Category: Architecture

The day dawned dry and clear – 25 October 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Not quite sunny when we woke, but dry and clear was good enough for us to pack a pair of boots and head off to Japan.

Before we went, we had one more thing to do and that was to photograph the eclipse. Everyone was raving about having to wear eclipse glasses. Being a photographer, I had a couple of polarising filters. If you orient them with the glasses at 90º to each other, they cut out about 95% of visible light. I did that and took a few photos of the sun with a bite out of it! Then we were on our way.

We drove over the ‘Clacks’ bridge to Clackmannanshire, then over to Dollar. Took a wrong turning there and got stuck behind a slow moving jeep pulling a trailer then up a long, steep, twisting, single track road, only to find a bin lorry coming the opposite way. Luckily I’d just passed a house about 100m back and was able to reverse down into their drive to let the bin lorry through. Thankfully no more vehicles on the road, but we seemed to be at the back of beyond and no sights of anything that could be construed as Japanese. We were looking for somewhere to stop when I saw an elegant open wrought iron gate. That looked like the place. We parked and walked to the cabin to pay for our walk in a garden.

A Japanese garden. Honestly you would never know this place existed if you hadn’t been looking for it. The photo, which became PoD, was the first view we got of this place. It’s laid out like a Japanese garden, but not in a tacky, tawdry way, but one that you just know was designed by someone who knew what they were doing. It was utterly stunning. The weather was trying its best to make it look even more beautiful. The sun, which had survived its fight with the moon, was cutting holes in the clouds and spreading some light on the trees, the pond and the little shelters. Everything was meticulously clean and tidy. Not a spot of litter. We spent about two hours walking round the place. We even found a “Christie Path” that led into the trees! I could rant on for ages telling you what we saw. It would be better have a look here and see for yourself:
https://cowdengarden.com/

Drove home by a different route, taking our time. After a cup of coffee Scamp decided it was time to cut the front grass. When she was finished I hauled the ‘grass hoover’ into the back garden and cut the back grass. It’s not perfect, but given the dampness underfoot, I think we did a fairly good job. It’s like a bad haircut, in a fortnight it will look fine. We also put up another set of lights. Little stars this time that hopefully will fare better than the last ones did. They’re shining brightly as I’m typing this.

Today’s prompt was ‘Tempting’.  I thought of that bag of four doughnuts I’d bought the other day.  There was only one left, so I sketched the bag and the doughnut.  One doughnut left?  It’s always a temptation to just eat it.  You know you shouldn’t. You know you should share it, so that’s what I did.  No I didn’t! I ate it!!

Tomorrow Scamp has been asked out for coffee by June. I’ve got more computer stuff to fix. Always got more computer stuff to fix!

A beer in the Toon – 13 September 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Today the Auld Guys, or at least, three of them went in to Glasgow for lunch.

We all met up sporadically in and around George Square. We were going to Doppio Malto, an Italian restaurant and beer shop in the centre of Glasgow. Ray arrived first and got things organised while I met John in the square (not a masonic keyword!) and we went looking for Val. Eventually we went back in to the restaurant to see if the wily Italian had sneaked in behind us and that was when we found Ray with the table all sorted. You can always expect Ray to get things done properly. So I left John with Ray and went looking for Val again. Found him and brought him back to the fold. The lunch could commence.

Pizza for Ray, Val and me, but John went for Carbonara, just to be different. Beer for me, IPA in fact, “Sexy IPA” to be more exact. John went for boring lager and Val had Guinness, Italian Guinness! Who knew there was such a thing? Ray was driving when he got home, so he was drinking orange juice. The pizzas were a bit of a disappointment. A bit tough and to use the Scots word, “Cheugh”. John said his carbonara was fine, but the sauce looked a bit thin. Maybe it’s just the focaccia that they can make well. We may go somewhere else next time.

Val seemed to enjoy chatting with the waitress in Italian. No, he didn’t tell me what they said! I just enjoyed being out with folk other than family again. Just sitting for an afternoon with pals, blethering, telling jokes and tall tales. What we ate and what we drank didn’t matter, but I did have another beer, if only to hear the waitress say “Your Sexy Sir”, while Val and John had Sambuca, but “Your Sambuca” doesn’t have the same ring to it!

All too soon we had to go our separate ways, vowing to do it again, hopefully some time in November. Before the Xmas rush.

