Category: Building

Lunch at The Barras – 30 January 2019

Posted on by Zogman

Well, not actually in The Barras, because they’re only open on a Saturday and Sunday and today is Wednesday. Maybe “in the vicinity of The Barras would be better”. Yes, that will do nicely.

Before any lunch could be partaken of, there was some dancing to do, and as we were a bit early getting to Blackfriars, we had a little drink first. Half a pint of Orkney stout for me and a ginger bee ’n’ lime for Scamp. It’s ok, we were travelling by bus today because we had agreed that ‘drink would be taken’ at some point in the day.

After our refreshment, we went downstairs to the dance class. Gary and Frieda weren’t coming today, so it was just us, Graham and Isobel and the two beginner girls. We’re no longer beginners, we’re ‘improvers’, and the Isobel in question isn’t Scamp’s auntie. Nothing like her.

Today’s jive was a reprise of the Step Over. We’d kind of forgotten it. Well, we remembered the basic move, it was just the little “John Wayne dance steps” as Tom Paxton called them, that we’d forgotten. Waltz was the usual round of getting it right first time then not being able to get back to those heady heights. A smidgen of Quickstep with Fishtails and Running Steps added in for good measure.

It was a short walk to The Barras and the A’Challtainn restaurant. Scamp opted for the Scallops with Yuzu followed by Stone Bass on Black Rice Risotto My starter was Mackerel two ways – Escabeche and Tartare. My main was Baked Loin of Cod Celeriac puree, Broadbean & Bacon salsa, Chicken jus. All the foregoing washed down with a nice dark Merlot. Just as good a meal as the last one and a great way to celebrate our the anniversary of the day we met, forty eight years ago. The meal was certainly worth the price of the Itison voucher, but a bit steep if you have to pay the full asking price.

We walked back up the town, had a cup of coffee and shared a slice of cappuccino cake in Nero and caught the X3 home.

We watched half of Ant Man tonight with a small libation to take away the pain of the ridiculous plot, and as you’ve probably guessed, I posted the PoD which was taken through the arches at Glasgow City Chambers and left the blog until today (Thursday).

On Thursday we will tackle the electricity cupboard.

Dress the dolly – 25 January 2019

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Today we were going in to town to get me more highland dress stuff.
Came out of the JL bridge after getting the compulsory photo of the Glasgow skyline and noticed a sale in the Ecco shop. Initially I was interested in a pair of boots to replace my old leaky Clarks pair. Then I saw a pair of black shoes which looked wearable and actually had a fair bit of tread on the soles. The upshot was I got the shoes and left the boots for another day.

The Lakeland shop is on that level of Buchanan Galleries and it was my next target. I’d asked Santa for a pasta machine, but lots of other boys and girls had been asking for the same thing and there weren’t enough to go round. Maybe Santa’s little elves would have been busy making more and put them on the shelves of Lakeland (cheapest place for a pasta machine). Yes! They had the very thing in stock, so I grabbed one and asked if we could pay for it and collect it later. Heavy beasts these pasta machines. Next, the object of the exercise, a new shirt and a belt for wearing to the ceilidh tonight.

We went to McGregor & McDuff in Bath Street, because that’s where we bought my kilt four years ago and we’ve always had good service from them. We could have gone to the House of Tartan which is a ‘cheap and cheerful’ chain which seems to be run by Indians or Pakistanis, but the prices were about the same in both establishments and the quality in McG&McD looks that little bit better. Today I was to be getting a Ghillie’s shirt (I hoped the ghyllie in question didn’t mind) and a belt for my kilt. Belts, along with braces sometimes, are usually used for holding things up, but in this case they are purely decorative but, thankfully not too expensive.  After that it was lunch at Verona, Italian of course and very nice too.

The salsa ceilidh was actually called The Tartan Ball and was held on Burns Night. The only rule was that you must wear something visibly tartan. The kilt ticked the box for me, but Scamp was scrabbling for something for her. She finally settled on a navy and white checked dress for a fiver and remarked that if she didn’t like it when she got it home she’d wear a thistle wrapped in tartan ribbon on a tee shirt. She didn’t like the dress when she got home, so the thistle and tartan ribbon was indeed the face saver.

