Category: Close-up

Hair raising – 26 July 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Scamp was out this morning to get her hair cut.

I did offer her my services with the number 4 cutter on top and the number 3 cutter on the sides and back, but she refused. It would have been cheaper and quicker than having it done at a salon with the added benefit of not needing it done again until it had grown in. Ok, I’m not a trained stylist, but the difference between a bad haircut and a good one is just two weeks.

While she was out I used the plastic to get me a new lens. This one looks as if it will be quite versatile. I know you’re all waiting to hear all about it, but all I’m going to say is it’s a Sony 10-18mm ultra wide angle that has the benefits of being constant aperture and also having OIS built in. I knew it would impress you and it was a steal at £1100.

When Scamp returned looking more beautiful than I thought she could, we had lunch which was a pot of yoghurt each because there wasn’t really any useable bread, especially after I’d paid all that money for a lens.

We both wanted to go for a walk and I suggested Colzium. It’s been a long time since we’ve been there and there’s always something new to see. We parked beside the old cafe at the Curling Pond. The cafe closed down about fifteen years ago, never to open again. I didn’t want to park where the tourists go on the other side of the pond because it’s so easy to lose your car in the potholes over there. I often wonder how many folk have broken a spring in them.

We walked up the steps to the big house, went left and followed the road round and down to the new cafe in the museum. Unfortunately their card machine was out of order, but luckily Scamp had a nice new tenner in the little purse she takes with her on walks. That paid for two coffees and a packet of shortbread. How’s your shortbread coming along, Jamie? We’d intended to walk round the walled garden before heading back to the car, but forgot, at least, I forgot anyway.

When we were walking over the bridge that crosses the wee burn, I spotted a twig with two Sycamore keys on it, the little seed pods that twirl round like miniature helicopters from the trees. I took a few photos of them and one of those shots made PoD. We walked down the drive and round to the car and home.

Back at the house, we’d decided to lift one of our remaining two ‘tattie bags’ for tonight’s dinner. It wouldn’t have made good eating as we unearthed just three potatoes. Thankfully the final bag gave us far more than we needed. Scamp had salmon with her potatoes and cauliflower and I had a very salty venison burger which I’d got cheap at Morrisons. Now I know why it was so cheap. We might plant some late potatoes for lifting in the winter, I think. Next garden job was to prune back the roses at the back door. It’s half finished, hopefully I’ll get the rest done tomorrow.

We’ve been watching a flower growing in the bed at the back of the house beneath the window. Neither of us had a clue what it was, at least until I put its photo into Google Image Search and out popped the name Astrantia major. The picture it showed was exactly like our mystery plant. Now we need to know where we got it from!

The lady with the cotton buds to shove down our throat and up or nose is coming to see us tomorrow, but we’ve no other plans. If it’s pleasant we may go for a walk, at least if the DPD man arrives with my new lens in time.

And just in case you’re wondering, I’ll say that the lens probably was a steal at £1100 when it was new, but I paid a fraction of that for it second-hand. If you’re not impressed, I’ll go and tell Alex. He will be!

Keeping Fit – 22 July 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Not me! This was Scamp’s adventure into dancing fitness.

Scamp was out just after 11am to go to a Fitsteps Tone. I have a Fitbit, so I don’t need Fitsteps too. My Fitbit keeps me toned to perfection. However, while she was away I spent a worthwhile hour or so running up and down the stairs, lifting stuff and searching through other stuff, looking for my Kindle. I thought I’d done almost as much exercise as Scamp had. That was until she came home still sweating from her class. About half an hour after that, I found my Kindle buried under a load of cartridge paper in my room. I really must tidy it up THIS WEEK! Apparently the class was a great success and she really enjoyed it. It certainly looked strenuous.

