Category: Architecture

Going Solo – 5 September 2020

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No co-pilot, no radio operator. Flying solo.

Scamp suggested I go out for a walk along the Luggie today while she went to Tesco. It was her turn to cook and we’d discussed her short list. It seemed like a plan.

Before we went our separate ways in separate cars, we emptied our ‘Tattie Bag’ which we’d planted with three carefully selected Jersey Royals or something that looked like them away back in early May. Not seed potatoes, just some ordinary potatoes that had been chitting on the window ledge in the toilet. We actually got better results than we’ve had with ‘real’ seed potatoes. A nice big bowl full of them. Only one scabby one. I’d consider that a success.

Scamp drove off and I followed suit a few minutes later. Found out a few more things about Blue, like where to find the ‘destinations’ I’d programmed into the satnav. Took a dozen or so photos of the railway bridge over the Luggie from one side and 42 photos of it from the other side. I was intending to create two panoramas from them in an old piece of software I’d found the other day. Surprisingly it handled both sets of images well, although it struggled with the larger of the two. Not surprisingly the finished article weighed in at just under 2GB. That’s a lot of GB. The larger one became PoD.

Scamp’s dinner was Tuna Pasta with Beans (and chilli flakes). Possibly a touch too much chilli flakes, but it tasted very good indeed. I think we were both thankful for the half price trifle she’d bought for dessert!

Apparently NLC in their wisdom have granted permission for an outdoor funfair in Cumbersheugh in these Covid-19 times. What else would you do when Lanarkshire is about to have sanctions imposed to control an increase in infections than encourage crowds of people to attend a funfair? I suppose the council will have been paid royally by the promoters.

Tomorrow we may go for a socially responsible walk down Glasgow Green.

Bits and pieces – 19 August 2020

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A day of bits.

Lots of bits, all bolted, glued and welded together to form a cohesive day. It all went wrong when I made a list of all the things I wanted to do today. I did actually do all those things, but the idea was that I’d sacrifice the morning to those tasks and that would leave the afternoon free to paint or draw. Burns got it right again “The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley”

First, get my thoughts down in Goodreads about “Flowers for Algernon”. Did you notice the link there? Algernon is a mouse and the Burns quote above was from “To A Mouse.” See, there’s a lot of thought goes into this. Anyway, the write up took minutes and that was a tick in one box. Next on the list was find the big thick graphic stick I needed to add texture and shadows to the sketch I was going to do. I’d looked everywhere last night and hoped I’d just put my hand on it today in the light. Gave up eventually and ordered a new one from Amazon. Five minutes later I found the graphic stick. It was in a box in the bedroom. Don’t you hate when that happens. Next was to solve today’s sudoku. It was impossible. I gave up after half an hour. Went in to the garden to prune my buddleia bush. Then Scamp and I proceeded to chop down the original buddleia bush that had only flowered once or twice and then in the autumn once all the butterflies that it’s supposed to attract had gone. It was a tough bush. It needed the combined efforts of a hacksaw, an axe and finally a full size panel saw, but it did come out of its pot eventually.

I should have been painting after lunch, but instead I took myself, my camera bag and my Benbo tripod off to walk along the Luggie Water. I’d forgotten to add ‘Take a photo’ to my morning list of things to do and it would only take a few minutes. The minutes somehow joined together to make an hour and a half, but I got the photo. The PoD is the railway bridge over the Luggie. Not a flower and not a beastie, but a landscape and an architectural picture for a change.

Back home I had a look a the the resulting photos and after some work, posted two on Flickr and found that it was now dinner time. Scamp made a really interesting veg curry and had baked a cake with chunks of pear in it. Quite heavy and moist, but beautiful cinnamon flavour. She’d also found time to cut the front grass. Makes me look like the lazy person I am. The painting never got done, nor did the sketch. Maybe tomorrow, or maybe I’ll get Scamp to do them. That way they’ll get done.

Tomorrow is to be wild with heavy rain and strong winds, and more of the same on Friday. Well, it is summer and it is Scotland

27º in Scotland? – 31 July 2020

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That just can’t be right, surely? Yet, that was what the thermometer in the car read. The outside temperature this afternoon was 27ºc.