I’d not been looking forward to the salsa ceilidh, but as sometimes happens with these events, as the time drew closer, it lost some of its dread. We drove in to Glasgow about 8pm and missed the turning off Clyde Street, exactly as we did last Christmas and had to rely on the Juke’s satnav to get us out of trouble again. Again it did exactly that and directed us to the wrong carpark for the second time. Two Q-Parks within 100m of each other seems daft to me. Anyway we were parked and under cover.

The salsa part was great and we danced a fair bit. The ceilidh was equally good with a real ceilidh band and caller! The caller did a wonderful job of instilling some order in the inevitable chaos. After the band, it was back to salsa again and I was danced off my feet by the end of the set. We left around 11pm because we have an early rise tomorrow.
Home and a wee dram to cure the ringing in my ears and the aching in my bones, then bed.

Today’s PoD is of a variety of architectural styles as viewed from Sausage Roll Street in Glasgow.

Tomorrow, hopefully we’ll be taking part in a workshop without the need for boiler suits or heavy machinery.

Different Dances – 23 January 2019

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It was cold this morning when we woke and that cold stayed all day.

Phoned the surgery to get the result of my blood test and it was fine. It was back to normal, but the doc had given me a course of penicillin to take to completely clear up the lingering UTI. Good result. Good start to the day.

Drove into town to go dancing and found out that we were doing a host of dances today. First we rattled through the seven spins of our jive routine. Then Michael started us on the Rumba which we hadn’t done since the Hamilton class years and years ago. After that we had an introduction to the Cha-Cha, which, again we had done before, mainly on sea days on a variety of cruises, but never in so much detail. Who knew your feet had to stay on the floor at all times? Finally we did a fairly representative waltz and a quickstep. Five dances in an hour. That’s not bad going. I think that’s us prepared for the workshops on Saturday in Strathaven, provided we can lay our hands on a pair of boilersuits.

Walking back from Blackfriars I looked along Hutcheson Street and saw the old Hutcheson’s Hospital lit up by the afternoon sun. It looked like a good subject and that’s why it became PoD. A fair bit of post processing in LR and ON1 2019 which meant the digital noise was a bit overpowering, but I managed to tone it down a bit in LR. Bought a couple of half pans of watercolour paint to beef up the Joan of Art painting box.

It tried to snow a bit as we were leaving Glasgow, but didn’t come to much. We weren’t sure if we were going to salsa tonight, but finally agreed that it would be fine. That was before the sleet and the snow on the M80 going in. Luckily again, it didn’t last and we arrived in fairly good time for Scamp to help out with the last half of the 6.30 class.

Moves in the 7.30 class were Astrella Complicada, Prado and Bayamo. Enjoyed the class although it was smaller than previous weeks.

Tomorrow I’m a Joiner for Shona fitting a lock to her bedroom door and then a Roadie for Scamp who’s got a gig for the Probus club. Not her favourite audience.

Out even earlier – 18 January 2019

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Why is it when I set the alarm on my phone to make sure I wake up on time, I don’t sleep for more than an hour at a time?

Up and out for 8.20 this morning to go to the docs for a blood test at 8.50. I needed that half hour to scrape the car and get the temperature up to a reasonable level where your breath doesn’t freeze instantly in front of your face. Then I had to drive through the hosts of parents driving their children to school to make sure their little feet and knee joints didn’t wear out prematurely.

Got parked and grabbed today’s PoD of the sun colouring the sky and clouds above Carbrain. A bit of a misnomer, because everyone in Cumbersheugh knows there isn’t a brain in Carbrain. I walked a bit further and watched two women being terrorised by marauding feral seagulls behind Boots the Chemist. Great beasts of things, they were and squawking like banshees and the seagulls were almost as bad. By the time I got to the doc’s, the sun had broken free of the horizon and was lighting up the sky properly. Another shot in the bag which might have beaten the first if it wasn’t for the ugly flat roofed Carbrian flats with windows and no doors. “Blots on the Landscape”, could have been the title. Did my Tony Hancock impersonation (if that makes no sense to you, Google ‘The Blood Donor’, a Hancock classic) and then headed home for breakfast which on this cold, clear morning would be porridge and a cup of Assam. The best central heating known to man.

