Category: Beasties

Another glorious warm day – 12 July 2026

Posted on by Zogman

Today started with some corrections to be made to my data.

It was just a couple of tweaks, but fairly important ones. With a great deal of help from Scamp I managed to get it done quite quickly in the morning. That left the remainder of the day for less serious stuff.

As usual on a Sunday morning, Scamp watched Laura Kuenssberg tearing into a couple of politicians. I often wonder if she is quite as aggressive at home, or if she’s really a ‘pussy cat’ when she’s at home. I don’t think I really want to know the answer. Sorry Laura if you’ve been reading this!

The main task today was to tidy up the garden. Scamp is always moving things around and occasionally chopping things too. I understand what she’s doing half the time, but sometimes I just don’t see the logic or the need in some of her plans. As long as she has it planned in her head, I’m happy to go along with it … most days. I’d noticed there was a long, empty trough had been emptied and replenished with fresh (ish) compost. Something was afoot. The plan was to refill the trough with some colourful annuals. How many, what type and when were not revealed, but I’m sure they will be soon.

I went for a walk in St Mo’s in the afternoon and got a few photos of insects doing their business. They were mostly Soldier Beetles happily producing more Soldier Beetles. Some of them were sitting on white tufted thistles. Google thought they might be Creeping Thistles. I’d never heard of them, but I was willing to believe Mr G. Soldier beetles were PoD today.

I had a Rump Steak for dinner with half a dozen Padron Peppers and some of our home grown potatoes, the second batch we’ve grown this year. Scamp had Sea Bass with fried onions and mushrooms. Dessert was ice cream and blackcurrant jelly. Very fitting for a summer’s day.

Spoke to Jamie in the evening, halfway through watering the garden and heard that they now have a hose pipe ban. Oh dear, and here was us saying that we were watering the garden! However, they are still allowed to use watering cans, although that would take a while with a big garden.

Tomorrow we may go shopping.

Bleeding – 10 July 2026

Posted on by Zogman

Well, not exactly bleeding, but being bled by the vampires of Central Health Centre. All in a good cause I’m told.

Scamp was meeting Isobel for coffee and a blether and once my bloods had been drawn, I joined them for a blether and a coffee too. Isobel was showing off a few ancient photos of her family, one of which was quite familiar to Scamp and me. It was a photo of a large family group at a wedding many years ago and I think it was a scan I’d made of that same original and then I’d used Lightroom or Photoshop to add colour to it. The clue that it wasn’t my original was the lines that crossed the print. I’d never leave them if I was printing copies.

Despite the heat today, Scamp wanted to work in the garden. It was mainly weeding and I wanted nothing to do with it. Instead, I put on shorts and a shirt and walked over to St Mo’s to grab some photos, because it was lovely and warm. In addition to grabbing some photos, something grabbed me on the leg. It was a dirty big Cleg, also known as a Horsefly. I didn’t hesitate to give it a big slap, flattening it onto my leg. I don’t think it will be biting anyone again. It had managed to bite me and the swelling was there for everyone to see.

The Soldier Beetles were out in force. They don’t bite humans, but they do mate on flowers everywhere. A couple made PoD.

We sat in the garden later and watched the wee fountain in the back garden spurting water at random. After that it was time to go back to the house for dinner which was a Pizza Express pizza. Too sweet and not worth getting again if you ask me.

Tomorrow we’re due to go dancing at Brookfield.

 

Shopping and Fruit Flies – 22 December 2025

Posted on by Zogman

Out this morning for a bit of shopping. At least, shopping for Scamp.

I dropped Scamp off at Tesco and headed for somewhere that would be redacted if I’d posted it here, so must remain a secret. Unfortunately I didn’t find what I was looking for, so drove back, picked up Scamp with the ‘messages’ and we drove home for lunch.

Thankfully we got parked fairly easily. The parking in our street is a bit hit or miss at times. Today was one of those strange days when there were lots of spaces when we left, but only one when we returned from Tesco. Parked the car and left it there for the rest of the day.

After lunch which was roasted cheese on white bread, with dried basil sprinkled over the melting cheese(try it sometime. Cinnamon sprinkles work too). I went for a walk over to St Mo’s. It’s a strange looking pond now that the water level has dropped by about 75mm. Also, the pond weed is much thicker than it should be at this time of the year.