Managed to get a train back and Scamp picked me up at the station. Her lunch had been the same as ours. Wetherspoons where they’d chosen had no fish, so fish ’n’ chips was off the menu. I’ve never heard of a restaurant having no fish. Macaroni cheese is fairly easy to make from scratch, but Wetherspoons seemed to be serving a microwaved box of it. There will be excuses reasons, I’m sure, but it’s sorry state for the hospitality sector to be in.

PoD was an ultra-wide shot of the new Queen Street Station in Glasgow.

Tomorrow we’re intending to go somewhere for a proper lunch. No ‘ping’ food accepted.

Out in the wide world – 24 August 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Both of us … together!

Back on the cruise, in what seems like a different world now, I felt a clicking form my dance shoes. I thought it would go away, but it didn’t. Today I was going to look for a new pair. If time allowed after that, we would go for a walk in one of the parks on the south side.

The weather didn’t look that clever in the morning, but the weather app maintained that all would be well in the afternoon, and gradually the sky lightened, the rain stopped and we went out.

We drove to the shoe shop in Rutherglen, hoping to get parked outside like we did last time, but today luck wasn’t with us, so we drove on to Tesco and parked there. Long story short, I got a pair of plain black dance shoes that seem to fit perfectly. Job done. Of course Scamp also saw a new pair of dance shoes and just had to have them!

After a couple of wrong turnings, ok, three wrong turnings, we found our way to Bellahouston Park. We had a wander through the park and found an elephant, a rusty, steel, life size elephant.  Cast from melted down scrap locomotives from India and South Africa. Locomotives that had originally been made in Glasgow. A photo of that “Nellyfunk’s Bum” became PoD, but it was close run thing between that and a couple of other images that may make their way into Flickr.

Lunch was in the Art Lovers’ Café in the House for an Art Lover in Bellahouston.  Peppermint tea for Scamp and a decent cup of coffee for me with two massive scones to keep the hunger pangs at bay, although I did fancy the Pork Belly with Potato Cake, chargrilled spring onions, Spinach and Mustard Cream sauce.  Maybe next time!

We drove home by the M8 and over a Kingston Bridge that was beginning to clog up to its usual afternoon traffic jam. Then Scamp noticed warnings that more roadworks were about to start in a couple of weeks and would last until January 2023! We’ve had months of roadworks earlier in the year, they finished in June before another set began in July. It seems that every month there has been roadworks in this stretch of motorway. I doubt if this latest set will be the last. Unfortunately for us, this is the route we take to dance class every week.

Just as we were driving in to the estate, and home, another electronic sensor in the car reported a failure. This time it’s the tyre pressure sensor which reported an error. The car goes in to the garage for service next month. I doubt if anyone will be able to diagnose the fault, but they will reset the failure log and tell me it’s fixed. Then they will want me to come in and choose my next new car. It might be a Nissan, but I doubt it. It most certainly won’t be coming from a dealer who can’t fix the problems with my current car.

I had a bit of sad news today. Jack Doyle, who I worked with for many years at school, passed away a few weeks ago. I’ll always remember Jack’s sense of humour. He was a great guy who drank beer, but never lager and told great stories, so he did!

Tomorrow I’m hopefully breaking in a new pair of dance shoes.

Flying home – 11 August 2022

Posted on by Zogman

There isn’t much you can say about going home, other than that it’s usually very carefully orchestrated by P&O and Jet2. Usually

We left our bags outside the cabin last night and knew they’d be picked up and taken away by midnight. The next time we’d see them would be when we took them off the carousel at Glasgow Airport. We were ushered into one of the restaurants after breakfast and waited there until our buses were ready to take us to the airport. Then the rain came. Torrential rain. The staff wouldn’t allow us to go to the coaches because it was raining! Why couldn’t they just bring the buses to the bottom of the gangway and allow us to leave? No, they couldn’t do that. Were they frightened someone might slip and be injured and they’d be sued? Possibly. Eventually they had to let us go.

We passed through security quickly this time because I’d organised all my camera gear and electronic gadgets plus my laptop into easily manageable chunks and it all passed muster. Then we were through and almost immediately we were given the gate number.

Fairly pleasant flight home until one baby at the front of the plane started screaming its head off. I don’t know if the mother was deaf or just didn’t care, but I kept thinking about the scene in Airplane where all the passenger queue up to slap the hysterical woman. It wasn’t the wean that we’d be queueing up to slap, but the mother.