Scamp was determined to renew our passports online since she heard that you could take your own photo and get it validated immediately. It’s a brilliant system and I’m still not sure if it is a really clever algorithm (the word of the moment, don’t you know?) or an actual human sitting there giving thumbs up or thumbs down. Possibly this will be the ultimate Turing Test some day. Anyway, the upshot of it was we passed the test and ordered our shiny new passports. Then we’d to send our old passports off to be cancelled or redacted or simply have their corners cut off. Again will it be by machine or will it be by a minimum wage human? Who knows. Just so you know, you have to actually post the passport off, you can’t simply stuff it into the USB port in the back or side of your computer. That’s a pity. It kind of goes against the digital ethos of renewing your passport online. That said, the whole thing is much better than take the photo, fill in the form, post the lot away, wait a week, get a refusal because Gort says the corner of your mouth is slightly upturned and you might, just might be starting to smile. DO IT AGAIN PROPERLY THIS TIME. Yes, this is a big step forward, even if we don’t know if Gort is human or android.

Drove to Blantyre to Carrigan’s and had dinner tonight with Margaret and Billy. Food was good and plentiful. My roast gammon had been sitting under the heat lamp for a few minutes more than I’d have liked, but it was more than made up for with the dessert. Total silence while four of us struggled with our Tablet Ice Cream. Astounding dessert. Totally unnecessary, but total gluttony!

Managed to find my way back on to the M74 only to find the M73 turnoff was closed tonight, but then I navigated my way off and over the M74 and back on to the M73 turnoff on the other side. That confused the satnav.

Tomorrow I believe we may be going to Stirling to Waitrose for food. Hopefully we won’t be getting up early and I’m not setting my alarm, so I should sleep less fitfully than last night.

A day in the toon – 10 January 2019

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Went for coffee with the boys and then decided to wander round Glasgow.

Finished off Colin’s calendar and with the ink barely dry, set off for the town centre. For once we were all there and the chat was good for an hour and a half until Jeanette arrived to drag Val away to do the shopping. That seemed to signal a breakup in the group and we all went our merry way.

I’d half intended going in to Glasgow for a walk and a bit of window shopping and as the day was still fairly light and almost dry, that’s what I did. Parked deliberately on level 5 of the multi so I could walk straight in to the ‘toyshop’ level of JL. However, there weren’t many toys at a price I was willing to consider, far less spend, but that was ok, because I was only window shopping. I think it’s true what the pundits on the news have been saying, there’s so many cut price weekends and end of season sales now, the January Sales haven’t the bargains they used to have. They’re just a means to ditching the Xmas tat they were selling full price a month ago. The great thing about them is the silence. No longer do we have to be assailed by xmas musak. Wizzard and Cliff Richard have now been put back in their box along with the mistletoe and wine.

Down Bucky Street and along Argyle Street looking for a PoD. I eventually got it in the form of the back of the St Enoch’s subway entrance. I joked with a couple of students who were also photographing it that it looked as if there was a queue forming to take the best shot. They agreed that it was an interesting building, but not as good as the old sandstone entrance to the station that’s now a Nero. I had to disagree with them when they said the cafe spoiled it. At least the cafe had changed the building only very slightly. It could have been a lot worse. We agreed to differ and went our separate ways.

That was about the extent of my Glasgow walk. I did buy myself a pair of bluetooth headphones just because they were cheap and looked better than the other ones I’d bought last week. I was right, they were fine. Got two songs out of them before the battery died.

Finally found out how to retrieve the call list on the Juke. If you delete the phone from the Juke’s system, then plug it in using a USB cable, it installs it again and the call list reappears fully loaded with its previous numbers. Why you need to connect it with a cable when it’s a Bluetooth system, only Nissan knows. Also, it’s only the iPhone that needs this connection.

