Category: Dancing

Dancing and New Shoes – 7 July 2019

Posted on by Zogman

Not Dancing IN New Shoes. That would be torture.

It was another of those strange days we’ve been having for some time now.  In the morning the sky is clear and blue, but then before midday the clouds roll in and obscure the sun.  The afternoons are warm but sunless with those same milky white clouds covering all the blue sky.  In the early evening the sky starts clearing and by about 9pm it’s blue sky again.  It happens over and over.  But we shouldn’t complain because at least it’s dry and that in itself is unusual for a Scottish summer.  It looks as if it’s not going to stay that way all week, though.  Heavy rain and the potential for thunderstorms later in the week.  Ah! that’s more like a Scottish summer.

We were going dancing today.  First Sunday in the month is a Sunday Social day and for just now it’s in  the Record Factory in Glasgow and it’s big selling point is the wooden dance floor.  Not exactly a sprung dance floor, but wooden, which is much kinder on the feet and legs than concrete with tiles.  But before that there were photos to take.

I took a walk in St Mo’s in my new Merrell Moab 2 GTXs.  I hadn’t noticed the GTX when I bought them, but they’re alright even if they are cut a bit lower on  the heels to give that Gran Tourismo feel.  Actually, GTX stands for Gore Tex, or so the InterWeb tells me, and it’s never, well rarely, well actually quite often wrong.  Anyway, the decision was made this morning that the label gets cut off and the shoes are free to travel untrammeled across the length and breadth of the country, or at least over to St Mo’s.  Got some pics of beasties there.  Fifty Four photos to be exact, but acutally they were reduced to Nine by my swingeing cuts to the not-so-good ones.  Still, tonight the icon showed the first signs that the battery was starting to become depleted and would need refilling with electrons soon after taking over 130 shots.  That’s pretty good going for a non-OEM battery.  I’m impressed.  One of the final nine, a Large Red Damselfly became PoD.

Went dancing in The Record Factory and actually got asked to dance by three, yes, THREE ladies.  Now that might have been because there weren’t a lot of men around, but I think it because of my stylish moves and dashing good looks.  Believe that if you will!  It was a good night, although there weren’t many dancers of either sex strutting their stuff.

So tomorrow I’ve a doc’s appointment to check my new medication (Cheapo pills) are working and the rest of the day is our own to do with as we will.  Hoping to bag some sunshine while it lasts!

 

 

Dancin’ – 3 July 2019

Posted on by Zogman

Today we were dancing again without the torture, almost.

For once we didn’t get picked up on every single wrong footed mistake. That’s only because Michael exited after the Jive session, leaving Anne-Marie to teach the Waltz and Quickstep session. It was much more interesting without the Chief Torturer’s nit picking. I can’t say it was any more perfect than our norm, but it was far less stressful than last week.

I got today’s PoD in Glasgow, walking back from Nero where we had our post practise debrief. It is, of course, outside the GOMA. To paraphrase Findlay Napiers “Down there at the GOMA where all the weirdos go …” All human life is there and a few that will never be human.

I’d already had a walk in St Mo’s earlier today, but despite the blue sky and some sunshine, I didn’t get anything interesting.

Scamp drove us in to Salsa tonight, but I think I had been trying too hard to keep my back straight and my head up in Blackfriars during the afternoon and as a result I had to give up halfway through the 7.30 class because my back was aching. Sat in the car and guzzled a couple of paracetamol which took away most of the pain.

Tomorrow we have no plans, other than waiting in for my batteries to arrive.

Recovery – 1 July 2019

Posted on by Zogman

Today we attempted to recover from yesterday’s dancing excesses.

In the morning we drove in to The Fort to see if they had any trainers in Sports Direct that looked as if they would last a week on my feet. They did have, but not in the right size. Saw a few others that might fit the bill, but need more investigation. We’ll see how far and wide I need to cast my net while still holding on to my basic rules:

  1. They must be comfortable.
  2. They must have a decent tread on the sole.
  3. They must be waterproof but breathable.
  4. They must cost no more than a tenner.

