Category: Dancing

Dancin’ – 9 November 2024

Posted on by Zogman

Almost forgot about the dance class today, but we did make it to Brookfield in time.

The torture started with Mayfair Quickstep, just to get us warmed up because it the Committee must be cutting back on the heating. Then it was in to the Hobie Quickstep and someone had formatted my brain, just after I formatted yesterday’s SSD. I couldn’t remember a thing. I used to say that I had a logical side to my brain and a creative side. I think I’ve spent so much time working with the upgrade to the iMac on my Logical brain, I’ve forgotten to keep up the dance practise on my Creative brain. That’s my excuse anyway.

After some gentle prodding from both Scamp and Jane, things began to slot into place and by the end of almost an hour, I was feeling more comfortable with it. It is a Quickstep, though and there’s a lot of fast footwork to get through.

Next was a Rumba. Much gentler than the quickstep, but more places to stylise your movements, hand, body and feet. None of these dances are as easy as they make them look on Strictly. Halfway through the class Stewart dropped the bombshell that there will be no class next week as he and Jane are going to Murryfield for the rugby. Oh Dear! What a shame! I was devastated, as you can imagine!! Not only that, there is a chance that we may be changing the venue for the Gala Ball from Perth to somewhere slightly newer. I don’t want to say too much yet for fear of jinxing it!
The Quickstep was a sequence dance, but the Rumba was a mix and match. Add, subtract and mix the figures to make your own routine. That makes it much easier, but you need a more structured approach to start with or else I would pick the easiest figures and ignore the more difficult ones. But it’s an interesting dance. Never as easy as it looks and always with the problem of remembering the terrifying “Sliding Doors” that used to haunt my dreams on a Saturday night after class. They were mentioned and demonstrated today, but I just covered my eyes and they weren’t there!

PoD today was a Calendula flower bravely bobbing its head in the cold breeze in the back garden. I wasn’t planning on going out for a walk today. Cold and gloomy with a layer of mist shielding us from the sun.

Watched with indifference the gyrations of the Strictly dancers. Criticising their attempts and giving them a lowly “5” for their poor footwork or blocky hands. I’ve no idea who will leave this week.

We have no real plans for tomorrow, but I might get myself a light, warm jacket to go to cold places!

Dropping in on the Kelpies – 6 November 2024

Posted on by Zogman

Not a lot to do today, so a visit to the big horses was a good idea.

It all started when Scamp broke two clasps on two separate necklaces, one ancient one over fifty years old. The other one had been repaired at least once before, but not very well. She trusts a jeweller in Falkirk and that’s why we were going there today.

Once we’d dropped off the jewellery we drove down to Helix park to see the Kelpies. There was a thin mist forming in the valley and I was hoping I would get some atmospheric photos of the great beast rising above the mist, but it wasn’t to be. The nearer we came to them, the clearer the mist was, but we went for a walk anyway, but first we had lunch in the cafe. We had a window seat which was just luck, because the cafe was really busy. Nobody wanted to sit outside today on such a chilly afternoon. The food was cheap and mainly warming, although Scamp’s Mac ’n’ Cheese was a bit cooler than she’d have liked. My lentil soup was hot! But the slice of pizza I had was tepid. Foodies expect the best all the time.

We walked around the Kelpies. You can’t really call them structures or statues, they are so much more than that. I took a lot of photos, but my favourite and PoD was taken from inside the cafe looking out and it was of a tray with two cups and a jug of milk with everything else being just slightly out of focus … intentionally this time and in monochrome.

We drove home and I spent nearly an hour on the phone talking to Val. He seemed in much better spirits today. The last time we spoke he sounded a bit down. It was good to hear him almost back to his usual self. We’ve arranged to have coffee some time soon. Either at his house or at Costa.

It appears, from what Scamp can glean from Kirsty, that we may be moving the Wednesday dance class from the British Legion to a council run centre on a Tuesday. Most folk seem to be perfectly happy with the arrangement. It would make a great difference to be able to dance on a real floor, much bigger than the postage stamp we have at present.
Tonight’s class was a bit of a disaster. I still haven’t got the hang of the Paso La Paz. Too many changes of direction and too fast. I’ll be glad when we leave it behind.