There was a slight patter of tiny rodent feet tonight and there had been the same on Tuesday night. Certainly not as much as before, but it will be reported to the “Rat Man”when he returns tomorrow.

Because we need to wait for the “Rat Man” tomorrow we have no other plans. If he comes early, which we suspect he will, we may go out to lunch.

Driving, Driving, Driving – 14 November 2018

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With a bit of Dancing too!

Woke early and we were on the road and in the torrential rain. Ran into the first traffic jam within 100m. Took a diversion and we were doing well until we hit the second traffic jam at the other end of town. Another diversion and we picked up June and pointed the Juke at Stobhill. Motorway started slowing down near our turn off and then the sat nav decided we’d like to go by the ‘scenic route’, rather than the one we usually drive. That added another traffic jam to our list, but we made it to the hospital with minutes to spare, literally. I drove back home the sensible way and waited for Scamp to request a taxi.

After an hour or so I got the phone call and drove in along a much quieter M80 and picked up the much relieved sisters. The offending lump was not malignant. Dropped June off at Shona’s and headed home again.  Still raining.

After lunch we packed our bags and drove in to Blackfriars for a tortuous Jive class followed by an improving Waltz class and then finally an impossible Quickstep where Michael demonstrated not only the FishTails but also the little run you see them doing on Strictly. It may be a week or so before we’re ready for that!  It rained all the way in and all the way home

Dinner was Paella and the PoD is a hash up of a picture of the old College of Building & Printing which later became the City of Glasgow College and is now just a slab of glass and concrete that sits unloved in the centre of the city. Solarized the image in Lightroom then adjusted the Shadow, Exposure and Highlight sliders until the colours you see here appeared. Certainly not my best shot, but it ticks the box.

Tomorrow another early rise. Even earlier than today.

Old haunts – 3 November 2018

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Today we went for a curry in Hamilton.

Since my brother mentioned he and his wife were going to the Bombay Cottage I’ve been hinting at Scamp that we should go back there for lunch. Today was that day. It was a dismal, dull, wet day and a curry for lunch sounded just the job. Parked across from the restaurant and got a window seat to boot! Food was excellent and the nan bread was the biggest I’ve ever seen. I’d have taken a photo but I hadn’t brought the ultra wide angle lens! Really, it must have been over 60cm long. Scamp reckons it’s been ten years since we’ve been there. I’m hoping it won’t be another ten years before we’re back.

After lunch we walked down into what used to be Hamilton town centre. This place used to be bustling on a Saturday afternoon, wet or not. Today all that was missing was the tumbleweed rolling down the road. It was described by one of the shopkeepers as “a ghost town”. The streets were empty, half the shops were closed and boarded up and even the covered shopping centre was almost empty of customers. Another Scottish town that’s had the heart ripped out of it. We bought some fish for tomorrow’s dinner and that was about it. Couldn’t believe the difference in this once thriving town. I managed to get the makings of today’s PoD. A shot of Keith’s Building in Cadzow street. This building has a chequered history to say the least. Some dodgy goings on used to happen in and around it, way back in the late ’60s. Before we came home we visited Hazy’s favourite shop in Hamilton. The Ink Spot. Part stationery shop, part art shop, part interesting little nicknack shop. An Aladdin’s cave of goodies. It hasn’t changed Hazy!

Drove home and although the streets were drying there were dark clouds seeming to drape down right to the horizon all the way round. Went to Tesco on the way home to get milk and a bottle of wine to cheer us up tonight. We didn’t drink it all … honest! Spoke to Hazy and Neil on Skype until the connection started to fail on their end, after that we literally spoke to the icon of Hazy on our end although they were receiving both sound and video on their end.

Spent an hour working the first version of today’s PoD up on ON1, only for it to go !PoP! and leave me with nothing. Went to speak to Duncan on the phone while I cooled down, then after I was done, calmly started again. This time I saved often between important changes and of course it didn’t go !PoP! this time and the backups I’d made weren’t needed. But, if I hadn’t made those backups … !

