Category: Dancing

Last Dance in The Weavers – 4 March 2020

Posted on by Zogman

Thankfully the last dance in that pokey little room, but we beat the corners.

First we got a phone call from Isobel to say that she was indeed getting out today. Although she’d get transport from the ward to the car, she would need a wheelchair to get from the car to the house, because the hospital wouldn’t load us a chair. Absolute nonsense, but totally in keeping with expected NLC policy. Scamp was not to be fazed by this problem and phoned one of the Gems singers and an hour later we had a wheelchair in the back of the Juke. You don’t realise just how much room a folded up wheelchair takes up in a car. I see the problem now Hazy.

By the time we’d worked out how to transport Scamp, Isobel, me and the wheelchair from the hospital to Cumbersheugh, Isobel had phoned to say she’d been told she was going to get hospital transport. Because she had more than one step up to her door and also she only had one handrail, she needed an ambulance person to get her safely into the house. One problem solved, but now we had to return the wheelchair and also return our life to what sometimes amounts to “Normal”. We went to lunch.

Lunch was in Craigend Nursery which used to be a decent sized plant nursery with a small tearoom bolted on. Now it’s very large tearoom with a nursery bolted on almost as an afterthought. Lunch was a beef burger and chips and salad and a dollop of ‘coleslaw’ that looked like a dog had been sick on my slate (no plates, just slates. Retro chic). Scamp had a very greasy looking Mac ’n’ Cheese. I don’t think we’ll be rushing back there.

Drove back and Scamp went to offload the wheelchair while I went to visit the ducks in St Mo’s. I also walked to the shops to try to get lemongrass for tonight’s dinner. Met an old friend of ours from salsa. Haven’t seen her for years, five years at least, according to her. How time flies. Didn’t get the lemongrass, but I did get today’s PoD which looks as if it’s been taken with flash, but it was just low afternoon light. A lucky shot.

Tonight we were dancing for the final time in The Weavers. I won’t be sad to leave that horrible room with its strange angles. What we did do was produce a decent foxtrot and another ‘work in progress’ quickstep. After a long explanation of how to dance in any shape of room, we even managed to remove the corners of the room and turn them into gentle curves, just by altering stride length and not dancing in entirely straight lines. It worked!

G&Ts tonight to remove the rough edges of an awkward day. Much like The Dukes of Hazzard song “Staightenin’ the curves Flattenin’ the hills …”. Exactly like tonight’s dancing.

Tomorrow more dancing in the afternoon hopefully. In a proper room this time.

Dancing again – 2 March 2020

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Waltz, Foxtrot and Quickstep it that order. Luckily we sidestepped (pun intended) the Tango because there wasn’t enough time. Oh dear, what a shame 😉

There wasn’t much else to talk about today. I took the Red Juke out for a run in the afternoon and ended up at my favourite landscape viewing site between two big stands of Scots Pines over by Fannyside Moor. Today there was a grand view across to the Meikle Bin and the Campsie Fells. So that’s where today’s PoD came from. There wasn’t much point in having a colour version as there wasn’t much colour. Besides, in colour the snowy Meikle Bin in the distance was lost against the sky, but it stood out much more clearly in mono.

Waltz:
It was quite good. We managed a few rounds of the floor without too many mistakes. It would be wrong to say that it was perfect or even nearly perfect. It’s still a work in progress, but it’s certainly getting better. Danceable.

Foxtrot:
Not all that good yet. Some mistakes still, especially towards the end. The big problem I have here is that of navigating the floor. I believe the proper name for this is ‘floor craft’ I have a different name, but I won’t sully the blog with it. Not yet danceable.

Quickstep:
Despite a fairly lengthy practise session this morning, this is still a work in progress. It’s improving and again the problem I have is dancing round the corners. Needs more practise. Not yet danceable, but with a bit of work it could be.

Reporting Scotland suggests that there could be up to a quarter of a million Scots hospitalised by Coronavirus. In the actual report a figure of up to 200,000 was quoted. A fifth of a million. I suppose that’s what inflation is all about.

Scamp is out tomorrow morning to have coffee with Annette. I may paint.

Freedom! – 1 March 2020

Posted on by Zogman

Sketching is fun and so is painting, but when you have to do it every day and also dance to someone else’s tune, it becomes work.

Today was the first day of March and that meant the inaccurately named 28 Drawings Later and Every Day in February were finished for me. It was fun for most of the time, but when it starts to resemble work, I have to draw a line (no pun intended). I’m quite happy to do the odd sketch as the notion takes me, but I’m also happy to let it lapse for a few days. All being well, I’ll probably take up the cudgels again in May for EDiM.