Finally we landed in Glasgow and the next calamity occurred. The person who drives the ‘airbridge’ couldn’t get it aligned correctly with the door and was attempting a second run at it, but then the airbridge broke down and wouldn’t reverse. Eventually they solved the problem by bringing in a set of steps manually. I think everyone was happy to get off that plane. It must be the first time we’ve arrived in Glasgow and our cases were in the reclaim carousel before us!

Driving home the traffic was terrible on both the M8 and the M74. I opted for the M8 which was the wrong decision. It took us an hour to get over the Kingston Bridge because some poor soul had broken down just past the bridge on the part of the motorway that has two lanes now instead of four. That meant only one lane in four was in use. We did get home, but it felt that everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.

As soon as we got the bags and cases in, we did our tests. I was negative, but Scamp was positive as she’d expected. At least we were home.

PoD was two street cleaners sweeping up Valletta’s streets this morning.

Tomorrow will be another day.

Koper – 8 August 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Looked for a flea market but found a hummingbird. Read on!

We got off the ship early because there are lots of things to see in Koper.

We opted for the sit-down breakfast restaurant where you’re not tempted to go back again and again for more from the buffet, especially after last night’s Indian feast. After breakfast and after checking out of the ship, we walked out of the port and headed for the lift to take us up to the viewing gallery and the town. I was impressed by the artwork advertising what I think was a ballet company’s “In a Dark Rabbit Hole”. Weird black and white photos overlayed with splashes of black ink hinting at scary things. Very arty and very clever. I photographed each of the billboards.

We didn’t actually go up in the lift, instead I suggested we climb the stairs to the viewing gallery where we took the mandatory photos of the ship and also photographed our reflection in the mirror panels that enclose the lift that the lazy folk use to avoid all those stairs.

Once we’d taken our photos and got our breath back, we walked in to the town and admired the cathedral and its bell tower. Scamp likes churches and she wandered into this one after covering her head and shoulders as is required. I’m not really all that interested in churches, but this one really shone inside with sunlight coming in through the high windows. We walked round and I took some photos, listening to what I thought was piped organ music, but it wasn’t piped. Someone was playing this massive church organ with an assistant turning the pages for him. That made it even more impressive.

After we left we walked in through the narrow streets of the town. I found some graffiti that I thought Alex would like because he’s into that sort of thing. In one shop they had a handbag shaped like a full size acoustic guitar. A snip at just over €80 and another about 60cm diameter shaped like an old style alarm clock with a working movement, a bit more expensive at €250. We walked on!

It’s an old town with cobbled streets and narrow alleyways that are just asking to be photographed, so that’s what I did, while Scamp found a dress shop with a reasonably priced dress that she bought. We found a real old fashioned cobbler’s shop where you could get a pair of hand made shoes made to measure. Luckily we didn’t have the time to wait, but the shoes looked lovely. There was a beautiful Yamaha Midnight Star motorbike just on a prop stand I took its photo, also for Alex.

I was looking for a flea market we’d wandered round the last time we were here and eventually had to agree that it was no longer there. There were some stalls in a park, but it looked as if it wasn’t going to be open today. Such a shame. We had a beer in an outside cafe and then headed back towards the ship.

We passed busts of what I think would translate as “National Heroes” all with a red star on them somewhere, so probably dating back to Soviet times. Further on, there were planters with great pillars of red flowers and … a Hummingbird Hawk Moth feeding on the flowers. I can’t remember who saw it first, Scamp or me, but the cameras were out in seconds and we were hammering away trying to capture an image of this fast flying insect. I remember seeing one, easily twenty years ago in France and maybe one since then. You just don’t get them in Scotland, even with climate change. There may be some in England, but I doubt it. Eventually after I’d shot over 50 images, I gave up.

As we were walking away from the flowers and the insect Scamp noticed a man on a wee electric ‘Monkey Bike’ with his dog sitting quite happily on a rack underneath him. Maybe that’s normal in Koper. We bought some things to take home at the supermarket in town and got them through security without any problem.

Back at the ship, Scamp went to the pool again for a swim. I grabbed my sketch book and pens and went back through security to draw the cathedral and bell tower. I’d sketched it the last time we were here, but for some reason I’d painted the clock face black – it’s white. This time at the third attempt I got what I wanted.