I’m intending to meet Alex tomorrow. I’d suggested we revisit Paisley, but he wants to try for some photos of the trees and cloisters of Glasgow Uni. That might work quite well, because we will lose those leaves soon, and we can do Paisley another time.

The Last Dance – 3 November 2024

Posted on by Zogman

Saying goodbye to The Salutation and Perth for a while.

Breakfast in the morning and then the inevitable final hour of dancing with about half of yesterday’s contingent. It was like a Tea Dance without the Tea. Fairly gentle workout after yesterday’s marathon. I remember watching a film, years ago, called They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?. The plot revolved round a marathon dance competition in Depression era America. In retrospect, that’s what yesterday felt like after a while. Today’s hour passed quite quickly and was a combination of all the dances we learned over the weekend.

We drove home, managing to avoid most of the roadworks this time and I was feeling just a little bit down, a bit flat after leaving all those other dancers. I’m sure a lot of them felt exactly the same. Arrived back home to drizzly rain. What a welcome!

The bags were emptied and dinner was discussed. At least, our dessert of rhubarb and custard wouldn’t taste of onions.

I went for a walk in St Mo’s and got today’s PoD which looked from a distance to be yellow flowers beside St Mo’s pond, but which was actually bright yellow leaves.

Spoke to Jamie in the evening and learned that their week had been uneventful and totally different from ours.

An early bed.

Hoping to sort out a computer update tomorrow.

 

 

All Day Dancing – 2 November 2024

Posted on by Zogman

Up fairly early for breakfast with the other dancers.

A leisurely breakfast then it was time to go down to the torture chamber again and bolt on the dance shoes for an hour long Quickstep tutorial. Actually it was quite interesting and although the steps did indeed come quick and fast, we both agreed it was danceable, after a fashion. The big problem was the number of couples, all wanting to be on the dance floor at the same time. Probably upwards of 70 folk.

We worked our way through most of the routine and once the hour was up, we agreed that, with a bit of practise at home, we could master this dance. It was called the Hoabie Quickstep if you want to look it up.

We went for a walk round Perth afterwards. I bought coffee and tea in The Bean Shop. We stopped to watch the River Tay for a while and I got PoD which was a bloke looking at his phone with the autumn trees in the background. We’d forgotten that the ‘glasses’ in the room would be plastic tumblers, so we splashed out and bought four glass tumblers. Then it was back to class for an extra, hour long, Salsa lesson by Gillian and Peter, who we’ve been dancing with for a few years now. They were concentrating on a set of moves called Exhibela which translates as “Show Her Off”. I found it a bit awkward and we were about halfway through the class when we realised they were dancing a different style from us. We dance Cuban salsa and I think they were dancing LA style. After that, we just amended the moves to fit our style of Cuban. It was a good workout for the hour.

We had a longer break for lunch which was a panini in Nero, then we read in the room for an hour or so before we had to get dressed in style for the evening ball. Dinner was great until the chefs appeared to run out of Pavlova for the dessert! When it eventually arrived the meringue was hard and the fruit tasted strongly of onions! Scamp reckons they were either using the knives that had been used to chop the onions for the main course or they had used the cutting board for the onions, to chop the fruit on. Either way, it was a bit of a let down. Wish I’d ordered the ice cream.

However, we were her to dance and we danced our little feet off for another three hour stint. Afterwards, we crawled upstairs to bed with the music still ringing in our ears.

Five hours of dancing and another hour to look forward to tomorrow!

FitSteps to DanceSteps – 1 November 2024

Posted on by Zogman

Dance Steps on a Friday?

Scamp went to FitSteps in the morning and I started selecting my clothes and shoes for the dance weekend.