We knew it was going to be hot today, but although we’d been warned, we just didn’t believe it until it happened. We’d decided that we would go out somewhere for a walk. We’d considered and rejected a few places. There was no point in going to the seaside because everyone would be going there. We finally settled on Chatelherault which was once the hunting lodge of the Dukes of Hamilton. Now it’s a country park in South Lanarkshire. Every time I go there I think it’s obscene that one family should have owned such a house in an enormous tract of land while others, the workers, were living in slum conditions with a tiny postage stamp of a garden to grow basic vegetables if they were lucky. Thankfully this building and its lands are now owned by South Lanarkshire Council and are open to everyone, even the scruffs from North Lanarkshire!

We chose a walk that we’d been on before, down through the gigantic pine trees with the Avon Water flowing below us. At the end of the walk we saw this view and it became PoD. It was good to see the ordinary folk staking their claim to some space in the sun on such a bright and sunny day. Actually it wasn’t all that sunny, but it was bright and warm and a clever bit of software changed the sky from milky white to summer blue with fluffy clouds. That’s the way it should have been anyway!

Once we’d walked “round the policies” as Colin would say, we drove home leaving a parking space for one of the eagle eyed visitors. Drove home and had lunch, then sat in the warm air of the garden for a while reading and listening to weans with their Drum ’n’ Bass ‘thumpy tunes’ as they walked along the footpath behind the house. Were we like that once? I suppose we were. Rebels without a clue. Found a little neon blue weevil in the grass and took its photo before it flew away to its next modelling assignment. Still don’t know exactly what it was.

Dinner tonight was a freezer raid for me. Butcher’s burger from January, butcher’s sausages from May, Waitrose liver from yesterday and an egg from a different butcher and half a portion of fried potatoes. A very mixed grill, but delicious. Scamp had trout fillet with the other half portion of fried potatoes. It was clouding over and attempting to rain by the time we were finished dinner and on to pudding (blackcurrant jelly and ice cream) and soon after that came a flash of lightning and the rumble of thunder. The rain became torrential and I think you could say the heatwave was over, but we did get 27ºc on the way home from Chatelherault.

Tomorrow the temperature is predicted to be a more reasonable 17º to 19º. Warm, but not crazy warm. We’ll see.

The sky is falling – 3 July 2020

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Well, that’ the way it felt today with the amount of rain that was dropping from the sky.

We had intended to drive in to Glasgow today for a walk down Bucky Street and then, maybe along Argyle Street and up past a certain art shop in Queen Street, then drive back home. That was the plan yesterday, but it didn’t quite work out that way. First off we needed to take Scamp’s wee car out for a run. Just to make sure that the battery was charged and that it was continuing to charge. It passed both tests with flying colours. It started first time and with Scamp driving and me as radio operator, we managed to code in the security number correctly. Who among my readers could tell me that they’d have the radio security number for their car, ten years after they bought it? Scamp knew exactly where the four digit code was and even corrected me when I initially typed it in wrongly. Ms Memory, that’s Scamp!

She had decided that she’d drive in to Robroyston, turn there and come home. Halfway along the motorway, with blinding rain and spray it didn’t look as if we’d get that far, but she stuck it out and we turned at the retail park and drove straight back home without stopping. Battery seems to be charging properly and no problems with it at all. The rain seemed even worse coming home and we were both glad to park up and have lunch. One trial over.

In the afternoon I walked down to the shops and got the shopping for tonight’s dinner in M&S where I was complimented on my frog mask, but reminded that from Monday, masks will be mandatory in shops. Shoppers will not be allowed to enter M&S without one. Not everyone is happy about it, it seems, but it doesn’t bother either of us. A mask is now just something you keep in your back pocket or your bag and slip it on as soon as you enter an enclosed space. How easily we become used to the new regime.

I managed to grab one shot today. Taken from the living room window, it’s a close up of a pink rosebud from the climbing rose at the back door. Scamp reckons it came from my mum and dad’s house in Larky. That might be true. Anyway, the rosebud made PoD.

Dinner was disappointing despite all the ingredients looking like they worked together. It was a ‘healthy’ recipe, not so much a low salt as a no salt recipe. There is no point in making an ultra low salt recipe if, in the end, it tastes of nothing. Salt is there for a purpose. It’s a flavour enhancer. True, too much is dangerous, but too much of anything is dangerous. I may try it again but with the addition of that four letter flavour enhancer this time. Vegetable, Herb and Smoked Trout Patties if you must know.

