Category: Dancing

Dancing, Dancing, but not all the day – 2 May 2018

Posted on by Zogman

Today we’d agreed to go to ballroom and jive, but not salsa, just in case it was a Shannon Show, all ‘Oo La La’ and ‘Happy Chests’ (Don’t ask). As it happened, we needn’t have worried as Will took both classes. So, here’s how the day unfolded.

Sat and worked through some of the tutorial videos for the new RAW processing software in the morning and am much better pleased with it now. It’s a real pity they didn’t get some of the YouTube tutors to produce their advertising videos. Then I’d have decided much quicker to give this software a try. It’s only when you get down to the nuts and bolts of a program explained by somebody who knows what they are talking about that you see its full potential. No need for tacky music and faked up special effects. It seems like a much better program now.

Drove in to Glasgow to go to the Ballroom Duet. Waltz was good and I think we passed with flying colours. Now we’re on to the small details. Big Steps and Rise and Fall. Using the Frame and Using the Core. Enjoyed it and also starting to get to grips with the Jive routines. Things are looking up at last. Next week will be a desert of dancing. No Salsa on Monday as the STUC is closed for the May holiday and no ballroom on Wednesday because both teachers are on holiday. We’ll just have to move the couch back and dance round the living room.

After we left Blackfriars we went for a coffee in Nero in Queen Street and noticed a degree of activity around the GOMA. On further investigation, it turned out that it was a film company doing a little bit of location shooting. I’ve no idea who the ’star’ was, but she most definitely thought she was a ’STAR’! Took a few photos and walked back to the car, but not before we stood and watched the giant demolition machine that was biting lumps out of the old hotel in front of Queen Street Station like a gigantic prehistoric monster. Scary looking thing.

When we came home the sun was shining so I grabbed the Nikon bag and took a walk around St Mo’s. Got the PoD which is of a tree climbing snail that only seem to climb the ash trees. After a bit of processing in ON1 and a bit of detailed work in Lightroom it began to look very pretty. It’s not what I saw, it’s what I wanted to see.  Came home through a rain shower to fish ‘n’ chips which were delicious, Scamp!

Hoping my latest lens will arrive by DPD tomorrow. Not new of course, but as good as. I’m looking forward to having a macro lens for my Olys. Up until now I’ve had to rely on a cheap pair of extension tubes. They are made of plastic with metal mounts and are getting worn and as a result letting light in which means I need to do more post-processing.

Other than lens-waiting, we have no plans for tomorrow. Some light gardening perhaps?

You shall go to the ball – 25 April 2018

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I had an idea at 4.30am

I woke at 4.30 this morning with an idea in my head. Today we were hardly going to be in the house. We were off to Glasgow to waltz and jive at midday and we wouldn’t get back until around 4pm. After dinner we were going to be off again to salsa for another couple of hours. We’d out of the house more than in it and wouldn’t notice that the heating was off, so why not cancel the repair to the boiler and re-schedule it for tomorrow. That’s what we did. There was no problem re-scheduling and we both got to dance practise. Simple. I don’t usually get good ideas in the middle of the night, but today I did.

Waltz was good, so good that we got to go on to the next dance which was Quickstep. I was so good at it, that I was too quick for quickstep and had to be slowed down. Michael wasn’t there, it was Ann Marie, his second in command, who took the class and went over the first steps in quickstep. It seems too simple, I’m sure it’s not. Jive was just the reprise of the first routine and also the First Spin of the Seven Spins. Ann Marie was answering questions about a dance this Sunday. The stupidest question was by one girl who asked “See this dance, do WE get to dance too?” Obviously she’d led a sheltered life and had never been to a dance before. They not only walk among us, some of them dance among us too!

On the walk back to the car I grabbed a few shots of the characters outside the Gallery Of Modern Art (GOMA) in Queen Street. My favourite and PoD is at the top of the page.

Salsa tonight was again a lot of fun. We managed three, well, actually two and a half classes tonight and needless to say both our fitbits were registering all green for our activities. I’m quite happy to admit that I was totally shattered coming out of the STUC afterwards. Drove home to a cold house with the hope that the repair man can get the boiler going again tomorrow, because it now won’t even try to start up.

So again the repair man will be knocking on the door between 8am and 12 noon tomorrow. We’ll have to be up and ready. That means an early(ish) bed. G’night!