Sketched a bit tonight using a mixture of fountain pen and dipper pen. I’m now looking for some brown / sepia fountain pen ink. I think it will need to be on-line!

Tomorrow? Apart from trout for dinner, there are no plans. It’s supposed to be a better day than today. That wouldn’t be difficult.

So, what of the day then? – 20 October 2018

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So, what of the day then?

That’s a morning question, especially an uninspiring morning question.

This morning we asked each other that question, but answer came there none for a while. It was a dull morning and we’d nothing much to do. Nothing that had to be done, nowhere we needed to go. Sometimes that’s worse than having too much on your to-do list. Finally, Scamp suggested that we go to The Fort and have lunch in Wagamama. The Fort isn’t my favourite place and as they are digging up our usual approach road to put in new water mains, that makes it even less desirable. However, it’s a long while since we’ve been to Wagamama and The Fort has a book shop now … So, lunch was the answer to the question.

Drove there via the M80 and M8 to avoid the roadworks that have plagued and still plague the other much more direct route. Had lunch, Tantanmen Beef Brisket Ramen for me and Chicken Samla Curry for Scamp. Mine was superb, but Scamp said her’s was a bit hot. Judging by the pile of rejected red chilli slices at the side of her plate, it was. After lunch Scamp went to investigate M&S and I browsed through Waterstones. Neither of us came out laden with stuff, but I saw a book that might be interesting once the price has gone down sufficiently. Something to replace the excellent House of Lies (Rebus 22) which I finished this morning.

Next, we made a half-hearted attempt to buy Morrisons, but we only made a small dent in their stock. A few bargains, breakfast muesli for me and a muffin each for coffee at home. It was raining when we came out, so we drove home.

Watched a two hour long extravaganza of pointless pre-race nonsense before the qualifying for the American F1 GP. How they managed to fill all that time I really don’t know. Most of the time we watched it on a flickering fast-forward. So many meaningless statistics produced by so many puffed up pundits. Please, I just want to see the bright coloured motors going round and round the track!

That was it for a dull day. PoD was what you see at the top. It’s raindrops on gladioli leaves. Sketch for Inktober today was a doodle done on my paper mousemat of a photograph I took ‘way back in June in sunny Barcelona. A place marker and that’s all.

This was written, as you’ve probably guessed, on Sunday. I had hoped it would be a better day, but it’s not turning out that way so far. Maybe later.

The wrong lens – 19 October 2018

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Today started off a bit dull and deteriorated.

<Technospeak>
The bonus of having two camera systems is that you can carry the light one without breaking your back on longer walks and the heavier one when you know where you’re going and you want really good quality. The problem occurs when you mix up the lenses. You carry the heavy camera complete with long lens and you *think* you’ve lifted a macro lens as well. You’ve been out for half an hour or so and you see an opportunity to get a macro shot, but the macro lens in your bag won’t fit. When you examine it more carefully, you find that it’s a 200mm lens for the other camera system. Bummer. No macros today then. That was this afternoon and I settled for the wide angle shot across St Mo’s pond as PoD instead of the macro of the rose hips I was considering. It took a fair bit of post processing to get what I wanted. I used Lightroom to develop two shots and then used ON1 to merge the sky from one into the foreground of the other. It works … kind of. It’s a case of taking the best parts of each and creating a new photo. Ansel Adams said we don’t take photos, we make them. So true.
</Technospeak>

That was the end of the day and the beginning of the good light which only lasted for about half an hour. The day started dull and got progressively worse until the rain started then it really went downhill. Couldn’t settle to do anything, that’s why I finally put on my rain coat and went out to see what the world could offer me, my Nikon and my 10-20mm lens, the 200mm being a passenger. After I got the photos for the paste up, I walked over behind St Mo’s school and down to the tarmac path. Caught a flicker from the bushes in the corner of my eye that turned out to be a young deer, not 3m away from me. I looked at it, it looked at me and we both decided to ignore each other. I stopped to take my camera out and it was off through the trees. I mean it was off THROUGH the trees. It just seemed to plough through them as if they weren’t there. Such a strange surreal experience. Saw nothing else worth photographing, but stopped for a while to inspect the new retail park that’s being thrown up across from St Mo’s school. Steelwork is up and I’d imagine the roof will be on in a week or two, then the sheeting on the walls the next week. That will make it wind and water tight enough for the sparks, plumbers and bricklayers to get in and work through the winter. Should be ready for opening by early summer I expect.

