Category: A Walk

Back to the garage – 27 September 2022

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Today we were going back to the garage.

We had a problem, but not with the car. The service history hadn’t been updated and wasn’t signed. I thought it would be a quick and easy fix, but forgot that the log book is a legal document and needs to be signed by the person who performed the service. That meant I had to wait for the service manager to take the book to the mechanic for him to sign, then bring it back. These little things seem to matter.

With the book signed, we continued on to Morrisons in Stirling. It was nearby and we hadn’t been to it for years, besides Morrisons is the only place we can be sure to get Neapolitan wafer ice cream. Just to be sure again, we got two packets. Of course we got other less important things too, like food.

After that we drove back through traffic that was considerably lighter than yesterday’s moving car park. Scamp discovered that the reason was probably the fact that there were three cows on the M73 after discovering that the grass was indeed greener on the other side of the fence. Something in the region of a ten mile tailback for three cows. And we wonder why the country is going to the dogs … and the cows.

I’d put the idea of a new phone on the back burner a week or so ago, today I turned up the gas. I had been looking at getting a Samsung Galaxy S21 FE, but Samsung UK didn’t have any to sell. John Lewis had none in any of its shops, Curry’s and Argos did have some, but they didn’t do 0% finance which the other two did. I’d read somewhere that Samsung had halted production of the ‘older’ phone, to concentrate on their newer models. I started looking at a more recent S22+. To help offset the cost, I could trade in an old phone – that offer wasn’t available for the S21 FE. The only stipulation seemed to be that it didn’t have a broken screen and that it would hold a charge. I put in the IMEI number of my old A40 and there it was, an instant £150 discount. I might just take them up on the offer.

With a bit of a smile on my face, I went for a walk in St Mo’s and found lots of spiders sitting in their webs, patiently waiting for an unlucky fly. However, the PoD turned out to be a shot of the late afternoon sun glancing across the Campsie Fells. I also walked over to Condorrat to get some stew and some mince to fill up my section of the freezer.  Back home I ordered another batch of Rave coffee.  Slightly different from what the Perth shop sells.  Not better, nor worse, just different.  A pleasant change.

It wasn’t until later in the evening that I discovered I’d brought something else back from St Mo’s. A tiny little tick on my wrist. It’s now gone to tick heaven. First one for ages. I hope it’s the last one for a while.

Tomorrow we’re visiting Margie. Always an entertainment.

Lunch in the Toon and a Wanderer returns – 26 September 2022

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We took the train in to Glasgow today after Scamp had run us to the station.  Just a wander around the centre of Glasgow with maybe the chance of a lunch thrown in.  Seemed like a good way to use a sunny day.  Sunny, but not all that warm, well it is nearly the end of September.  Glasgow was busy, probably partly because this is the end of September weekend which is a local holiday.  We walked down Buchanan Street and heard a bloke playing a blues on nice sounding guitar.  I gave him a few quid for his efforts.  We walked back up and found the restaurant Val had praised a few weeks ago.  It’s called Mozza and is part of a chain.  We’d been impressed with their pizzas when we’d been staying in Annette’s caravan in St Andrews last year.  Today’s pizza wasn’t a patch on the St Andrews one.  I had Italian Sausage and allegedly Italian Broccoli, but what was on my plate was cabbage, possibly Italian cabbage, but nothing like broccoli.  It was smothered in half a ton of cheese.  Scamp was smarter, she’d asked for just a little cheese and her’s looked a lot less of a mess.  It wasn’t expensive, but it wasn’t all that great either.  It wasn’t as bad as Doppio Malto’s effort, but way below Paesano in my quality rating.

We went for coffee in Nero after the disappointing pizza and then headed for the train.  Just missed the train back by seconds and with 25 minutes to wait for the next one, we went for a walk round George Square and down to Cass Art to see if they had a sale on … they didn’t so we ambled back to the station and on the way I got a few shots of the big glass building that is 110 Queen Street.  I liked the round table set for a meeting.  That became PoD.

Back home and had just finished a coffee when the phone rang and it was the garage to say the Blue car was ready.  I drove the White Duke over to Stirling, noting  the two mile queue on the other carriageway, the carriageway I would have been using to drive home.  Picked up our car and found that an upgrade to the Engine Control Unit had solved the problem and an upgrade to the sat nav and radio had also been done and checked.  I haven’t tested their checks yet, I was too busy plotting a route home that would mean the wheels were turning all the time, but I think we may go for a run soon.

That was about it for the day.  Nice to have the Micra back, but I admit I almost stalled it a couple of times forgetting it wasn’t an automatic!

No plans for tomorrow yet.  Weather looks reasonable for the time of year.