Today we drove to Perth for the three day extravaganza. The destination was The Salutation Hotel. It opened in 1699 and has the original floorboards judging by the squeaks and creaks every time you walk across one of the rooms. We were in a second floor room which had a shower. A couple of years ago we were in the top floor which had a shower, but no running water. Maybe that’s too critical, it did have running water in the shower if you didn’t mind waiting for half an hour for it to build up a sufficient head of steam to get the water up to the third floor. It’s a listed building and lots of the corridors had a list too. Some even listed in two directions along their length. I’ll leave it there. We weren’t really bothered about the rooms, we were there for dancing, Three days of dancing.

Arrived and parked after innumerable roadworks and diversions on the way. We picked a road that looked like it was going our way, and let the sat nav do the difficult stuff. With Scamp’s help, it took us right to the entrance to the car park. Parked the car and carried our dresses, shoes, suits, changes of clothes and a bottle of gin round to the hotel.

A condensed list of the day:
Got the key and found the room.
Dumped the bags and went out for lunch in Nero.
A dull, wet day, so we didn’t hang about.
Dinner served in the restaurant of the hotel
Dancing started around 7pm …
… and went on until just before midnight.

Absolutely exhausted.

By the way, the photo is the view from our room. Putting the “B” in Brutalist.

Tomorrow, more of the same.

Dancing, Dancing all the day – 31 October 2024

Posted on by Zogman

Yesterday we were at dance class and today we were dancing at a Tea Dance.

I struggled in the morning to find something to photograph, because I knew we were going dancing in the afternoon. There is so little time in the morning and by the time the tea dance finishes, these dark days approaching winter, there is no light worth talking about, so it was going to be an inside photo, which is always a get-out, but!

I already had a subject, an inside subject. All I needed was a display. A cardboard box and an old CD container covered with a scrap of velvet to disguise their angular shapes into smooth curves gave me a pedestal for the bow tie I made yesterday. Anyone who has tried to tie a bow tie will know how devilishly difficult it is to do, even standing in front of a mirror. Especially when standing in front of a mirror! Try doing it with a cup as a ‘neck’ and tying it from behind the cup. It’s utterly impossible … almost. I did manage it at my third attempt, only because I found the hidden loophole you have to thread the part made tie through. That is what you have here. Today’s PoD is the Star Wars Stormtrooper Bow Tie.

The dance was quite well attended, but for some reason, Stewart had decided to concentrate on Sequence dances. They are a bit too repetative for my liking. They are useful, it’s true because they are repetitive. They generate muscle memory and you can almost dance them in autopilot, almost, but not quite. We did dance one freestyle waltz, Waltz Nioli which is fairly simple but with some more advanced steps. We also dance a decent Cha-Cha without getting it too wrong or missing out the occasional couple of steps. The second half of the tea dance was devoted almost entirely to Sequence, but we joined in anyway.

Today was the final of this year’s Inktober. The prompt was Landmark. It just had to be The Kelpies. Anyone who has seen them and walked round them, knows they are special and you feel as if the are moving with you. They are massive, dwarfing any visitors to Helix Park in Falkirk, but not in a bad way. Yes, The Kelpies are a great closing image for Inktober 2024.

This was probably the worst and least imaginative collection of prompts I’ve seen. Also the increase in AI ’sketches’ and ‘drawings’ done on iPads has been exponential this year.
</Rant>

Tomorrow Scamp may be going to FitSteps and I might try to get a photo or five in the morning.

Dancin’ – 26 October 2024

Posted on by Zogman

Off to Brookfield on a sunny morning in October wondering what the torturers oops, teachers would have in store for us today.

We didn’t have to wait long. The menu started with a Queen of Hearts Rumba we thought we knew, but obviously didn’t. After the second one we more or less had it.

Next was the October Waltz which was new to about half the class and nearly caused a fist fight between me and Scamp. As it happened, for one I was right. It was all about one back step which Scamp said I didn’t have to do, but on review later, I did have to do or I’d end up starting on the wrong foot. It was a simple wee dance with figures we already knew, just not in the order we were to do them in.

To cool things down, we did a Midnight Jive. Not my favourite by a long way, but at least we didn’t argue about the steps, because they are burned indelibly in to our brains.