I couldn’t settle on a subject for a sketch tonight and I finally grabbed the two chicken salt and peppers and put them in front of me. They became Inktober No 19.

Tomorrow looks even worse than today, so we may just go in to Stirling for lunch and messages.

Urban Sketching – 3 October 2018

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Out early to the Royal Infirmary and a bit of Urban Sketching.

In, Scamp delivered and the car park was full, so on to the next car park being careful of course not to scrape the car! The second car park, which was just across the road, was almost empty. So were my pockets! Only 80p in cash and a fiver in my wallet. Unfortunately the parking ticket machine didn’t take paper money and the minimum amount was £1.60, exactly double what I had in my pocket. On to plan 2, or is that plan 3. I was pretty sure I could park on Ladywell, the long street between the Necropolis and the Cathedral. Loads of spaces and the parking meter that had a minimum charge of 20p. Obviously the cheaper side of town. Parked!

Went for a look at the Cathedral, because I don’t like going to the Necropolis. It has a bad feeling. I did a 20 minute sketch that covered the basics, but wasn’t at all brilliant. It was one in the bag. It had started to rain as I was finishing, so I made my way back to the car. Just got there when Scamp phoned to say that was her finished, so I drove back to car park 1 and picked her up.

With a bit of time to kill, we drove back in to town, parked in Buchanan Galleries and went for a coffee. The place was ram jam full, so I went back to the car and got my sketchbook and assigned myself 20 mins to sketch Buchanan Galleries while Scamp went window shopping in the Galleries. While I was walking down Buchanan Street I crossed paths with a *STAR*. DI Jimmy Perez (AKA Douglas Henshall) had just walked into Sketchers wearing that same donkey jacket he wore all through the Shetland series! Got my sketch done, but it was a bit ropey too. Having said that, it was better than the Cathedral sketch from earlier. Met Scamp and we went to see if Nero was any quieter. Thankfully it was, but my coffee wasn’t much better than the last time I’d been there. In fact, that might be “the last time I’d been there” for a while!

After we finished our brown water, we walked down to Blackfriars, but as we were crossing the road, Who should be crossing the road but the ex Doctor himself? Peter Capaldi. Today we were really walking in the footsteps of *STARS*. Of course Scamp didn’t see him, but I turned her head and pointed it in his direction and she duly admitted that it “looked like him”. Unbeliever!
I could say “With stars in my eyes I danced down the rest of the way to Blackfriars”, but that would be pushing it, wouldn’t it? Anyway, we had plenty of time, so we dropped in at Paesano first for a couple of pizzas which came straight from the oven and were delicious. Sat amazed watching a bloke holding his fork as if it was a dagger he was stabbing his pizza with. It was the most bizarre way of handling a fork I’ve ever seen.

Jive was a bit complicated, but now we have a version of ’Timesteps’ in our heads and the Quickstep is firming up too. Waltz is definitely looking a lot better. Much cleaner turns help there. On the way home I picked up today’s PoD, “Sinusoid” which is the curved marble seating in Brunswick Street..

Home and a quick look at today’s sketches told me that there was only one Inktober No3 and it was the Buchanan Galleries. It has been cleaned up a bit and had a couple of watercolour washes applied, but it looks much better now. A worthy winner.

Salsa tonight was enjoyable, but the drive in was a nightmare. Crash just at the off slip for Great Western Road meant a lengthy detour, but we still caught a bit of the 6.30 class to add to our hour with the 7.30 class. Bumped into some old friends who were waiting for the 8.30 Thriller tutorial.

Tomorrow Scamp is out for coffee with Isobel and I’ve got a 1pm appointment with a man with a laser.