After lunch, I drove over to Fannyside and got some photos of what I though were sheep, but which turned out to be goats. Very nosy goats that came right up to the fence and one in particular more or less demanded that I take its picture, which I did, of course. I’d intended getting some landscape photos, but there was a van parked in my usual parking space so I went for a drive along the single track road to Arns which is a couple of houses about 50m apart. I eventually gave up looking for somewhere scenic to photograph and drove back to see if Van Man had moved on. Thankfully he had and I got my landscape photos. The lighting had been better earlier, but since there is only room in the parking place for one vehicle, I couldn’t stop.

I drove back after getting some moody cloudscapes. I stopped just after the boatyard at Fannyside Loch and got some better shots with the loch sparkling in the sunshine that had appeared. Behind the sun I could see the rain clouds looming and sure enough, as I was driving down towards Cumbersheugh the first splashes of rain hit the windscreen.

The rain stopped. I, too, stopped, at Tesco and tried to get a pizza and two litres of milk, but with a queue of twelve folk, some with the weekly shop in their trolleys, waiting for a slot in the self-service checkouts, and only two of the ten main checkouts in operation, I put the milk and pizza back in the racks and left empty handed. You’d think that a company like Tesco would be able to organise its staff better. It’s not as if they wouldn’t know that Fridays were going to be busy. The shop is usually jumping on a Friday. Or, do we blame it all on Covid again?

I went to Iceland, got the pizza and the milk and got served in a quarter the time it would have taken in Tesco. Maybe I’m just in a ranting mood today because Van Man stole my parking space in Fannyside!

Pizza was ok, but the glass of cheap Malbec wine was better. All was well with the world again. The PoD went to the photogenic goat, and second prize went to the landscape shot I took of Fannyside Loch.

We spoke to John and Marion in the evening and got an invitation to dinner next month. That will be good. That put another smile on my face. Wrote to Alex and sent him some photos.

Just before Marion phoned the rain started again. Not a shower this time but good heavy soaking rain. Good for the garden.

Tomorrow we may go out somewhere, but I also want to clear a space on the sofa in my room.

It’s been raining – 15 July 2022

Posted on by Zogman

We woke to streets wet with rain. It wasn’t actually raining, but it had been.

That was good. It meant we didn’t have to water the garden. As a result, we decided we’d have a relaxing morning. So after we’d had coffee and solved today’s Wordle (four for Scamp and a risky six for me) we set out our plan for the day which was: Let’s go down to Broadwood Farm and have lunch with a drink. We both thought that was a good plan.

We walked down to the restaurant and ordered our meals. Small carvery for Scamp and a large one for me. The small carvery gets you two pieces of meat, the large one, three. It wasn’t really worth paying the extra. The roast beef was like dried out cardboard and the turkey was dry. Thankfully the ham was much better. Veg was ok, just ok. However, it was lunch with a pint of Belhaven Best for me and a glass of Merlot for Scamp. All for around £20. Not bad really.

We walked back up the road, choosing not to buy anything more at the shops. When we got back the place was warming up and the wind, though gusty, was warm. Scamp got out her lounger for probably the first time this year and after slathering on some sun cream set herself up for a tanning session in the back garden. I changed into shorts and tee shirt and went for a walk with the Sony in St Mo’s.

On my safari through the tinder dry grassland of St Mo’s I did actually see a black and green striped dragonfly, but it had no intention of posing for me, or even stopping for that matter. It was just constantly flying loops round the bushes. I eventually gave up and went looking for lesser prey that I might actually capture on camera. The best I came up with was a black and white hoverfly and that became PoD.

Back home I helped Scamp finish off a bottle of red from yesterday and then had a bottle of Birra Moretti. Snoozed for a bit in the sun before it started to set and the temperature dropped too low.

Tomorrow we may take the bus in to Glasgow and go to Kelvingrove. The weather fairies are predicting seriously high temperatures early in next week. I don’t think they will reach as far as us, but we live in hope!

A Pencil – 4 July 2022

Posted on by Zogman

I found a pencil today. I’d searched everywhere I could think of yesterday to no avail, but today it was found.

