Category: Dancing

Golden Light – 19 December 2016

Posted on by Zogman

Today dawned, like the rest with a dull, grey cloudy sky.  It didn’t look as if it was going to get any better and it lived up to that promise, in fact it got worse.  A heavy mist came down obliterating any view that had been there.

I decided to make the best of the day and print off a first copy of my 2017 calendar.  Unfortunately, El Capitan doesn’t want to work with my Canon ip4500 printer.  Canon don’t want to supply a driver and Apple don’t care about any hardware more than seven years old as I already know.  A quick search of the internet confirmed my suspicions that there is no workaround for the problem, apart from buying a new printer.  I did manage to get the calendar printed by converting my Pages file into a PDF and using this to print it off on my old Tosh laptop.  A laptop much more than seven years old.  Despite my disappointment, or maybe because of it, I drove in to Glasgow hoping that Staples could supply me with a magenta cartridge for my ancient printer.  They could at £16.95.  Rather expensive when you find that Amazon can supply a three cart set for £26.  So Stalples is going out of business?  I think I can see why.  I didn’t buy their overpriced cart.  One interesting thing I found out is that Epson sell a 3 in 1 printer for £189, complete with two years’ worth of ink  No more dinky ink cartridges, this thing works with bottles of ink.  It sounds like a good investment as long as Apple don’t make it obsolete halfway through my second or third bottle of ink.  I’m really beginning to become pissed off with Apple’s devotion to designed obsolescence.  I may bite the bullet and go back to Mickysoft.  It’s slow and sluggish, but at least the OS just works.  Something I used to say about Apple, but not any longer.

When I was driving home my mood was lifted by the golden light making everything glow.  Now, that’s more like it.  The clouds had blown away, the mist had lifted and the sun was setting with a beautiful glancing light.  Instead of heading straight home, I took the road less travelled and with better views of the landscape.  That’s where the photo of the trees came from.  Even the mist earlier in the day had produced the water beads on the car roof and gave me one shot in the bag before I left for Glasgow.

Salsa tonight was a Christmas Extravaganza, one of JamieGal’s specialities with dancing, games, glow-sticks, silly hats and prizes.  He’d previously issued an open invitation to dancers past and present, from our school and from any other and none and there was a great party spirit.  Fun for all, that’s just his way.  Brilliant.  One of the best teachers I’ve had the pleasure to meet.

Tomorrow?  Maybe a swim.

Dull Day, Dynamite Dancing – 18 December 2016

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What a dull day.  From time we got up until dusk, the sky was a dull overall grey and the light levels were atrocious.  As a result, we didn’t go anywhere in the morning.

We were going in to salsa in the afternoon, the last one of the year, and as we hadn’t moved for the early part of the day, we decided to go in early and make the most of the uplifting salsa.  We did really need that uplift today.  Also for a change Scamp suggested that we park at Cowcaddens and walk up Sausageroll street to the Garage.  Since this is panto season and the Garage is a block away from one of the biggest pantomime venues, it is alway a problem getting on street parking in December.  Great idea.  So that is what we did.  We parked at Cowcaddens, walked around town for a while and then landed in Cuba at the Garage.

Excellent music and energy from everyone there.  Couldn’t have felt any different from the dull drab weather outside.  Had a brilliant time as always and came out almost two hours later feeling on top of the world.  Salsa does that for me.

Dinner was soup, Hake with broccoli and potato wedges followed by creme caramel, then Guinness Cake with chocolate sauce and cream.  That must have put back all the calories I lost in the Garage.

No plans for tomorrow, but I might go for a swim if I’ve got time.

A day of nothing done – 14 December 2016

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Today was a lazy day.  Scamp’s meeting with Nancy was called off as the trains from Larky were also off.  Jackie left to head back up to Skye and texted us when she was on the bus to say that Mairi had passed her driving test first time!  Congrats to her.  I don’t know if she’d dare to ask her dad if she could borrow the car tonight!  We drove to Bishopbriggs to get some essential stuff.

