Category: Beasties

A sea of green – 28 May 2017

Posted on by Zogman

I thought it would be a good idea to go down The Green this morning for a wee walk.  So did a few thousand others, it seemed.

I’d made the fatal mistake of forgetting that yesterday twenty two men had been running around a green field chasing a ball in the rain  Eleven of them got a trophy for doing the running better than the other eleven.  The ones who won the trophy were wearing green and white shirts.  The losers were wearing red.  Today we were driving against a sea of green and white tee shirts.  Luckily.  If we had been going the other way, in the direction the crowd were going, we would still be waiting in that traffic jam.  Also, we started out fairly early and the traffic was light.  Later, when we were coming home the traffic queue was from Parkhead to the slip road from the motorway, in fact they were queueing along the inside lane of the westbound M80, a distance of about 5 miles!  Fanaticism!

However, it didn’t really affect us.  We drove to the People’s Palace and parked there then went for a walk along The Green to the McLennan Arch and back along the riverside to the suspension bridge.  Along the way I spotted on Mr McGivern who was the bane of my life for the last two years as a PT.  He worked two days of the two years he was meant to be with us.  A ghost of a man who screwed the system and probably still does so.  I didn’t speak to him.

We stood on the suspension bridge and watched the people rowing up and down the river.  Young and old, fit and unfit, but everyone seemed to be enjoying the sunshine, especially after yesterday’s rain.  We headed for home after that, without even our usual tea ’n’ toast or roll ’n’ sausage.

It was on the way home we saw the extent of fandom for Celtic.  So glad we were going the other way.  After lunch and a pretty boring Monaco GP, I drove down to Auchinstarry and walked along the canal to Twechar and back along the railway path.  Saw a Humming Bird Hawk Moth.  The first time I’ve seen one in Scotland.  Photo wasn’t all that good, because I was using the Teazer and it’s not really designed for my kind of macro photography.  Should have taken the Oly 10 as a banker.  Next time, yes, next time.  It was when I was crossing the plantation I saw Bolt.  That’s his name and his photo is at the top of the page.  Cheery wee guy and PoD.

Dinner was roast chicken with cabbage (because it was there) and potatoes.  Lovely warm day and I well exceeded my step count.

Tomorrow, no Gems, but it’s forecast for rain.

Tick – 26 May 2017

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First tick this year. Let’s hope it’s the last. Tiny wee bugger under my watch strap. Beginning to nip now.

Another very hot day, well, very hot for Scotland. Sat out in the garden reading for a while but had to keep going in to the shade to cool down. Got he call from the car hospital about 11.00 to say that the car was ready to collect.

Picked up the car from the garage Car Hospital. They had replaced the radiator after having to remove the entire front of the car. Changed days from when my father in law and I removed the radiator from my Reliant Regal with the aid of a couple of spanners and a screwdriver. Then we took it to Hillington in Glasgow where he soldered a couple of cracks in the fins and brazed the bottom pipe back on.  Then we reinstalled it with the same two tools we’d used to remove it. Life was so much simpler then.

Drove to Torwood to get some more plants for the garden. This time the plants were herbs and vegetables. The radiator worked perfectly but unfortunately on the hottest day of the year (28ºc) the air-con has packed in. It was a very uncomfortable drive home. I think the time has come for the Megane and us to part company. I’ve enjoyed driving it for the eight years I’ve had it. It’s a bugger to park and the visibility to the rear is very poor, but other than that, it’s a very comfortable car to drive … and it goes fast, or at least it did when it was in its prime. I suppose we all did when we were younger.

I took a walk over to St Mo’s before dinner but didn’t get much. To many dobbers wandering around half cut with bottles of Buckfast. A typical Friday night in Cumbersheugh.

Today’s PoD if from the garden and is a rogue floret from one of the alliums (or allii if you’re being pedantic) in the front garden.

That was about it really. Tomorrow? Apparently we need some shopping – don’t we always? Then we need to sit indoors and watch the rain.