Ok, I’m flexible on rule 4. I realise that it’s probably not feasible to tick off the first three rules for a pair of trainers costing £10, so I will go as far as £15. Surely I’ll get a good pair for that!

Back home I farted around for a while doing nothing in particular for as long as possible. I did manage to clear the dining table for Scamp and also cleaned the downstairs toilet while she did the bathroom. I’d thought of going over to St Mo’s to grab some photos in the sunshine, but instead I just had time before making the dinner to get some photos of Scamp’s sweet peas which are just flowering and well ahead of my garden peas which are not doing very well at all. The PoD was one of the lilac coloured flowers on a dark background, but Scamp preferred this one, so it became PoB (Picture of the Blog). The dark PoD is on Flickr.  Dinner was spaghetti with pesto, and yes, I did wash my hands after cleaning the toilet before I made the dinner!

Ordered a 14mm lens from WEX and instead of paying to have it delivered here tomorrow, I’m having it delivered free to the WEX shop in Glasgow. That means we can pick it up of Wednesday after Michael’s Torture Class.

Salsa tonight was a killer after yesterday’s marathon. The ‘advanced’ class were re-learning Setenta Visa-Versa, and a few others of that era. Today’s new moves were Angel (named on my suggestion for the Angel Falls in Venezuela) and Gabriel. Now I realised at the end of the night that Angel finishes with a Setenta and Gabriel starts with a Setenta. Does that mean the we can seamlessly join the two together and call the new move Angel Gabriel? Is this Jamie Gal’s masterplan?

Tomorrow is supposed to be dry and partly cloudy. We have no plans for what to do with it yet.

You shall go to the ball. – 30 June 2019

Posted on by Zogman

Some days centre around food. This one centred around dancing.

Today was the day of the Salsa Summer Ball. We missed it last year because we were on our way back from our cruise. This year we were determined to go. Before that there were photos to take.

Went for a walk in St Mo’s in the afternoon with the Oly 10 and a macro lens. Despite the sunshine and probably because of the gusty wind there weren’t many insects posing for their close-ups. I did grab a few shots of a hoverfly, Eupeodes corollae feeding on a cow parsley head. Tried a few shots with the on-camera flash with some success.

After the photos were in the computer, it was time to get ready for the dancin’. Drove down to the Record Factory in Byres Road and couldn’t find a space anywhere. Finally got one a couple of streets over. By the time we got to the place, the ball was in full swing. Danced all night from about 7pm until just after 10pm, almost non-stop. Great fun apart from Alex and Valeria’s show off LA Salsa routine which apparently was fantastic, but not being a fan, I didn’t think so. Worse was a Balkans (or was that Falklands) dance presented and taught by Samira. Not my favourite person either. It looked like all peasant dances, boring. Maybe you had to have come from the Balkans (or the Falklands) to appreciate what finer points there were in it.

Scamp and I did a bit of a tutorial of our own with a Polish(?) couple. The bloke was flummoxed by Dile Que No. After a few demonstrations and a bit of leading from Scamp, I think he got it.

Scamp really got into the swing of things by getting her arm painted. I did actually think of getting my face painted, but held off from that extravagance.

Arrived home around 11pm and watched an interesting Austrian GP were Verstappen managed to just steal a win from the new Ferrari wonder boy Leclerc. After that, totally exhausted we went to bed.

Tomorrow a lazy day with hopefully some dancing at night to ease the aches in our legs and backs.

Of course this is written as a catch-up!

The Rubber Ear – 26 June 2019

Posted on by Zogman

Went dancing today. Almost came home with a black monkey.

