Category: Dancing

Under the weather – 16 January 2021

Posted on by Zogman

I suppose we’re always under the weather. It doesn’t matter if it’s rain or snow our sunshine, the weather is always above us, ergo we are always under the weather.

However I had a sore throat, was a bit shivery and ached all over just the typical symptoms of a cold. I could have languished in it and stayed in bed with a good book, but I was a big brave boy and I had things to do, so I forced myself to get up. As usual, a hot shower helped and a couple of fizzy vitamin C tabs kicked some more life into me, as did a cup of coffee. It was raining otherwise I’d have gone out for a walk, if it was dry, but instead I stayed in for the morning at least.

Lunch was beans on toast. When was the last time you had beans on toast? I can’t remember, but it was a long time ago. You forget just how good simple food can be. The rain had stopped, so I suggested to Scamp that we might go out for a walk and she agreed. Just a wander around St Mo’s would do today, sticking to the paths for once. No wandering into the woods, getting wet and making the cold worse. It got today’s PoD there which is a single seed on the cow parsley that I love. Apparently they are edible for humans as well as birds and taste slightly of aniseed. I may try them sometime. It looked as if all the ice had gone, but only from the grass and the paths. There were still ice floes on the pond. It was nice to see the ducks returning from their winter holiday in the Canary Isles. They flew in when we were on our second circuit. I hope they enjoyed the visit to their little yellow cousins.

Back home we were having good warming food for dinner. Mince ’n’ Tatties with Cabbage for me and Bubble ’n’ Squeak for Scamp. Again, plain, simple food. Before that there was Limoncello to make. I decanted the yellow liquor from the jar and ditched the lemon rind. Then, I mixed a cup of caster sugar with a cup of boiling water to make the syrup and poured it in in stages into the alcohol. Actually all the syrup was needed to sweeten the limoncello and then it could be poured into a vodka bottle with the remainder half filling an old limoncello bottle. One to go into the cupboard and one to chill in the fridge. Home made Limoncello. A great Christmas prezzy. Thank you again Scamp.

After dinner we watched a video of what we hope Stewart & Jane have planned for the first of the Sunday Zoom Dance Lessons. Actually looking forward to it now. Feeling much better after a decent walk round the pond in the afternoon and I’ve just taken the second of my vitamin C drinks of the day. Hoping to feel back to normal tomorrow.

So, tomorrow we’re hoping to do a bit of dance practise and that’s about it. Weather looks like today. Rain and sunny spells.

The world is warming up – 10 January 2021

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And it’s raining.

I liked the snow. I even liked the ice, but like an old friend who overstays his welcome, it was good to see it go. Today it was on its way to another place that needed snow and ice.

We decided to go for a walk in the morning because it was dry and the temperature was above zero. Almost as soon as we closed the door, the rain started. We intended walking round St Mo’s, but without grippers, that was going to be a tough trek, so instead we walked round along the pavement beside the road and just took our time to go the longest road we could to get back to the house. Not the most scenic of routes and the camera stayed safely in the bag the whole time. I intended going out myself for a walk later, but that didn’t happen.

Instead we had lunch and then I started to make some soup. I remember my mum pouring boiling water from a kettle on the leeks in the garden and me digging them up to make soup. That’s what I did today. My last three leeks were meant to make the soup on New Year’s Day, but we never got round to it. Today we came out of the big freeze and although the ice and snow were leaving us, they still held the raised bed in their grasp, so I had to resort to my mum’s trick with the kettle. It worked and the leeks came out. Well, two of them did, the third one broke getting it out, but I did manage to get both halves eventually and they were going to be cut up anyway.

