Category: A Walk

A bit of a wasted day – 6 June 2025

Posted on by Zogman

A day when the cloud cover hinted at rain in the wind, but the deluge never really got going.

Scamp went out to FitSteps in the morning and I’d intended spending the morning clearing up my expenses, but instead I used up most of my free hour reading.

We were supposed to have an Amazon parcel delivered in the early afternoon, but for whatever reason, by the delivery time had disappeared, I had a message to say it wouldn’t be delivered until late afternoon. That sort of spoiled our day, but Scamp took it as a challenge to haul out the strimmer and tidy up the edges of the front garden. Not to be outdone, I dug out spades full of compost from the bottom of the back garden compost bin to fill up the potato bags and pail. Most of the compost was very well rotted and simply crumbled through my hands. I dug out enough of the compost to fill two potato bags and one potato bucket. That should help to produce a decent crop of potatoes later in the year.

I had a few spaces in the raised bed, so rather that leave it barren, I planted out some leeks. I’d planted some about a month ago and they were looking quite good considering they had been in the ground all through those hot days of May. I’m hoping the new planting will also begin to show in a week or two.

Dinner tonight, we agreed, would be fish and chips from the Condorrat chip shop. I walked there and on the way remembered I was going to photograph a lovely big rhododendron bush that was growing wild beside the path. I even managed to get a bee’s bum sticking out of one of the florets! PoD sorted. The fish ’n’ chips were good, but not the best I’ve ever tasted. Could do better IMO Condorrat.

My parcel from Amazon which held a pair of dance trainers arrived as we were starting our fish and chips, and after that wait, they were just slightly too short. I’ll send them back tomorrow.

Tomorrow we’re intending to go to Saturday dance class but without my new dance trainers. 🙁

The weather fairies get it wrong – 5 June 2025

Posted on by Zogman

The weather fairies predicted that today would be worse than yesterday with 100% chance of rain. It was cold, but it was dry almost all day. Sometimes even the weather fairies get it wrong.

We went out to meet Isobel for coffee and a blether in Costa. It was a cold wind blowing across the car park, but for once it was warm in Costa. Scamp spent the first half hour showing Isobel the photos from our visit to Hazel & Neil. I just sat there and added the occasional comment. Then Scamp explained the scan process to Isobel and answered all her questions. When both of them were talked out, Isobel went off to the bank and then went shopping.

We drove to our nearest Tesco and collected a trolley full of provisions for the coming week, or at least part of it. Back home it was lunch time. After that, Scamp started pruning some of the straggling branches from bushes and fading flowers, while I put new batteries in the string of lights round the rowan tree. I think it’s wrapped up in enough tape to make the battery box watertight, at least I hope it is. I’ll do the switch on later in the evening.

While Scamp was starting a new jigsaw, I took the A7iii out for a walk in St Mo’s and got a few decent photos of a bright green Cucumber Spider. Hadn’t seen one last year, but at least I got one today. I was quite pleased with that. While I was out I wandered down to the shops and bought some chocolate for Scamp and a cake each for us.

Dinner tonight was an absolutely delightful Prawn & Pea Risotto that Scamp made. It was light with creamy rice that was just al dente and no more flavoured with lemon and mint. I could never achieve that level of delicacy.

PoD went to that Cucumber Spider.

Tomorrow Scamp is intending to go to FitSteps. I’m intending doing some banking!  Pocket money banking.

Westward Ho – 4 June 2025

Posted on by Zogman

Today we were going west. Along a great road. In fact we were on the Great Western Road to Gartnavel Hospital to drop Scamp off for her brain scan.

I was glad I didn’t listen to my, now dodgy, sat nav as it tried to direct me through a line of bollards and then a steel barrier onto a road that no longer exists. In fact, a road that hasn’t existed for about 10 years. That’s what’s good about Nissans. Their technology make life more interesting. The sat nav was trying to direct us off at junction 17 of the M8, when we knew we should leave by junction 18. The rest was fairly well know to us from when we went dancing twice a week along Woodlands Road. Not exactly on the road, but in a building, just off Woodlands Road!

I dropped Scamp off at the hospital and as she was happy to go into the hospital alone and there were no spaces in the car park anyway, I drove back into the centre of Glasgow and parked in the JL car park.

I was too early to meet Alex, so I thought I’d have a wander through town first. That was before I saw the sheets of rain being blown down the street. Maybe it would be best to walk through the car park and over the covered bridge to Buchanan Galleries. From there I only had to cross the road to get to the bus station where Alex would arrive about 20 mins later.