It was all going swimmingly to start with. We’d covered the Seven Deadly Spins, and the Timestep. We’d even almost completed the Clap Back. In fact, the Jive wasn’t giving us too many problems. Then came the Waltz which we thought we were doing quite well. Even when one of the other group stepped onto the dance floor, I managed to dance around them. We actually danced for a whole song without a stop and almost without missing a beat. Of course, Michael wasn’t watching us then. When he did decide to watch us we made a few mistakes that’s when he pounced. First he told me I wasn’t dragging my foot in the proper way the waltz. I told him I was. He ignored me. Next I was told that I wasn’t looking where I was going and needed to lift my head. I was getting angry now. I told him straight to his face that I was looking where I was going, that was how I saw I needed to take avoiding action in the last dance. He ignored me again. Michael is deaf in one ear, but I believe he uses that as an excuse when he doesn’t want to hear something. Next was Quickstep, but to be honest I knew he’d find fault in that too. I gave up and just agreed with everything he said then told Scamp I’d had enough.

I get annoyed when I make a mistake and someone sees it, most folk do. I get really angry when I get accused of doing something I know I didn’t do and then get ignored when I argue against it. Even Scamp was ignored when she defended me. In CassArt you can buy an eraser shaped like an ear. I’m going to buy one for Michael. Just in case his usual ‘Rubber Ear’ isn’t working. One thing he did let slip before I walked off was that we should enter his ‘Strictly’ competition with a rival teacher because after all the criticism, he said we are really good. Scamp reckons we are being groomed to be his star pupils for a competition. That might just be what all this serious nit picking is about. Unfortunately for him, it’s not going to happen.

As you can imagine, I came out blazing mad. Thankfully halfway up the hill to the car park we passed a couple about the same age as us. They were having an argument and at that moment I felt the wee black monkey I’d been carrying, leave me for another host! The sun shone even brighter and I felt much better.  Glad I’ve got that out of my system now!

The rest of the afternoon went much better. Went to Tesco to get the makings of a salad and then grabbed my camera and went for a walk in St Mo’s. Got a host of photos, most of which are destined for the bin, but a few ended up on Flickr. The best one of the day and PoD is the red rose Alec’s Red. My brother gave it to us as a wedding present, although I’d guess it was my mum who picked it as Alex would be about 11 when we got married. It’s grown in every garden we’ve had and it still flowers every year. The perfume is exquisite.

Sat in the garden with a beer after dinner soaking up the sun.

Tomorrow it’s a early rise and then out to go to the hospital for a routine check up for me. Hopefully it will be ok and the we will be able to enjoy another beautiful day.

It Rained – 24 June 2019

Posted on by Zogman

It didn’t rain all day, but when it did, you knew about it!

Didn’t do much this morning. It was just one of those days. I ordered another camera strap from the Cordweaver bloke. He makes such a neat job of them, it’s simply not worth your time learning to weave the paracord.

In the afternoon I dragged myself out for a walk with the E-M1 to see if there were any beasties out looking for a photog to take their foties. They found me. Spiders were the prey today and some scary ones too. The yellow and black striped one was looking decidedly scary, but then black and yellow are the warning colours in nature aren’t they? Wasted lots of shots today trying things that would never work, but it’s just part of the learning curve with a new camera. I really need to catalog what the four storage areas are holding in terms of camera settings. I know what they do, but I need to use a spreadsheet to save the details of HOW they do it.

Drove in to Glasgow to Salsa through some really torrential rain. It didn’t last long, but it certainly was heavy. Even with the wipers on double speed they were struggling to clear the deluge. Salsa with the beginners class was interesting and fairly easy, but the advanced class were few in number and unlike last Wednesday, especially few in men. Jamie actually cajoled Megan and Andrew to join in as leaders. Last week’s twisty turny move got a new name: Boda. And of course there was a new, new one which hasn’t got a name yet. The advanced class is becoming a bit stale. New moves that very few people will dance at socials and too many new moves for my poor wee brain to retain. Maybe we just need a holiday in the sun. Yes, that would be nice.

Lightroom is being a bugger again. Forgetting where to put photos and forgetting which are its default settings. Tonight I reset the .plist and that helped a bit, but didn’t fix all the problems. It actually caused a few more problems! Most are fixed now, but since the main reason I use Lightroom is to catalog my photos, if it doesn’t do the cataloguing, then it’s not really much use. I’ll go search the InterWeb for a solution tomorrow. That’s what I did last time and I fixed it, so a solution is out there, I just have to fix it.