 

Dancin’ – 24 September 2022

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Difficult dancin’ too but, I did tell them I wasn’t to move my left foot from the floor. That’s what made it difficult.

We drove the White Duke to the dance class in Brookfield. Never once did I move my left foot off the floor. I tried out the cruise control on the quieter stretches out approaching Paisley, but I didn’t like the way the car took over the driving, controlling not only the speed, but also the steering. It’s called ‘Assisted Steering’ and it attempts to keep you between the white lines. That’s what my friend, Colin, claims to do when he’s driving on memory. Keep it between the white lines and on the left side of the road! Actually, it drove quite well. Part of the fear is gone, but part is still there. Now, perhaps, I know how Scamp feels when she says it feels like the car is getting away from her. Anyway, we made it with time to spare.

We stared today with the Mambo Marina. It’s a silly, but cheerful little sequence dance with, what Stewart calls, ‘Happy Music’. We know it and it was one of the first sequence dances I learned. That got us on our feet and warmed up, because it was a cold morning this morning. 4.3ºc when I was making the breakfast.
Next it was Gershwin Foxtrot. We’d been practising this at home in the living room and although the heel turns and spin turns were difficult to control when dancing on a carpet, we felt we were progressing. Stewart, the perfectionist, found lots of my steps to criticise, but I understand where he’s coming from. Positioning on the dance floor is important in ballroom. I’m so used to Salsa where you don’t mind where you end up or what direction you’re facing. It’s a couple dance that really can be danced on the spot. Most of the ballroom dances flow round in an anticlockwise direction and a bit of floor craft is necessary to make sure nobody crashes into anyone else. Although a certain person who shall remain nameless did once deliberately crash into a show-off latin dancer, and enjoyed it! We’ve almost completed the Gershwin now with just a couple of figures left to round the whole thing off.
We finished today with Tango Serida which I’d never danced, or don’t remember dancing, although Scamp knows how it all works. To help out us beginners, S&J did a couple of walk-throughs. In the end, we were almost ‘getting it’.

Drove home via the Clyde Tunnel and, again, my left foot stayed firmly fixed on the floor. MPG for the journey was in the mid 50s which is quite good for a fairly heavy automatic, I think.

The rest of the day was spent recovering from the dancing and the stressful drive back, although I did go out for a walk in the afternoon and managed to get some lovely light on a spider stretched out over its web. That got PoD.

Dinner tonight came from Bombay Dreams and was delivered very promptly. The food was just as good as it usually is. I can’t find anything to beat BD for good Indian food, certainly not locally.

We watched the tedious matching up of the professional dancers with the celebrities in Strictly, actually a recording from yesterday. We have today’s equally cringe inducing first dance recorded to watch tomorrow. We just like living in the past, you see!

We watched ‘Ridley’, Hazy. Actually we quite enjoyed it and found that ‘Ted Hastings’ could hold a decent tune. It was a bit long for a police drama, though.

No plans for tomorrow. No F1 GP to watch, but I suppose there will be something to do in the garden!

 

An early rise – 22 September 2022

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Up and out fairly early today to take the car to the garage for its service.

I thought it was going to be a nightmare run to Stirling. The rain was torrential when I woke, but by the time I was leaving it was tailing off and so was the traffic which usually turns the M80 into a carpark if you are travelling before 10am. A nice easy run to the garage.

Spoke to a lady assistant who asked if I’d had any problems with the car since the last service and when I handed her the typed up A4 sheet, she said “Oh! I see”, read it and promptly passed it on the service manager. Actually they couldn’t have been more helpful today. They seem to be under new management, so that might explain it. I signed all the paperwork, drew in a sharp intake of breath when the service assistant told me the cost of the Major Service and we walked out to my car for the day. It was a white Nissan Juke – automatic. His parting words to me were “Just remember not to lift your left foot.” Wise words. At the first roundabout I stamped on the brake, thinking it was the clutch. “Don’t lift your left foot” became my mantra for the drive home. My first thoughts were It’s BIG, It’s a bit noisier than the Micra and It’s got Sport Mode!!

After a bit of a kerfuffle I managed to reverse park The Beast and like all Nissans it complained about everything with warnings on the dashboard screen and beeps for every infringement.

I thought it would be good to go for a drive with Scamp. I knew she’d hate it. It’s too big and it goes too fast. I have to agree, but first I had to find how to put fuel into it. I could not find the switch to open the door that hides the fuel cap. The Micra has two tabs, one opens the bonnet and the other opens the fuel compartment. Eventually I gave in and read the instructions. To open the door, you press on the rear of the fuel compartment door, just like the Megane. Problem solved.