With the soup on the go, I started doing the prep for the veggie chilli we were having for dinner. We’d decided that we’d use what we had in the fridge for the chilli. Peppers, onions, carrots and butternut squash all went in to the pot along with a tin of tomatoes and a litre of stock. It was a bit monotone, more yellow than I’d intended, but I chopped up two of my small jalapeños that I’ve kept in the freezer, thinking they would provide some heat if not any colour. The didn’t do much of anything for the chilli. After thinking about it, I remembered that Sim, and expert on chillies and said she’d put the whole chilli into a curry seeds included. I’d been too careful, removing all the seeds. Next time I’ll use the whole chopped up pepper. Probably that will make it too hot! The soup was a bit thin, but ok. The chilli was a bit bland in colour and taste, but both together filled a space.

We were supposed to be taking part in a Zoom dance class tonight. Scamp was really looking forward to it, but I wasn’t. I always feel so uncoordinated in a dance class, a ballroom class anyway, but I was willing to put up with it for Scamp. She had the booking confirmed by the teacher and we were ready to go at 7pm. That slot came and went, so most of the Zoom dances start at 7.30pm, so that was probably the start time for a lesson too. 7.30pm came and went with no message to give us the starting link. We eventually gave up at 8.30pm. Scamp is going to text the teacher tomorrow to see what the problem was.

Spoke to JIC afterwards and were amazed by his revelation that work in many of the labs in the UK is having to be shelved because many of the consumable tools are not being replaced because Covid research and vaccine development is being prioritised. It’s not until you hear from someone at the ‘coalface’ that you realise the different problems this pandemic is creating for everyone. These things don’t make it to the evening news!

PoD was a macro of raindrops on a kale leaf. The leaf is now in today’s soup. Some of the raindrops will be too!

Tomorrow we may attempt a walk somewhere and to be honest, the cars need a run to keep them healthy too. So maybe a drive to somewhere for our daily exercise walk.

Rain & Wind – 26 December 2020

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Boxing Day, and it rained all day from early in the morning until late at night with gale force winds thrown into the mix. Also, all of mainland Scotland moved into Level 4. Lockdown returns.

I made a loaf using the last of the yeast I bought online during the first lockdown. It’s lasted well and I was smart enough to buy some more from Tesco last month. For once I hand kneaded the dough in preparation for making the bread from JIC and Sim’s present. I must admit that although it took a long time to prove, it tastes very nice indeed.

I’d planned today’s PoD because I knew it would be very unlikely I’d get out to get an outdoors shot, but I changed it a little to add a little bit of interest. Originally I was going to do a monochrome shot of a red pepper that was more wrinkled than I am, but in the end I just couldn’t get enough detail into it. That’s why I co-opted the MiniMen to brighten it up. Smaller than minifigs and mostly men, so they became ‘MiniMen’. They are actually ’00’ gauge figures for model railway dioramas, but they walk and climb and stand in many incongruous situations for my photos. After 20 odd shots I had a winner, or to be more precise, I had something I could make into an acceptable PoD.

Besides baking and photography, I also did a bit of Indian cookery. I made some cauliflower pakora and to go with it, some onion bhajis. I won’t say it was my best effort and it did make the kitchen smell like a chip shop, but they seemed to go down well with Scamp. Also, they became ‘dinner’. We’ll maybe have the turkey tomorrow.

Oh yes, and although I didn’t manage to do the ascending and descending of the stairs, we did go through some dances tonight.  Jive, Salsa, Quickstep, Waltz and Sequence.  Well, we had to do something to begin to work off all that food and drink we’d consumed yesterday and it also helped fix a couple of the sequence dances in my head.

Tomorrow the weather looks to be becoming more wintry with snow and ice forecast. If it means we don’t get today’s rain and wind I’ll be happy. We might even get out for a seasonal walk.

Dancin’ – 5 December 2020

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Dancing and a new NAS

Tonight we were going dancing with Stewart & Jane and about twenty other couples. Not physically, but virtually. This was the Christmas Zoom Dance, but more of that later.