Today’s walk took me over behind St Mo’s school (all the kids are on holiday) then out into the woods where I found today’s PoD which is Amber Jelly Fungus on some winter trees. Odd looking fungi whose colour does look like amber. I also got a couple of nice cloud photos that I must plumb into Photoshop to be a home made cloudscape background.

Dinner was Sea Bream with Potatoes and although the fish was quite small and thin, was delicious. Scamp wasn’t so complimentary.

We’ve been pestered by tiny little fruit flies in the house. We can’t find out where they are coming from, but I’ve found a way of getting rid of them. Scamp has been experimenting with little jars of Apple Cider Vinegar with a drop of washing up liquid to reduce the surface tension. The top of the jar is covered with cling film with holes punched in the top. The flies are attracted by the smell of the cider vinegar and crawl down through the holes then fall into the liquid and drown due to the reduced surface tension. It works, but takes quite a lot of time.

I’ve chosen to use my battery powered tennis bat You may remember Jaime having one in Trinidad. It makes a lovely crack as it despatches the flies. Other than that, we didn’t do much today.

Tomorrow I may get the bus in to Glasgow to get the final prezzy that I’d hoped to get today.

Unlucky 13th – 13 December 2025

Posted on by Zogman

A dull day that never really got off the ground.

It was a will we? Won’t we? Kind of day. We did think about going in to Glasgow, but it would be mobbed as the Xmas mobs start to congregate everywhere there is a shop open. The sky was looking like the weather fairies were on the ball with their warnings of heavy rain. We decided that the best plan of action was inaction and stayed at home.

I set up a still life later, a shot of a Christmas cactus against an out of focus window spattered with raindrops. It’s become a tradition, to photograph some tabletop shots around Christmas, and this was one of them. Scamp has been feeding the cactus with coffee grounds, a tip she saw online and it seems to be working because this plant is much healthier looking than its companion in the next room. Maybe I’ll start feeding that one too. Anyway, that was PoD sorted.

You may remember I was out in the woods yesterday and found a sixteen spot ladybird. What I didn’t know then, was that a little tick had found me. Didn’t find it until this morning. Luckily I have a tick remover tool on my keyring, Scamp gave me it about a year ago, and I managed to get the tick out. A tiny wee thing. It’s now been squashed. Put some TCP on the spot where it was and took Piriton. I would have thought all the wee beasties would be tucked up in bed at this time of year. Just shows you, you have to be careful.

In the evening we got dressed for dancing and headed off through the rain to Brookfield for the last social dance of the year, a Christmas Social. I wasn’t greatly looking forward to it, I rarely am, but as usual, mixing with folk I like, I did manage to have a good time. I didn’t dance as much as I usually do, but enough to get round without making too many mistakes. We left just before the last dance and drove home through a busier than usual motorway, all the way home almost without stopping. It’s a great luxury driving through an empty Glasgow at night.

We arrived back home just before midnight to find that some kind person had left us a parking space. Whoever you were, I thank you! A wee snifter of sherry for Scamp and a slightly larger glass of brandy for me, then off to bed. Of course, you know by this time that this is written the next day!

No plans for tomorrow (today)!

Getting there – 10 August 2025

Posted on by Zogman

I’m hoping I’m nearly at the end of the struggle against the iMac M4. Always hopeful.

It seems like ages since I wrote a blog, but it was just over a week. In that time I’ve driven to, and also caught the train to the Apple store in Glasgow. The Geniuses there have been very helpful, but it really time they started making it easier for the general public to deliver their problematic hardware. It would also be a bonus if they actually tested their iMacs after repairs and changes had been made, considering the distances some of us have to travel and expense of the equipment.

Complaints apart, the M4 iMac really shifts. An Enhanced Super resolution that takes about that takes about 2.5 minutes on average on my old Intel iMac takes about 3 seconds! That’s one of the things I spent the high bucks on. It looks like no more making a cup of coffee while the machine churns through the heavy duty computing.

Scamp has been a tower of strength during the last couple of weeks, offering sensible ways to tackle what I saw as impossible situations. Thank you again and again for being there pushing me in the right direction and telling me it was time I took a wee walk … in the rain if need be!

All in all, I’d say I’m happy with results now. Of course there are always things that need tweaking, but once the majority of the new iMac is stable and probably against Scamp’s better judgment I’m going to do a backup, a sensible Apple backup on an ssd. For seven or eight years I’ve made them and then when I needed them I realised I’d forgotten to make one. Don’t forget the backups.