Paisley Pattern – 21 May 2017

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It was a lazy Sunday with a late start.  I thought we could could go down the Green for a walk, but the rain put an end to that idea.

Started making a mock-up of the stand for the tablet and got a fairly stable version after a few iterations.  Next step is the prototype.  At least that’s what I remember of the Design & Make method … or maybe it’s the prototype first then it’s the mock-up.  I never did work it out.  In fact, I don’t ever remember actually using the design method, but I was happy to teach others that it solved all their problems.  It doesn’t.

Took a walk over St Mo’s later with the Teazer and the ’50 as backup.  This might be my holiday setup if the Teazer starts to cut the mustard.  So far, it’s a hit and a miss.  It’s a nice light little camera with a long zoom.  The CCD is the problem, it’s just too small, but I have to ignore that, stop ‘pixel-peeping’ (that means examining every shot at 100% magnification) and look, really LOOK at the finished result, because after all that is the what I and everyone else will want to see.

After I got back from my photographic sojourn, it was time to get ready to dance.  Today we were going to the uncharted wilds of Paisley.  The last time I was in Paisley, I was driving a hired box van to do a flitting for you, JIC.  That was many years ago.  Checking the height and width of the van against the size of the arch leading to the flat you and Andy were renting.  Anyway, I digress, as I usually do.  We got the train from Croy to Queen Street and then another from Central to Paisley Gilmour Street and walked to La Rambala restaurant.  It was much smaller than our usual Sunday Social floor, but it felt comfortable and the smells from the Spanish restaurant that made up the other half of the building were good.  We’ll go back again and next time we’ll have tapas before dancing.

The train home was full of drunk Sellic supporters fresh from the win against Hearts, a sort of second-hand derby, a cross country derby.  Drove back from the station in sunshine, which was nice.

Today’s PoD is of a tree climbing snail from St Mo’s.  The answer is ‘Because they’re there’  You know the question.

Two little sketches to get the ‘one sketch a week’ thing up to date.  The relation is obvious.  They’re both cameras, in fact, they’re both TZs separated by about nine years which is an age in digital cameras.

Tomorrow it’s Library and Health Centre then dancing at night hopefully with a wee bit of photography in between, DV as always.

Testing – 12 May 2017

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Scamp kindly offered me a run to the train station today because I wanted to go camera shop window shopping and she didn’t.

First stop was Jessops.  It used to be good, a long time ago, then it became truly terrible and eventually died.  It was taken over and re-energised by Peter Jones famous for Dragon’s Den.  For a while it became more like a photography shop again, but recently it’s become run down, staffed by people who don’t know what they’re talking about and just plain crap.  However, it was there or JL.  At least you can pick up the cameras in Jessops, even if most of them have almost no charge in the battery.  The big failing point for Jessops is the staff.  They think they know it all, and they don’t.  For selling point ’n’ shoot cameras to little old ladies, they’re fine.  Ask them questions about the more juicy details of a camera’s specification and you get that rabbit in the headlights look.  Either that or they tell you the first thing that comes into their head and then argue black is white that they’ve ‘Read it in a review’.  No you haven’t mate, you just made that up.  That was the case today.  Apparently Panasonic are wrong to say that the sensor size in the TZ 70 and the TZ60 are exactly the same size.  The schoolboy who served me today told me that the TZ70’s sensor is ‘just slightly bigger’.  Utter crap.  “Could I put a card in it, to try it?” I asked Mr Know-it-all. “Eh no actually.  Sorry.  You need a screwdriver to take the security device off.”  So you expect me to pay three hundred odd quid without checking the quality of the lens?  “Yes.  Sorry.”  See what I mean about Jessops.  They’re on the slippery slope.