It seems the news people are having a field day with all the Coronavirus stuff. They’ve found a perfect way to take up hours of screen time giving us updates and filling our screens with stats and visual representations of how bad this virus thingy is. Most folk don’t really care all that much. Until it actually affects them, it’s just another blah blah blah that takes up too much time and deflects the serious news to the last five minutes of the program. The gigantic map behind the presenter with whole countries splashed in RED don’t really tell the whole story. Yes, there’s a case of the virus in Scotland, but because of that, the whole of Scotland is painted red. Someone somewhere has read and applied “How to Lie With Statistics”, a brilliant book written by Darrell Huff and as valid today as it was when it was first published in 1954.

So, today, after lunch I went for a walk in a soggy St Mo’s. Got today’s PoD which is a dried up looking hummock of moss growing on a branch of a dead tree. It’s amazing what interests photogs with a decent camera and a macro lens. Apart from startling a couple of deer, that was the only interesting thing that crossed my path today. A dull windy day which eventually turned to sleety rain, but not until much later.

Curry from the Spice Tailor range for dinner. I don’t think I’ve ever had a bad one. Didn’t read the instructions properly for this one and left the chilli in for a bit longer than necessary, but it was fine, just spicy enough.

Drove in to the Record Factory for Salsa tonight, but the music was so dire we left earlier than we’d intended. It wasn’t just us, either. Almost all of the ‘old school’ were complaining too. It seems that a lot of Jamie G’s ‘Advanced Class’ have now gone over to The Opposition, Sergio & Patricia. I can’t say I blame them. The move from the STUC building out to the West End hasn’t endeared Shannon to a lot of people and the fact that Jamie seems to be away from class more than he’s there is bound to affect the continuity of teaching. At least they now cancel his advanced classes when he’s not going to be there. That is a move in the right direction.

Spoke to JIC tonight and found out all about his short trip to Boston. Poor soul hardly got to see round the city at all. All work and no play by the sound of it. Never mind JIC, you have a week to enjoy the peace between studying, working from home and looking after Vixen!

Tomorrow is a Gems day, but we also need to cram in some dance. Hoping we make a better show of things tomorrow night.

A busy day indeed – 26 February 2020

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Well, I predicted it would be a busy day and for once I was completely … right!

Scamp was out in the morning to see Isobel. No coffee shop for them today Isobel phoned to ask her to come to the house instead. Too cold and with her dodgy knee, Isobel that is, she decided she’d stay at home. Quite right, I say.

While she was out I mused over what to do to cover today’s prompt, “Pink”. I eventually settled on a Pink Piglet, and so today’s sketch was born. Of course, if I’d been on the ball I’d have painted him on a page of my Pink Pig sketch book, but instead he’s on a page of the Seawhite sketch book! To start with he began to look more and more like a prominent politician, but then he began to mature into his piglet form. He’s based in part on a little piglet I painted in art class on a cruise a couple of years ago. I tried to remember all the tips the artist gave us, but after a while I just painted and it worked.

When Scamp returned, we had a swift lunch of toasted cheese on my salt and pepper bread then we were off to Falkirk Town Hall to our first Tea Dance. After 20 minutes and an aborted Saunter Together sequence dance I was ready to throw in the towel and go home, but Scamp was determined and we did get to do one of our jive fallbacks, the Seven Spins next. After that my mood lightened. At the tea break halfway through the two hour dance, a couple of people spoke to us, before that they’d been sizing us up I think. By the end of the tea break they knew we were beginners and started to encourage us up on to the floor and we started learning some of the sequence dances. Music was provided by a bloke playing a Korg keyboard and singing along to it. Perfect for us because the tracks were short enough so if we made mistakes, there was another tune along in a minute or two and we could make a sharp exit. All in all it was a success and we’re looking forward to the next one in a month’s time.

Back home, I finished the painting, photographed it and posted it. That was the only photo I took today. It was a clear day for the most part, but just after I’d posted the photo the snow started falling. It didn’t last, but for a while it looked as if it was on for the night.  As it happened, it was on and off all night. Next on the busy list was Wednesday dance class were we reprised the Quickstep from Monday and now it’s more firmly in my head. Not perfect yet and difficult to practise in our living room, but all the figures are now there and in the correct order, it’s just the details of the figures, the steps that need a bit of correcting. It will come. We finished with a Rumba One which we had been learninAnnoying loud music from the pub we practise in. I get the feeling some of the locals aren’t too pleased at our incursion into their territory. Hopefully Kirsty will find somewhere with a rectangular room and less noisy neighbours soon.