A sewing day – 23 April 2018

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Today I had intended to do a bit of sewing, because the weather was dull and rainy.

That was in the morning, but after lunch it brightened up a bit. However, it wouldn’t take too long to run up a bag for my dance shoes. Would it? Actually it didn’t take that long after all. I’d already discussed the design with Scamp and had a fair idea how to progress. I had a bit of problem with the stitch tension (should this be under a <Technospeak> warning ;-). I just turned a couple of dials to different numers and it all seemed to settle down. I started out with setting 2 and finished up with setting 3 on both the dials (that was just for me to remind me what I did). The bag is a bit bigger than the original, but that’s not a bad thing. It just means I have more room and it was easier to make the big one than the small one. Still lots of coffee beans left just in case I need something else coffee themed! Thanks Hazy.

Downstairs Gems were practising and for a while I put up with it, but eventually I had to resort to Spotify and a pair of uncomfortable, but great sounding headphones. They did their work and soon Gems and the sewing machine faded under Daily Mix 2.

Later, after my dancing bag was finished, I grabbed the Nikon bag and went for a walk over to St Mo’s. Not a long walk, and there wasn’t much to see, but I did get some macro shots and a PoD which was the green alien at the top of the page. It’s actually a fern frond emerging from the leaf litter. The Sigma 105mm macro lens is really great. The only thing it lacks is anti-shake, but you can’t have everything I suppose.  I got one other photo of interest.  It’s a bunch of Cowslip flowers.  When I was reading the blog for 19th April 2017 I noticed the photo of the flowers.  Then when I was out yesterday there were the same flowers in the same place!  This must be the time of year they flower, even given the fact that everything else in the garden and in the wild is at least a month behind just now.  Just thought you’d like to see them.  Compare them with the shot on 19th April 2017 from the Archive section of the blog.

Salsa tonight was exhausting but good fun. New move was Leoncio Complicado which was a name we both remembered but we didn’t have a record of it in our library, well, we did have but it was a YouTube video, not one of us dancing it, which makes me think that it wasn’t a great success with the class and fell from favour. That’s a pity because it’s quite a stylish move with difficult turns for the leader. We’ll give it another try.

Tomorrow the gas man cometh to give the boiler its annual service. It should be before 1pm. Don’t know what we’ll do with the rest of the day. Weather doesn’t look very promising.

Dancing Day – 18 April 2018

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Today we were better prepared for Michael’s class and I was better prepared for Michael too.

We had one quick possibly three minute practise in the living room before we went in to Glasgow. Just enough to prove to ourselves (i.e. ME) that we had mastered the first run of steps from the Box Step through the Whisk & Wing to the Chasse then on through the difficult (for me) reverse section and the Promenade into the corner. We didn’t have enough room to do the prepare step for the Natural Turn and the turn itself, but we were sure we could wing it (no pun intended).

In Glasgow we were sure we could do it, but I stumbled a bit in the reverse section and that’s when Michael pounced and started to tell me what I had done wrong. I knew what I had done wrong and I also knew that he wasn’t going to give me another lecture that just wasted more of our precious time. I turned to meet him face to face and told him that his constant interruptions were doing more harm than good because it was destroying our flow. I think he needs face to face contact to know that you’re speaking to him, because he does have a hearing problem. I also believe he uses that as a way to ignore you. He didn’t get the chance to ignore me. He agreed, but still showed me what I was doing wrong, I accepted it, but that was the last correction he made in the hour we were there. Maybe he wasn’t best pleased with me speaking back to him, but I don’t care. Both waltz and jive were much better than last week. That doesn’t mean that I can do either with any degree of skill, but we are much better than when we started.

On the way back to the car I got today’s PoD. Well, it’s actually two photos merged in Photoshop. Not the most successful piece of photo manipulation, but not bad. Again, the photos took about five minutes and the post processing took around two hours.

Wednesday dinner is a much more leisurely affair now that we are going to the later salsa classes. On today’s menu was Prawn & Pea Risotto. It was deemed the best I’ve made by the food critics (Scamp and me). I think it was down to the vast amount of butter I used.

In class tonight, we finished with La Rosa, Zorro and Infinity. All rueda moves and all utterly confusing. I imagine these are their real names because Jamie just rhymed them off so quickly. I must look them up some time on YouTube.

