happy to let her do them. I went for a walk over St Mo’s and got the photo you see at the top of the page. It’s not brilliant, but it’s a fairly decent landscape. It’s not the landscape that made me take it. Here’s what I wrote about it in Flickr:

Loads of frogspawn in the pond in the spring, then damselflies a little later followed by dragonflies later in the summer. Today, all that was visible was water on top of ice. However, I know that below that there is life waiting to evolve into walking flying creatures next year when the temperature rises again.

That was about it for the day.

Tomorrow Scamp is meeting Nancy for lunch and I may go for coffee in Perth, or I may not. There, Indecision is my byword.

Coffee – 15 December 2017

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Today I was going for coffee, but not with the usual company.

The Campsie Fells enticed me to do a wee watercolour. It’s the snow that makes the hills so interesting. It smooths the shape, levelling everything out, but at the same time it enhances the ravines that cut their way down the slopes. Thankfully the snow didn’t quite reach us, because although it’s nice to look at, to paint and to photograph, it’s not so great to fight your way through.

By the time it was finished, it was time to drive to the town centre for coffee with Shona and Scamp. Usually I have no problems getting parked in Tesco car park, but today it was chock a block. No room at the inn and non in Tesco car park either. The only solution was to park in the main center car park, across the dual carriageway. I spotted a few spaces in the far away area of the car park and headed there. Then I found the reason for those empty parking spaces. None of the roads or pedestrian areas had been gritted or cleared of snow. Three days of thawing during the day and freezing at night had made the paths un-walkable. Where the snow and ice had melted and re-frozen, the suface was like a sheet of glass. Worse, it was like a sheet of glass with water running over it. Not good for walking on, but the company who own the town centre don’t care. They seem to think that having provided a car park, they don’t need to maintain it as well. Dobbers.

Had coffee with Shona and Scamp then gave Shona run home. I was surprised at the amount of snow still lying where she lives. We have no lying snow and we live only about two miles from Shona.

When I came home, the weather looked good and I reckoned I would manage an hour of decent light, so it was boots on and grab a camera time. The paths here are just as bad as those up at the town centre and the bin that was half full of salt grit last week was now lying empty. It won’t be filled again until next autumn. Saw a couple of deer in the woods of St Mo’s and managed to get a clear shot of one of them. The hills that had impressed me were turning pink as I climbed the mound at the end of the forest. I took a series of shots at varying zoom settings. What you see above was my favourite and became PoD.

Scamp sensibly decided to forego the delights of the choir carol concert tonight as the temperature dropped down to just above zero again. I think that was the right decision.

Tomorrow we may go in to Glasgow in the morning to get the pain over with early!

Ice is not nice – 14 December 2017

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An icy morning. Jac’s taxi didn’t come, so I volunteered to drive her to the station.

It wasn’t all that cold, but it had snowed during the night and the snow had melted, then frozen again and now that ice was melting, on the surface at least and that meant it was treacherous. The Juke performed perfectly, I couldn’t fault it. Unfortunately there was a queue of traffic heading along towards St Mo’s taking the children who can’t walk if it’s cold, or windy, or wet, or dry, or too hot, or too tired, or .. well, you get the picture. I turned at the roundabout and took the longer, but much quicker way round the back of Blackwood and then through the new estates to the station. Got there with plenty of time for Jac to catch the train (the next train, that is). Came home the same way because, although the queue was shorter, it was still there and resolutely not moving. Walked back from the car and that was when I found out just how slippery the surface was. Slid all the way down the short slope to the house. Didn’t fall, luckily, but Scamp decided it would help other folk if I spread some chippings on the path. Such a simple solution and it worked.

After lunch Scamp parceled up the Christmas parcels for JIC and Sim and I took them to be posted at Tesco. Got that completed and stopped off at St Mo’s to take some foties. Liked the shot through the trees also liked the shot of the swan attempting a tricky landing on ice, but decided the trees won PoD. The rest were good, but not great. I was better prepared for the ice this time with a pair of walking boots, real ones, not Clarks flashy looking, but ultimately useless Goretex ones. The ice was melting in the areas the late sun was reaching, but as I was leaving I could see thin icy fingers stretching out across the puddles. (Oh dear, I came over all ‘Nigella’ there!)