Normal sit-down dinner tonight with the couple we’ve been sitting with. Alan is a Senior chef and his wife is a Tax Consultant. Both from Newcastle area. Good company. We went to an awful show after dinner. That’s the last show I’ll go to on this ship. I’ve seen school shows that demonstrated more acting and singing talent.

Tomorrow it’s our last port, Šibenik, and we get to go in the wee boat, the tender to shore, then a free bus to the town itself.

Cool! – 20 July 2022

Posted on by Zogman

A much cooler day.

We probably sat around too long this morning. We should have been out enjoying the sun and the breeze on a much more pleasant day. Eventually when Wordle had been completed by us both, we got our act together and drove in to Glasgow, me to get my hair cut and maybe look at trainers and Scamp to possibly look at shoes and maybe collect some foreign money.

First stop John Lewis, top storey for the money. After that we split up. I went to the barbers and Scamp went to Buchanan Street to look for comfortable walking shoes. I did get my hair cut (No4 on top and No3 on the sides and back). In and out in less than 20 minutes. That’s good going. We walked down to Tiso where I eventually settled on a pair of Columbia trainers. It was the same bloke who served me last week. The one who explained the good and bad things about every shoe in the shop. He was explaining to a new-start that the mountain in one of the pictures was the Quiraing, and that he used to live in a little village called Staffin at the bottom of that mountain. To break the ice I said “So you lived in Staffin?” He replied that he lived there until he was 5, and then left to go to the big city, Portree. We told him about our connection to Staffin and then got down to business. He gave us a discount on the shoes and Scamp thinks it’s because we’d been to Staffin. I think he was just glad to see the back of me after my fruitless search last time.

Back home and it was getting warm again. I’d saved some pennies on the trainers, so I felt I could splash out on some petrol. Just enough to take us over half a tank. Prices are coming down. Today’s price was 189.99 for petrol and 195.99 for diesel. Not brilliant, but a step in the right direction.

We read in the garden for a while when I came back but then Angela’s wee grandson was wandering about shouting and having a laugh in his sandpit, so I came in to peruse today’s photos. My favourite and eventual PoD was 110 Queen Street. It’s taken about two hours to get it from what I saw in the viewfinder to what I’d like to see on the screen. Nothing is ‘real’ in photography.

It’s now down to a two horse race in London. Liz Truss v Rishi Sunak. I think they should dispense with formality and make it “Strip to the waist and fight to the death”, except that would mean Truss would win!

I ordered some coffee and tea from the Bean Shop in Perth and it’s coming tomorrow. Have a look on their website, Jamie. Their selection of coffees is drastically reduced! I think they may be in trouble.

No other plans for tomorrow. We may go out and use some of that expensive fuel.

Out for lunch, a drink and some history – 20 June 2022

Posted on by Zogman

We took the bus today, but not into Glasgow.

We got the bus up to the Town Centre and then another one out to Dunfermline. Scamp’s suggestion and a very good one too. Walked through the town that’s now become a city, having been granted city status by Mrs McQueen at her Platignum Jubbly. We walked on into Pittencrief Park and down to the Peacock cafe in the park. There we made a mistake and had a coffee and a scone in the outside terrace. Please, someone, remind me never to have coffee and a scone in that cafe again! Especially if I know I’m intending having fish ’n’ chips and a pint in Wetherspoon’s later. What should have been a flat white became a latte. The excuse was that the dishwasher in the cafe was broken and they had to resort to disposable cups. That was fine, but why did they put one shot in the mug sized cup then fill it to the brim with milk? Worse still, why did I drink it?

We walked out feeling full and walked round the park. I forgot to mention that it was an absolutely stunning day. Wall to wall sunshine. After we’d done a circuit of the park we went to inspect the flower gardens. The one thing I will say about the park is that the gardeners do an excellent job. The place is immaculate.
The glasshouse in the park is rarely open, but today it was and we really enjoyed the varied and specialised plants growing there. My favourite was the Bougainvillea hanging above the fish pond. Beautiful big orange flowers, glowing in the sunshine.

We eventually left, because the heat was becoming difficult to bear and I fancied a walk to the Abbey which isn’t far from the glasshouse as the crow flies, but the problem was we weren’t crows and we weren’t flying. So, we’d to walk down an the old worn stone steps into Pittencrief Glen and then follow the river upstream until we found a bridge to cross the river. Then, of course we had to climb the same amount of stairs we’d just descended to get up to the abbey.

