Category: Dancing

Dancin’ – 18 December 2025

Posted on by Zogman

The Last Dance.

The final dance class of the year no matter what dance class you are in. How will we survive for three weeks without a Chassis or a Spin Turn? Maybe we’ll just have to talk to each other.

I was out fairly early this morning going for petrol to make sure we’d have enough to get us to Glenburn and back again. Thankfully almost all of the petrol machines were working which is a change for Tesco. I had a wander round the Tesco shop too, but didn’t find anything interesting, so I just came home again.

I struggled through Wordle and Strands, then flung a few, almost random suggestions into Connections and lo and behold, I got all four groups correct. Even the Mini crossword was solved in double quick time with a little help from Scamp on a musical question. Not bad though for a bear with a sore head, because I wasn’t at my best today for no reason.

Soon it was time to get dressed for the last Tea Dance of the year. We drove over to Glenburn and danced almost all of the ballroom and sequence dances that were on Stewart’s list. I actually enjoyed the whole afternoon and we stayed just a little bit longer than usual and danced to the end of the class.

We usually leave the class about half an hour before the hall closes, and now I know why. Long lines of cars where there are usually three or four on a bad day. Today we were crawling up to the nightmare roundabout that just seems to hold everyone back. We finally arrived home after about an hour. Much later than we usually are. I think it was partly due to the rain and driving in the darkness, but maybe some folk were leaving work early, it being nearly Christmas. Whatever, that extra half hour made all the difference between a fairly easy drive and a drudge.

Dinner tonight was Bacon, Potatoes and Cabbage. Actually it was Cavolo Nero rather than cabbage. I think I prefer cabbage. Still, Scamp had fried the streaky bacon until it was crisp and lovely. Probably not good for you, but very crunchy!

PoD was the third indoor photo for December and was the Fairy on the Tree. We think the fairy is about fifty years old. It’s quite amazing to look back at how the world was then. We didn’t have a car. No Internet. No colour TV, but we did have our own house. It was a different world then, but just the same too.

Tomorrow, Scamp wants a walk around Glasgow. Not looking for anything special, just stravaiging.

Unlucky 13th – 13 December 2025

Posted on by Zogman

A dull day that never really got off the ground.

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

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

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

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

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

No plans for tomorrow (today)!

Out on the Town – 8 December 2025

Posted on by Zogman

Nothing exciting, no parties and no drinking. Just shopping for stuff to go to Santa.

Scamp had the whole thing organised. Bus in to Glasgow on a wet, drizzly day. Through Buchanan Galleries passing JL on the way into a shop in Buchanan Street then across the street to yet another shop. Across the street to one more shop, then along Argyle Street to Next to get a shiny top for Scamp and M&S where I couldn’t find what I was looking for.

Bumped into Lorna and Andrew from Kirsty’s class. Then we managed to find an empty couple of seats in Nero and had a short respite from the walking, taking time out for a cake and a coffee.

Fed and watered, we walked up to Tiso to get proofer for my Rab jacket, but discovered we didn’t need it, because it’s lined with Goretex. We walked back up to JL to get new curtains (Strawberry Thief by William Morris – very posh) for our bedroom then we got the bus home.

Except … the bus broke down on the slip road of the motorway and we had to wait for a mechanic to come and fix it, which only took about ten minutes, either that or the driver had forgotten his dinner time piece box, then we were on our merry way back to Cumbersheugh.

I lost count of the shops we visited today, but none of them were selling cameras or lenses, so they were no fun at all.

We just got in to the house when Scamp’s phone beeped. It was Kirsty to say that since it would only be us at the evening’s class, she was thinking of cancelling. We agreed and could relax.

Next thing to do was to convert our Virgin V6 box to a Virgin TV 360. The remote and the instructions had dropped through our letterbox in the morning before we left on our whistlestop tour of the shops in Glasgow. After a false start, everything just worked. Now we have a whizzo box that does everything except make the tea. Scamp had it sussed in no time at all. I just sat there and watched, making the occasional sarky comment.

PoD was a girl playing bagpipes in Buchanan Street in Glasgow. I felt sorry for her. What she played was lovely, but she looked cold.

Tomorrow I believe we may be going shopping. Just local shopping for necessities.

Slept in – 6 December 2025

Posted on by Zogman

Well, we both sort of slept in this morning, but managed the day quite well after that.

Saturday mornings can be a bit of a problem. We have to be up early, have breakfast, and be out to face the drive to the dance class in one synchronised movement, or so it seems. Today the synchro was broken and we were still yawning, but fed, when we headed west on the M8. Thankfully we weren’t the last to arrive.