Later in the afternoon I finished last week’s Zentangle doodle. I thought these things were beneath me, but they are more difficult than they look. You need a good eye and a steady hand to produce the accurate linework.

That was about it for the day. The highlight of the day was going to Tesco. Some days are like that.

Tomorrow, I may be joining Scamp for a coffee with Shona!

Slipped the Leash – 13 December 2017

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This morning, Scamp and her sister were off into town. I had a chance to slip the leash.

Ended up doing a bit of sketching and pastel drawing, but nothing serious enough to be considered for public viewing. I also made some yogurt, repaired a bit of the kitchen ceiling and finished off an iron-on transfer for a tee shirt.  Eventually, after lunch I went for a walk in St Mo’s and just missed the last of the good light. What I did find was a quadricopter drone stuck up a tree. After a bit of work energetically throwing chunks of branches at it, it finally dropped to earth. It really was in a sorry state, but it did have a camera and after a bit of examination, I extracted the micro SD card. Like the rest of the drone it was fairly well corroded, but with some careful scraping with a scalpel, the contacts were clean enough to download the video of its last flight, all 2.5minutes of it. It’s not the best resolution, but it does show the dangers of flying too close to tall pine trees!

My one decent photo from the day and my PoD was entitled “Slipped the Leash” on Flickr. Quite fitting.

Tonight Scamp, Jackie and I drove down to Bombay Dreams for dinner with June and Ian. Our combo starter was enormous and while others less used to the size of the restaurant’s portions were eating their way through it, Scamp and I were more careful. Mains were also their usual size and just as tasty as always. Entertainment was provided by the two twin waiters. One serious, the other telling jokes with such a deadpan expression you wondered if it was a joke at all. All this while snow was falling outside. This was the first expedition in the snow in the Juke and it performed perfectly. It even climbed the hill to the house without a single grumble. Nice car.

Jackie heads to Embra tomorrow and depending on the weather we may go to Stirling.

Walking in a Christmas Card – 11 December 2017

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Today started early, too early.

I switched off the alarm before it rang at 7.30am. A quick breakfast, dressed and out to defrost and warm up the car (it was -7ºc), then we were off into Glasgow for Scamp’s second routine hospital appointment in two weeks. There were warning signs on the motorway that things weren’t good ahead. Speed restriction signs set for 40mph. That usually means a serious bit of congestion ahead. There was serious congestion, six miles of it at just at under 10mph. I decided on a change of direction. If I left at the Stepps slip, I could circumvent the congestion and go through the outskirts of Kirkintilloch. Bad move. As soon as I left the 10mph motorway, the slip road ground to a halt and the motorway speeded up, but it was too late to change my mind, the die was cast. Not to worry, we’d plenty of time in hand for such contingencies. Eventually reached the roundabout and headed for Kirkintilloch, then I saw the queue on that road and the blue flashing lights at the head of the queue. That explained the congestion. There was an accident at the next roundabout and it looked as if everyone was heading back on to the motorway we’d just left. There was nothing for it but to rejoin the queue on the motorway and follow the sat nav. After about fifteen minutes of ‘taking the second exit’ and ‘turning left in 200yards’, the computerized voice proudly announced, “You have reached your destination” which was a dead end next to a boarded up shop with two dead cars parked outside. Shouting “Oh no it’s not” didn’t seem to help, so I did what I usually do and followed my nose for about 100yds and found the sign directing us to the hospital. Got there with time to spare and it looked like everyone else had been held up too, because we sat in the waiting room for another half an hour or so. Scamp got seen and told everything is ok, come back in six months. After a cup of coffee and a scone, we made our way home. This time the sat nav took a totally different route, through the outskirts of Glasgow and we were were home in less than 20 mins.

