Category: Dancing

Looking for plant pots – 25 August 2025

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Out looking for plant pots and came home with a chicken.

We slept last night with just a duvet cover on top of us. Too warm for the actual duvet itself, so the cover provided all the warmth we needed. The weather is due to break in the next few days according to the weather fairies, hopefully that will mean that the weather will return to real Scottish weather. Cold and wet.

Scamp was looking for half a dozen plant pots for the back garden, so we drove to Torwood Garden Centre to source some. A lot of the plant pots we have have suffered in the recent weather. The pots being plastic are easily damaged by bright light. It makes them brittle and it won’t be the first time I’ve picked up a pot and had the bottom fall out of it and be left with just the rim in my hands. Like everything, plastic doesn’t last for ever.

We found exactly the pots Scamp wanted almost right away, so I volunteered to get a trolley because I just knew by the look in her eye that more things would be going into that trolley before the day was through, and I was right. A raspberry bush, pansies, wallflowers some black kale plants, a pot of heather and a chicken. All went into the trolley along with lots of other things.

Once we got them all into places in the boot and the back seat of the car, we went for cup of coffee for me and peppermint tea for Scamp. Then we shared a tipsy cake, tipsy in name only I think because this was a No Alcohol tipsy cake. I’m sure tipsy cakes used to have a distinct whiff of alcohol about them, or maybe I was dreaming.

Drove home via a narrow road just outside Haggs. I wanted to get some photos of the Forth & Clyde canal from one of the locks. I got the shot, but the real interest was a red tractor in a field next to the canal being loaded up with hay bales, presumably for silage. The bloke who was driving the tractor, was also carting the bales onto a low loader with a forklift attachment to the tractor. The light was constantly changing and I duly took around twenty shots from different angles and in different lights. That gave me some photos to turn into a PoD. I was really quite taken with them.

Back home and with the pots, flowers and of course the chicken safely unloaded, it was nearly time for Kirsty’s dance class.

Today was part 4, the final part of the rumba routine. This was the most complicated part so far, but by the end of the hour I was beginning to see how it hung together with parts 1 – 3.

Tomorrow I have a phone consultation with a doctor from the health centre to see how I’m getting on with my two lots of iron tablets.

The chicken has been named Crazy Chicken and is 100% ceramic! It lives in the back garden under some bushes.

Yet another hot day – 18 August 2025

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Out to the dentist in the morning.

I was lucky to get an appointment at the dentist. I had my six monthly check last week and today, a week later, I had one of my teeth filled. Not for the first time either, it’s the second or maybe the third filling I’ve had for the same tooth and it’s all my fault. I just keep probing the repaired tooth and occasionally I’ve bitten down on a hard sweet and cracked the tooth. I’ve now had a “good talking to” and for the next week I’m banned from chewing anything tougher than an apple. I’ll do my best to comply.

So it was that lunch was half a nice soft Ginsters pasty. Scamp had gone shopping after I returned from the dentist. I was attempting to solve a couple of problems that were still lingering with the new iMac. It’s beginning to look more like a usable machine now, not just a bag of disconnected parts.

After lunch Scamp started to clear out some of the clutter we’d built up over the years. Many sheets of ancient documents and invoices went into the shredder and then into the compost bin. Chopped up paper apparently makes great compost when mixed with vegetable and fruit in the big black box at the back of the garden.

While she was doing that, I went for a walk in St Mo’s and got a photo of a Painted Lady butterfly that became PoD. They are occasional visitors to Scotland, but are less rare now than they were.

Scientists have discovered that the Painted Lady butterflies do indeed migrate south each autumn but make this return journey at high altitude out of view of butterfly observers on the ground. Radar records reveal that Painted Ladies fly at an average altitude of over 500 metres on their southbound trip and can clock up speeds of 30 mph by selecting favourable conditions.

We were dancing Rumba at Kirsty’s class. Very slow and precise and quite enjoyable in this hot weather. Kirsty taught three separate parts of the routine and then encouraged us not to dance them in order, but to take them in any order the leaders chose. No directions, but the leaders had to guide the followers by hand pressure alone. I found it difficult and demanding, but worth practising at home. Our one hour slot just disappeared!

Tomorrow I believe we may be taking some stuff to the Council tip. Especially if Scamp has her way!

 

 

A lazy start to Saturday, but … – 16 August 2025

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… then it got busier and busier.

This was the first evening dance for months. At least the first one we had a chance to go to. We didn’t do very much, but we did both remember to send Jamie a Birthday Message, just because it was a special one.

We spoke to Hazy in the morning and heard about the goings on down south. She and I talked books for a while and I told her of the problems I was finding with the iMac. I realise this isn’t your forte now Hazy, but thanks for trying.