I’d been roughing out a sketch of Jacki and Allan’s house and been using a giant A2 sheet of paper which meant I needed a nice big, thick pencil. I knew that Hazy had given me a lovely wee stubby clutch pencil many years ago and I thought it would be ideal for the purposes, but like I said in the intro, despite Scamp’s and my intensive search, we couldn’t find it. Even this morning, with the sketch half finished, I still couldn’t lay my hands on that pencil. Yesterday we had hauled out loads of boxes and chucked out lots of stuff in the process, but the pencil wasn’t to be found. This morning, after another hour’s fruitless search I remembered two places it could be. Both of them were leather shoulder bags and it was in a zipper pocket in the second bag that I found the pencil. I swear the lines I drew with that pencil were the best in the whole sketch.

What had started out as a rough, now has a splash of paint on it, but it’s still going to be a rough. I don’t think I like the photo I’m working from and need a better view. It was taken in a rush on the day before we left to come home. I don’t think I can use that as an excuse for a few days in Skye, but it’s a nice idea.

I took a walk over to St Mo’s this afternoon to clear my head and because Scamp wanted to walk over to the shops. I walked with her halfway there and then walked round St Mo’s a couple of times while she went round the shops. Lots of cow parsley flowerhead on show in St Mo’s, all bobbing around in the gusty wind, but that didn’t seem to deter the hover flies and beetles from landing on them and having lunch. It was a nightmare trying to get photos in that wind, even more challenging than yesterday along the canal. Then I found my PoD which is a plant called St John’s Wort whose main claim to fame is as a herbalist source of anti-depressant. Something to do with the flowers, it would have to be, because the seeds are deadly poison. I’ve seen those black berries in the winter and wondered why no animal or bird was eating them and now I know why. Look, but don’t touch.

I watched two more episodes of Slough House. Some of Lamb’s on-liners are pure gems, or maybe it’s just my sense of humour.

Tomorrow I’ve arranged to meet Alex in Glasgow to go to the Art Galleries. He wants to do some slow shutter arty photos, I want to go and look at a John Byrne exhibition. We’ll probably meet up later for lunch, all being well. Scamp intends to cut the front grass while I’m away.

 

The first of July – 1 July 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Hopefully a warmer and calmer month than ‘Flaming June’.

We faced the potential of more rain and drove up to Tesco for milk, bread and breakfast cereals and ended up coming home with what was a fairly substantial weekly shop.

Back home I had my usual end of month clean up of the last month’s photos. It’s amazing how many photos I take in a month, even once I’ve culled and deleted the obvious junk photos.

Because I’d cleared out some space on the computer, that gave me the chance to fill that space with more photos. That’s why I went out for a walk in the afternoon to get some photos. It was definitely going to be an insect of some description that was going to be PoD and it turned out to be a Ringlet butterfly that filled that first space in Flickr. I’m trying to actively reduce the number of photos I post in Flickr to increase the quality of my submissions.

While I was over in St Mo’s taking photos, Scamp was pruning and clearing space in the garden, digging things out and moving things around. Just keeping things in good order.

We did manage half an hour or so in the garden when I was back from my walk and Scamp had taken her gardening gloves off. Time to read a bit and have a glass of wine. Then the sun disappeared and it was time to head inside again.

Tomorrow hoping to get one more dance lesson at Brookfield before the teachers go off on their three week holiday work on a cruise ship.

Recovery – 26 June 2022

Posted on by Zogman

We got to bed too late last night and suffered the consequences today.

With that in mind, we decided to have a more relaxed day today and possibly get to bed at a more reasonable hour. Hopefully on the same day we got up. So here I am writing this blog at 22:50. That means I have just about an hour to get all the ducks in a row and in the right order. Here goes!