I had a drawing for yesterday, but was too tired to post it, so it went in today. It was Glasgow’s pigeons sitting on one of the old buildings in Argyle Street. Today’s is a still life of the fruit bowl. Drawn on a rough textured cheap sketch book from Cass Art using a cheap compressed charcoal pencil from The Works. It just shows that not all art materials need to be expensive. The pencil and paper work so well together, they are great to draw with.  Both drawings now on Instagram and FB.

Tomorrow looks to be much less wet than today and we may go out. That’s all I’m saying.

The day after – 26 December 2019

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Drove down to meet H&N at Starbucks!!!!

I thought it was going to be lunch, but it was more like coffee and cake, or, considering this was Starbucks, Starbucks and cake. It ended up just being six people talking round a table and it was good. Lovely mural on the wall. At first I though it was a repeating pattern, but then realised there were no repeats. Yes, there were things that looked like repeats, but no actual tessellation. Then I noticed the signature and date and that confirmed that it wasn’t wallpaper, it was an artwork. Very nice. Remember I said that, it’s not often I say good things about Starbucks.After the hugs and goodbyes, we drove home and got ready for the outdoors. Graham Water was our destination and we were walking anti-clockwise this time … in the rain. It could have been a dreich walk across muddy grass and even muddier paths, but the scenery kept changing as we went through woodland, down dips, up hills and into little villages. Past strange cottages with gargoyles on the eaves and then dwarfed by fields of three metre high corn. Occasionally catching glimpses of the Water itself. Eventually we reached a place where the flood waters stretched right across the road and it wasn’t clear how deep it was. We’d done enough. We turned back and I got a chance to photograph the old church that became PoD, although it could have been the grass or the gargoyles that got that honour. No, it was the church.

Back home and drying out, dinner for Scamp was another whole sea bass and for the rest it was Wagyu steak. Extortionate price, but amazing taste and texture. I can’t remember what we had in accompaniment, the steak was the star. Tasting almost like fillet and almost like ham, but softer than both. Beautiful. I wonder if the butcher in Muirhead will have some? Finished off with Christmas Pudding and Brandy Cream. I may never eat again!

More TV at night and we decided to leave the packing until tomorrow. Tomorrow we must go back up north.

A day in the toon – 17 December 2019

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Today we and a couple of million others went in to town to do some last minute shopping.

We decided that we’d drive in rather than freeze to death on a cold bus. It was probably the right decision, but it looked like half of Scotland thought the same way. We had to drive up to nose bleed altitude in the Buchanan Galleries car park to get a space. People were queueing everywhere on level 6 to squeeze into a space between a gigantic Land Rover Discovery and something that looked like a well polished Chieftan tank with alloy wheels. Meanwhile on level 7 we got to choose which of the hundred odd spaces we would grace with our presence. We both agreed on a “divide and conquer” approach and went on our separate and secret ways confirming that we would phone when we were finished or fed up, whichever came first.

I can’t remember who cracked first, but I do remember I was on my way to make my only purchase of the day when Scamp asked if I wanted to go to Paesano for lunch. Oh yes, that brightened the day. Actually the weather was quite bright, it was just the crowds of people everywhere that took some of the shine off it. When we got to the restaurant, it was crowded out the door. My face fell as I stood there wondering how long I was willing to wait. Ten minutes? Twenty minutes? Thirty minutes top. Nope, we got taken right away. It seemed that most of those waiting had booked full tables or were waiting for carry-outs. The place was jumping. We had to wait ages for our pizzas, but a bowl of balsamic onions helped stave off the hunger. The pizzas when they came were beautifully well done, mine to the point of charcoal in places. I cannot fault this place. My pizza had a bit too much garlic, but nothing I’d complain about. Scamp got the wrong pizza, but it turned out better than what she had ordered, so she was happy with the extra roast courgettes with her extra rocket and no cheese.

Coffee afterwards in Costa and it was good coffee too. Just goes to show that it’s Cumbernauld Costa that’s at fault. Too little coffee in their coffee I suspect. Scamp had some extra thing to buy, so I went for a walk, taking some photos. Didn’t really like anything I’d done, but I went up to load my single purchase in the car and took some photos from level 7. They were later turned into the PoD by some clever effects in On1.

Back home I struggled to find a way of removing the old HDD from the MacBook Pro and still get it loading. After about five hours of this, I’m back where I started. Tomorrow I’ve a different plan. It might work. All to be able to take it in to get a new battery.

Tomorrow we’ve been invited to lunch in the Village by Isobel. Sounds like a good meal too.