JL were worse.  After waiting for 15 minutes for a promised sales assistant to allow me to touch the TZ70, one arrived and opened the case.  “Could I put a card in it, to try it?” I asked, “Yessssss??” was the hesitant reply. “If you …..”I didn’t wait to find out what I had to do, I just stuck an SD card in the camera and took a couple of shots.  It seemed ok.  “Can you tell me what the ring around the lens does?” I asked.  “I think it’s for focusing or something, but I’m not sure”  was the answer.  Her parting shot was the winner for me: “If you’ve got any questions, just come and ask me.”  By this time, I’d had enough.  I thanked my assistant and went to get the train home.

When I got back home, I eagerly fired up Lightroom to see what the purloined shots from the TZ70 with the ‘slightly bigger sensor’ would look like.  I’d deliberately chosen RAW and JPG files as the format.  Sorry JIC, is this giving you a headache?  Anyway, poor little Lightroom 5 just stared at the grey square in  the import dialog and said “I don’t know what this is.”  It appears that the RAW file requires Lightroom 6 to open it.  All that time wasted!  But there was an elegant solution (isn’t there always?)  It seems like that if you edit the EXIF (which is the little database inside almost every computer file) and change the camera model from TZ70 to TZ60, it will load perfectly.  I did and it did.  The result wasn’t earth shattering.  Well, the subject was a rack of ‘toy cameras’ in JL, so the subject matter wasn’t fantastic, but the quality wasn’t either.  It wasn’t bad, considering that the sensor (the digital ‘film’) is about half the size of an adult male’s pinkie nail.  It just wasn’t what I’m used to.  Size IS everything in cameras.

I think I’ve talked myself out of a superzoom compact camera.  I much prefer the quality of my Olys, despite their weight.  I took them out to run around St Mo’s for a while later in the afternoon sunshine.  That’s where today’s PoD came from.  It’s a Jenny Long Legs, also known as a Crane Fly.  The other two scary flies didn’t make it to PoD, but are available for your inspection on Flickr.

Tomorrow it’s going to rain.  So say the weather pixies.

Karma – 9 May 2017

Posted on by Zogman

It began last night when we were getting in to the car after leaving salsa, I asked Scamp if she had had her handbag with her when she went in, knowing that I had it under my jacket, because she had been too busy gossiping to pick it up when she left.  When she ran across the road I called her back and told her I had just put it in the boot of the car.  Almost total silence all the way home.  Later I apologised (of course) and the matter was forgotten.

Today we went to Linlithgow to get some fish for dinner and also to stock up the freezer.  After leaving the fishmongers we went for a coffee in a wee coffee shop across the road.  It was quite expensive and tasteless coffee, but  the chicken soup we had was excellent.  In general it was quite an expensive wee coffee shop where a panini was almost eight quid!  Eight quid for a long roll with cheese and a slice of ham?  I don’t think so.  We just had chicken soup and coffee, poor coffee.  There were painting for sale in the shop too, and they were as bad as the coffee, tasteless.  Anyway, we paid and left then went back to the car.  We’d almost reached it when I turned to Scamp and said “Camera Bag!”.  I handed her the shopping bag and hared off to the coffee shop.  Thankfully some kind soul had handed the bag in and we were reunited.  That’s Karma.

Sat for a while in the sun in the garden today.  The wind was westerly and milder than of late.  It had been cloudy in the morning, but by the time we were driving to Linlithgow, the sun was shining.  As I’m writing this, the sky is still blue with not a cloud to be seen.

However, you don’t get your 365 done by sitting around in the garden.  Well, you can, but sometimes you have to wander further afield if you want some decent photos.  Today’s decent photos were taken in St Mo’s in the late afternoon.  They are of Orange Tip butterflies – males.  Both genders have the underwing pattern, but only the males have the bright orange tips to their wings.  As usual, I started off a good distance away from them and grabbed a few shots, then moved closer. for another shot, then closer still.  What you have to avoid is your shadow covering the butterflies because they seem to be very sensitive to changes in light level.  It probably triggers their flight response.  The only way to get closeups with the ‘wee dog’ is to use extension tubes and that’s what produced both today’s shots.  Extension tubes with a zoom lens is a great tool for macro work.  I like it.