A late start to the day, but that was inevitable. We filled the washing machine and set it to work. The poor thing must have been almost totally full, but it struggled manfully with the load. Then Scamp phoned June to see if she was at home and entertaining visitors. She answered “Yes” to both questions, so Scamp gathered together all the things belonging to either June or Ian that she (Scamp) had brought back from Skye and hadn’t got round to returning to their rightful owner(s). Then she drove up to June’s house and deposited them and basically had a good blether with June for the rest of the morning. Me? I just messed around as I usually do on a Sunday morning. Doing nothing, but filling my time with it!

After Scamp had returned and we’d had lunch the washing was done, but it looked like it was raining, so we waited before committing to hanging out the washing. When the rain came on in a more serious way, Scamp gave up on the idea of hanging out the washing and just hung most of it on airers of various types around the house.

In between the showers, the sun nearly came out and the sky got a bit brighter, lighting up some alliums in a bunch of cut flowers on the table. I took some photos of the flowers and one of them eventually became PoD. I used the LensBaby Sweet 35, but didn’t actually label the photo with that as there is a bit of snobbery in photographic circles about using LensBaby lenses. I can’t see why. It’s a distorting lens, yes, but all lenses distort reality to some degree. To ostracise cheap(ish) lenses purely because they are not made by Nikon, Canon or Sony is simple snobbery, and it has no place in my photography.

We discussed dinner and set plans for Chicken Goujons with potatoes and broccoli. All was fine and well, until Scamp took the chicken out of the fridge and asked me to smell it. It was definitely off and went in the bin. I volunteered to walk down to the shops to get more. It wasn’t really raining by then, just a smirr in the wind but the wind was gusty and cold.

We were fated not to have those chicken goujons today, because the chicken fillets I’d bought turned out to be a bit tough. However they weren’t so tough that we couldn’t eat them.

We got a message from Jamie to say that they’d been working in the garden all day and time had just disappeared, they’d phone tomorrow. At least they had some sun by the sound of things. We’d just had wind and rain.

I did get a chance to write to Alex. Hope he’s feeling better and we can do a catch-up this week.

Tomorrow, we have to take my good suit (ie the one that fits me) to the cleaners to get some stains removed. Other than that nothing much to do. Weather looks better than today, but Tuesday? You don’t want to know what the weather forecast is for Tuesday.

A more relaxed day – 18 June 2022

Posted on by Zogman

After yesterday’s busy day, a more relaxed attitude was required.

Up fairly early and showered, then when I was getting dressed, Scamp said there was no rush. I said “I know” because I was well organised this morning, dressed and ready well before our 10am start for the drive to dance class. Then she said that not enough people were available and the class had been cancelled late last night but she hadn’t noticed the message coming in. That put a whole new complexion on things. Actually I was in two minds about it. Pleased, because I hate driving through the road works on the M8, but sad because, despite my protestations, we are beginning to move better on the dance floor and we’ve missed a lot of classes recently. It would not surprise me if the teachers called a halt to the Saturday morning class in the summer, simply because there are fewer and fewer people available at this time of the year. Oh well, it would be a more relaxing day than we had planned.

So after changing back into shorts and tee shirt, I sat around for a while and didn’t do anything useful, while Scamp read. I’m pleased that I chose the Fitbit after all. It’s got a ‘get up and move’ feature that buzzes you if you’ve been sitting too long and tells you to get up and get at least 250 steps completed within a time limit of 15 minutes. That seems a long time to complete the 250 steps, but believe me it is so easy to say “Oh I’ll just sit for five minutes and then complete the steps” then find 16 minutes later that you’ve not done it. So I did do it when I was told to. At least once today!

After a grand lunch of tea and toast with beans, because I for one had eaten far too much yesterday, we planned the rest of the day. I wanted to get a sketch book from Hobbycraft at The Fort and Scamp had vouchers to use in Boots.

Neither of us could believe the crowds at The Fort. There are three gigantic car parks and each one seemed full. We were lucky and got a space right away, but there was a constant stream of cars prowling around looking for an empty slot. I got my sketch book and Scamp got her perfume. Neither of us were all that keen to say, so we gave up our parking slot, which disappeared before we’d driven round the corner, and drove home.