As you will have gathered, this is a catch-up, so I’ll cut to the chase:

  • We both sent birthday wishes to Jamie.
  • Spoke to Hazy in the morning.
  • Scamp noticed that Karlyn and John, our next door neighbours, were dressed for a wedding.
  • I offered to take their photos and got half a dozen decent images.
  • Later in the afternoon Scamp watered the garden, both back and front.
  • Then Scamp was getting ready to go to the August Dance
  • That meant I had to too.
  • Actually enjoyed the dance, but the room in Brookfield was really warm, even with the doors open.
  • It was a lovely drive home after the Last Waltz. Very few cars on the road. It was like Glasgow had become a deserted city!

No PoD’s worth posting. Sorry!

Tomorrow I’m hoping it will be a more relaxed day.

Butterfly Day – 28 July 2025

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Scamp and I were in the garden in the morning when I spotted a Red Admiral butterfly, then another and another and a Tortoiseshell too.

The Buddleia bush had been blooming really well this year so perhaps it’s it that is encouraging this sudden influx of colourful butterflies, but long may they continue to visit our garden to feed on the nectar that seems to be very popular. One shot of a Red Admiral grabbed first place in the PoD.

Other than that it was just an ordinary Monday, except we didn’t have to go shopping because we’d bought a decent basket full yesterday. Scamp, of course was pruning and chopping back flowers in both the front and back gardens. I’d had another uncomfortable night with the warm, muggy nights, so I went for a snooze in the afternoon. I know it’s not a great thing to do, because you wake from an hour in dreamland and feel worse than when you went to bed, at least, I do.

We spent about half an hour later in the afternoon practising the Continuous Hover Cross for tonight’s Foxtrot class. It’s a dance routine that is complicated to work through, well, for me it is, anyway, and it doesn’t seem to achieve anything for all its twists and turns. Even worse the man’s steps are totally unrelated to the lady’s. That means I have to learn my steps and not rely on following Scamp’s! After a few runs through, we almost had it taped. Then Scamp got an email from Kirsty to say that she was intending doing a different dance, still a Foxtrot but totally different from what we’d been practising!!

Only two couples were up for tonight’s class, which was good because we had the whole floor to ourselves, but bad because there was nowhere to hide. We stumbled through the steps, or to be more precise, I stumbled through and tried to follow Scamp’s. In the end it almost went together properly.

I was checking my emails tonight and found that a big parcel is due to arrive soon, but with confusing arrival dates. It will definitely be this week, but when which day is not clear. Maybe, just maybe, there will be more than one parcel, one for each day!! No, that’s just greedy.

No plans for tomorrow yet.

Another wet and warm day – 21 July 2025

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Not at the same time, though.

This will be a quick blog. Although we did very little, the day just seemed to run away with us.

In the morning I spoke to an Apple robot with a Scottish accent, explained my problem and she fixed me up with an appointment for tomorrow with a ‘Genius’! A living, breathing one, I hope.

After that I noticed we had another butterfly on the buddleia bush and when I went out to see if it was still there, realised I didn’t have a camera. Luckily Scamp had her’s handy and she gave it to me, because the butterfly was too high for her to reach. That’s when it flew away, but eagle eye’d Scamp saw another one, a Peacock butterfly this time. We grabbed three shots with the phone and then it flew up and over to the back of the tree, but we got the shot! It made PoD.

We had a look through the laptops, for fridge-freezers after that and after tomorrow’s Genius Bar, we might actually order one.

We went to Kirsty’s dance class in the late afternoon and I almost managed to do new version of the Foxtrot with the diabolical Continuous Hover Cross, my nemesis! It was actually too hot to trot in the dance room and there was no cool air blower.

That’s as much as I’m going to write for now. Enjoy the holiday, Neil and Hazy. Hope you have fun. By the way, I finished Rivers of London episode 10 today and wouldn’t recommend it.

I’m off to bed no hoping to cool down, hopefully. Tomorrow may be another busy day.

Going for the messages – 14 July 2025

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Monday is traditionally shopping day and we drove to Morrisons in Falkirk, in the rain. We were delighted to see some real rain today, just as long as it doesn’t think that it’s staying for good. Scamp got her grass seed scattered and washed in with the prospect of more scattering tomorrow, all being well.

We wandered round Morrisons and bought more than we really should have, but that’s the problem when you’re not shopping in your local supermarket, you keep finding new things on the shelves and adding them to your trolley. Then you realise how little space you have left in it. Anyway, as we were piling the shopping into the blue car, I said to myself, Well, that’s something done.