Scamp made a salad for dinner and it was delicious.  After going to Linlithgow, we didn’t use any of their fish, it went straight into the freezer.  I had about half an Arbroath Smokie in my salad and despite it having been in the freezer for about six months, it tasted perfectly fine.  Mind you, it was cured and smoked and frozen, so it should have been perfectly preserved!

Tomorrow, I’ve got the Dentist in the morning.  What we do afterwards hinges on that being a good meeting.

Breaking new ground – 8 May 2017

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A Monday is Scamp’s Gems day, so generally, I make myself scarse. Today I’d decided to go exploring.

The morning was all about gardening. Added some more compost and soil to the raised bed and gave it a good soaking.  Then replanted the beetroot. Hopefully it will grow this time. Also planted out five of the peas I’ve been bringing on inside and hardening off in the mini greenhouse. Planted some spinach and kale in trays and put them into the space the peas have vacated in the mini greenhouse. I also planted out the strange wee plants I’ve been growing from seed since last autumn.  I don’t know what they are, or where they came from.  Maybe they will grow into a gigantic bean stalk.  That was enough work for one day, so the man who worked in the garden went and had lunch then got ready to go out.

I’d intended cycling to a wee nature reserve on the Auchinstarry road.  We’ve lived here for thirty odd years and this is the first time I’ve visited it.  Got there and found it’s a lot bigger than it looks from the road. Unfortunately it was nowhere near the building I wanted to photograph. I think it’s a ventilation shaft for an old mine. I couldn’t even see where it was from the nature reserve. More investigation required.

While I was sitting sunning myself in what was a natural suntrap, protected from the cool east wind, I managed to get a few shots of a hover fly and that’s my PoD.

I decided I had to find that wee building and cycled out along the Kirkie road and eventually found it half a field away!  Maybe tomorrow or later in the week I’ll visit it, on foot.

Carried on to the Drumgrew bridge and followed my nose into what used to be an old dump, but now looks as if it is being redeveloped. Lots of fenced off areas and warnings about Japanese Knotweed, so I kept well away. Two deer, a doe and a buck weren’t so bothered and casually walked across in front of me. Of course both cameras were in my bag and by the time I’d retrieved the Oly 10 the deer had realised they were not alone and jumped the fence totally ignoring the warning signs. Hooligan deer, obviously!

That was about it as far as cycling and photography was concerned. Am now standing as acting doorman at STUC building while Scamp gets a chance to dance as a follower for a change.

Salsa was as energetic and as brain taxing as ever with one old and one new move.  The old move was Tresario Doble and the new one was Agamemnon.  Nobody seemed to like Agamemnon, well, nobody except Jamie G.  It might grow on me.

Tomorrow?  Maybe a visit to Glasgow.  Got stuff to get.

Damsel Day – 6 May 2017

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After yesterday’s peregrinations across the breadth of Scotland, we had decided to have a day at home.

While Scamp went out to search for provisions, I made myself a cup of coffee and sat on the front step in the sun.  While I was sitting, I spotted this week’s potential sketch.  It’s just the house across the road.  Nothing special about it, just a corner house with some trees in front and some scrubby bushes.  Sometimes you miss what’s right in front of your face.

After lunch we went our separate ways.  Scamp to cut the grass and plant out some alpines and me to cycle, hoping for a few damselflies to photograph.  It seemed such a lovely day, it was a shame to waste it sitting around on the step or even worse still, moping around the house.