Tomorrow I have to sort June’s birthday prezzy and then it’s coffee with the boys.

Dancing and The Wullies – 19 June 2019

Posted on by Zogman

The dancing was in Glasgow and the Wullies were of the “Oor” variety and were everywhere in Glasgow.

Spent the morning making a set of Wales photos to go into a gallery on this website. They aren’t quit ready yet, but hopefully they will be soon. After lunch we drove in to Blackfriars for a torturing class of ballroom and jive.

It wasn’t that the moves were difficult, or even new. It was just that we’d had Wales and walks in our heads for the last week, with no time for dancing or dancing practise. Now it was all a blur again. At least that’s what it seemed like for me. Jive didn’t jell. Waltz didn’t flow as it should and although Quickstep was better than the other two, it too wasn’t “Our finest hour” as Scamp described it. A cup of coffee afterwards helped with the pain, but a lot of practise is needed before next week.

Then, there were the “Wullies”. They were everywhere we looked. They were painted “Oor Wullies”, made of fibreglass and larger than life size. After some research when we got home, I discovered there were 59 of them dotted around Glasgow and the West. The first one we saw, and my favourite so far is Oor Charles, modelled on Charles Rennie Macintosh. I got a few more, but Oor Charles got PoD. If this paragraph made no sense to you, then:

  1. You should read the Sunday Post, just the comics page though.
  2. Wait until we get to The Broons.

Salsa tonight for me was only about the 6.30 class. The 7.30 class was oversubscribed in leaders, so I was superfluous and took myself out to be doorkeeper. That’s where I wrote most of this blog. The Intermediate class at 6.30 were doing Pachangero which is one of Scamp’s favourite moves. They are a really good class and most of them are picking up the moves really quickly. Scamp drove tonight which made life a lot easier for me. Thanks S.

Tomorrow we have no plans. Maybe go for some messages!

Catching up – 17 June 2019

Posted on by Zogman

I was up about 7.30 this morning firing up the computer and burning my fingers on my bowl of porridge.

And the reason I was up at that ungodly hour was to get the blogs posted and the photos uploaded to Flickr. By about 4pm it was all sorted. Although I must admit I did stop to take some photos and to have lunch. Also managed to get some essentials, milk and bread from Tesco. Other than that, it was computer-catch-up today.  Scamp was out all day enjoying herself while I was busy beavering away. But now we are sorted. The PoDs have been uploaded for the world to gaze at in admiration. The golden words have been pouring from my keyboard and you lucky readers can now follow us on our travels through Wet Wales. I hope you enjoy the stories and pictures.

Went dancing tonight to Jamie Gal’s mad class where we learned a new move from last week called mysteriously “New Move” there was also the “Walking Shoulder” move. That one trips off the tongue, now, doesn’t it? Finally there was a reprise of an older move called Lotus or Lotis, not sure which. Altogether a confusing evening of salsa. Confusing but fun, though as all his classes are.

<Technospeak>
PoD was a focus stacked shot of a Schoolgirl rose that I pruned today. Oh yes, that’s another thing I did today, I dead-headed some of the roses. So focus stacking is where you take a load of shots of an object with the camera on a tripod. After every shot you change the focus very slightly so you get a series of ‘slices’ of the object. When you’ve got enough (seven in this case), you bundle them all into a piece of clever software (ON1 Photo Raw 2019) and it layers them all together and deletes all the out of focus bits to leave a composite image that looks totally sharp from front to back. I don’t know the exact method for the rebuild, but I believe it’s all done by tiny little men (and women) who snip all the sharp bits out and reassemble them like a very complicated jigsaw puzzle. The main thing is it works. That’s how I made today’s PoD.
</Technospeak>

No plans for tomorrow, but I’m hoping to get out for a while. Out in the open air and away from the computer.

Venison, Dancers and that railway walk again – 14 June 2019

Posted on by Zogman

Time to get your feet wet!