My main complaint with Morrisons is that the cafe was closing at 2.30pm. This seems to be a common occurrence in the Falkirk shop. The slightest thing causes the shop to shut. It’s raining. Oops we’ll need to close the cafe. Don’t they want to make money?

Scamp had an old bracelet that needed a new clasp and there is a wee jewellers in Falkirk she trusts with her fragile things, so we managed to get two things done in the same place. The bracelet should be ready for collection on Thursday. Two tasks completed.

While Scamp was off explaining what she wanted done to the bracelet, I was sent off to Waterstones to browse the books. I did see two I liked the look of, but of course I didn’t write down their titles. Instead Scamp met me and we went for a coffee in Nero across the road. I thought I’d manage to drop in to Waitrose on the way to the car and snap the titles on my phone, but only one was still there on the stand. For the life of me I cannot remember the name of the other one, but with an interesting cover, I’m sure I’d recognise it again. At least I had one title safely in the phone.

On the way back to the car we passed Falkirk Trinity Church. Even in the rain it looked really good, and after a few shots I got what I wanted and with a little bit of work at home it would become PoD. Task number three completed. We drove home in the rain.

Tonight was the start of the Monday dance class with Kirsty. The plan was to begin with a Foxtrot. As with most of the dances we do, Kirsty takes them forward very slowly to make sure nobody is left behind. I think she sometimes takes too much time to it, but usually Scamp starts shoving me around the floor and that is when I see that it it isn’t all that different from the routines we use in Stewart and Jane’s classes. Sometimes the names are slightly different, but my feet know where they are going, because we’ve walked through those techniques many times at Brookfield. It’s really just muscle memory, or parts of it. By the end of the night, things were clicking into place. More Foxtrotting may be planned for next week, all being well.

Tomorrow it looks like more rain for us. Good for the garden.

 

 

 

Dancin’ – 3 July 2025

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For the first time in what seemed like ages, we went to a Tea Dance today.

It was one of those terrible days with pelting rain one minute and sunshine the next. Mostly it was rain today, though. We drove to Glenburn in the afternoon along with about a dozen other couples. Not a great turnout, but enough for a quorum. Also, with the schools in Scotland being on holiday, probably a lot of grans and papas would be on child minding duty. Most of them wishing they were dancing instead.

Stewart and Jane did their level best to draw us out on to the floor with a Lace Agate Swing. A little bit of everything in this sequence dance, covering spins, chassis and even a couple of fishtails. I filmed it and watched the recording on my phone later in the session, but wouldn’t say I remembered all the steps, or the sequence of them. It was fairly fast too.

Just as a bit of an experiment I wore my Dance Sneakers rather than my usual Black & White leather dance shoes with the suede soles. I’m glad to say that the dance sneakers were just as comfortable as the traditional dance shoes, if not more so.

We danced Waltz, something that might have been a Rumba and a Cha-Cha with a lot of sequence dances in between to pad things out. We left, feeling we’d really enjoyed today, then Stewart dropped his bombshell. There would be no dance class on Saturday because Brookfield hall was being used for a summer feté. The dance teachers are off on holiday (teaching) for the next three weeks, so the next dance class won’t be until August. A long time to wait.

We left early as usual to avoid the traffic, then I drove straight into that traffic. It was a long slog down to and over the Kingston Bridge and it was all done in torrential rain. The big heavy clouds we had hoped to leave behind us, just followed us home.

Dinner tonight was Bacon and Borlotti beans, one of Jamie and Simonne’s recipes that we use quite often.

PoD turned out to be Willowherb a much maligned wildflower that brightens up rough ground everywhere.

I don’t believe we have any plans for tomorrow.

Shopping – 23 June 2025

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Today we were going shopping.

It was a day of hit and miss showers. Also, it was much cooler than it has been of late which was great for sleeping in. Those hot muggy days of last week were not the best for trying to get some rest.

Instead of doing the usual Tesco run we went to Waitrose in Stirling for a change. Wow, did we have a big shop today! I was beginning to think the boot wouldn’t be big enough and we’d need to buy a trailer. It’s not often we’re tempted by the variety of goods on sale there, but we were today. I’m sure I heard the wee Blue car groan when we shut the boot.

We had just unpacked when there was a knock at the door and there was a delivery man with what obviously was a box of flowers addressed to Scamp. The card inside was from Alex and Carol. We found out later it was because I’d been saying that Scamp seemed a bit down lately and Alex must have picked up on that. Such a kind thing to do. Thank you Alex and Carol.

After lunch I wanted to go out and get some photos and left Scamp reading at home. I got a few shots, most of which were of insects or wildflowers. Insects always seem to have their own agenda and either stay put for a while, or are off ‘doing things’ immediately you point a camera at them. I must have found the lazy ones today. One was a strange looking red eyed fly and the other was a little pure black insect that I’d have called a ‘Buzzer’ if I was fishing. Both flies were hiding under leaves or sitting on leaves. Either way they were sheltering form those hit and miss showers I was talking about. Of the two, I chose the Black ‘Buzzer’ as PoD.