The next dance was a Cha-Cha which deteriorated into a free-style Cha-Cha and one we stumbled through, or to be more correct, I stumbled through.

One more sequence dance and we were free to go. Can’t remember its name, but that’s no loss.

Drove home over the Kingston Bridge which allowed us to travel at 40mph all the way over. The easiest drive home from Brookfield we’ve ever had, I think.

The sunshine we’d had in the morning stayed with us well into the afternoon, but later everything dulled down and it felt like the sky was preparing for evening. PoD was a photo of a strawberry flower growing in the garden. I don’t believe it will ever produce fruit that will ripen, but the deep red flower held my interest.

Today’s sketch was Camera. I didn’t try anything fancy, like the camera obscura I was going to draw and instead just drew a fair representation of my A7iii with the kit lens that lives on it these days.
Half of the time I had one eye on the sketch and one eye on the progress of the dancers on Strictly, but, it being Halloween week, the antics of Craig Revel-Horwood and Anton Du Beke as two evil twin sisters really stole the limelight from the other two.

Up and out fairly early tomorrow because I’m booked for my combined Flu and Covid Jags. Oh what fun. At least I get an extra hour in bed because the clocks go back at 2am tomorrow. Scamp had her jags last week.

 

Nearly New Shoes – 23 October 2024

Posted on by Zogman

The weather is just dragging its heels this October. Grey skies seem to be the order of the day. However, it wasn’t really cold and we did what I suggested in yesterday’s blog and went out.

We drove to Rutherglen, to look for a pair of dance shoes for me, but there wasn’t a great selection to choose from and I eventually left the shop empty handed, so did Scamp, which surprised me!

After navigating by following my nose and the occasional glance at the moving map in the car, we did head for home, then decided we’d go local for lunch and drove to Craigend Nursery which also has a big cafe bolted on to it. It’s all glass on two sides and the noise of all the folk talking just rebounds round the room, but we did have a lunch that was a bit overpriced for what it was, just two paninis a tea and a coffee. Oh yes, and the ubiquitous side salad and crisps. Didn’t ask for them, but got them anyway.

It used to be a decent garden centre too, but some of the plant labels were so old, neither of us could read the prices. Maybe that was just as well when we did read some of them. Scamp was shocked at the price for tiny wee Christmas Roses.

Just for fun, we drove home from Craigend by a quite circuitous route to see if we could find where the dance teacher’s new house was. I was amazed at the number of houses that were in a tiny little space that used to be a travellers camp, maybe still is. It gave me a chance to drive round roads I used to cycle on.

Dancing tonight was the amalgamation of parts one and two of the foxtrot we seem to have been learning for months. It wasn’t a great improvement from the last time we learned it. We seemed to spend three quarters of the allotted time re-learning part one, which we now knew, more by muscle memory than anything else. The remaining fifteen minutes were spent on part two and then on joining them together. Only four couples on the floor tonight and they were getting in each other’s way. Just imagine what it would be like if all six couples turned up one night. Carnage, that’s what.

Next week we are going to be treated to Paso La Paz which is fast, fiery and Spanish! That should be fun!

Today’s PoD was taken this morning before we went out and is of the Schoolgirl rose, now fully out and spreading its petals everywhere. Still a beautiful flower.

Today’s prompt was “Rust”. To my mind Rust should be red, orange or brown. If I’d drawing with a black pen, that makes life difficult. What I ended up by doing was changing the prompt to “Rusty”, sketched a whisky glass with a rusty nail and what looks suspiciously like whisky in it. Maybe there is a little spot of Drambuie in there too to make it a Rusty Nail! It’s simple if you just apply some lateral thinking.
Tomorrow’s prompt is Expedition. I’ll need to get my thinking cap on.

Tomorrow I’m hoping to meet Alex at the bus station to get a bus to Edinburgh to see the sights of the exotic Far East!

 

Dancin’ again – 17 October 2024

Posted on by Zogman

After the recent changes to the Tea Dance schedule, we were back on track (allegedly) until next year. I’ll believe it when I see it.