Spoke to Jamie tonight. I did take a bit of ribbing from him and Scamp, but I deserved it. I’m hoping the blogs will be arriving more often, but no promises.

PoD was a wee red dragonfly.

Thanks for your patience. I’m told I don’t have any!

Dentist tomorrow!

Just a Monday – 16 June 2025

Posted on by Zogman

A day to refill the fridge and the freezer and also the cupboards. Nothing fancy here, just replenishing, yes, that’s it. Replenishing!

But first we had the Canadian GP to watch. It was a bit of a procession until Lando Norris rammed Piastri in the dying minutes of the race and turned everything on its head. Too many hot heads in this GP world.

Apart from the GP, was a dull old day again. Nothing much to see, nowhere interesting to go, unless you consider Tesco to be interesting. It’s more a necessity to us. If M&S doesn’t have it, then surely Tesco will. A trolley was half filled from the list Scamp gave me and then it was added to when she returned from another shop and used her memory cells to recall the little bits and pieces she’d forgotten to tell me to find.

Back home we were unpacking the car and finding places to put all the things we’d bought. I do hope I’ve put them all in the right places or I’ll be getting my knuckles rapped for not paying attention to my wife!

In the afternoon Scamp did some planning of the garden, moving things around to create more space or to mix the colours of the flowers better. I can see what she was attempting to achieve, and it’s working. The colour combinations definitely brighten the borders.

For me, I took a camera over to St Mo’s to see what I could find. What I found was a newly hatched group of Shield Bugs. All of them wandering around the boardwalk and it was one of those bugs that got the PoD when it appears to wander into the jungle. I won’t go in to that in any detail. It’s nothing like what I was intending, but it worked, and that’s the important thing.

We went dancing in Kirsty’s class in the late afternoon / early evening. It was a reprise of the Waltz Nioli we’d started last week. Eventually we got it working properly, or as near as I could make it. Now we have three weeks off her class and another week or two off Stewart & Jane’s. I’m sure I’ll forget everything I’ve learned and I’m also sure I won’t be the only one.

Watched the final two episodes of GOLD and we’re still puzzling about what actually happened in it. It might be based on a true story, but it was confusing as I suppose all true stories are.

We have no plans for tomorrow.

Another hot day – 11 June 2025

Posted on by Zogman

Hardly any wind today to ruffle the leaves on the trees, but plenty of sun. Making the most of it, because it looks like it will be all change by the weekend.

Scamp was out in the morning tweaking this and pruning that in the garden. She was just making sure that all the flowers she’d planted yesterday were sitting up straight and looking happy.

We sat and solved our usual puzzles and then had lunch. It wasn’t a day to go our anywhere in a hurry, so we walked down to the shops to get the ingredients to make a stir-fry and then sat in the garden reading until I decided I’d go ‘beastie’ hunting. Scamp’s description of insects, arachnids and things that crawl and sometimes bite.

I managed to get a decent photo of a Four Spotted Chaser dragonfly at St Mo’s pond. Didn’t quite capture a Common Blue damselfly, there have been very few of them in and around the ponds this year. Further on I got a shot of a Yellow Iris with one flower beginning to go over and another just about to unfurl. That was about all the exercise I got today.

Back home we both read for a while in the back garden with a Pimms at hand. Later, Scamp turned the mixed veg we’d bought earlier into a well filled stir-fry for dinner.

That was about all the excitement we could take for one day.

We may go dancing tomorrow.

Hot again today – 21 May 2025

Posted on by Zogman

A day that started with 14ºc but which did have a few sprinkles of rain to cool us down.

It wasn’t a day for doing much or for going anywhere. Most of the work we were doing was in the house for a change, at least it was cool there. I couldn’t be bothered going over to St Mo’s for photos, so restricted myself to photos of the bees on the rhododendrons and a few from the aquilegia that are beginning to set seeds now, although there are plenty of flowers on them yet. Both the flowers and the seedheads are good subjects for photography.

In the afternoon, Scamp treated us to a glass of Pimms and dinner tonight was another variation on Neil’s Chicken Rice. This was the third meal we’ve had from the chicken we bought on Sunday!

The sprinkles of rain we got wasn’t as heavy, nor as long lasting as we’d hoped, but the weather fairies are adamant that there will be heavy and more prolonged rain next week. Let’s hope they have it right this time.

No real plans for tomorrow.

Gettin’ New Glessies

Posted on by Zogman

Off to Larky to get my eyes tested. Just a normal routine eye check.