Not a bad day and a warm one too with lots of sunshine on offer. Tomorrow looks like being even better, so we may go out somewhere nice.

Burnt Water – 17 April 2018

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Coffee with Fred today. Lots of stuff to discuss.

This was a change of day for us. Usually we’re there on Thursday or occasionally Friday. This week it was Tuesday. We’d books to exchange and TV programs to criticise and building control department to castigate for messing up Fred’s daughter’s extension. Basically we just complained about stuff for a couple of hours, then agreed that we’d had a good natter.

Came out of that dive with the sour taste of the last cup of something described as ‘coffee’, but was really burnt water, or so it felt to me. Went to get some gardening and painting stuff:

  • Seed potatoes. Charlotte, one of Scamp’s favourite varieties.
  • Twine to make a climbing frame for Scamp’s broad beans.
  • Tester paint pots to use as cheap gesso for painting boards

Came home to a slightly rearranged garden again and had it explained to me. I’m sure I’ll forget the finer details, but I have the basic idea of what was achieved while I was out drinking burnt water.

Since Scamp was making dinner I had some time to go and get a photo or two in St Mo’s. Like yesterday, today was a mixture of sunshine and showers. What we used to expect in April a few years ago before the jet stream started messing around with our weather. With that thought in my mind I grabbed my jacket and camera bag and went to see what I could see. What I saw was somebody sitting on a seat looking out over the BMX track and thought it would make a decent shot, especially if I reduced it to mono and darkened the sky, cropped it and … So I took a few shots from different positions and exposure setting. Walked round the pond after that, but saw nothing else interesting.

After dinner (Chicken with a mushroom and shallot sauce since you’re asking), I started to process the pics. About two hours later, after a fair bit of swearing, I finally exported the finished result into Flickr. Takes about two or three minutes to take the shots and two hours to make the picture. The new software I’m using on trial is ON1 2018 and it is very flash, a bit heavy on special effects and unable to export without crashing (twice). I may not shell out the $69 for the pleasure of beta testing their dodgy software for them.

We did manage a bit of dance practise tonight again. Just the waltz, but I’m happier with it after yesterday and today. We’ll see how it goes tomorrow.

Tomorrow is dancing day!

The bird that evolution passed by – 16 April 2018

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Today started off a bit cloudy, then the sun shone.

It didn’t stay for long though. The day soon degenerated to the usual cloudy with the threat of some rain and very short sunny spells. However, the temperature was high enough to convince me to go out for a walk while Gems were practising.

Drove down to Auchinstarry, parked and walked along the canal in sunshine. Grabbed some photos of some Tufted ducks. Then walked across the plantation and on to Dumbreck Marshes where I found today’s PoD. The brightly coloured pheasant is one of the stupidest of Scotland’s birds. I really do not know why they are not extinct. This one must have seen me wearing a bright blue anorak, but did it fly away? No it did not. It ran away in front of me then went back to feeding turning away from me all the time. I think they must be related to ostriches because the do the equivalent of sticking their head in the sand. They just turn away from you because, as everyone knows, if they can’t see you, you’re not there. Eventually it did fly for about fifty yards before crashing back down again. Maybe their brains are so small they can’t work out how to make the transition from walking to flying. That’s the problem with having a single core brain. Even if it had a dual core it could make the leap from running to flying. The bird that evolution passed by. Maybe more dodo than ostrich. Nice colours though.

Came back and made pesto pasta for dinner. Then it was time for dancing.

Managed a few minutes in an empty room at the STUC for some ballroom practise. I think I’ve finally got the idea of the walking backward part of the waltz. Hopefully it will be good enough for Michael on Wednesday.

Advanced 1 was quite interesting and the class were doing well with Niagra. Advanced 2 did Setenta e Jani (pronounce ‘yani’). I’m not sure I’ve actually mastered this one yet. Time will tell. After that it was Enchufe Moderno which I’ve totally forgotten and something called ‘The New One’. Good fun though.

Just found out that I picked up a tick today. First one this year, in fact, first one for a long time. Little bugger was sitting under my watch strap. A common place to find them.

Tomorrow I’m meeting Fred for coffee. Nobody else is available.

Dancing on an empty floor – 15 April 2018

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Up early to watch an exciting Chinese GP. Yes, really. Exciting!