I wasn’t looking forward to today’s class. I just knew it was going to be filled with more Samba nonsense … but it wasn’t! Instead it was a mixture of dance styles we’d seen before or danced before, but had forgotten. I can’t quite remember the format, but there was a form of Argentine Tango that Scamp said she’d seen, a Christmas Pudding dance, performed to “I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas”, a couple of sequence dances that we danced without breaking the sequence and, of course, a waltz or two. I thoroughly enjoyed the morning’s education and exercise, and was doubly delighted by the missing Samba!

We drove home on the M8/M73 route to avoid the Kingston Bridge. When we got home I went out almost right away to get some photos for the blog, only to find that Flickr had crashed and wasn’t showing any record of my existence. Try as I might with a lot of huffing and puffing I couldn’t get it to recognise me. Then I checked with ‘Downdetector.co.uk’ and discovered that the Flickr website was indeed down. The next move was to read a few lines of instructions suggesting I should delete the a couple of caches and that was the answer. Flickr knew me again. I think it must have had a heavy night the night before and was just recovering. Anyway, Scamp phoned for a taxi, because we were going to an early Christmas dinner.

A week or so ago, one of the guys in the Monday dance class had suggested we book a table in Dullatur golf club and have a late lunch there as it might be the last class this year.

It turned out to be a great afternoon. Scamp and I had Arancini as a starter then she had Fish ’n’ Chips and I had Lasagna. She didn’t like the arancini and didn’t eat much of hers. Mine was ok, but only just ok. A couple of drinks and a chance to catch up with a lot of folk we either dance with or have recently danced with. We got a lift home with Kirsty.

Today’s PoD is a reflection of some rushes in the flooded pond.

Tomorrow we are hoping to relax!

Dancin’ – 4 December 2025

Posted on by Zogman

Today we were heading to Glenburn for a Tea Dance.

Before that Scamp offered to drive to Tesco in the morning to get a loaf and some veg for dinner and encouraged me to go for a walk in St Mo’s because the sun was shining. Yes, the sun was shining until I got to the park, then the sun disappeared and it started raining. However, I have to thank her for getting me moving and I did get some photos of Cladonia lichen to make a PoD.

For once, the hall was a bit more empty than we’re used to. Not that it bothered us much. We still managed to do the usual circuits of the floor, but to Christmassy music to emphasise the coming of Christmas with all that entails.

We started with a Waltz as usual and stumbled through two tracks. Then a few sequence dances just to get more folk on the floor, I think. That was followed by a Cha-Cha and a Rumba One ( which is always followed by a Rumba Two – Just a little bit faster than a Rumba One ). Another sequence dance and time for a blether with David and Carol, before the tea trolley came round.

As usual, tea time tended to last a little bit longer than was really necessary. The second half was a fair copy of the first half, with a couple of different sequence dances to fill the floor again. We had a chance to talk to Barry and Cath and interested to find that Barry has been told he has crystals in his ears. I’ve had that a few years ago. It seems that the solution hasn’t changed in that time:
1. Sit facing forward and move your eyes slowly from left to right and back again, without moving your head.
2. Sit with your head facing left and try to move your head as far as you can to the right without moving your eyes, then repeat in the other directions.
No crystals fell out of my mouth or ears in all these exercises and I felt no great benefit. Barry was in total agreement.

Spoke to Ronnie and Millie later. Ronnie was in hospital for a while earlier in the year with heart problems. He looks a lot better now than when we last saw him and he still bounces when he dances. He’ll never change!

We drove home through today’s rain and crawled over the Kingston Bridge. I’d hoped we would make better time that way than going the M8/M73 route, but I guessed wrong.

Hoping to meet Alex tomorrow for a day in Kelvingrove Art Galleries taking photos.

 

The first day of Winter – 1 December 2025

Posted on by Zogman

The first day of the month is always busy and it was no different today.

Photos to file and organise into external drives. Rejected photos to be removed from the catalogs to allow the new month’s photos to have some place to live. A time for careful checking that all the photos I want to keep are KEPT and not deleted by accident. This has been a terrible year for making mistakes and there are still more than thirty days to go!

After I’d worked out how to copy my photos onto my external drive for archiving, I decided to write a short explanation to self describing how I did it, because it’s so easy to say “Oh, I’ll remember how to do that. No problem.” It is no problem until you come to the beginning of a new batch and can’t remember the exact method that works. Belts and Braces may look clumsy, but it works. Hopefully I’ll remember where I put the explanation!