Today was a great help. Dancing on a dance floor among enough people to make it challenging without it being a difficulty. That’s what we’re both needing to master.

Also, this is the first time I’ve put a sketch as PoD and SoD. There just wasn’t enough time today to get a decent photo taken, so needs must.

Tomorrow, no plans as yet.

Coffee and some adult conversation – 24 February 2020

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Coffee at midday with the rest of the Auld Guys.

Topics under discussion were how to fix NLC, health centres and Boris.

  • It was generally agreed that NLC are now BER (Beyond Economic Repair) which is a nice way of saying FUBAR.
  • Health centres seem to be screwing up a lot of people. Within about a 10 mile radius the three centres under discussion were all operating different systems and all of them totally inefficient. Possibly they too are BER.
  • The book I’m reading at present is Real Tigers by Mick Herron. One nasty piece of work in the book is Peter Judd who is Home Secretary — described as ‘a loose cannon with a floppy fringe and a bicycle’ has his eye on Number 10. Now Peter Judd’s initials are PJ. If you say them quickly they’d sound like BJ, then all sorts of similarities are revealed. A nice piece of satire or simply a coincidence? You choose.

With the world once again set to rights, we went our separate ways and vowed that we’d organise our next meeting in a pub in Glasgow. We’ve been saying it for years and it hasn’t transpired yet. Perhaps 2020 will be that year.

When I got home, Gems were in full voice, so I swiftly had a roll ’n’ bacon and went out into the grim sleet to see if there were any pictures out there worth taking. There were as it happened. I’d stopped on one of my favourite places for a view of the Campsie covered in snow when the clouds came down and obscured them. Then I heard the sound of geese and a large skein appeared from behind some trees. There seemed to be hundreds of birds in the group that split up and rejoined as I grabbed my camera and shot off a few frames through the smirr that had started to fog up the lens. A quick wipe with my shirt tail cured that and I go some more before they headed off north. What do they know that I don’t. The resulting image is at the top of the page.

Dancing tonight was a reprise of waltz which I will tentatively say we can now complete without arguing 75% of the time. After that we did some foxtrot and made a bit of hash of it, but nothing that can’t be improved with some more practise. New to us tonight was quickstep. Now we’ve done quickstep with Michael, but this was quickstep with names for all the steps and the figures and it seemed to flow much better than when we were dancing it in Blackfriars. I’m not saying we have it off pat yet, it’s still a work in progress, but we’re about half way there. Feeling much better about this dancing lark.

I’m not publishing my attempt at a Mandala which is today’s challenge. I wasted an hour of my life drawing it and I don’t intend to foist it on anyone else. If you want to see it go to FB or Flickr.

Tomorrow, no plans, but I think we’ll be practising the quickstep figures.

Dancin’, really Dancin’ – 22 February 2020

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Just another day of rain and wind and occasional snow, but with the chance of some brightness in the evening.

A parcel arrived for Scamp at midday. It was the long awaited pair of Adesso slippers. The first pair were the wrong size, my mistake. This pair, like Cinderella’s fitted perfectly. Anniversary present ticked off!

Today’s prompt was ‘Rain’. Now that should have been easy given that we’ve had nothing else pouring out of the sky for weeks now. Like the tiger, this drawing was scribbled down this morning on my ‘doodle sheet’ and despite trying to redraw it various times, I liked the feel of this original.

PoD was a picture I took in the downstairs toilet with one of those occasional spells of sun shining brightly behind the plants.

We went to Frankie & Benny’s at The Fort for lunch. Unfortunately, it seemed as if almost all of the east end of Glasgow were there too. The place was jumping and half of them were noisy weans. To compete with the noise of the conversations, the staff had turned up the volume of the music system, it seemed. Even despite all that, the food was good Cheeseburger (No mayo) and Fish ’n’ Chips. Guess who had what!

Then while Scamp went window shopping for clothes, I browsed Waterstones. Bought myself a book on painting with acrylics, something I’ve not dabbled in recently. It’d make a change from watercolours and ink.

When we got back to the car, we had to sit for a while to allow the blizzard conditions to decrease. No snow was lying, but it was certainly coming along, almost horizontally, quite fast. After that, the sun came out and there was blue sky above. Scotland, at least three seasons in one day.