With a couple of squirts of WD 40 on the bike we were ready for the off.  The outward leg was so very easy, I knew it was a bad sign.  It was a tailwind.  The wind was from the east and also stronger than it was in the morning.  That meant it would be a headwind on the way home.  However, after wandering around for a while without any signs of insect life, I caught a few shots of a hoverfly sitting on my bike jacket.  A nice little one, with bright yellow stripes.  Maybe someone on Flickr will ID it for me.  Then I saw a little red damsel.  The first I’ve seen in Scotland this year.  I saw some in Tobago in February, but that’s a different world.  Here we don’t usually see damsels until the end of May or the beginning of June.  Early May is very unusual.  Got a few shots of it, then started to plan them a bit better, trying to get at 90º to its long body to keep as much as possible in sharp focus.  Almost impossible with the extension tubes and the very narrow depth of field.  Still, got a few ‘keepers’.  Nice colour on the body and thorax.

As I predicted, the homeward leg was a struggle with a gusty eastern wind.  Bag was heavy too with a couple of rocks to create perches for the smaller birds in the birdbath.

Dinner was the second attempt at Spanish Rice (just as good as the first.)  While I was making it, Scamp was sunning herself with a Pimms for company in the back garden.  Yes, she did have her sun cream on.

Watched the BFG on Amazon Prime tonight.  Great escapist fun.

Tomorrow?  Probably dancing in the afternoon, the rest is up for grabs.

To the Manor Born – 14 April 2017

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Actually Wimpole is an estate, not a manor, but ’estate’ didn’t make such a good title I thought.

JIC drove us all there in the morning, and this being Good Friday, there were already hundreds, if not thousands of people there.  Most seemed to have brought their 2.5 children with then.  I did hope there were an even number of families, otherwise it might become messy with that poor 0.5 of a child wandering around.  Got parked and Sim set off in search of the ticket office and managed, somehow, to get to the front of the queue.  Tickets purchased we went in search of the formal gardens.  Most of the other families with their 2.5 children in tow were taking part in the ’Easter’ Egg Hunt which had been cunningly renamed to Cadbury’s Egg Hunt so as not to offend any non-Christians while they searched for eggs.  I thought it was a petty and childish piece of semantics and, as my mum used to say, “That’s how wars start.”

It being early spring, there weren’t a great variety of different flowers in bloom, but the colours of the daffodils and tulips made up for that.  You can see a couple of shots of them above.  As well as flowering plants, there were also veg and fruit plots and it was good to see that many of the plants had been labelled.  I learned on our visit to Kew a few years ago to photograph the label as well as the plant.

The estate farm was quite interesting, but there were too many weans squealing around the place, so I was quite glad when we left.  Even more squealing and grunting was coming from the enormous pigs in the piggery.  It’s not until you see these providers of our bacon that you realise just how big they are. Just as we were leaving the farm, which thankfully is a real farm and not just a petting zoo, an old plane flew over, a biplane.  I thought it was a Tiger Moth, and when I got home and checked the reg, I found I was right for once.  So strange looking at it through the EVF (Electronic View Finder) because it looked as if the propellor was stationary.  Must be due to the refresh rate of the EVF.

I took some photos of the Wimpole Hall itself. It was very grand and enormous.  Such a terrible waste of accommodation.  How the other half live.  Even more astounding was the view down the tree lined avenue which appears to be about a mile and a half long.  Another demonstration of one family’s wealth.

Having said all that, it was a great day out.  A bit cold, especially when you weren’t sheltered from the wind.

Back home, Sim made Trinni Stewed Chicken while Scamp watched and made mental notes.  Chicken was lovely.  Much better than anything we saw the contestants making on Masterchef later.  However I did have a nice bottle of IPA to take the edge off the bald bloke’s “Oh Mate!” exclamations.

Vixen still doesn’t seem to take too kindly to male bearded strangers, especially if they are standing.  Maybe tomorrow.

Tomorrow we may be going to Hitchin for a walk round the shops in a quiet wee town.