Made the decision to donate my Tamron 18-200mm lens to Val.  His need is greater than mine and it might just brighten his day.

Salsa at night was great, although as an aftermath of the Salsa Ball on Sunday, the classes were small.  Had great fun.  JamieG was looking for Christmas songs – salsa style for the extravaganza of parties next week.  Good luck with that.

I don’t suppose it was a day of nothing done, really.  Oh and today’s photo is Fairy Nuff who lives in my cabinet most of the year and spreads her own kind of magic from her place on the tree at Christmas.  That’s Christmas with a ‘C’.

Ice and a Fiery Temper – 5 December 2016

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Woke this morning to sub-zero temperatures, ok it was -0.7º, but it was below zero and that counts.

By the time I got up and showered, the temp had risen to just above zero and it was brightening up nicely, so I wrapped up warm and grabbed the Nikon to go get some photos of the urban deer.  It was a good plan,  the only thing missing was the aforementioned deer.  They weren’t to be seen.  Imagine that, they were up and out before me!  Amazing.  Got some photos of some backlit weeds – backlighting is always good in the low winter sun.  When we were in Glasgow yesterday, I was sort of admiring some photos by a photog who was using 00 gauge figures in a variety of situations.  ‘Sort of’ because I wasn’t impressed with the actual photos which were unremarkable, but I’d forgotten about my own attempts with these tiny figures.  I kept seeing situations this morning where I could pose my mini-men.  I’m intending digging them out tonight and having a go at some mini-men scenarios tomorrow when I have the house to myself.

Photos turned out better than I’d hoped.  I think my favourite was the skating Coot.  It reminded me of the painting “Revd Dr Robert Walker (1755 – 1808) Skating on Duddingston Loch” by Sir Henry Raeburn (Google it).  It doesn’t really look like it, it just reminds me of it.  That was my favourite, but PoD goes to the frozen feather.

This afternoon when Gems were doing their singing practise I went to the gym and the pool for an hour or so.  It was a very pleasant hour or so too.  Sauna wasn’t all that hot, but the steam room was.  Even managed a few lengths.

Kizomba tonight was the end of the road for me.  I’ve taken as much as I can take of assistant teacher, Levis’s Mr Cool antics.  Yes, he’s quite stylish, but when the class has just managed to achieve even numbers because Kaye, the teacher, is dancing, that is not the time for Mr Cool to cut in and push a paying customer, me, out to be a wallflower.  I don’t like being the wallflower and I don’t do it quietly now.  That’s why I made a fuss tonight and complained to his boss about his attitude.  I also told her that was the reason I wasn’t coming back.  It did seem to cause a bit of a kerfuffle and an extended discussion with Shannon under whose auspices the class runs.  It also forced Levis to come and apologise to me although he didn’t seem to understand why.  It made no difference to me.  That was my last Kizomba class with them.  Maybe I’m just a silly old man to him.  He’ll find out I’m a vociferous and angry old man too.  I feel sorry for Scamp, because she was enjoying the class.  I wasn’t and I’d already told her I would give it until Christmas and then evaluate the situation.

The foregoing left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, but it had to be resolved.  There’s no point in complaining to Scamp and shouting the odds.  Better to get these things out in the open then, maybe they will learn from their mistakes.  Salsa took the bad taste away and with three new moves to remember and Jamie Gal’s inevitable tall stories , it didn’t take long to put a smile back on my face.

Tomorrow is another day and it’s going to be a painting day, I think.  Well, that and a trip into Glasgow to retrieve Scamp’s boots that she left at the STUC tonight!

Santas on Parade – 4 December 2016

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We were driving into Glasgow when we saw a sign:   “Warning! Santas Running”  Hmm.  Looks like a Santa run.  I couldn’t pass up the opportunity of a PoD and that’s how it turned out.