Scamp was out at midday to meet up with one of her old friends for lunch. That left me with the whole afternoon to play with. I went for a walk and struggled to find a decent photo anywhere in St Mo’s. The trees are all bare now apart from the conifers and they just stand like dark guardians behind the pond. I saw one photo that interested me, more a challenge than an interest. There was a bit of life in the sky, but the foreground was almost completely black. I set to and managed to produce a decent photo with a fairly dramatic sky. That became PoD.

When I returned, Scamp wasn’t far behind. We knew we were going out later to Kirsty’s dance class and neither of us were hungry, so we sat down and read for an hour or so. Eventually we had to move to get ready for the dance class. I struggled with the sequence dance Kirsty had ready for us three couples. The dance was Tango Sereda which Scamp says we’ve done before, but I couldn’t remember it. It’s an old fashioned sequence dance. Fairly short and not too complicated (Scamp says). After a good half an hour we almost had it in the bag. Kirsty says we’ll hopefully do it again next week. It was certainly much better than Samba, that’s all I’ll say.
We finished with another sequence dance, the Mayfair Quickstep which is right up our street. Almost every Tea Dance has a Mayfair Quickstep in it somewhere.

Drove home and got parked easily! Dinner was Friday’s soup and it tasted even better than when it was new.

Tomorrow, Scamp is out in the afternoon to be a supporter for Shona when she goes to see the doc.

Dancin’ – 29 November 2025

Posted on by Zogman

Out early as usual on a Saturday, heading for Brookfield and our weekly dance class.

The class started with House of Bamboo which is Stewart’s idea of a warmup. I suppose that’s what it is, but a very gentle one – sometimes a good thing, sometimes not.

Next was the first real lesson and it was the Christmas Waltz. We managed quite well at it and by the end of the lesson we were almost there.

Next was the Feta Foxtrot. Most of it was ok, but there is a reverse turn at the end where the man dances round the lady and the lady dances round the man without either of us tramping on each other’s toes. We’ll get it done, but it will take some time.

To give us bit of a break from dancing, dancing, dancing the complicated stuff, we did a couple of well worked sequence dances beginning with Shivers by Ed Sheeran, then the Tina Tango to Annie Lennox. That gave us the chance to cool down.

Next was Samba, my nemesis. I hate this fast, shambles of a dance. In fact I wouldn’t even dignify it with the word ‘Dance’. I first saw it danced with Kirsty years and years ago and didn’t like it then and my attitude to it hasn’t changed. Jane, the teacher, didn’t even attempt to interest me in it. I think she knew it wasn’t going to work. I clock-watched all through the 25minutes I wasted on trying to learn these steps. Scamp did her best and to be honest, after the time was up, I was getting most of the steps right, but nowhere near the speed of the rest of the class. I will say no more.

We didn’t drive straight home, but we navigated our way through Glasgow’s streets and eventually found a way into Buchanan Galleries carpark, parked and walked down to The Briggate to go to a Pot Fest in one of the big galleries there. A Pot Fest is where potters come to sell their ceramic pots, bowls, mugs and other hard-fired glazed clay pieces. Scamp bought herself a lovely big fruit bowl, decorated with leaf imprints.

That was about all we did in Glasgow itself, but walking back past Paesano (my favourite pizza shop) the light was lovely just catching the light on the old sandstone buildings. I took a few photos. PoD was that street with the sun shining on it.

We parked at the house and unpacked the new bowl which looked just as good as it did at the show. Then I walked over to St Mo’s to get two small fish suppers – one each. That was lunch and dinner combined.

We’ve just finished watching the F1 GP pre-race.  Strange to watch on Scamp’s laptop, but it will have to do until we get our old V6 box fixed.

No plans for tomorrow.

Dancin’ – 22 November 2025

Posted on by Zogman

Heading to Paisley for a dance class at 9:45am.

We drove through the thick Cumbersheugh fog, heading to Brookfield, but before we reached Glasgow the sky had cleared and the sun shone from a bright, blue sky. Welcome to Scotland.

It was a fairly easy run to Brookfield. No dramas today and no great holdups. Everything just running to plan. We reached the dance class with time to spare.

First dance was my much hated House of Bamboo, written by a Bampot, I think. When we’d disposed of that piece of excrement, we went on to the Foxtrot we’d been learning for weeks and I struggled to get all the bits in the right places.

At this time of year, the Christmas Waltz is a standard. After Christmas it changes its name to the Spring Waltz, then later it becomes the Summer Waltz and so on. Today we were in Christmas Waltz territory.

