Category: Dancing

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.

Dancin’ – 11 July 2020

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Dancin’ with at least six other couples, not from the same household and nobody stayed overnight, so Nick’s Nasties weren’t called.

The day started with a lazy morning, a lazier than usual morning. It was a dull day and we had nothing to go out for, so we didn’t go. I used the leftover dough to make a pizza for lunch and it turned out better than yesterday’s. I was impressed.

After lunch Scamp went out to pick some blackcurrants from our ailing elderly bush. She keeps saying we should cut it down and plant a new one because it has a fair bit of disease in it. I’d agree if I thought she wouldn’t regret doing it and also, where would we put a new bush? It would be foolish to plant the new bush into the same ground as the old one is in. If the nasties are in the soil, they’d just attack the new bush as soon as it was planted. The bush we have began life as a cutting from my mum’s plant in her garden. It would be strange not to see it filling that space beside the apple tree.

While she was pruning and picking, I was painting. It began as just adding the line of hills to a painting I started a few weeks ago, but it ended up as a complete re-paint and it made Sketch of the Day, does that make it a SoD or a PoD? Can’t be a PoD, because that award went to Rosie the little rosebush that Scamp has grown from a seed given to her by Hazy.  I think we’ll have to settle for LLNo 89.

Dinner tonight was a hot chicken curry. Really quite hot, but not white hot. Rhubarb pie and ice cream cooled our mouths while we watched a crazy qualifying for the rebadged and second Grand Prix from Austria. The Styrian Grand Prix is named after the region the circuit is located in. Racing in torrential rain for three qualifying events is madness. Thankfully most of the cars survived intact and all of the drivers did.

Immediately afterwards we had to get ready for Stewart & Jane’s first Virtual Dance, run over Zoom. Brilliant night, lots of fun with at least six other couples joining in with most of the dances. I think we are both exhausted and will sleep well tonight.  The best bit about the virtual dance was that when it started we didn’t need to drive home, because we already were home.  Fantastic idea.  We’d definitely do it again if we get the chance.

It might be a late start tomorrow, but we’re not planning on going anywhere important. No plans.

Today was Saturday.

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Saturday used to be The Weekend. These days the week has no beginning and therefore no end. The only thing that makes the weekend different from the rest of the days is that the individual weekend days start with an ’S’.

We went for a walk today. That’s where the PoD came from. Down to Broadwood, avoiding the loch, because everyone was out there walking their dogs or cycling in a wobbly way along the footpaths in a very un-social distancing manner. Instead we walked down past a soakaway ‘water feature’ and back up underneath the Craiglinn Roundabout and on to St Mo’s by way of the now well worn path behind St Mo’s school to the actual St Mo’s. A cursory inspection of the ‘pollothywogs’ (tadpoles – ‘Some Fishy Nonsense’ poem by Laura E. Richards). We walked home. It was cold for most of the walk because of the wind, but when we were sheltered from that wind it was quite warm.

Met the window cleaner when we got back home, just in time to pay him with the last fiver we had! Spent a long time reminiscing about times at CHS in ‘the olden days’.

I wanted to pot up a couple of the chilli plants that have been growing on the kitchen window sill since October last year, in a different world. They look a lot happier now with room to flex their roots. Scamp was busy too cutting and pruning. On the way home we ‘found’ a few cuttings of Berberis and she planted them too. I remember my mum pausing by a wall when we were out walking in the summer and ‘finding’ some cuttings of something she fancied. It must be a family failing or just a family ‘finding’.

Dinner tonight was Chicken Thighs on a bed of peas and leeks, with Jersey Royal potatoes. Very nice and even better because it’s a tray bake, so very little prep and a one-pot meal.

A little dance practise tonight.  I chose ballroom, so we did Waltz1, Waltz2, Quickstep and Foxtrot.  Then Scamp wanted to practise a new sequence dance, the Melody Foxtrot.  It looked very complicated, but she assured me it wasn’t.  I’d tend to disagree with that, but we did manage to get it right a couple of times.  Maybe part of it will be in muscle memory by the next practise session.

PoD was a field of Coltsfoot Daisies setting seeds with a nettle in the middle. No reason for it, I just liked it. Today’s sketch was a metal whisk. What a dull thing to draw, but it made Lockdown Library No 34.

Tomorrow we have no plans and it’s weekend day number 2 which would make it Sunday!