First there was the little matter of the decorations and the tree to put up. In the tree lights tin was the usual letter. So strange reading it this year. “Nope we didn’t do that … Nope we didn’t go there … Nope we didn’t manage to meet up with them …” and so on. Scamp, of course, did most of the work and I was just there to hand things to her when she needed them. It didn’t take her long and by lunch time most of the work was done. Then the new NAS arrived. I was in two minds about whether to open it or not, because I’d read on the net that the WD drives in it were very slow. However, I did open the box and it looked a lot neater than I’d anticipated. I’d go over to St Mo’s to have a word with myself and see what I thought.

Took a camera over to St Mo’s to see if anything was coming out to play. Well, there were a few toadstools that could have made PoD, but the landscape photos were disappointing. I took them anyway, but wasn’t impressed. I came home and powered up the NAS and immediately knew this was a totally different beast from the My Cloud. So may security protocols to get past and so much jargon and abbreviations. I must talk to Val about it. This might need his AV experience. However, by bungling through I got the whole thing working at the second attempt. Copied a few files and the transferred fine and even better, I could read them back. Best of all, Hazel (the organisation prog I use on the Mac) worked seamlessly with the new NAS after the two were formally introduced. Sighs of relief all round.

In the morning I’d been painting “M is for… “ sketch. It was a scrunched up bag of Maltesers, and at the third or fourth attempt I was fairly happy with it. When I was cleaning yesterday’s mess from the palette I saw a face and that became PoD. This may be the last sketch for a wee while. Too much in my head and not the same interest as there was in March for the sketches, I’m afraid. That doesn’t mean I’m stopping, just have a bit of a rest from it for a day or two.

The Zoom Dance started at 7.30pm and was the usual well organised event we’ve come to expect from Stewart & Jane. I even managed a fairly representative version of the Christmas Pudding Rock. Good to see other folk dancing and enjoying the occasion too. These Zoom dances are great for cheering us all up in the middle of winter and I applaud S&J for all their hard work.

After the dance finished at 10pm we watched the qualifying for the penultimate GP of the year without Hamilton who has contracted Covid and is self-isolating. Then we watched Strictly and that’s the reason this is a catch-up blog.

Tomorrow we’ll be probably be recovering from two and a half hours of dancing.

A dull day with one bright shining light – 4 December 2020

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It was raining in the morning and it’s raining now, at 23:57. It hasn’t stopped raining all day.

Today was a day for finding things to do inside. Scamp made a start with putting up our four Christmas cards and some of the decorations. I followed suit by clearing the dining table and together we covered it with the Snowman™ table cover. I bought it many years ago and worried that I’d paid too much. It’s paid for itself many times over since then. It always brings a smile to our faces, even in such trying times.

With that done and after lunch I intended to take a walk to the shops, but after I opened the door I changed my mind. These are the days we bought the car for. Days when you don’t want to come home dripping with rain. Not exactly soaked to the skin because the Goretex in the Bergy works so well, but not feeling totally comfortable either. Waltzed into M&S and stocked up on oranges, grapefruit, chicken and a curry each for tonight’s dinner. Went to the till and that’s where the magic happened.

After I’d scanned all the messages, I scanned my M&S card and got a message to the effect that today as a special surprise, my purchases were all free! I checked with the till assistant and she confirmed that tonight’s dinner was on M&S. Scamp has had one of the M&S cards for months, probably over a year and has never got much more than a bag of Percy Pig sweets. I won over £25 worth of groceries and I’ve only had the cards about a month! Almost walked back because I was still in shock at my good luck, then I remembered I’d brought the car and drove home.

Today’s PoD is a Christmas Rose growing in the garden. I risked the rain to get its photo. According to Scamp’s records it’s a Helleborus niger “Christmas Carol”. It was very pretty sitting there in the rain brightening up that corner of the garden.

I did attempt a picture of the letter M subject, but I wasn’t impressed with it and a bottle of beer followed by a glass of Hortus Gin from Lidl put paid to any and all attempts to improve it. Hopefully tomorrow will be more fruitful.

We have no plans for tomorrow other than a Zoom dance at night for which we practised tonight. We even attempted a medium paced salsa track and had to sit down to allow the room to stop spinning afterwards.