I was a wee bit apprehensive about having my eyes checked after being told the during my last test that I was borderline for being able to drive. However, that was before Mr Sharma gave me the two magic bottles and instructed me with “This Bottle ONCE a day. This Other Bottle TWICE a day … This Bottle ONCE a day. This Other …”
Y’see Mr S, I did remember it. Your repetition method worked for me!

I needn’t have worried though, it was Euan doing the testing and I trusted him. As it turned out he hadn’t met Mr S, face to face, only corresponding through emails. Lucky man.

Long story short, I did need glasses, actually two pairs of glasses, one for reading and one pair for distance. At Scamp’s insistence, I ordered scratch resistant lenses! They should be ready tomorrow, or by Wednesday at the latest.

I couldn’t see well enough to drive after the eye dilation drops Euan had used and although it wasn’t really bright sun outside, I was glad I’d remembered to pack a pair of sunglasses. Because of the drops, Scamp had to drive us to Brookside garden centre on the outskirts of Larky. Just outside the wall if you know what that means! A flat white of decent coffee and a roll ’n’ link sausage for me, a latte and a roll ’n’ scrambled egg for Scamp. Now that we were fed and watered, we went for a walk round the plants and magically we walked out of the shop with a big box full of roses and other flowers. How that happened, I do not know.

I felt happy enough with my eyes, so I drove back home Scamp got busy planting all the new stuff we’d bought and I put my boots on and walked over to St Mo’s. I managed to get a Large Red damselfly. My first this year and unusually early in the season. It was earmarked for PoD, but was beaten to the line by a wee Amber Snail. Tiny thing. It was crawling down a blade of the now sprouting Flag Iris plants that abound behind St Mo’s school. The iris leaves are an almost luminous green in the spring.

It’s Monday and that means Pasta. Today’s pasta was Carbonara, and it was a good one. Plenty of taste from chopped up bacon and lots of Parmesan in the sauce.

Scamp’s smart watch is proving to be less intelligent than its name and has been playing up for a while. Now it seems that Google who now own the license are closing down the FitBit side of things completely, so she’s looking for a new watch. I’ve made suggestions, but she really wants to see what she’s buying, which makes perfect sense. We may go looking later in the week.

No plans for tomorrow.

Here, there and everywhere – 19 September 2024

Posted on by Zogman

That’s how it felt. We seemed to be here, there and everywhere.

I was driving Scamp to the train station this dull morning to catch the train to Glasgow. Then I was going shopping for the ingredients for tomorrow’s dinner with Crawford & Nancy and June & Ian (I don’t know why Crawford comes before Nancy, but June comes before Ian!). Once the shopping was done I came home and had my lunch. I had most of the items on my list.

After lunch I lay down on the toilet floor and squirted more silicone up into the offending joint and almost choked on the vinegar smell from the silicone. For the second time in a week I remembered to put on the disposable gloves before I started using the sealant gun. If you don’t, it’s a messy job getting rid of the sticky silicone. Hopefully the joint will be sealed now, at least temporarily, although it will need a plumber to repair it properly.

By then, Scamp was probably on her way to meet Mags for lunch in Cumbersheugh town centre, having got an express bus from Glasgow. At last, the clouds were clearing and the sun was shining.
I was on my way to meet Fred for a coffee in Tesco. We spent an hour or so, Fred and I, setting the world to rights. Something we haven’t done for ages. Then he unloaded a few books on to me. The only thing about Fred is that he tells you almost the whole story of the book as he’s handing it to you! You don’t really need to read the book then! With the book exchange complete, we parted ways, he going to get his meds and I was going home. Tesco coffee is awful! Worse than Costa!

After catching up with Scamp, and hearing about her day, I went over to St Mo’s to see if there were any flying beasties worth photographing. Almost right away I found a Black Darter, but it was well named. It darted this way and that and wouldn’t settle. I let it have its way and waited until it trusted me, then I got a few photos of it sitting on a horsetail plant. That was PoD sorted.

Dinner tonight was Fish Fingers, Egg and Spaghetti. Then it was time for me to start the prep for tomorrow’s dinner party, Chicken Tagine. I’d made it fairly recently, but this time I had all the ingredients. It took a good hour and a half to get all the prep done and the cooking completed. It looks exactly like the last one, but just not as sweet. I think it will do the trick. I’m just doing the main with Scamp making the starter and dessert. My work is done for now.

Tomorrow more prep and more cooking probably.