The bus station is busy and a great place for people-watching. That’s what I ended up doing. “All human life is here” was a leader in the Times Literary Supplement some years ago and it can certainly be applied to train stations, airports and bus stations. Watching folk coming and going some carefully consulting their watches when connections are simply not connecting. My connection worked today when Alex strode along the concourse.

We walked down to Nero and discussed our plans for today. We agreed to do our usual walk down Buchanan Street, on through St Enoch’s Square and down to the Clyde Walkway to see what new graffiti there was. The answer was, not a lot. I’m guessing the rain that had fallen during the last week would make outdoor painting difficult, if not impossible.

I got a message around about then to say that everything was going well. Her injection had been in the back of her hand and she was now going to wait for it to spread through her body.

We on the other hand walked on past the St Andrews Church and further still until I found an old cobbled street that I recognised as Paddy’s Market. The market’s name originated with the large numbers of Irish immigrants who came to Scotland in the early 19th century, and I remembered it as a dirty alleyway where much wheeling and dealing went on. Now it’s just a cobbled street with some poor quality, but colourful graffiti adorned the walls. The view down through Paddy’s Market made PoD.

From there we walked up to Paesano for lunch. We agreed that it was one of the best pizzas we’d had. Quite, quite delicious. We had a look through the GOMA, but there wasn’t much to see there so we headed round the corner and had a coffee in Costa. Just then I got a message saying Scamp was on the bus back into town. I’d told her I would collect her, but Scamp is her own woman. Always has been.

We three sat and talked about the day in town and in Gartnavel and then we all headed home. Scamp was keeping her distance because she had been warned that the injection could be slightly contagious and she didn’t want Alex carrying it in to the house. Very thoughtful.

We split up at JL we were going to get the car from the car park and Alex was heading for the bus. A strange thing happened when we went to pay for our parking. I was parked on level 6 but I tried to pay on level 1, but I, and everyone else on level1, got the same message that card was rejected. We walked up to level 2 and got the same result. In fact, everyone had the same problem. Then one girl showed us where the help button was. We pressed it and before we could explain to the operator that the machine wasn’t working, he told us to go straight to the exit because the gate would be open for us due to a system error!! That saved us £14 for the day’s parking!! Wasn’t that nice! A lovely way to end the day.

Tomorrow we may visit Isobel in the morning for coffee and a blether.

Loaded with cold – 29 May 2025

Posted on by Zogman

A dull day, just got that little bit duller for me with a stuffed up nose and an annoying cough.

  • Scamp packed me back to bed and went off to do some shopping.
  • I did as I was told for once and had an extra hour of snoozing.
  • Felt better after a shower and a few squirts of the magic Sterimar decongestant.
  • I even managed a PoD which is a wee posey of flowers in their glass vase.
  • Early bed tonight after another shower and another dose of magic.
  • It works!
  • You won’t be surprised if I say I have no plans for tomorrow!

Soaked – 27 May 2025

Posted on by Zogman

It was a wet day, a very wet day. Spring was giving in to the rain.

  • Stayed in the house and watched the rain for a while
  • Eventually Scamp and I got fed up and we decided to go for a walk.
  • We went across the road and found a path I’d walked five years ago, a different one from the other day.
  • The further we walked, the heavier the rain became and the more lost we got, although not entirely lost because we occasionally glimpsed the golf course we were crossing through.
  • We were looking for a cafe we knew was there somewhere, but eventually gave up and walked back to the main road. That’s when we saw the clubhouse and presumably the cafe.
  • By then we just wanted to get out of the rain, and I was beginning to think the clubhouse was a mirage anyway.
  • Aren’t mirages meant to be found in hot, dry, arid places like deserts?
  • Eventually soaked, we dried off.
  • Neil brought filled rolls from a bakers and a newspaper we could stuff into my leaky trainers and leave to dry out on the radiator. Thank you Neil.
  • Dinner was in an Italian restaurant with Canute, Delia, Hazel, Neil and us. Good food and a comedian of a waiter. Lots of laughing and some planning too.
  • Evening was spent packing our bags for the train home tomorrow.
  • PoD was a dragonfly carving we passed on our trudge through Horton Country Park

Back to the heat again – 20 May 2025

Posted on by Zogman

After a respite from the heat yesterday, today it was back to the heat again.

The weather fairies keep telling us that rain is coming and that temperatures will return to the May norms, but unfortunately nobody has told the weather itself, yet. Today was another hot one, but there were signs later in the day that a change is coming. Cooler than it has been in the early evenings and a few more heavy, possibly rain bearing clouds crossing the sky. We live in hope.