We drove out slowly and put in a few quids worth of petrol, then went for a run to The Kelpies. Just to annoy Scamp, I put on the heated seats when she wasn’t looking. That gave her a shock and a laugh (you taught me that, Jamie). I still don’t like them and Scamp hates them. I managed to drive all the way to Falkirk and only once did an ‘emergency stop’ by trying to use a clutch that wasn’t there. I also gave Scamp a laugh when I started trying to change gear in an automatic. My hand went to the gearstick quite a few times. When we parked at The Kelpies, I tried to pull on an invisible handbrake – the joys of ‘electronic handbrakes’.

The Kelpies were just as magical as they always are. We walked round them trying to see them from a different angle and being amazed at how lifelike they are. It was quite quiet today, no crowds. Well, it was quiet until a lorry load of visitors arrived and mobbed the place. There seemed to be hundreds of them. We went into the cafe and had lunch before they realised there was food nearby. Today’s PoD came from Helix Park, where The Kelpies live. It was a snap shot, not a snapshot. Saw it and took it before I realised that the bloke was with the woman in the background, wearing the yellow jacket and she was photographing him. Oops!

After we’d seen the great metal horses and walked round them, we headed home. Scamp bought birthday cards in Condorrat while I processed today’s photos. After that, we wrote the cards and I walked to Condorrat to post one. Hopefully the other will go to June for safe keeping tomorrow.

Oh yes, tomorrow. I got a phone call from the garage about 5pm to say Would it be ok to leave the Micra with them overnight until they finalise their investigations? I agreed that it would be fine by me. They confirmed that they would extend my insurance. So I get another day to find our more about the White Juke.

Tomorrow June and Iain are taking us out for lunch at the Red Deer (AKA the Dead Deer). Looking forward to it. Also looking forward to getting my Blue Micra back.

A walk in the park – 21 September 2022

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It was a lovely morning. It would be a shame to waste it.

Too often on a lovely sunny morning, like today, we have a coffee and open our tablets or laptops and cast an occasional glance at the world outside. Scamp has said many times that we should just go out and enjoy it, rather than sitting looking at it. That’s what we did today.

We drove over to Colzium and were one of three cars in the car park that can easily hold twenty. We walked up to the big house, then followed the steep road round the house and up the hill to the Tak Ma Doon Road, but rather than walk on to the road, we turned right and stayed on a path that took us down to the Colzium Burn. At the burn we turned left and followed it up and up and up until we reached the second bridge over the water. The light was really good on the first of the three waterfalls that tumble under the bridge and through a ravine, into a deep pool downstream. So good that I just had to take some photos.

We walked over the bridge and down the path on the other side of the burn and then we went for a coffee and some shortbread biscuits in a wee cafe that we visited a month or so ago. The sun was warm enough for us to sit outside although we kept getting buzzed by wasps.

Suitably refreshed and with a couple of shortbread biscuits squirrelled away to have when we got home, we walked round the lower part of the park and back to the car. The clouds were rolling in by then and it looked like the weather fairies warning about rain might come true.

Back home it was filled rolls for lunch and after some discussion, an old favourite, Fish Fingers, Egg, Spaghetti and Chips for dinner. I’d already downloaded the photos to the computer and knew there was enough there to get a PoD, so a visit to St Mo’s wasn’t necessary.

I got a phone call from the Nissan garage late in the afternoon, to check that I was still available for the service tomorrow and did a I have “any concerns I wished to speak about this evening?” I said “Oh yes!”, but agreed that I’d list them and hand it in tomorrow. That gave me the incentive to get my ‘concerns’ down on paper. It’s now written with one copy for the Service centre, one copy for the manager who I’m hoping to speak to, and one copy to go to Nissan UK.

PoD was a view of the first waterfall at the top of the walk today.

Tomorrow the Blue car goes in for a service. I’ve booked a courtesy car. I wonder what I’ll get! If the manager reads my list of ‘concerns’ first, it might be a pedal car!!

 

Pencil to paper – 20 September 2022

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It should have been brush to paper, but I didn’t get that far.

Scamp was out to meet Annette this morning, but for tea, not coffee because Calders has the reputation of serving the worst coffee in the world, so tea is a safer option. I had the morning to myself and started on a sketch I’d been meaning to get down on paper for months. It’s just a house and garden and it should have been easy, but in the past I just couldn’t get the perspective right. Today was no exception, at least until I tried using a grid. It’s a trick that I’ve seen others use and have scoffed at. I actually taught it as a means of scaling up a drawing for a while. Now I taught myself how to use it, and it worked. Admittedly, now I have the grid lines to cover up, so the painting that I anticipated being a watercolour may turn out to be an acrylic. Today, I’m just happy with the sketch.