Up early, well around 9am to watch the Chinese GP. For once it was worth getting out of bed for. Great tussle between the top teams with lots of ill will on the part of most of them. My, what spoilt brats they are.

Spoke to Hazy for a while after that and then went to work in the garden. No, really. I did actually do some creative work for a change. I built up the frame for Scamp’s broad beans to grow on. Unfortunately we couldn’t find any gardeners green twine, so the actual net the will climb on is not in place yet. Not my problem mate. I didn’t put it away. I’ll get some new twine tomorrow. With the work part completed, I skedaddled to St Mo’s to get some photos.

There wasn’t much doing across the road, but I did get one photo of a coot standing on its nest. The nest looked almost as untidy as my ‘bean frame’. PoD went to a macro shot of a tiny wee spider on a tree trunk. It could only have been 3mm long. Most impressed with the result from my pair of extension tubes.  The down side, or maybe not is that the orange ladybirds I’ve been tracking have disappeared.  Flown the coop, I hope.  Hopefully if they were egg laying earlier in the week, I’ll see the results next year.

Came home and started the prep for dinner which was to be 5 A Day Chicken with Pesto. It should have been pistachio pesto, but Scamp’s avoidance of any nuts meant that I substituted pine nuts for pistachios. Apparently pine nuts aren’t really nuts at all and can be used in place of ‘real’ nuts. I was only doing the prep, because I’d spent too long in the Land of St Mo and, as we were strapped for time to get in to Glasgow to go dancing, we’d have to have our dinner after we came back.

The dungeon that is Arta was almost empty when we got there. Apparently Cameron was holding an event in competition with AdS and Rangers were getting gubbed by Celtic (as usual) and most of the guys would be there or else be too inebriated to dance. It did brighten up a bit later, or to be more precise, more people arrived. Nobody could ever call it bright. We did have a few dances and both of us tried out moves we’ve learned in the past few weeks. We really should go out more often just to practise some of our moves.

Came home and I made the dinner which turned out better than I’d hoped, but there was a lot of garlic in the mixture. Possibly (definitely) too much. Needs some tweaking, but then again don’t most recipes. Just to get them working like you imagine they should taste.

Tomorrow looks good if the weather fairies are correct. If it turns out as predicted, I’ll go for a walk along the canal. If not, then I’ll go to the gym.

Two left feet again – 11 April 2018

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Today it was waltz that was causing more problems than the jive, but really neither was perfect.

Drove in to a monochrome, cold Glasgow. There was nothing interesting to photograph. I tried some shots of the demolition of Queen Street Station, but it just looked like the bomb site it is. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do and you’ve just got to realise it.

Ok, let’s start with the waltz. I got really fed up with the teacher nit picking about not turning quickly enough, or my hand not being quite right on Scamp’s back. Yes, I know that you need to know these things, but constantly stopping us isn’t the right way to do it. Sometimes you just have to let people get through the bit they know they’re not doing right and allow them to attempt the next part. I know he’s the teacher, but so was I and I probably taught for longer than he has. It was really getting me angry and the angrier I got, the more mistakes I made. I was beginning to regret spending money on a tutorial weekend we’d booked for next January. I know I need practise, but I can only get that practise once a week, in this class and then I have it interrupted because I’m not turning while I’m walking backwards or some other minor detail. It doesn’t help that the room is too small, there’s a piano and speakers in the far end where we’re trying to learn to turn and the other couples just seem to wander across the line of dance when we’re dancing down it … badly in my case.

Jive. This was much better than last week. I think I mastered the basic leaders step and almost mastered the ‘Loop’. I think that’s its name. If I’m wrong, I’m sure Scamp will correct me. Actually enjoyed it. The more I think about it, the more I believe that it IS the hall that’s the problem as you’re not travelling in the jive. It, like salsa is done almost on the spot. Anyway, at least that was an improvement. Just at the end of the class, I got a phone call from the shop I took the laptop to, to tell me that the price had been set for it and it was more than I was expecting. Sale complete, money should be in the bank by the weekend!

Salsa was good fun. Relaxing and just plain enjoyable.

Today’s PoD turned out to be a Poinsettia leaf that’s still attached to the plant Scamp got from one of Gems early in December last year. The plant’s still growing although there are only a few leaves left now.

Scamp’s going for coffee with Isobel tomorrow morning, so I may paint.