It was worth the climb. We couldn’t get in to the ground floor area of the abbey because the stone flagged floor was being steam cleaned, but we might go back another day. Scamp wanted to look inside the abbey church which is really two churches joined together. Very impressive stonework inside and beautiful architecture. My favourite part of it was the flying buttresses outside and the perspective looking through them. Scamp was more interested in the stained glass windows, some of which looked really old.

Outside we found we were only a five minute walk back to the town/city. I always thing of places like Glasgow, Edinburgh or London when I hear a place being called a city. Dunfermline is really more like a small town, but someone thought it would be a good idea to give it a bit of a boost by nominating it to be a city and Mrs McQueen or one of her advisors agreed. Money probably changed hands too. Anyway, after some dithering and a seat in the park, we decided we would go for lunch in Wetherspoons, so we had a small fish ’n’ chips each with mushy peas. Scamp had a glass of wine and I had a pint of lager and all for the princely sum of fifteen quid.

After that we made our way back to the bus station and caught the bus home. For the first time on my new smart watch, I achieved my 10,000 steps. Let’s hope there are plenty more.

PoD was a shot I took just after we arrived and it shows the turrets of the City Chambers of Dunfermline towering like a Disney palace above the city’s rooftops.

That was a good day. Scamp suggests that we should have one day a week where neither of us drives. I think that’s a good idea. Tomorrow looks a lot cooler and duller than today, so maybe some gardening and just maybe a trip to the dump.

Out on the town – 6 May 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Meeting my brother for a walk around Glasgow.

This time we were heading for Glasgow Cathedral to see what difference there was between it and Paisley Abbey. Both of them are really big, grand buildings. I’d imagine that the cathedral is bigger than the abbey and I thought it would be grander, but the stonework was quite dark by comparison with Paisley. Balancing that was the total amount of rooms and the different areas, including the basement rooms. Of the two, I preferred the Paisley Abbey. However, a shot of the Cathedral made PoD.

We tried to find somewhere near the cathedral to get a cup of coffee, but the clumsily named St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art was closed as was a cafe on the other side of the nearby Glasgow Royal Infirmary, so we walked back to Glasgow City, in the rain.

We finally settled on a roll each and a bottle of juice from Greggs and ate our lunch in George Square, surrounded by pigeons keen to remove any crumbs. They also scoffed bits of chicken that Alex dropped. I tried to explain to them that was cannibalism, but my protestations fell on deaf pigeon ears. I must admit it was good to sit and eat our lunch in the open air and in the sunshine, even with the pigeons.

We took a walk down Queen Street to get some photos at the GOMA. Then we walked down to Cafe Nero in St Enoch’s and finally had that coffee. I had a flapjack, but I think my brother maybe later regretted his Raspberry and White Chocolate Chouxnut. I do hope you were ready for your dinner Alex.

We walked around St Enoch’s taking a few shots in the late afternoon light before heading for the bus station and home. A good day. It was the first test for the ‘new toy’, the Tenba camera bag. It performed well with a fairly full set of camera gear. Heavy, but not uncomfortably so. Still to test the new Lensbaby Sweet 35 optic. Maybe tomorrow. Also I got a shot of Alex’s new 85mm f1.8 lens. It may go on the shopping list.

Tomorrow we’ll probably be doing a bit of dancing in Bridge of Weir, but the rest of the day is our own.

Time to tidy up – 1 May 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Scamp returns today and that means the kitchen must be returned to its pristine condition. Oh dear.

As it happened, Scamp didn’t return to around 6pm which gave me plenty of leeway to make an even bigger mess of the kitchen by attempting to make a dozen English Muffins as advertised by Simon and Garfunkel in Punky’s Dilemma. Water, sugar, salt, yeast, flour, melted butter. What could go wrong!? Well, the answer was “Not much, actually.” It all went quite well considering how long it is since I’ve done any baking.

With the dough made, I left it to its own devices while I loaded the washing machine with stuff and set it to work. Then I went into the garden and planted some seeds. Teasels and a sort of Cowparsley or Hogweed called Ammi majus. The first is now in the greenhouse and the second is in the raised bed.