After I ‘finished’ the sketch – you never really finish a drawing or a painting, you just reach a point where, as Whistler is alleged to have said, “I do not intend to do any more to it”. When I reached that point, I left the sketch unfinished for the day and decided to do something useful instead, so I cleaned the shower. It’s a dirty job, but somebody has to do it. That’s probably a quote too. I’m sure I’ve heard it somewhere before! With my good deed done for the day I waited to see if Scamp was coming home today, or perhaps waiting until tomorrow. She arrived bearing rolls! And not just any rolls, ‘Well Fired Rolls’. Crisp, crunchy rolls. I forgave her late arrival.

After lunch which was filled rolls for two, we went for a walk to the shops. We needed milk. We didn’t need Chocolate Cookies or a Bakewell Tart, but we got them anyway. When we got home I saw the red Californian Poppies that nod their head in the border looking bright and cheerful in the sunshine. The first shot went a bit bonkers because the camera decided that 1/800th of a second was a reasonable shutter speed rather than the 1/125th I’d asked it to use. That turned the bright red poppy into a dull dark red blob … however, maybe if I did a bit of jiggery pokery in Lightroom … ?
So that’s what I did. A bit of jiggery pokery in Lightroom, then in ON1 2022 and then back in Lightroom again for a final sprucing up and I had a PoD!

While I was engrossed in the post processing, Scamp was having a field day, digging up plants. Unfortunately she dug up what must be a long time favourite of mine whose real name is Astilbe but my mum always called it Spirea, because the man who gave her the first plant called it that. Strangely, one name for it is False Spirea. Thank you Mr Nelson. Anyway they are now all dug up although Scamp did spare one plant which is now in a pot. Yes, I know they were invasive. Every year we cut them back, only for them to return the next year, but they had pretty pink flowers. I’m sure they will come back again … twice as strong.

The uprooting caused a bit of an argument and I went out for a walk to cool down. When I returned I got stuck in to making the dinner which was Haddock & Prawns with Fennel. It’s meant to be Cod, not Haddock, but it tastes equally good with either. One of the best ones I’ve made. It must have been the anger that concentrated the taste.

Later we agreed to differ on the Astilbe question and watched The Hotel and were amazed at the mess people leave in their hotel rooms We were equally shocked at the hours the staff work. It might make me more forgiving when we go on holiday and don’t get five star service in a four star hotel.

No plans for tomorrow. No painting and no digging plants up.

A strange day – 19 September 2022

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Today was the funeral of Queen Elizabeth, who will always be Mrs McQueen to me.

I started the day putting the washing in the machine and switching it on. Scamp was settling down to watch the pageantry and I got hooked on it too. We both watched almost the entire ceremony. From the poor blokes who were pallbearers carrying the coffin in to Westminster Abbey to the hearse leaving to take her to Windsor Castle. I couldn’t tell you why I found it so fascinating. It might have been the colour or the grandeur of Westminster or the excellent photography. I think it might have been the silence. No running commentary to get in the way, to explain what we could see with our own eyes as some commentators delight in doing. For once the BBC got it right and just let the music and the sounds and the images do the talking. Not one car had moved in the whole of the street. Nobody was going to work today. Almost all of the shops were closed for at least the morning here and some were closed all day. Nobody wanted to go anywhere.

Once it was all over we had lunch and Scamp went out to work in the garden, taking cuttings, chopping up plants and just being outside in the fresh air. Later I took the A7 for a walk in St Mo’s and got a spider building a web bridge as PoD. I also made a photo from seed head that looked like a tassel. I’d tried and failed to get what I wanted yesterday, but today I was happier with the result.

Oh yes, and I got an Explore award on Flickr for ‘Down on the Canal’. It was literally ‘down’ on the canal. Kneeling on a pontoon, hanging the camera over the edge to get the reflections of clouds on a still area of the canal. I don’t know if it was worth the risk of a cold ducking to get the shot, but it worked.

Tomorrow morning Scamp is out for coffee with Annette and I might start something I’ve meant to do for a long while.

Just a lazy Sunday – 18 September 2022

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Didn’t even manage to get my Eight Active Hours or my 10,000 steps.

A lazy morning, completing our Wordle puzzles (I got 3 today, Scamp got a little more). Then we struggled to make the greatest number of words from the seven letters you’re allowed in Spelling Bee. Scamp beat me. These little puzzles have become a daily challenge and a matter of some competition.

I went for a walk in the afternoon after lunch. The sun didn’t come out to see me, though. It kept attempting to break through the clouds and I could see sunbeams over to the west, but they never came near us. It didn’t stop me taking photos. PoD went to a little yellow spider dangling on its web.