All of this was the precursor for the main event of the day, Dancing. We were off to darkest Paisley to a community hall for a night of waltz, foxtrot, possibly quickstep and probably jive. Dancing with Stewart and Jane’s class. As like the Christmas dance, we were welcomed into the bosom of the company and found that three of those at the table had been on our last cruise with us! Great fun, although my waltz wasn’t quite as swish as it could have been and my salsa was a bit rusty, but We Danced, and in company too!

Arrive home just before midnight, so obviously this is a catch-up

Zog meets a Frog – 21 February 2020

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A whole day without a phone call from the doctor! What’s wrong, have I offended someone?

It was another horrible day. Wind and rain in varying amounts and intensities. Didn’t do much and didn’t go very far. What we did do was practise the Foxtrot and the Waltz ‘figures’ just in case we want to dance them tomorrow. Actually I’d gone for a walk in the afternoon and found a piece of open ground in the middle of the trees and there I had a short solo practise of the figures in the Foxtrot, because that’s the dance we know the least about. I must have looked what my mum would have called ‘a proper chookie’ (a fool) if anyone had caught a glimpse of me dancing through the trees!

It was when I was coming back from my outdoor dance class that I saw two frogs in an amorous embrace attempting to get out of a fast flowing burn that had appeared overnight. The lady frog was trying to climb up a crumbling banking without much success, so I lifted them both out of the burn and placed them on the grass, took their photo and then put them down in a more gently sloping sandbank to allow them the opportunity to continue on to dry land or reenter the stream. I thought as I was walking away that it must be the first time I’ve handled a frog since I was a wee boy. One of the photos I took was sharp enough to become PoD. Zog meets a Frog.

Today’s topic was ‘Olive’. I tried all sorts of still life setups with black olives and also the green variety. None of them appealed to me, then I thought of the most famous Olive of all, Ms Oyl. I also wanted a fairly easy drawing after yesterday’s complicated crown.

Tomorrow’s task is ‘Rain’. I think I might be able to construct something around that theme, considering we’ve hardly had one dry day since Christmas. Only other plans for tomorrow are to go out for lunch somewhere if we don’t get blown or washed away.

Curry and Dancin’ – 19 February 2020

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Today we finally went for a curry in Hamiton after I’d been to the doc’s.

Yesterday I got a message  asking me to contact the doctor’s surgery re: the results of my blood test.  I phoned and was told that the doctor had looked at the results and my Haemoglobin level was too high and the nurse wanted to check it.  I made an appointment for this morning and the nurse went over all the results, but never mentioned haemoglobin.  When I queried it, it turned out the receptionist had got mixed up between haemoglobin and haemoglobin – sugar level. Yes, the sugar level was a bit high, but lower than it had been at my last test.  Panic over.  Nothing to worry about.

With that out of the way and another awful day of wind and rain in almost equal quantities we drove to Hamilton for a curry in the Bombay Cottage. Food was as plentiful as always. Starters were obviously freshly cooked but my main tasted a bit like it was a re-heat.  Scamp’s was fine but a bit spicy.  Still, that is just nit picking because this is one of the best Indian restaurants we’ve been to.

Hamilton, as I’ve said before is a bit of a ghost town now, compared to what it used to be like. For that reason and because of the weather we didn’t linger long. Visited Currys on the way home to see how much it would cost for another desktop hard drive for photos. Easy answer, they didn’t have any. Also it seemed to be Union Meeting day with all the sales staff in a huddle round a table, presumably discussing something so important they couldn’t (be bothered to) help customers. And then they complain that on-line shopping is killing the High Street. Hamilton High Street is already dead and buried and the same is about to happen to the retail park.

Back home, a grab shot of some daffs on the doorstep produced an acceptable PoD. SoD topic was ‘Phone’. Since most mobile phones are simply featureless black slabs of glass and plastic, I thought I’d go back a decade and sketch our old house phone. Nice curves and rectangles. Somehow more soul than and Android/Apple glass slab.

We went dancing tonight in The Weavers in Condorrat. Not the biggest dance floor in the world and probably the strangest shape for one, being a distorted rhombus, Awkward to dance round. Especially so, if like me you are awkward to start with. Made a hash of the Foxtrot which we later put down to the teacher having cut a portion of it out to make it danceable in the space we had. Back home we went over the ‘figures’ again and sorted some of it out.

Tomorrow we’re intending going for the messages.