Fog – 26 November 2020

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Woke to fog. We’d been warned about it by the weather fairies, but you can never believe anything they say.

It took a fair time to clear and the house was cold, because the heating hadn’t come on, because I’d turned it off last night when I was trying in vain to program the lights to do something they didn’t want to do and forgotten to put them back on schedule. Quickly fixed once I discovered what had happened.

When I was making the breakfast, I plugged in the skeleton NAS drive and powered up the computer. Later when I’d showered and was ready to meet the monster I tried to access the NAS. At the second attempt I got connected, but when I tried to download a small PDF file the access stopped and the icon for the drive disappeared from the screen. The most success I’ve had with it has been from Windows 10 on Scamp’s computer. Apparently, NAS drives in general don’t like what Apple OS in any of its many flavours. No taste, you see! I’ve given up. Even with Scamp’s reliable laptop the downloads don’t actually complete. I think it’s time to “take the burst ba’ away from the dug”.

We kept waiting for the fog to lift but it took its own sweet time. Scamp made some soup, leek and potato and I thought it was lovely but she was more critical. She didn’t want to go for a walk, because she had tidying up to do. I didn’t ask what was being tidied, sometimes it’s better not to know.

Instead, I grabbed my old Clarks boots which, although they have little or no tread, at least keep my feet dry, and I went for a walk in St Mo’s hoping for some sunshine since the fog had lifted and the sky was clearing. It wasn’t to be. However, I did get a PoD which was the water drops left by the fog on some spiderwebs. It’s ok and the quality is good, but the lens just isn’t up to close-ups. We are supposed to get more fog tomorrow morning, so I may take the old macro lens and try again.

I redrew yesterday’s sketch of eggs an egg shells and laid on some better washes. I’m happier with this version. I also drew today’s sketch which is the wee fairy that sits on the shelf in the living room. At Christmas it gets to sit beside the Christmas tree. I think it enjoys the change of view, but prefers its higher viewpoint on the bookcase.

Tonight Scamp and I had a practise of The Christmas Pudding Rock which is a dance Stewart and Jane have invented for the virtual Christmas ball. It’s left me with two left feet Usually the man leads with his left foot, but in this dance he leads with his right! Most confusing, but I’ve almost got it. Another few practise sessions and I’ll be there or there about … I hope!

One last thing.  Today Hazy sent a photo of a postcard that had just dropped through her letterbox, sent by us from Fuerteventura A YEAR AGO!  Delivered by camelpost perhaps?

No plans made for tomorrow. It looks like it will be cold. If it’s cold and clear that will be fine, a walk might be on the cards. It it’s not we may practise that Christmas Pudding Rock again.

Just another Sunday – 15 November 2020

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It rained, it was dry, it rained, it was dry, … repeat.

We waited until after lunch before we committed ourselves to a walk. The sky was lightening, the clouds seemed a bit higher and it looked as if there was a decent chance of just a passing shower to spoil our walk. As it happened, our walk round Broadwood Loch was a dry one, by which I mean it didn’t rain. There was plenty of standing water to splash in if you were interested in that aspect of the walk, but Scamp doesn’t like to get her walking boots wet, or dirty. I, on the other hand was wearing my Clarks Super Slide-a-lot boots that keep your feet almost dry, but have virtually no grip. Stylish, but Pointless would be their marketing logo.

<Warning boring photography stuff inside>
There were loads of people out for a Sunday stroll in the fresh air and avoiding the rain showers that had dogged the morning. I got a few shots, but forgot that the Samyang 18mm has a mind of its own as far as focusing goes. I need to remember to check that it is actually locked on to focus before I press the button. Although the sky was lighter than the morning there were almost no clouds to give any texture. A milky white Scottish sky. Luckily I’d been experimenting with the old Sigma 105mm macro on the Sony earlier in the day and today’s PoD was already in the bag, a Jenny Long Legs or Crane Fly to give it a more general name. I hadn’t noticed the possibilities of the man feeding the birds until Scamp put me wise to it about half an hour ago. Maybe some of my technospeak is rubbing off on her.
<Photography stuff is gone now>

With constant tuition from Scamp I may one day be able to cook a decent stew. Today I tried a new method and it worked, still with tweaks from the chef. However I could never reach the heady heights of her apple crumble which was a pure delight! Bramley apples and cinnamon were the secrets, she said. My contribution was a loaf which looks quite good, but tomorrow will be the real test.