While I was out, Scamp was splitting up plants and repotting them, taking cuttings of others and pruning. She is so good at propagation. I’d guess that most, if not all of those cuttings ‘take’ by next year. Before I went out, I got the smelly job of turning over the compost in the bin. It’s now a lot less smelly, but I was for a while.

Dinner tonight was Just Soup then Trout Fillets with cabbage and potatoes. Apple and Rhubarb Crumble (our rhubarb and our apples) to end a Sunday dinner.

Spoke to Jamie later and got a fair bit of information about phones. Yes, the phone may be on the back burner, but it’s still there. Thanks for that Jamie. I did have a look on the Samsung website tonight.

There are no plans for tomorrow as yet.

Short Changed – 17 September 2022

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Out early today for a short class at Brookfield.

Although it was a wrench, getting up at about 8.30am on a Saturday, it was worth it to drive out to Brookfield on a fairly quiet M8. We arrived about then minutes early on a bright sunny morning to find that everyone was there before us.

A Square Tango was the warm-up. Scamp tells me she learned it at school. We didn’t have any of that foreign muck in Larky. We danced real dances like the Military Two Step and, well, that was it, as far as I can remember. When we were sufficiently warmed up, we started on the Foxtrot. Scamp and I have been practising it all week in the rearranged living room. I’m glad to say that all that effort was not in vain. We gave a good account of ourselves on the Brookfield dance floor. We even added the Continuous Hover Cross and a Telemark Turn (don’t ask, I haven’t a clue what it is) to the end of our routine. We were feeling quite pleased with ourselves.

Then Stewart added a Barmoral Blues to the sequence dances. It has become my most hated dance of all time. I don’t know why, but it’s something to do with the individual pieces not gelling properly. It’s as if it’s been designed by a committee, each person with their favourite figure and each one determined to fit it into the sequence somewhere … anywhere! It just doesn’t work for me, and I’m not alone for once. It seems that Jane is not a fan or it either. Scamp just says “It’s alright.” A couple more sequence dances and we were done. A hard won hour, but for once, I felt a bit left down with just an hour’s class after we’d been practising all week. It almost felt like we were back in Michael’s class. Almost, but not quite.

We drove home and discussed what to do with the rest of the day over tea and toast. Scamp suggested soup for dinner, Just Soup. I agreed. We needed veg to make it and I offered to drive to Stirling, have coffee and a bite to eat there and go shopping in Waitrose. There being no better offers, that’s what we did.

On the way back, I took a detour out to Haggs and while Scamp read her magazine, I went along the canal and took some photos of the cloud reflections on the Forth & Clyde canal. One of them made PoD.

Scamp made the Just Soup and it was excellent. It will be even better tomorrow, once it’s matured. After dinner we watched the film Paddington. Just good fun entertainment where the goodies won and the evil baddie was vanquished.

No plans for tomorrow as yet, but it’s getting colder now. We even had the heating on tonight and to hell with the expense!

 

 

Autumnal – 16 September 2022

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This is the first day this year I’ve really felt the autumn chill in the air.

Scamp was going out to her FitSteps class this morning and I cleared up yesterday’s dinner dishes. After that I put on my hoodie and with the A7 and the macro lens in my bag I went for a midday walk in St Mo’s. The weather was beautiful to look at, bright sun and blue skies with a few clouds scudding past. The temperature was a bit low though, not very deep into the double figures. It had been in single figures when I was making the breakfast.

The sun must have been warming up the boardwalk round the pond, because the air was full of little red dragonflies that I think were male Common Darters with a couple of Small Black darters too. One of the common darters made PoD. I’d hoped to get some photos of bees feeding on the blue Scabious flowers, but there were none to be seen today. Perhaps they all had the day off.

By the time I got back, Scamp had returned from her class. We discussed going out for lunch, but finally agreed we couldn’t be bothered and settled for a home lunch.

After lunch, Scamp planted two gigantic bulbs of Crown Imperial which is a , one at the front of the house and one at the back. She also planted some small Globe Alliums. Finally, because the sun was warm as long as you stayed where it was shining, we pruned the apple tree to reduce the amount of fruit the poor thing has to carry. We both agree that it will probably need staking in the spring to give it some extra support.

Dinner was provided by Golden Bowl and I volunteered to walk over to Condorrat to collect it. It was getting quite chilly when I was coming back. I think we’ll be looking at single figures again tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow we’ve an early shift at the dance class. Stewart wants class to start at 10am rather than our usual 11am. That will mean getting up at about 8.30am. On a Saturday!