Dreadful Dancing – 3 February 2020

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But before we come to that, it was a windy, wet day, but I posted a letter, solved a problem (perhaps), got rid of some stuff and I got one decent shot.

So, with Gems coming today and no Margie because she’d called off, I grabbed the letter and a bag of old laptop batteries and went out to solve a problem. The problem was the poor mpg on the Juke. I took JIC at his word and checked the tyre pressures. Front 31psi should be 36. Rear 29psi should be 31. The rear ones weren’t a problem, but the front ones certainly were. Crouched in a heavy rain shower and got them all up to the recommended pressures with the automatic pump at the petrol station, because I don’t trust my old pump that plugs into the lighter socket. It seems to be working JIC. Mpg seems to have improved after a very rough and ready check. Will keep you posted.

Next on the list was the letter. I’d recently signed myself fit in mind and body to drive a motor vehicle and was given a new plastic driving licence free of charge on the understanding that I’d cut through the old licence and return it to the DVLA. I cut it up over a week ago and today I posted it away.

The stuff I was getting rid of was a collection of old laptop batteries. Two HP and two Apple batteries. Easy peasy, there is a metal container at the recycling centre where you can drop them off. There’s a load more stuff that needs recycled from the back bedroom, but that can wait until next week.

With that all done, I drove up to Fannyside Moor looking for some inspiration. It came in the form of a bank of cloud lying over the loch. I’ve photographed that tree for many years with many cloudscapes behind it and with varying degrees of success. Today wasn’t one of the best, but it recorded the day.

With that I drove home and started to make dinner. Tonight it was red pasta day. Just a basic sugo with some finely chopped shallots and mushrooms mixed in. Seemed to work well.

Now the dancing. We started with the Saunter Together which I thought we’d mastered, but I was wrong. After a couple of dummy runs we did a passable version of the first part, but the second part still eludes me. Next was Foxtrot and I was confident we’d have that off pat. Again I was wrong. We just kept making mistakes. I got lost. Scamp was determined to turn the opposite way from the one I was trying to turn her in (for once, I was right too!). We just made a pig’s ear of it. Finally the Waltz, and finally we found we could dance that. Not perfectly, but definitely much the best of all tonight’s dances. Only stayed for an hour because our brains were befuddled.

Came home and I sketched tonight’s Burger. I don’t like salad on my burger and I detest mayo on it too, so my burger is a hamburger with a nice piece of melted cheese. If I’m going to have to draw and paint it, I might as well make it the burger I’d actually eat.

So, some successes and some work in progress. Wind seems to have died down a lot after a very stormy night last night. That said, it was sleet that was falling when we were on the way to the dance class tonight.

Tomorrow no real plans. Maybe move the settee round and clear the floor for some Foxtrot practise.

I saw shadows today – 2 February 2020

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It was another of those dull days we’ve grown to accept this January and February. I went out for a walk and saw some shadows.

You don’t get shadows on a dull day. They only appear when there’s direct sunlight. It didn’t last long, but I managed to get a few shots in the time it was there. One of them became PoD and that’s what you see above.

Earlier, in the morning to be more exact, I started to recover the back room from the piles of rubbish and not-so-rubbish that was covering every horizontal surface. I used my usual FKB method. File, Keep, Bin. Some of the stuff was in the Keep box. Some went into the File box, in fact some of the stuff that had been put in the Keep box got moved to the File box in phase 2. The remainder dropped into the Bin which is now overflowing. The bonus from this is that I’ve once again found the top of the chest of drawers and with just a little more work, I’ll be able to sit on the sofa.

Later in the afternoon, I went out in the rain to try to find some photos, that’s when I found the sunlight and grabbed my few shots. Back home I started to make dinner – paella. We were just finishing dinner when Scamp’s phone announced that tonight’s Sunday Social had been cancelled because the Record Factory was hosting a Super Bowl evening instead. I wouldn’t like to be in their shoes when Shannon goes eyeball to eyeball with them tomorrow. That Canadian snarl will freeze them to the floor. Seriously though, 15 minutes before the social was due to start and we get a message to say it’s been cancelled. Somebody somewhere has some explaining to do.

At least it gave me an extra two or three hours to get my February drawing done. Today’s topic was Paris and rather than do the usual and expected Eiffel Tower, I drew one of the gargoyles from Notre Dame. The purists will know that you can’t actually see the Eiffel Tower from this angle, but that’s what artistic licence was designed for.

Tomorrow is a Gems day. I’m hoping for another few minutes of shadows to allow me to grab some more photons.