We practised a bit of Jive tonight, just to keep our hand in and our feet from tripping each other up.  Spoke to JIC later and he sounds better than he did last week. Discussed lockdown looking for hints and tips as it seems we may be heading that way by the end of the week. Lanarkshire, the pariahs of Scotland.

Hoping we’ll manage lunch tomorrow with C&N at The Cotton House.

Better than we expected – 24 October 2020

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It was raining this morning as predicted by the weather fairies. Then, surprisingly, it brightened up!

I wasn’t feeling at my best this morning. I think I’ve got a cold hanging over me. For that reason I was quite happy to sit and watch the rain on the window with nothing really to go out for. I was also waiting for a parcel to arrive for Scamp, one she didn’t know about and thankfully it did arrive on time. It got the reaction I was hoping for.

After that I sketched out my version of today’s prompt “Dig”. I was quite pleased with the result because it was drawn from my imagination. Not sketched from a Google Images photo.

After lunch it brightened up and the rain stopped, so with some vitamin C in me, Scamp and I went for a walk round St Mo’s, but the tribes were holding a convention there that involved getting bevvied and swearing. They really do drag the area down. I’m pretty sure the polis know about it, but it doesn’t tick any boxes for them, so they aren’t interested. At least until something more serious happens and that does tick a box, then, too late, they’ll react. Might give St Mo’s a wide berth at weekends for a while.
Continued or walk down to the shops and came back with stuff for tonight’s and tomorrow’s dinners. Grabbed a few photos on the way and one of them made PoD. It’s my favourite plant, the Cow Parsley against a bush of brambles.

The highlight of the day was tonight’s Zoom dance with, at it’s height, sixteen, or was it seventeen couples participating. One of Stewart’s great ideas. Dancing in your living room, or sitting watching others dance in their own houses no problem with bumping into others or avoiding the “Thick Couple” who insist on stopping every time one of them makes a mistake and enter into a “That was your fault. No, it was your fault.” discussion. No flamboyant show-offs to dance around. Just two and a half hours of dancing. Absolutely brilliant. Made us feel human again in these surreal times. We’ll ache a bit tomorrow, but it will be worth it.

Tomorrow I think it’ll be more of the same weatherwise. Rain and sun. We may go out for a walk.

Not as oppressively warm as yesterday – 1 August 2020

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That was my first thought this morning.

Not as warm. A bit fresher perhaps? Yesterday was just a bit too unScottish on the temperature scale. Today was going to be more down to earth.

We had no bread, very little fruit and no fancy little cakes, so I wandered off down to the shops in the morning. Got enough stuff to feed us for today (and a few days more if the truth be told) and a bar of chocolate for going, which I thought was very fair. Lunch was a roll ’n’ cheese for both of us, but not just ordinary rolls, no, these were Ciabatta rolls that had come all the way from Iceland, the frozen food shop, no the northerly island nation. Then we sat and wondered what to do until the live British F1 GP qualifying was due to start. We were then glued to our TV until the end of the qualifying came to a nail biting finish, or at least that’s what we were told. It was the usual faces in the usual grid slots. No nails were bitten in this house.

Later in the afternoon, I took myself and a camera out for a walk in St Mo’s while Scamp waited at home, deciding what to wear for tonight’s Zoom Dance. To be fair to her, she also prepared the “mise en place” (food and dishes preparation) for tonight’s dinner which was Smoked Salmon and Broccoli Quiche. We’d made it before, but it was really good to walk into the kitchen and find everything laid out for me. The actual cookery was easy after all that. It tasted really quite good. Not as good as Jackie’s, but a fair stab at it. Plus, of course she uses the old fashioned shortcrust pastry base while we have a new super fast method which must remain a secret!