After checking with the NLC volunteers, it turned out that the fun run had just started, but as we were about halfway round the course, we had a while to wait before the first runner, oops, Santas arrived.  These aren’t the real Santas by the way, but are some of his fleet footed assistants.  Having said that, Santa was only a few miles away in Falkirk yesterday, so I wouldn’t put it past the old fella to have sneaked in to the fun-run.  We watched for a while and Scamp got into the spirit of things and was happily cheering them on their way, while secretly wishing she’d heard about it earlier and had managed to wangle a Santa suit and an entrance number for herself.  Me?  I’d hold the jackets.  Lots more Santa pics on my Flickr page.

Once I’d got a few photos and was sure I had at least one contender for PoD, we drove the rest of the way in to Glasgow.  Scamp had the bright idea of parking at Cowcaddens and getting the Subway to St Enoch’s.  A stormer of an idea as it turned out when we saw the queues for different parking places around the town.  Just to clarify, Glasgow is a city, but it’s always been known as The Town or more likely, The Toon.  After we’d wandered round what is, apparently, the Medieval Part of Glasgow, down by Clyde Street and I’d taken some photos of extremely non-Medieval buildings, we had a coffee and headed for home.  Glasgow on a Sunday in December is no fun.  It’s full of shoppers and disappointed looking foreigners hoping to see men in kilts everywhere.  Thankfully the ‘Bastard Drummers’ were nowhere to be seen or heard.  Not even the mad “Bowie & Bolan” bloke who neither sounds nor looks like Bowie or Bolan was in evidence.  Thankfully again.

Came home and relaxed for a while before getting ready for the Sunday Social.  The highlight of the week for us.  Had a great time as usual and met an old friend (Kul) there, once we managed to get parked – nightmare during panto season – and basically that was it for Sunday.  Beautiful day with plenty of sunshine, although a bit cold.  Currently 0.3ºc with snow forecast.

Tomorrow is Monday with all the hustle and bustle that Mondays bring.

Just for a change – 28 November 2016

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Just for a change today, I got the bus to Perth.  Now this may be a spoiler alert for Hazy, but I’m sure you expected I’d have to take the trip to Perth, didn’t you!

These CityLink buses are really comfortable.  Did you know they have heaters that work!  Isn’t that a simply wonderful innovation?  Typically one X3 bus in 100 has working heaters, and that’s the one you get every day in the summer and the heating is on full blast and the windows won’t open.  In the winter, it’s the one with the sign that says “SORRY NOT IN SERVICE” or more often in Scotland “A’HM NO WORKIN’”.  So, a comfortable journey north to the fair city of Perf.  It’s a bit like Embra which is also known by some of its inhabitants as Edinburgh.  Embra is its more usual and useable name.  Perf is much better than Perth IMO and MO is the only one that counts in this blog.  By the way, I once got an irate comment from an Edinburger on Flickr to the effect that: “It’s actually Edinburgh, not Embra, I know, I live there.”
My reply was: “That’s a shame, but I suppose somebody has to live in Embra, and it is Embra, hen.  It’s Embra, it’s always been Embra and it always will be Embra.  I know, because I’ve been there … once.  But it’s alright, I’ve had my jags.”  She didn’t reply to that – too many big words in it, I think.
Perf’s a nice place, I like it.  It’s pretty and has nice buildings, but the folk are not so stuck up as Embra folk.  It’s got a good coffee shop, an independent camera shop and a great second-hand bookshop too.

Anyway, purchases purchased I got the equally comfortable bus back down the road to less than scenic Cumbersheugh where they are painting the lovely butter coloured bricks of the town centre with a coat of ‘nearly black’.  Cooncil must have got a job lot of the paint going cheap.  I think it probably was originally black masonry paint, but they didn’t have enough to finish the job, so they got some equally cheap out-of-date emulsion for B&Q and just mixed it in to make the masonry paint go further.  That would explain the slightly purple tinge to the finished product.  If it looks boggin’ paint it black, that’ll fix it and make it look stylish into the bargain.  Aye Right.

Kizomba was a bit of a shambles tonight.  Class was a bit smaller with a lot of new faces.  Mainly black faces, so maybe friends of one of the teachers.  Also faces that were looking bemused most of the time because it appears this is the first time they had met this dance.  Methinks it might have been Rentamob, there to pad out the numbers.  ‘Left’ and ‘right’ seemed to be new concepts for some.  One girl had to be dragged away from her phone and on to the dance floor to help balance the numbers.  She was irate, because she didn’t know how to do the dance and didn’t want to learn.  Hmm, not impressed.