Next thing to do was get the room sorted for Gems Christmas party, then I volunteered to go and collect Margie while Scamp prepared the food. I then vamoosed to get some photos. I drove to Auchinstarry and walked the canal. It really was like walking inside a Christmas card. Everywhere was white and clean looking. It was cold too, but I was wrapped up well, with hat, gloves, scarf and fleece lined Bergy jacket, but I could still feel that dry cold you get on really frosty days. I’m not sure what my PoD is. I think it might be the tilted Christmas tree, which is really a frosted piece of reed poking out of the ice on the flooded Auchinstarry quarry. Decided I couldn’t hang around too long, because Scamp wanted me back for 3.30pm to take Margie back home. Managed that with a few minutes to spare.

Salsa tonight was good, mainly because we only had one new (impossible) move. The exercise was good.

Tomorrow I think I’m going in to Glasgow in the afternoon. Certainly don’t plan an early rise!

The Big Freeze – 10 December 2017

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We woke to a temperature of -6ºc which was cold, but no snow and some areas of the country were much harder hit than us.

After lunch I went out to get a mouse trap, because something has been eating its way into the bag with the birds peanuts and I don’t think there are any birds in the house. On the way back I parked at the station and went for a walk along the Luggie Water. Not much actual water, but a lot of ice. Got some nice shots of icicles hanging in front of the wee falls upstream a bit from my usual walk. That made PoD. There wasn’t much else to shoot, although I’m always tempted by the contre-jour shots of hoar frost on the weeds.

We were dining out in La Rambla in Paisley before the salsa. Food was good, but the service was just too slow. The waiters never seem to know where food is going and it becomes a bit of a free for all. Dancing was organized by Shannon and it was very enjoyable. Just like last week, I danced almost non-stop for about two hours. Good fun.

The heater in the car is quite excellent and tonight, coming home it was actually too warm and I had to turn it down. Pity we don’t have heated front seats and heated steering wheels though. That would be the ultimate luxury! 😉

Early bed tonight, because we’re up and out early tomorrow morning and since it’s -6.9ºc just now, I think I’ll be scraping the car in the morning.

Under the Bridges – 9 December 2017

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So, what of the day then? Well, it was cold when we woke this morning, sub-zero in fact.

We’d half intended to go to Embra, but as we both slept a little longer than we’d intended and as we then read a little longer than we’d intended, it was really too late to go to ‘Auld Reekie’ today. Instead we decided to go to South Queensferry. It’s a great place on a cold, bright, clear day and today fulfilled those specifications perfectly. Surprisingly, we found a parking place right away and then when we walked through the main car park we found there were lots of spaces. After yesterday’s experience, I guessed that everyone was in Embra or Glasgow today, frantically searching for just the right gift for someone. Maybe someone they don’t particularly like, while that other person is also searching for something someone else won’t like Both of these ‘gifts’ will soon find themselves in the council tip or in a charity shop. The recipients will be ultimately disappointed and the buyers will be out of pocket. The only winners from Xmas are the shops. Will I be taking part. Of course I will, because that’s part of the game, isn’t it?  We walked under the old bridge and that’s where most of the photos came from.  PoD was of the pillars, top right.

There were a lot of Asian tourists here. Maybe they were on a visiting cruise ship, or maybe it was just the one family and we just kept meeting different groups of them. We seemed to bump into them a few times as we walked along under the railway bridge. After that, we walked through the town of South Queensferry and Scamp remembered us sitting outside in a pub courtyard in warmer days, and as it was a pub courtyard, and there would be beer involved, it must have been a few years ago in more relaxed times. She also liked the way spaces in the lines of shops had been used to provide windows on the Forth and the bridge, the old bridge, the real Forth Bridge. She’s developing a good eye, is Scamp.