After dinner it was a bit of a rush to get the living room rearranged in time for the dance. It’s really a good way of having a socially isolated dance without the need for face masks and all that faff. Just a computer and a space in your own home to dance. It’s amazing the amount of stuff we’d (read “I’d”) forgotten since the last one. It took me one whole track before I got the steps for the basic waltz anywhere like a dance and not just staggering blindly around the living room. The Social Foxtrot is all about dancing in never ending saw-tooth formations, even I can manage that. Salsa was … let’s say it wasn’t as smooth and faultless as it should be. All in all, it was an exercise in not falling over and no, I’d not had anything stronger than a bottle of beer at that point. However, it was great fun and good exercise too. Don’t know what the couple next door in their Jacuzzi thought! I kid you not, they have a jacuzzi in a gazebo in a garden the same size as ours. What is Westfield coming to? I think they have just too many Zs in their heads! When the Zoom dance ended we had to have a wee seat in the quiet just to allow our muscle groups to return to normal. Next one is in a couple of weeks time unless Lockdown finishes before then – we should be so lucky!

Today’s PoD was wee fly on a cow parsley head.

Tomorrow we may be aching so much we won’t be able to go out anywhere, or maybe we should just to ease those dancing muscles.

Paint and painting – 13 July 2020

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Once more into The Fort, dear friend, once more.

Despite spending a fair amount on a new full paint box, I still needed more paint. Two of my half pans were empty in my old box. One was Cerulean Blue, a sky blue. I got one in the new box. The other empty pan had held Hooker’s Green Named after an English botanist and illustrator William J Hooker, not for any other reason. Not that I would know about such things, you understand. The new paintbox didn’t have Mr Hooker’s green and the reason the half pan is empty is because I use it a lot. Today I intended to go to The Fort to get a tube. It’s not essential as a colour, because you can mix a fair representation of it using a couple of colours with a third to adjust the intensity, but to have one to hand would be good. Scamp decided she’d come along. She’d spent the morning browsing B&Q looking at lawnmowers. We’d had a discussion and she agreed that the old mower probably needed to be replaced for H&S reasons and she’s still speaking to me!

I got the paint, £5 for a 5ml tube. Multiply £5 by the 18 colours in the new box and you see how much it costs to paint some watercolours. Of course I didn’t pay that for the paintbox. Also, paints come in four price bands. My HG was in band 1 the lowest price. Some are much more expensive, just under £10 for the most expensive (and most poisonous!) paint in the price bands. Still I was happy to pay to be able to mix some good dark greens.

Meanwhile Scamp was off window shopping. She came back empty handed but smiling because she’d been out in the sunshine and seen some pretty dresses. Unfortunately there was no point in buying any because there’s nowhere to wear them to. I think we are now coming down from the high of dancing – virtually – with other people for an hour and a half on Saturday. Now we are realising that it may be some time before we will dance with people again. We were supposed to be trying out dancing in the open air on Wednesday with our dance class, led by the teacher, but we’ve since heard that has been veto’d. Presumably, the dance board wouldn’t allow it on H&S grounds or their insurance wouldn’t cover it. Such a pity. It would have been interesting.

Grabbed a shot of one of Scamp’s favourite roses, Sheila’s Perfume. It looked stunning back lit in the garden this morning. That made PoD. I’d actually completed a painting for Lockdown Library yesterday, but didn’t think it was good enough. Today I had a second look and it’s fine. It has been posted on Instagram. Today’s painting is of the two wee chickens that make up our cruet set. I’ve done them before, but that was a while ago and I don’t mind painting them again. They always make us smile.

Not much more to add today. Doing a Zoom meeting tomorrow with the man from Falkirk. Hopefully it will go well.