When we got home the rain started. We could see it coming across the hills when we were nearly home and Scamp managed to get the clothes in off the whirly just in time before the rain appeared.  Thankfully the blustery wind today had dried them well.  I took a few shots of flowers in the garden in the drizzly rain and the PoD by a nose was the new Hydrangea panticulata whose flowers actually do change hue as the seasons change, but the Shooting Star seedpods were a close second.

Dinner tonight was a reheated yesterday’s Chicken Cacciatore with some Jersey Royals added for good measure. Even better today, I thought, because the sauce had thickened even more.

Tomorrow we may go dancing at a Salsa picnic on Glasgow Green if the weather is kind to us.

Making an impression

Posted on by Zogman

Scamp, not for me.

Scamp was out this morning to the dentist, to get an impression made of a tooth that needs replaced. This has been an ongoing saga for many, many months, probably since last year. Many excuses have been made for the length of time it’s taken. Covid has been the main whipping boy, being blamed for everything, but a government that sits on its hand, rather than making decisions is a culprit that is never mentioned, but is always there in the background. Don’t get me started!

When she returned and after she told her tale of woe, she went out to get some things for tonight’s dinner while I drove in to Glasgow hoping to find a new phone that would connect consistently using Bluetooth. I tried most of the shops in the city centre, but although most of them had phones on display, many were dead with a pasted on picture of what a screen might look like, but they were not powered, probably had no innards and besides they were glued down to the stands. The ones that actually worked were the most expensive, of course, but on closer inspection, there weren’t any boxed phones visible. John Lewis, one of my favourite browsing sites had hardly any available for purchase. It’s nearly always the case now that you look, you pay and you get the tech sent to you. That’s not the way old folk like me like to work. We like to touch, lift, and play with these ‘toys’ before we pay for them, then take them away in our pocket. We don’t want to wait for a delivery from a white-van-man. Even worse, we don’t want to get home and find an email waiting for us, the gist of which is “Sorry. The article you bought is out of stock. Sucker!”

Back home the sun came out for a while. Not a long while, but enough to encourage Scamp to go and sit in the garden. I joined her and together we sat with a glass of wine and watched the bees feeding on and at the same time, pollinating the Honeybell flowers. We must have had about half an hour of peace and quiet, watching the bees and waiting for the oven ready chips to cook, taking turns at shaking them ever ten minutes or so to make sure they didn’t burn. Then Scamp went inside to fry the Giant Fish Fingers to go with them for dinner. Fish Fingers, egg, chips and peas. A decent dinner.

PoD was going to be Honeybells and Bees, but instead it became the flower heads of the fluffy Thalictrum. The flower we bought in Cambo last year.

I don’t believe we have anything planned for tomorrow.

We shall go to the ball – 11 June 2022

Posted on by Zogman

And the balcony too!

Scamp was on the computer first thing this morning. Her flying fingers quickly netted us a week (hopefully) in the sun, sailing round the Adriatic again. What a clever girl she is. I know I couldn’t have done that in such a short time. A wee while to wait, but that’s sometimes a good thing. No rush, and time to look forward to the experience.

With the technical and financial details completed, we sat back and dug deep into our memories of strange sounding names of places far away. We did notice the rain falling, but felt obliged to ignore it, because it looks like we’ll be going abroad this year after a long wait.

Ah, but back to reality. It was raining. The wind was blowing a hoolie, and we didn’t have anything planned for dinner. Scamp had hung some washing out to dry (or blow away) and we walked down to the shops to get some chicken for the dinner which would be Butter Chicken from an easy cook-in sauce mix. Back home we had judged it perfectly, because within half an hour it was bucketing with rain. We got the clothes in just before the rain started. Then Scamp made the marinade for the chicken and started ironing while I made some flat bread for the dinner. After that I made myself scarce and took the Sony A7 with the big macro lens to St Mo’s to annoy some insects.