I think Scamp was really set on having lunch in the Italian restaurant we’ve been to a few times in Queensferry, but when we passed a second time, it was empty. An empty restaurant is not a good sign, so she made the decision to go to a busy one we’d passed. The fact that it had big picture windows was not a factor, honest. We had burgers for lunch. Chicken for Scamp and beef for me. Both lovely. I even had a Becks Blue with 0.05% alcohol, while Scamp had a latte. The only drawback was that the picture windows on to the main street had the low, bright sun shining straight in my eyes. I eventually gave in and allowed Scamp to move round the table so that I could sit with my back to the sun. The bonus was that we could both watch the tiny wee trains passing over the Forth Bridge.

Paid for lunch, walked back to the car and drove home. Took a wrong turning on the way and got the sat nav to help us out of our difficulty. It took us down a single track road, round a very posh looking farm conversion and then back along the single track onto the main road, then got us onto the M8/M9 perfectly with ease. I presume the detour round the posh houses was its version of ‘perform a U-turn when possible.’

 

Still cold tonight with the threat of snow. So, as to what we’re doing tomorrow, as Scamp says, it all depends on the weather.

Masterchef – 8 December 2017

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Today was Scamp’s annual Witches Christmas Dinner so it was get up, get out of bed and put your pinny on.

Scamp was first in the kitchen getting her pudding sorted. I’d taken loaf’s worth of dough out of the freezer last night and left it to defrost, then rise in the kitchen overnight. It didn’t look as if it had done much rising, but I left it on the radiator to warm up and hopefully do the business. It did rise a bit, but not as much as I’d hoped. When Scamp was finished, I turned up the oven and when it got up to temperature, I bunged it in. I still wasn’t convinced, so I made another batch of fresh dough, just in case. As it turned out, the bread was fine, so that was another load of dough in the freezer for another day. Bread done, what’s next. I started to prep the veg for the starter while Scamp sorted the table. I’d already carted the iMac upstairs away from the sticky fingers of the Witches. Prep done, there was nothing for it but to make the filo pastry nests for the quiches. It is the most fiddly stuff to work with, filo. If you so much as look at it the wrong way, it becomes desiccated and falls to pieces. However, I got the four nests made and then filled with the veg before being filled with the egg mixture. Stick it in the oven for 15 mins at the equivalent of 160ºc. They came out anaemic and liquid. Bung them in for another 5 minutes. Still not set, so turn it up a bit and bung them in again. Finally they looked ok. Had to go to Tesco for more provisions, but then it was time to make tracks before the Witches arrived.

Tried to park in the usual place in Auchinstarry, but there was a giant artic with the logo Scottish National Theatre on the side. In Auchinstarry? Surely not. Well, it was and there were luvvies everywhere as well as roadies setting up temporary shelters and there were also lockers spread all along one of the paths. Oh oh, this looked like serious theatre nonsense. Lots of money being flung at an outdoor contemporary dance and movement piece of pish. Council sponsored no doubt for the fourteen inhabitants of Auchinstarry. Just the thing you want to go to when the temperature is sub-zero and the wind is from the north. The mind boggles.

I parked at the Boathouse and left them to it then walked along the canal as far as the lone seat half way to Twechar. I didn’t sit down for fear of freezing to it, I just turned and walked across the plantation and on to the railway path, then back to the car.

Drove out to The Fort to waste some time and had a coffee and a panini there before driving back. My head still buzzing with Wizzard singing about how the Wished it could be Christmas every day. That seemed to be the only Christmas (or should that be ‘Xmas’?) song they had on the Fort’s iPod. The Party was winding down when I went in, but luckily I’d taken the iMac upstairs, so I could retire to the relative quiet of my room, process PoD which was the view along the canal with the sun streaming through the trees, and listen to some real music courtesy of Spotify.

Was told later that the quiches (remember the quiches?) hadn’t been set properly and Scamp had to rescue them by giving them a further 5 minutes. Basically the temperature in the recipe is wrong for our oven.

It was really cold today.  I don’t think the temperature rose much above zero.  When I got back to the house in the late afternoon, the rain that was frozen on the rear light cluster of the car when I went out was still frozen.

Tomorrow? Don’t know. It depends on the weather I fear.