Then we started a run through of the Mayfair Quickstep set to new words that were quite funny, but I think they would begin to grate after a few weeks.

The next offering was a Samba. I thought we’d seen the back of this ‘dance’ a year or so ago, but it had returned with some new steps in it. I just couldn’t get the hang of it. Kirsty tried to teach it a couple of years ago, but thankfully it was dropped from the curriculum before it caused an injury!

I was on the point of walking out when the tempo changed to a Cha-Cha and I could manage that.

Finally we did one track of the Queen of Hearts Rumba, and after that we were allowed to go home.

The roads towards town were very busy, probably to do with the Christmas rush that’s just beginning, but I tried one of the back roads I’d used in the past that took us under the Clyde and out through the town in a lot better time than any other route. I reckon we were just lucky.

I took my A7iii out for a walk in St Mo’s and PoD was a Buckfast bottle lying on the sheet ice that’s covered the pond for these last few days. Thankfully the ice is melting now, but it’s still a lot thicker than it looks.

No plans for tomorrow yet, but I’m sure something will fill the space.

Another cold blast – 20 November 2025

Posted on by Zogman

Another sub-zero morning.

I was out in the morning to get my meds and some messages from Boots and Tesco in that order. I was meant to get sone veg, milk and a chicken, except I completely forgot about the chicken. It wasn’t until I got home that I realised my error. Scamp said it was ok and we could survive without the chicken and I took her at her word. I also realised that Boots had short-changed me on my meds. Two lots of them just weren’t there. I did get a message from them two days ago to say that my prescription was partially ready, but yesterday’s message said that it was ready to collect. Crossed lines somewhere, Boots. This is the first time I’ve had a message like that. I’ll maybe have a word with them next week if I have the time.

Back home it was time to get ready to drive to Glenburn for a Tea Dance. I thought we were going to be late because of what looked like a collision between two large lorries, but the Polis managed to sort it all out and we arrived just in time, before the doors closed.

I thought it was a bit of a washed out tea dance. Just not a lot of life in it. Maybe that was because most of the attendees had recently been at Perth for the autumn dance weekend. For whatever reason, there was just not the same ‘life’ to the day. We left later than normal and got caught up in the homeward bound masses. Just as we neared M&S in Cumbersheugh, we saw the line of waiting traffic and gave up on any idea of having a chicken for dinner. Instead we had a very nice pizza I’d stashed in the freezer earlier in the week.

Watched another episode of Portrait Artist. Some good work, but some equally poor stuff. I won’t say I could do better, but I was veering that way.

PoD was a setup shot of a Lindt chocolate bear. That’s what happens when you spend an hour going for the messages and then your day disappears and you don’t get an outside photo.

Hoping to meet Alex tomorrow for a blether and some photos.

Dancin’ – 8 November 2025

Posted on by Zogman

We were dancing again at Brookfield.

Thankfully the heating was on today. Not to warm us up, though, it was to heat up the discussion room for the bowlers who were having their AGM or some other get together. We just benefitted from their excess heat.

First dance was the inevitable House of Bamboo. Thankfully we only did one round of it. Personally I don’t see the fascination of this old song, originally by Andy Williams in 1958. Heavens! that was almost as old as me! With that put back in its box for another couple of weeks, our first ‘real’ dance was The Christmas Waltz, also know by its other names, The Spring Waltz, The Summer Waltz, etc. It took a while, but it did eventually work its way into my little grey cells, and by about an hour it was almost there. It is actually quite a comfortable dance.

Next was a couple of sequence dances to give us a break from Christmas dances before we plunged into the Foxtrot we’ve been learning for a while. We were completing it today, by adding the final section. It, too, is starting to gel in my head. Mainly because we really like the foxtrot and feel comfortable dancing it.

A couple of sequence dances finished off today’s class and we were allowed to leave. No dance class next Saturday, because the autumn class is in The Salutation in Perth and we’re not going. Too much other stuff going on.

Back home and after solving the puzzles, I chose to go for a walk in St Mo’s. The light was quite good, but nothing exceptional. However, I did get a PoD which is a Crane Fly hanging on to a reed in the wilderness area behind St Mo’s school. Some work was done on it and I’m happy with the result.

Chicken Cacciatore for dinner tonight then we watched Strictly which is becoming a bore. Some of the dances and dancers are quite good, but most are professional dancers. As the days drag on the real professionals will become installed as the ones to beat and the remainder, the amateurs will fall by the wayside. It’s becoming very formulaic.

No plans for tomorrow.