The end of a beautiful friendship – 4 December 2019

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Almost made the 11am cut-off.

Just after 11am I took a the new little brown job out for a walk in St Mo’s along with a few of my little bayonet fitting pieces of expensive glass. It was a dull day, but I wanted to see how it coped with dull Scottish weather. The answer was, not all that well. The kit lens was fine, but when I put on the macro, it just didn’t want to focus. Couldn’t work out how to set it to manual focus (Don’t worry JIC, almost done with the technospeak) and it has started raining. Didn’t want to get the little brown job wet, because it was going back to JL in the afternoon, so it went back in the bag.

I wanted to see how NLC and their helpers were getting on with the upgrade to the footpath. Work is progressing well on the new boardwalk, but less than half the footpath has been tarmacked so far. Hopefully it’s a temporary setback.

Home just in time to stuff a piece ’n’ bacon in my face before getting ready to drive in to Glasgow.

Michael was in charge today and no sign of Anne Marie. We started off by dancing Over the Rainbow with the ‘expert girls’, then Michael began correcting some of the individual elements. The bane of my life since last week, Spin 4, was amongst them, but his teaching was clear and not all that repetitive. It was going to be ok. Messed up a few of the moves in the new routine, but that was to be expected. Then it was time for waltz.

We made a small mistake at one corner and he started tearing our routine apart. Told us we were doing it all wrong. Told us we’d missed out two steps. Now Scamp is brilliant at getting the counts right and she argued with him that although she’d made a mistake at the corner, the rest was fine. So he took her through some steps we’d never seen before and tried to baffle us with maths. It didn’t work. We both told him that we’d never seen those steps before. He seemed to lose it at that point, shouting “Check your phone. Check your phone.” I told him I didn’t need to check my phone, I knew we were right. (I did check tonight and we WERE right.). Then he switched to Quickstep, but not before he had danced the proper routine, the one we recorded about a year ago, the one I checked tonight, and said that’s how it should be done. He wouldn’t listen to us when we told him that was a different set of steps from the one he’d done, not ten minutes before, but he’d switched on his Rubber Ear by then and was hiding behind it. I don’t know if he realised it was all over by then, but we had.

We walked up through the Christmas Market on George Square and bought two Coconut Buns. Delicious cold, but heavenly when warm.

Back home I got instruction from Scamp on how to make a stir fry and I showed her how to thread the needle on my sewing machine and how to do the basic stuff (all I can do, to be honest).

Sitting watching The Apprentice I started fiddling with the Little Brown Job (it’s got tan coloured leatherette trimming) and found lots of interesting and useful things. Lots more than just manual focusing. It’s a keeper.

PoD was some stacked architecture from Glasgow.

Tomorrow we’re booked for coffee with Crawford & Nancy.

A curry, a walk and a creepy old building – 23 November 2019

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Today we went to Hamilton for a curry.

Yesterday was such a grim day and a bit of a let down, so we decided we’d go to Hamilton today for a curry.

And a very good curry it was too. Actually too much for both of us and with the size of the nan bread in this restaurant, you are really full when you waddle out the door. We walked back into Hamilton itself, although there wasn’t much to recommend it. It was the night they turn on the Christmas lights and as usual there was a fair attempt at a celebration … in the rain. There was a band in the rain and there were dancers in the rain. I really felt sorry for the dancers. At least the band were under cover as was the master of ceremonies, but the poor dancers were out in the rain, some of them lying on the wet ground. Poor wee things. We stayed for about five minutes before we chose to take a short cut back to the car.

We walked through parts of Hamilton I’ve not been in for years, down beside the Cadzow burn. In the summer it’s quite a pretty place with walks along the burn, but in the winter it’s dreich. Did you notice that ‘dreich’ is the number one favourite Scottish word? That’s because it’s so often dreich in Scotland. It was certainly that today. On our walk down to Hamilton town, we’d passed one of the creepiest building I’ve seen in the UK. It used to be a department store and there is a well researched history here: https://bit.ly/2s4yE3p Certainly worth a read.  With the right lighting this really is a sinister looking building, especially from the Cadzow Glen.

Our walk took us right back to the car and we drove home in the rain. It really was a wet day. The photo of the creepy Keith’s Building made PoD.

No Sunday Social tomorrow and no plans made. We’ll just have to see how the land lies in the morning.

Two left feet – 30 October 2019

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You know those days when everything goes right? I don’t.