It also looked like our salsa teacher wasn’t present and no announcement was made about who would be taking his class. This gave us a bit of concern and made us wonder if it would be one of the, how should I put this, less able and teachers of AdS.  We needn’t have worried, Will took it and introduced us to a trio of twisty, turny moves that were a lot of fun.  The next class was not so lucky, but we were out the door by the time the music started.

Maybe going to do a painting tomorrow.  If I can remember how!

Cold and Frosty – 21 November 2016

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Yes, in the morning it was cold and frosty and it stayed that way for most of the day too.  Poor wee violas in the hanging basket at the back door.  They rarely see the sun in these winter days and today they looked wilted.  When they finally thawed out about 4pm, the sprung back to life as if it had never happened.

Today being Scamp’s ‘Gems’ group’s singing practise, I packed my bags and headed for the leisure centre where I intended to have a swim and a nice 30 mins or so in the sauna and the steam room.  That’s 30 minutes total, not 30 in each!  However, it was their turn for ‘essential maintenance’.  So far we’ve had the air-con in the changing room refurbished and the gym equipment replaced.  Last week it was the jacuzzi that was essentially being maintained and today it was the hot rooms time for an overhaul.  Next week the pool?  Who knows.  It always worries me when an establishment like this gets a complete facelift.  Usually it presages a change of ownership.  I hope I’m wrong, but I just have that feeling …

After the curtailed swim, I left and headed for Fannyside Moor, just on the outskirts of Cumbersheugh to get a PoD.  Actually I had one in the bag from earlier in the day when the bluetits found the bird feeder had been refilled, but another one or two wouldn’t go amiss.  I was armed with the old Sony F707 and the Furry Monkey.  Hoping his magic paws would do the needful with the IR filter again.  Well, he worked his magic, but there just wasn’t enough direct sunlight to give the necessary IR, so I resorted to a couple of landscapes taken with normal light instead, the best of which is above.

Salsa tonight was the usual mayhem with Jamie Gal forgetting his moves which “… worked perfectly earlier in the day in my office!” Then trying to make up a name for them, before attempting to translate the name into Spanish.  Great fun!

Kizomba?   Hmm, not a lot of fun and I sense a rant starting.
This was the last lesson of the block and I would have thought that Kay, the teacher, would have been pushing hard to keep us interested.  Instead she just tread water for almost all the class time.  Because her teaching assistant was absent, she had one of the class members run the guys through a ‘warm-up’ reprise of the last seven weeks’ moves while she did the same with the girls.  The ‘warm-up’ lasted for twenty minutes.  Twenty minutes of an hour long class.  Then she introduced a new ‘helper’ who either didn’t speak English or didn’t want to be there, because he hardly uttered a word all night.  You could tell the class weren’t too happy when she applauded us all after our first dance and nobody in the class responded.  I nearly left there and then when she attempted to introduce ‘Musicology’ as a topic.  I wasted two hours of my life with the dreadful Samira attempting to make this into a science instead of something that everyone can do naturally.  If you can’t understand the beat of the music, this time wasting exercise wasn’t going to help you IMO.
Scamp wants to go back for a second block of Kizomba, but I’m not so sure.  This is the second week we’ve been without a teacher for the guys.  I like the dance, but if there is no teacher for us, then I’m not getting value for my money and that’s not a good thing.  I’m suggesting we pay the class on a week by week basis to see what transpires and if it doesn’t improve, I’m not going to continue with it.

Temperature is rising and even as I write this at 11pm it’s warmer than it’s been all day.

Dentist tomorrow 🙁

JIC and Sim Homeward Bound – 20 November 2016

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This morning we drove JIC and Sim to the airport for their flight back down south.  We stopped in Glasgow on our way back for some shopping and a coffee and then returned to an empty house.  It was good to have a busy house for a while, but they had to go back to their own life and Vixen.  Oh yes, and back to work too.  We really did enjoy the visit and Friday was a brilliant day, one we’ll remember for a while.