I spent most of the morning writing and posting the blogs I’d just finished, along with the ones I’d collected the bare bones of from the weekend. It’s only Tuesday, but the weekend feels like it was ages ago.

We went shopping in the afternoon, just getting the bare essentials, but Scamp remembered we needed a couple of bags of cheap(ish) compost to fill up the potato bags and bucket. The warm weather really brought them on. Also, I remembered that they are Arran Victory.

Shopping done and after lunch, I put on a pair of shorts and went for a walk over to St Mo’s. PoD came from that walk and it’s an upside down spider. Google Images thinks it’s a Tetragnatha extensa, but I’m not sure it is. When I got back, Scamp had made a jug of Pimms with some apples and oranges chopped into it. Very welcome. Dinner was Neil’s Chicken Rice. I don’t know what the proper name for it is, and I don’t think Scamp knows either. It was as delicious as it usually is.

We watered the garden using watering cans tonight. I think we felt guilty about using a hose. There isn’t a hosepipe ban in force here yet, but the news folk keep banging on about it, so this is our contribution to the crisis.

No plans for tomorrow, yet.

 

Driving home – 18 May 2025

Posted on by Zogman

After an hour’s dancing.

Woke about 5am to the joyous sound of hundreds of screaming seagulls. Well, it felt like hundreds, but it could have been thousands. Really, why do we call them seagulls. Most of them have never been near the sea!

Went down early for breakfast and were some of the first folk in the restaurant. At least we didn’t have to queue for the breakfast. After that we went for a walk down to the viewing gallery over the River Tay and at the early (for us) hour of 10am, it was pleasantly comfortable to walk around without a jacket or a hoodie.

We took a circuitous route round the town that led back to the Salutation, thinking we might be the first there, but we were wrong, there were lots of other dancers there tying on shoes and discussing yesterday’s high points.

We danced a mixture of old and new dances, mostly sequence dances with the occasional ballroom or jive dance thrown in. An hour and a half later we trundled out of the hotel and drove out of Perth. We’d already dropped our bags, rucksacks and other stuff in the car.

A relatively quiet drive home with a stop at M&S in Dunblane for tonight’s dinner which was a roast in the bag chicken. I’d already bagged a few frames in Perth as a backup just in case.

Dinner was great. Nicely roasted chicken which was moist and tasted great. Served with a side salad and the last of the new potatoes.

Watched the Emilia Romagna GP and gave a small cheer for the driver who came second, only because he was British.

PoD was a shot of a padlock on the railing of “The Ship” viewing gallery of the River Tay. A kind of abstract.

Tomorrow may be tidying up day.

Perth – 17 May 2025

Posted on by Zogman

Drove to Perth in brilliant sunshine.

We set off at 9am and arrived at the car park neat The Salutation Hotel almost exactly an hour later. Parked on the ground floor for the first time ever and found our room was on the third floor. Scamp asked if there was a room on a lower floor. We’d been given a top floor room before and remembered the water dripping from the shower head when the shower was set to full. We didn’t want that again. Thankfully the girl on reception found us a smaller room on the ground floor. Great we shall be washed!

Met the rest of the dancers at our table, all of whom we’d met somewhere before and were introduced to our lesson for today, Rona’s Rumba. There were fewer dancers than there had been last year, although that was in November 2024 and this was a hot May 2025. The temperature was maybe the difference. In the bigger parties, the teachers usually split the class into two and teach the lesson to one half of the class at a time, then the groups are reversed. This time everyone was on the floor at the same time and it was a bit chaotic.

In the afternoon we bought some sandwiches and two wee bottles of orange juice then found a vacant bench in the park and had a picnic. It was great sitting in the sun watching the world go by.
Now that we’d been fed and watered, we went to the Bean Shop and I bought a couple of bags of coffee beans and a bag of Ceylon decaf tea. It’s the one decaf tea I can say honestly tastes like real tea.

It was so hot we had to stop and have drink before we went on to the creaky old Salutation and got dressed properly for the Dancin’.

Food was quite good in the hotel and although I did lose a knife somewhere, that was the only problem this time. It has been much worse in the past.

There was a little fly in the ointment. Obnoxious wee man tried to lower the tone of the night, but a few smiles between Scamp and I and some sarcastic comments by me were all that were needed for him to leave in a huff! I felt sorry for his wife, but now I know why she calls him Grumpy!

Danced to almost everything in the evening and lasted until the last two dances were called, then made our way back to the room.