Today started well. Scamp was out meeting a friend this morning for coffee. That gave me time to sit and draw today’s prompt which was A Houseplant. I chose one of Scamp’s Geranium cuttings. Although both back and front gardens are full of plants, this is one of the few that are allowed into the house. I believe she has it house-trained and it is careful not to leak on the window ledge it usually sits on, basking in the warm autumn sun. I quite liked the result. The pot isn’t quite right, but the plant was well drawn, I think. The good stuff ended there.

We drove in to Glasgow and in the dance class we thought we danced quite well in the free dance practise at the start of the lesson. After that I had brain-fade. Led with my left when it should have been my right. Stepped inside the lady when I should have stepped outside. Got every element of the new routine wrong. I just couldn’t put a foot right, or was that left? Whichever it was, it wasn’t the correct one. Came away really disheartened.

A coffee and a photo of 110 Queen Street helped lighten my mood, but I wasn’t a happy bunny. The only good thing I can say about today is that next week will be better. Surely it can’t be any worse.

There’s not a lot else I can say other than that I made mini lamb chops and a lamb burger for dinner and it was delicious. Mini lamb chops are made from the individual pieces of a rack of lamb, cut from the rack and pan fried. I don’t know if I’ve invented it or if it’s already a thing, but this is the second time I’ve made them and they work really well.

Got a Tesco sim and stuck it into the now unlocked iPhone SE. Now I have a serviceable phone running on O2 as well as the Samsung on EE. The camera on the Samsung is pretty poor. Not a patch on the iPhone camera, but at least I don’t have to worry about running out of space on the phone. Swings and roundabout, that’s what it’s all about.

Coffee with Val tomorrow morning and then a run to Coatbridge in the afternoon. That’s the way the day should run.

Just another dancing fool – 9 October 2019

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Driving through the driving rain to dance our hearts out to Michael’s tune.

Just another Wednesday. Weather was almost as bad as yesterday with more high winds blowing more rain clouds our way. Managed to avoid most of the rain on our walk down to Blackfriars. Stood and watched some brave souls abseiling down the City Chambers to give the statues a but of a wash and brush up. Thought it was Extinction Rebellion protesters at first, then realised they were wearing hi-vis jackets with a company logo on them, so they were legit. Below them they seemed to be giving away “Boris Bikes”, but on closer inspection it was just a photo opportunity to show off the new “Electric Boris Bikes”. I can’t imagine what an Electric Boris would be like. Probably he’d short circuit the National Grid.

Even further down the road there were a film crew setting up. We used to get excited when we saw film crews in Glasgow, but now it’s just par for the course and we’ve learned to ignore them. Glasgow is built on an orthogonal grid with roads running North / South and East / West, so with it’s old turn of the last century buildings it makes a decent look alike for some of the older parts of American cities. It must be a lot cheaper to seal off a portion of Glasgow that, say, Chicago. Couldn’t see what or who was being filmed today.

Dancing was quite good, but although the room is fine for Jive, it’s really too small for ballroom. We leaders keep getting told to take bigger steps in Waltz and Quickstep, but when we do, there’s so much clutter in the room we can’t fit in all the steps. Pillars in the way don’t help either. However, today we reprised the entire Over the Rainbow set and we got to dance with some of the advanced dancers which is always good, because they are so exact and so quick. We eventually gave up trying to dance round the room because people would stop and discuss who was right and who was wrong and, coupled with the two speaker stacks, the piano and the pillars there were too many obstacles in the way. Instead, we practised the short routines we’d been learning.

Coffee afterwards for our usual debrief, then back up to the car park. We weren’t so lucky on the way back and got fairly well soaked. In addition I wanted some shots to use for today’s sketch. My Inktober list for today wanted “A bird’s eye view or a worm’s eye view”. In view of the strong winds, I decided that a bird’s eye view was out of the question. Also because of the heavy rain showers, I had to give up on an in-situ sketch, so instead I took some shots to use as reference material for today’s sketch.  It’s the Cranberry’s [sic] Restaurant in Glasgow.  Interesting building with a sort of tower breaking out of the corner of it.

Back home I decided there was enough light to warrant a walk to St Mo’s where I got today’s PoD which is a toadstool I saw emerging on Saturday. It’s grown a fair bit since then. I thought I’d get home dry, but that wasn’t going to happen. I got soaked, but at least it was on the way back.

Tomorrow I go to see the nurse about my blood results and Isobel is coming to lunch.