You’ve NOT got mail – 9 April 2018

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Wasted an hour today trying to get Windows 10 Mail to work with my blog account.

Mickysoft, here’s an idea: If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.

Windows 7 worked superbly. Still does on Scamp’s laptop. Microsoft fixed it with Windows 8.
Windows 8, the great white wonder was a great white disaster. People just went back to Windows 7, supported or not.
Windows 10 was the biggest con in technology. It was free, but you now no longer own or control your computer, Microsoft does. Big, buggy, bloatware.
Windows Live Writer was a great little piece of blogging software. Windows 10 killed it.
Windows Live Mail was an ok email program until the latest Windows 10 upgrade killed it.
Now we are stuck with Windows Mail. It’s an absolute bastard to work with. It simply does not work. It tells you you are connected and everything is ok, then it decides that your password is wrong. It’s not wrong, the software is wrong. Will they fix it? I doubt it. Going back to Gmail on the Linx. Windows Mail isn’t worth the effort.

Went out for a walk down the Luggie to clear my head after the technology overload. Found some toads making more toads in a pond besides the bridge and that’s what became PoD. It was a lovely day with warm sunshine and just a gentle breeze. Daffies are flowering and it feels like spring.

Salsa tonight was hard work. I don’t know why, it just was. It should have been fairly easy in the level 4 class, but the heat was building as it usually does in that small room and there was no fan tonight. Advanced class wasn’t just as bad as we were in the big hall with greater air flow. However, I still felt it was a drag. We discussed it on the way home and maybe Scamp is right that Jamie is trying too hard to come up with new moves every week. Maybe we should be going back to older, more polished moves that really work. Maybe too, he has too much going on in his life to devote all his time to salsa. Who knows. Glad we’ve got ballroom dancing to fall back on too. It’s new, but there seems to be a progression that works. One of the girls from the advanced class was in a ballroom competition and we were watching the video of her waltz and it looked very swish. That’s what we are aiming for. Aye Right!

Scamp is out tomorrow for coffee with one of her witches. I think I’ll try to do a final clean out of the Tosh laptop and take it up to the second hand shop and sell it. May even find time to go for a run on the Dewdrop!

Dancing, dancing, all the day – 28 March 2018

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“Shoes to set my feet a dancing” definitely help too.

Wet start to the day, but there was little chance of us having any free time anyway, so weather took a back seat. After feeding my sourdough starter we fed ourselves and it was time for the first dance classes of the day. Have I mentioned the sourdough starter? I’ll try to write a bit about it tomorrow. Today is about dancing.

First class is waltz. Very demanding for me, but I feel I’m getting there now. A practise session with Scamp yesterday helped greatly. The biggest help was the lesson last week with Michael’s second-in-command. Today the boss was back and I think we both did well under his eagle eye. I really believe it’s easier dancing with proper dance shoes rather than ordinary street shoes or trainers. I’ve been dancing salsa wearing trainers for years and never bothered with ballroom shoes, but for some reason, waltz especially is much easier (or less difficult) when I’m wearing those uncomfortable dance shoes.

I was on dinner duty tonight and as Scamp reminded me that we hadn’t had our dose of pasta this week, decided to make another attempt at Spaghetti dello Chef. This time I used spaghetti, garlic, chilli flakes, capers, tomatoes and sun-dried tomatoes. Served with parmesan shavings. Not as good as last week in my opinion, but Scamp said it just tasted different.

The change of plan tonight was to go to the 7.30 and 8.30 classes. Ooh, staying up late! That is much better than having to face Shannon’s boringly repetitive routines and trying to keep a smile on my face. It’s dull, dull, dull, dear. Salsa should be fun, exciting and vibrant, all the things your classes aren’t. We got there earlier than I’d anticipated, so Scamp got to dance for about ten minutes at the end of Jamie’s 6.30 class which was oversubscribed by men as usual. I just stayed in the class and typed up the first half of this blog post on my phone. The 8.30 class was a revelation. For a level 3 class they were brilliant. I think we may make this a regular occurrence.

Today’s PoD was a grab shot of a fat pigeon sitting on the fence at the back garden. I liked the shadows cast by the tree on its plumage. Just a grab shot through the kitchen window.

Tomorrow it’s coffee with Fred and Colin because Val has shingles. Poor guy.