PoD was a shot of four men. Two were real and two were manmade … or, was that an oxymoron? Actually the guitarist busker was really good, with a nice line in clever dialog. I gave him two quid!

Tomorrow we may be dancing again after breakfast. It’s a hard life, this dancing business.

 

Flying Things – 15 May 2025

Posted on by Zogman

Another bright sunny morning, although the breeze was cold, despite the temperature being 13 point something degrees, according to the old thermometer in the house.

I just had enough time to tackle Wordle although Scamp had already started into the more complicate of the NYT puzzles. Then it was time to get dressed properly for the drive to Glenburn for today’s Tea Dance. A smaller than normal group with quite a few folk calling off, probably because of the good weather.

It was the usual fare, starting with a waltz. We tried hard to work out the steps of Waltz Nioli, but got as far as the first half dozen steps before it all fell to pieces. We eventually gave up and started a wee short nameless Waltz that Kirsty had taught the class fairly recently. That worked, but it was a lot shorter than Nioli.
Next Stewart called for a Jive routine, any jive routine. We danced the Seven Spins we’d learned with Michael, all those years ago – before Covid, that’s how long ago. A couple of sequence dances later and it was nearly tea time with a fairly lengthy chance for a blether.

Second half was more sequence than ballroom, with a few well known sequences and also a few we’d almost, but not quite forgotten. As the clock was just past 3pm we decided that if the next one was worth dancing, we do it, otherwise we’d drive home. The next one turned out to be the Ria Bachata, but not to real Bachata music, so we said our goodbyes and drove home.

An almost non-stop drive from Glenburn, over the Kingston Bridge and home. Not the best drive time we’ve had, but the wheels were turning all the way. That’s very unusual on a Thursday afternoon.

Back home, Scamp was having a rest in the garden and I was going over to St Mo’s to see if any of the dragonflies and damselflies were coming out to play. Well, the dragonflies were, but I only saw one damselfly and it was keeping a low profile in and out of the weeds by the side of the pond. Keeping out of reach of the dragonflies that were patrolling the pond looking for easy takings.

I walked round the pond then went back the other way. Sometimes that gives you a different view of the park. Today I followed a wee butterfly with strange markings and got a shot or three of it. Next a damselfly came past and attached itself to a nearby leaf. Another half a dozen frames made sure I’d a photo of that too. Finally as I was walking home I spotted a bedraggled Crane Fly (AKA Jenny Long Legs in Scotland) was dangling from a trio of Horsetails, the prehistoric perennial plants. That became PoD.

Dinner tonight, just for a change was pasta with a rich tomato sauce. Very nice it was too. I made it!

We watered the garden later when the sun was going down. Scamp did the front and I did the back, despite warnings on the BBC to the effect that water shortages may mean a hosepipe ban. It’s just meant to scare us and we’re not listening!

Tomorrow Scamp may go to FitSteps in the morning. I have no plans.

A lazy start to the day – 13 May 2025

Posted on by Zogman

A lazy start for me, that is. Scamp was already up and pouring her first coffee well before I broke surface.

It was another warm day. Quite breezy, and maybe that was what cleared the morning clouds away. It was just over 13ºc when I raised my weary head.

After lunch, Scamp started building a frame to encourage her sweet peas to start climbing. She has already planted out two areas of climbing frames for them. This one might be the final one for this year.

I went for a walk in the afternoon with the correct combination of camera and lens. I was hoping for some shots of damselflies. I had managed to capture one a few days ago and had seen some flying around the pond yesterday. However, there were only a very few in the air and those were in the centre of the pond and flying low. The reason soon appeared in the shape of a Four Spotted Chaser and it was living up to its name today, chasing every flying insect it could find. I admit, I went a bit over the top with almost 50 shots of the dragonflies taken. They were hacked down to a more realistic number in the first cull. I think the sun had gone to my head. Still, it was the first dragonfly of the year, that’s my excuse.

Dinner tonight was Fragrant Prawn Rice Noodle Salad. A bit of a mouthful and a bit tricky to scale down from four servings to two, but it tasted fine, but was a bit difficult to eat. I think we may have another try at it later in the summer all, being well. Orange and Rhubarb jelly for dessert and it was delicious.

After dinner I watered the veg in the garden. The kale looks a bit dried out and so do the leeks. I’m hoping to get started earlier to morrow and get the rest of the kale and leeks planted. Weather looks set fair for the next week at least. Great for sitting reading in the sun and for sunbathing, but the garden will be taking a beating unless we get rain soon.

By the way, Happy Birthday, Neil!

Tomorrow Scamp is intending to meet up with the other witches and I may be working in the garden.