We were off to Glenburn today for the first Tea Dance in a while. It started with a waltz as usual and also, as usual, I couldn’t put a foot right. Eventually I had to admit that I’d lost the waltz completely. Cha-Cha was better and I managed to keep everything working in the proper sequence if not the proper time. Lots of sequence dances in between the ballroom and latin dances and although it was a mixed bag, I think we both enjoyed it. We were sitting with David and Carol again and the conversation was as lively as usual.

After the tea break we started the second half with a waltz … again. I feared the worst, but Scamp suggested we try Kirsty’s Waltz Nioli and it almost worked for the first track, so we stayed up for the second track too and lo and behold it did work. Once through the whole dance and then on to the second round. I’ve a feeling it was muscle memory that was dragging me around, although Scamp’s whispered prompts helped too. I was really pleased with Nioli!

Drove home through heavier traffic than I’d anticipated, but would have got home earlier if I hadn’t gone via Tesco. I got a microwaveable Chicken Biriani for dinner, not noticing that it was a meal for one. Instructions were a bit ropey. They said to pierce the film in a few places and cook for 3min 30sec. Stir halfway through. How can you stir the curry if the film hasn’t been removed? Tell us that Tesco!
We agreed that the curry biriani was actually very good and we’d get it again, but then we’d buy two, one each! We completed the dinner with a baked potato each.

I hadn’t had time to take a photo in the morning and by the time we got home, the light was fading, so it was an inside shot today of a cutting Scamp had taken from a Honeysuckle. It’s sitting in a rectangular glass vase. I’m not sure it will actually take root, but I’m hopeful it will. It got PoD.

The prompt for today was Journal. I think my sketch of a hand writing in a book is reasonably good, sketched with a Lamy Safari fountain pen and a Pentel Sakura brush pen. It fits the prompt without having to twist things around as I usually do.

Tomorrow we’re booked for lunch with June & Ian.

 

Cardigan, Doll and Sketching – 16 October 2024

Posted on by Zogman

Scamp was off to meet Isobel in the morning. Just before she left, she got an “Ur ye in?” text from Hazy, to which she replied “Phone dad. Ahm gaun oot!” Those of you who are englanders might not understand this and I’m not explaining. We had a three way discussion of the week so far, then Scamp was off to drive up to Costa for her meeting with her cousin. Meanwhile, Hazy and I had a discussion of books, new cars and Bake Off. Nice to know we’re on the same footing with Bake Off. Thanks for the recommendations, H.

It was a fairly lengthy phone call, almost an hour by my reckoning and I really enjoyed it. My task for the day was to find my Lamy Safari fountain pens, refill them with black drawing ink and get a sketch done. I actually cleaned and filled the Safari and the ABC child’s pen, although I only used the Safari for today’s prompt which was Grungy, not Grunge as I thought it was. Grungy was much easier for me. Just pick a face from Google that looked lived in and sketch it with a lot of corrections. That did the trick. By the time Scamp had returned, I was done. Fifteen minutes later the sketch was scanned, resized and posted.

After lunch, Scamp parcelled up a cardigan and a woollen doll Isobel had knitted, then I did the addressing of them to Grian and Scamp went off to post them. She’d already posted a couple of cards. One to Allan & Jaki and another to the new Gran & Grandpa.

Later in the afternoon I went for a walk to St Mo’s. On the way I dropped in at Brodens and booked a tab for June, Ian, Scamp and I. St Mo’s was a bit dull by the time I was getting there, but I did manage to get a couple of decent shots from the batch I took. Just leaves showing off their autumn colours. Lazy photography.

Tonight was a simple dinner. We had the last of the Butternut Squash soup from a couple of days ago, then Scamp had home made Ratatouille, “Rats” to us, and I had a veggie chilli which had been maturing nicely in the freezer and was blinding hot once it was reheated!

No dance class tonight. It seemed to be a last minute decision by Kirsty. No reason given. Maybe it was because it was October Week and she thought there wouldn’t be enough folk. We don’t know.

Tomorrow we’re hoping to go to the Tea Dance in Paisley.