Back in the land of computers, I finally got the photos backed up on to the new external drive and the battery rallied for a while on the Mac, but it was a temporary respite before it dropped again to 37%, currently 31%.

Salsa in the Garage tonight was uplifting to say the least and we left feeling a lot better than when we went in.

Tomorrow?  Well, tomorrow’s Monday with all that a Monday entails.  Busy, busy, busy.

Just an ordinary Scottish day – 16 November 2016

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Windy, wet, sun and cold.  Four seasons, sort of Scottish.

Today was Scamp’s turn to have needles stuck in her and lasers fired into her too.  She had to go to the physio to get some treatment for her ankle.  Something to do with her Achilles Tendon, or Archimedes Tendon as I got it wrong.  Like me she wasn’t really all that bothered with the acupuncture needles or the laser and she’s got exercises to do to.  Only five reps, three times a day not ten, three times a day like I had.  That’s a bit unfair, I think.  Sexist or ageist or shoulderist or something.

When we got back, I went for a walk over to St Mo’s in the sun, but ten minutes later the sun disappeared.  I managed a couple of shots before the gloom and rain arrived again.

Spent some more time consolidating my photo collection and being side tracked just looking at the photos.  Attempted to use File Juggler which is supposed to be a filing assistant on the PC.  The best one apparently.  Filing on a computer pivots on the use of folders, as anyone who has work with Windows, OS X or Linux will know only too well.  Unfortunately after trying unsuccessfully for half an hour to move folders using File Juggler, I discovered this on the company website :

Question – Can File Juggler manage folders?

Answer – No, unfortunately not. File Juggler handles only files.
I plan to add this feature later.

This was followed by a link to a page that had nothing at all to do with File Juggler or the author’s apparent abortive attempt to implement this feature, which he seems to feel is not really all that important.  I’m guessing he’s never worked with Hazel on a Mac.  I got all my folders nested exactly as I wanted them in ten minutes flat using a script I’d written in Hazel.  Sometime you just have to leave the PC to do what it does and get the work done on a Mac.

Salsa tonight.  Helping in a beginner’s class at 6.30 then an advanced class at 7.30.  Great fun as always.

Weather to get colder tomorrow.  Pack wooly jumpers, wooly hats, warm gloves and snowshoes JIC and Sim!

Super Moon, Ordinary Day – 14 November 2016

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Not such a bad day today compared to yesterday. Thankfully, Scamp is feeling a lot better and I think a phone call this morning from Hazy helped too, that and looking forward to a visit from JIC and Sim has lifted her spirits. Still a bit cloudy with the occasional rain shower, but we had that in Lanzarote last week too. Having said that, the temperature differential is significant, nearly 20ºc .

Last night’s attempt to resurrect the damaged partition on the external hard disk ended in failure, as I expected it would. However PhotoRec which comes as part of the free TestDisk partition recovery suite managed to find all the photos in the damaged partition and, using it I also managed to download some of the photos to check that they were intact. It looks like most if not all of the photos are recoverable. The problem now is where to put them while I sort them back into their proper folders. Sorting them into the folders won’t be a big problem as the Hazel app on the Mac and File Juggler on the PC will manage that task with relative ease. The problem is that I now need (yet) another external hard drive to use as temporary storage while I do the filing. I might just bite the bullet and buy another external HDD and be done with it. Then I’ll format the old one and use both as a photo repository. It does make you think though, that a free program downloaded from the ‘net can search your hard disk and recover deleted photos even from a formatted drive. If a free prog can do that, what can dedicated forensic software used by police and other agencies do?

For the rest of the day, I went to the gym and then for a swim. Really quite enjoyed it. Salsa and Kizomba tonight was demanding, but also enjoyable.

Today’s photo is of the ‘Supermoon’. Did look slightly bigger than normal, but nothing to get excited about.

Looking for sunshine tomorrow. Always looking!