Lunch was another of Hazy’s “Crimpits”. This time the filling wasn’t so successful. I used grated cheese, cooked ham and beetroot. Maybe I overloaded it. Maybe it was because I was using white ‘Thins’, rather than wholewheat. Maybe it was because it was Sunday and Sunday should be a fried lunch. Anyway, I’ll try another mixture of fillings later in the week.

The dough was having a lazy Sunday and needed a bit of a talking to, so I gave it a last warning and told it to get rising or it would get kicked out, then I left it to consider its future while I took a camera and a couple of lenses to see what was hiding in St Mo’s woods.

There was a deer hiding there, but it saw me long before I saw it. It was last seen heading in the general direction of Glasgow at a fair rate of knots. PoD was a shot of a larch branch with fresh green needles that had captured some of yesterday’s rain and was holding on to it. I liked that.

Back home the dough was more than doubled in size. It’s amazing what a threat will do. I chopped it up into 12 little 77.33g balls and rolled them until they were smooth, flattened them and dusted them with a mixture of flour and semolina before cooking six of them in the frying pan (without oil),then baking them in the oven. As usual with our gas oven the timing was a bit hit and miss, and more miss than hit in this case. Some worked ok, some were underdone. There are another six in the fridge chilling tonight. Hopefully I’ll be more successful tomorrow. I suppose it doesn’t help that in Scotland we don’t eat many English muffins, so I didn’t really know what the texture should be like.

Halfway through the cooking and baking I got a WhatsApp from Jamie asking if we could do a FaceTime from New York. I explained that Scamp was still on the way home from St Andrews, but I was available. The next thing I knew, I was looking at Jamie with skyscrapers in the background. It felt such a surreal thing to do, to talk to someone I knew, thousands of miles away and in real time. I know this sounds incredibly old fashioned to some folk, but I’ve never had the need to do Face Time over a long distance before. It quite took my breath away. Thank you for that opportunity Jamie. Such a pity Scamp couldn’t have joined in too. And then he was off to catch his train to the airport to fly home. Safe flight home Jamie.

Scamp arrived about half an hour later, with lots of interesting foody things. Duck eggs, Ginger and Leek sausages, an interesting looking quiche, a jar of garlic piccalilli and two sticky cakes that we’re keeping for tomorrow. The sausages and a duck egg with some bacon became my dinner and mixed well with the piccalilli. Scamp said the quiche was ‘just all right’, but the pastry was lovely.

It’s great to have a bit of freedom, but its even better when you’re back home again. Lots of stories still to tell, I’m sure.

Somebody is coming to see us tomorrow to invite us to swab our throats and noses, then ask us those difficult searching questions.

Change of plan

Posted on by Zogman

Driving to Perth for coffee. But …

I intended driving up to Perth today to get some coffee from my favourite tea and coffee shop, but on the way there I was calculating how much petrol I’d use and how much the drive would cost me. When I worked it out, it would be way cheaper to just order it online and pay the £3 delivery charge. So I changed my destination to Kincardine. At least I could get a walk and some different photos, plus free parking. The weather wasn’t great, with the rain clouds building from the west, but I got some interesting views, well, I think so anyway. The rain was just starting when I was halfway home, it hasn’t stopped. Kincardine did, however, provide today’s PoD.

I came home via Tesco to get something for lunch and some milk. No alcohol today. Now, I’m not saying that’s because Scamp isn’t at home this weekend, that’s purely coincidental!

Struggled with my Sudoku after the late lunch but it still remains unsolved until tomorrow. Couldn’t quite decide what would be dinner tonight. Would it be home made pizza or Golden Bowl. I eventually gave in and had Golden Bowl make me a fairly decadent Sweet and Sour Chicken Balls with Fried Rice. My only complaint was the fried rice was a bit soggy, but the sweet and sour was delicious. I know I’ll suffer for it tonight, but I don’t really care.

Finally finished Amongst Our Weapons. The little short story at the end was confusing, but added to the title, I felt.

I’ve just finished a photo swap with Alex showing our favourite photos from the last week or so. Really good to have someone to bounce ideas off.

Jamie sent some cracking photos of his day off in NYC. Beautiful skyline behind him on the boat. I really hope Time Square is equally good. You deserve it Jamie.

That’s it for today. Now I need to go and get the house looking more like a home than a student flat!

Tomorrow Scamp returns and expects everything to be just like she left it! It might be!