JIC and Sim were off into Aberystwyth for supplies so we had the morning to do as we pleased. Heavy rain last night had swollen the burn that runs down the side of the house, that meant it was just screaming out for a slow-shutter series of photos. Dragged the tripod out of the car and got started. About fifty shots later I was done. It was one of the fifty that got PoD. I got my boots wet, but thankfully my feet stayed dry.

Time to start prepping for tonight’s dinner which would be Venison Casserole. We’d brought the slow-cooker with us along with a kilo of venison from the butcher in Muirhead. There would be nine for dinner tonight. Eight for venison with Scamp preferring he non-meat ‘Rats’. Nine in total because Madeleine had invited an old school friend of hers with her husband to spend the day with them and have dinner. That’s why I was prepping the casserole just before lunch.

After the slow cooker was doing its thing, and lunch had been served to Madeleine and her guests, we minions left for one last long walk. This time we were going all the way along the railway before turning up the hill and heading for high ground where we hoped we’d get a good view. We got to the end of the railway and started to turn up the hill when Sim called a halt. There were bullocks and cows in the field we were in and she didn’t know how Vixen would react to them, so we turned round and went all the way down the hill towards a river ford. About three quarters of the way down we heard a dog barking. Again we stopped while an expeditionary force went to investigate. We couldn’t find any sign of dogs, but there were a couple of houses and everyone down here seemed to have dogs of some description, so we aborted that route and headed back along the railway line then up that bloody hill again.

Madeleine was holding court in the kitchen when we got back and after we’d got cleaned up and changed, we finalised the cooking of the dinner while they chatted noisily in the background. Dinner was well received, as well it should have been. Then we found out that we had a lot in common with the two visitors. He, Peter, had been a college lecturer and head of department. Both he and Alison were ballroom and Latin dancers. We shared tales of Fishtails and Turkish Towels. Overall it was a good night. After that it was time to start the packing and we really got most of it done with just enough time left for a last drink with no TV, then it was time for bed and a long drive for all of us the tomorrow.

Private lesson – 5 June 2019

Posted on by Zogman

Private lesson for two couples

Drove in to Glasgow through some torrential rain to find that there were only four of us, just two couples. We had a whole hour with teacher Ann Marie while the other couple had one of the experts, Heather. The great thing about Ann Marie is that she asks you what you want to do and then goes over that in detail. So, not only a private lesson, but an own design private lesson. We went over some of the Jive steps that were bugging us and then we ironed out my problems with the fish-tails and running steps in Quickstep. We also learned the Two Handed Cuff and improved on our Bumps in Jive. Came home after a coffee in Nero to give us some time to review the lesson.

Later in the afternoon I took a couple of cameras over to St Mo’s and everything fell apart. Not only did the camera start to vastly over-expose, but then it got itself stuck in electronic shutter mode and wouldn’t come back out again. Nothing I did would make it work. It all started when I stuck on the Samyang 7.5mm and the image started shaking and jumping in the viewfinder. After that, nothing would work again. Eventually I gave up and came home. Finally got it to do a full reset, after which it was back to normal and working well. I think the Samyang had messed with one of the esoteric settings I’d set up over the last week and the full reset put everything back to normal. Scary time though. I had visions of an irate phone call to Brighton followed by parcelling up the new ‘Toy off the Rack’ and sending back. Neither of these are now necessary … I hope. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.  So, no PoD from that visit to St Mo’s, but luckily I’d taken a walk around the block earlier in the day and got a couple of shots of Scamp’s alliums from the path at the back of the house and that’s what achieved PoD.

After the drama of the camera, I did some painting. Today’s challenge was meant to be Seashells, but the only shells I could find were snail’s shells, so that was what I painted. Even worse was that I only could find one shell, so it was one shell in two positions. Tomorrow’s target is Something Shiny.

It’s been a day of mixed weather.  Occasional sunny spells and occasional heavy rain showers, but for the most part it’s just been plain dull with heavy clouds.  Hopefully it will be better tomorrow.

No Salsa tonight because teacher Jamie is still down in deepest England doing sciency things at a science festival.

Out early tomorrow to give a few drops of blood to be sent over to Monklands hospital for checking by the consultant. Nothing else planned.