As usual I’d been carried away with photographing insects and plants and forgot the time. Scamp was going to a dance display arranged by one of the Witches. By the time I got back she was almost ready for Jeanette Witch to pick her up.

I’d had mince for dinner yesterday and today I was converting it into Spag Bol. Not a difficult task and I soon had the feeling that the plate I was using wasn’t really going to be big enough, so I ate as much as I wanted from an excellent Spaghetti Bolognese then put the remainder, regretfully, in the bin. Dessert was the last squat peach. Just as lovely as the first one had been, two or three days ago.

Scamp staggered in just before 11pm and raved for a while about the dancing those girls and one boy could do. I’m glad she enjoyed it, but I’m not so sure I would like it.

Tomorrow I may be going to get a new pair of trainers. The ones I got from Go Outdoors are ok, just ok. I’m sure there are better ones out there.

Another damp, dismal, day – 9 June 2025

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More or less what we expected after reading the weather report and checking online. It’s a Monday. Mondays are often dull. We had to cancel the visit to the Kelpies. I don’t think they’d be coming out anyway today.

With a lot of help from Scamp, I parcelled up my unwanted, too narrow and too short, dance sneakers, then drove over to UPS and gave the box and the proof of posting to the lady there and she said everything was in order. It’s up to UPS and Amazon now to do the rest of the business.

Next was a trip to Tesco for the usual lunch requirements. I did think about going for a walk in St Mo’s, but the constant showers didn’t encourage me to go walking in the rain. Instead I read a few more pages in my latest book, Murder Mindfully. It’s described as a the darkly comic bestselling thriller. I don’t know about the best seller, but it’s certainly very dark and at times funny. About a third through it now and I’m still not sure what’s going on or where it’s going!

I took some photos of the next batch of partly dried flowers that landed on the mat a couple of days ago. Then it was time to get ready to go to Kirsty’s class. Tonight we were reprising Waltz Nioli. I’d forgotten just how much I had forgotten. This was the dance class wearing my new dance sneakers and I must say they were very comfortable. I’d been told by a lot of folk that they make you think you have nothing on your feet and now I see exactly what they mean. Lovely, light trainers.

Drove home through more rain and around 7pm we had our dinner which was Giovanni Rana Tortelloni pasta and yesterday’s refried baby potatoes. Very nice and filling too.

After dinner I took some more photos of the flowers, but it was one of the earlier ones that got PoD.

Tomorrow we may have another chance to see the big horses, if they’re not too rusty.

Another fairly early rise for us dancers – 7 June 2025

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Up and out by 9.45am to join the M80 then the M8 and trundle along through torrential rain to Brookfield and a fairly large dance class. The last one for a fortnight.

First dance was the Charnwood cha-cha. Actually a routine we are fairly au fait with. A gentle cha-cha that doesn’t stress you too much and works quite well. Next was a short Foxtrot which again didn’t put us under too much pressure, mainly because we’d done most of it before.

A break for a sequence dance was next, Scamp’s favourite, the Tina Tango, the Ed Sheeran version. We’ve danced it so many times, I sometimes think I can get through the routine blindfolded – but I can’t! After that it was Rona’s Rumba. It’s not my favourite rumba routine, but Jane wrote it for a friend of hers who died recently after a short illness and it’s just a case of learning it for her and Rona’s sake.

We just had to slide in a House of Bamboo for all the line dancers in the class. At least it’s one of the dances where people smile as they dance it, not at all like Waltz Across Texas, a terrible dirge of a dance.

We finished up with the Mayfair Quickstep which isn’t a real quickstep, but gets you moving round the floor at quite a pace.

We said goodbye to everyone and drove home again to even more heavy rain. This was probably the last dance class for a couple of weeks … thankfully. Having said that, I did actually enjoy the class and clarified some of the routines with help from Jane.

Easy run home and just when I thought I’d go out for a walk, the rain returned with a vengeance. It was that sort of day. I did remember to wish Jamie and Simonne a good day with their Open Gardens day. The house and gardens did look grand in the photos he sent. Well done you pair!!

PoD was taken in the garden and is another Schoolgirl photos, but taken in the back garden this time, after the last rain shower.

Today’s dinner was a take on Chicken & Pea tray bake. This time it was a spiced up version with skin on, bone in chicken thighs with potato wedges and red onions. This was our first attempt at it, but we agreed it needed some refinement.

No real plans for tomorrow. It all depends on the weather.