Found a bit fat spider on a thistle and a lot of little flies on grass flowers, then got PoD, a plantain, not a Caribbean plantain, but a little weed you see every day, but don’t realise is a wild flower. I also found a wild orchid. Not as pretty perhaps as the ones we saw on Skye, but nicely detailed. Both are on Flickr.

Watched Maleficent which we both thought we’d seen before, but agreed we hadn’t after the first fifteen minutes. It might have been Maleficent2 or 3 or however many there have been. Anyway, it filled in an hour and a half of innocent fun with a few ‘funnies’ thrown in to lighten the dark gloom of the story.

The Butter Chicken was disappointing, we both agreed. No real flavour in the chicken sauce, despite being marinaded. Not a kit we’d use again. The flatbreads too, fell rather flat. ‘Could do better’ was the comment from both of us.

Well done to Scamp this morning for knowing when and how much to push!

No plans for tomorrow. Hopefully it will be a less windy and drier day.

 

A Busy Day – 9 June 2022

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This was always going to be a busy day. The question was ‘How Busy?’

I was first out. I was driving Scamp’s wee Red car down to Jim Dickson’s garage to get its exhaust fixed. It was a hairy drive with the exhaust banging and clanging all the way there and once I got to the village, I had the speed bumps to contend with. I was praying that the exhaust would hold on until we reached the garage. It did. I got it booked in and left to meet Scamp, who was driving the Blue car and had picked up Shona.

We swapped over drivers at the village and I drove the rest of the way to the hospital just outside Falkirk. Shona was going there for an X-ray to check that her broken arm was healing properly. With her dropped off, we drove to Torwood garden centre for a cup of coffee and a cake each. Then we walked round the plants. We were really looking for some bark to put on the plant pots to retain some moisture in them and also to dissuade the slugs from eating them. Apparently slugs don’t like crawling over bark. By the way, bark has now been renamed “Woof!” in the house. Oh! the fun we’ve had with that 🤨. We did find some bags of bark which would actually fit into the car and dumped one in a shopping trolley.

Of course we had a look at some of the plants too. Both of us have been looking for a plant called Snow in Summer. It used to be very common, but we couldn’t find it anywhere. Today Scamp found what looked like a pot of it. I checked the name on my phone and it was indeed correct. We got two pots of it, one small one to go in with the alpines and another to go into the general garden. Pelargonium Grandiflorum was our other purchase. Lovely colourful big flowers.  I found a part of the garden centre I’d not seen before.  It’s laid out as a sort of zoo enclosure with resin cast animals in it.  Some quite realistic, some not so much.  I took a couple of photos on the better examples.  They’re up on Flickr.

We loaded them all into the car boot and sat for a few minutes before Shona phoned to say she was ready to go. She had offered to buy lunch for us, so we drove to Broadwood Farm and had a taste of their carvery lunch. Scamp had turkey, Shona knew the server 😉 and got turkey, ham and beef. I had ham and beef. There was mash, carrot and turnip, peas, stuffing and gravy to hand and I think I had all of them except the mash. A very enjoyable lunch.

After lunch we went back to our house for Shona to see the wedding photos from two weeks ago. Halfway through the show I got a phone call to say the car was ready. When the show was finally over we drove Shona home, then down to the garage where we swapped over again and Scamp drove home while I settled the bill and followed her home.

There was a rain shower just as I was going out to get some photos, this time with the A6000. I’d taken a few shots earlier and although they looked good on the camera, I wanted a few more just to be sure. This time I used the 55-210mm lens, but the gusty wind made it a hit or a miss. In the end it was a shot of some daisies waking from the rain that got PoD.

I drove Scamp up to the Link in the evening to get her Pneumonia jag. It’s a once-only jag for over 65s.

That was a busy day with so many changes and things done. However, the wee Red car is back in business. Now all we need to do is save up enough money to put some petrol in its tank!

Tomorrow there is talk of going somewhere, possibly for lunch.