British Summer Time – 26 March 2017

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None of your Daylight Saving Time.  This is British Summer Time.  Two sunny days in a row means it’s Summer and we are in Britain, at least until Nick the Chick gets her Second Referendum, then her Third, then her Fourth until the people give her the result she craves, because it his her job to protect Scotland! Cue the fanfare and  the cheering crowds.  But I digress.  We don’t save daylight here.  Sometimes I wish we could.  I wish we could bottle it up and bring it out on cold December days when the starlings are making their tuneless twittering noises in the skeleton trees and it’s dull, grey and just miserable.  If we had a bottle of Daylight, we could open it up and everything would be lovely.  Unfortunately, it’s not like that, so we make the most of two days of sunshine back to back, like we did today.

Scamp wanted to do a bit of gardening with the scary gardening gloves Hazy sent.  I wanted to get the bike out and go cycling just because I could.  I even put a pair of shorts on!  I didn’t go far, just a few miles, because this is only the second time I’ve been out this year on Dewdrop.  Got a photo of a zombie frog and a blue vent cover the birds have been crapping on and a strip of silver birch bark the sun was shining through, turning the silver to gold.  Best of all, I got a bit lost coming home and came upon the branch of cherry blossom.  Imagine, I’ve been living in the place for around thirty years and I still manage to get lost!

Came home and watched a really boring F1 GP.  Really, the cars look like they did back in the 1950s with big triangular fins and wide tyres. Also, what’s with the multitude of spoilers and wings?  They look like boy-racer specials.  Despite all the changes and supposed improvements, the excitement just wasn’t there.

Dinner was a beautiful piece of haddock with sautéed potatoes.  Quite delicious.

Tomorrow may be warm and a bit sunny, but low pressure is ensuring that the weather is on a downward path again.  I knew it couldn’t last.

A Day with the Kelpies – 10 March 2017

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Scamp wanted to get to Dunelm Mills in Falkirk today to get sheets.  I didn’t, but in the same retail park there was a Hobbycraft shop and that did me nicely for diversion while Scamp was choosing exactly the right set of sheets.

When we left there, she was the one who suggested lunch at the Kelpies in Helix Park.  It was a good choice.  We got a seat near the window where we could gaze out at the Kelpies.  You’ve always got to capitalise their names, because they are celebrities and deserve the honour.  After lunch (Potato Wedges for Scamp and Chilli for me) we went for a walk round these gigantic statues, just to say hello again.  It becomes more and more difficult to find a new angle on these giant horse heads, but I think I managed it again.  I tried to get a reflection of them, but the water, although still, was too murky to produce the effect I was looking for.

On the way home we stopped at Lidl in Kilsyth to get milk and beer.  We left after filling two bags and spending about £14.  We did buy more than our shopping list, but we did get milk and beer.

I have had a sore back for a couple of days, so when we got home, I packed my swimming stuff and went for a relaxing swim and a soak in the steam room.  Wow!  The pool was empty.  Not a single soul in the water, but there were 9 ladies in the jacuzzi happily chattering away while it was on its cleaning cycle.  Now, I’ve looked in the jacuzzi while it’s cleaning and I wouldn’t sit in it.  I don’t know what chemicals surge round its whirlpool, but they are certainly not meant for contact with the skin.  Still, it’s their life, their skin, their health they are damaging and the warnings are there for the few of them who can read.  There were also about twenty other spray-tanned spa damsels spread around the deckchairs.

I Went to go in to the steam room but was warned that someone had had a nosebleed inside and it was being cleaned.  Sitting in the sauna, I watched four folk go in.  About ten minutes later the cleaner went in too and then came out to sluice away a bucket down a drain.  Presumably he had cleaned up the mess while the other four jokers were in there.  H&S?  Not a speciality of Westerwood these days.

Pizza for dinner.  Home made pizza.  Most enjoyable.

A well as the Kelpies, I’ve included a couple of pics from Madeleine and Jaime’s garden in Trinidad.  One of a beautiful red flower and another of a shield bug.

A day in the Toon tomorrow hopefully.  No driving, it’s a bus day.  Yesterday, Saturday looked a good day.  Today it’s not seeming so likely.  It won’t bother us, lunch is booked.