Category: Dancing

Dull and wet but dancin’ inside

Posted on by Zogman

Today was a day for driving to Glenburn and dancing for a couple of hours.

For the second time in a row, we drove to Glenburn, just outside Paisley and danced almost everything the threw at us. We both made a mess of some of it, but there was a quiet confidence to us that wasn’t there before. I don’t know exactly what was happening, but I’ve a curious feeling that I was leading for a while! Usually I rely on Scamp to tell me what comes next, but for some of the dances, I knew what came after what. It’s hard to explain, but there was definitely a difference to our dancing.

The afternoon started with a waltz and that led on to cha-cha and then an interspersing of ballroom or latin with a sequence dance. I’ve complained here in the past about Stewart’s plan to have, let’s call it formal dancing, in the first half and sequence in the second half. I don’t think that works well for everyone, but the mixing he and Jane were doing today seemed to encourage everyone to get on the floor more often. We covered usual trilogy of waltz, cha-cha and quickstep with lots of sequence dances. We even attempted a Gay Gordons as well, but stayed well clear of the Canadian Barn Dance, the music for which seemed never ending. It was good to see that folk were taking to heart Stewart’s recommendation to wear something tartan for Burns Night. He even ‘accidentally’ played Donald Where’s Yer Troosers because he said I liked it! Cheeky get!

The two hours went quickly and then it was time to go home, have a cup of tea and a biscuit before getting ready to drive Scamp up to The Link to get her Shingles jag. That didn’t take long. Probably about 15 minutes maximum, then we were heading home again for Haggis Neeps and Tatties. Standard fare for a Burns Night. I don’t know why we call turnips ‘Neeps’. Burns was born and bred in Ayrshire, but Neeps is a north east coast word. How did it get inveigled into Ayrshire dialect? I blame the Aberdonians. Or better still, I blame Boris who was a bit of a turnip heid!

With the traditional Burns Supper meal and a wee dram to toast it, the excitement for the day was all but over. Today’s PoD was a photo of a bouquet of cut flowers, well, it was a Thursday. The flowers weren’t “arranged tastefully, in a vase” as D.P. Gumby used to demonstrate on Monty Python, but laid down on the kitchen worktop, but the little light that filtered in through the clouds lit them perfectly.

Tomorrow we may drive somewhere for lunch or we may walk somewhere local for it instead. As usual, it depends on the weather.

Dancin’ – 20 January 2024

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Last Brookfield dancin’ class for three weeks at least.

Scamp doesn’t think she’ll be able to go to next Saturday’s class because she’s intending to sing the Verdi Requiem (with a few others) at the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow and I certainly won’t be going there, or to the dance class in Brookfield if I can at all avoid it. Far too shouty in both venues.

For some reason, the road to Brookfield was quite busy today. Either everyone was heading to the Monster Truck show at the SEC or there was football somewhere, maybe even both! But we’d been out early and made good time after we left the city centre and got past the 50mph restriction. We had about ten minutes to collect ourselves while the little darlings in the ballet class were ushered out of the room with their ‘mummies’ – no ‘daddies’ were in sight. Smart daddies!

First track was Melody Foxtrot with Robbie Williams’ Go Gentle. I don’t like him, but I do like the song. The rhythm and timing go so well with this gentle song. I can’t remember what track two was, but it obviously wasn’t a patch on Go Gentle.

Next we were in to Waltz Time with what we’re going to call the Spring Waltz. Christmas is so last year. After a few fumbles of the feet, I was beginning to enjoy the dance. Stewart did steal Scamp away to explain something technical about the dance, but strangely Jane didn’t steal me away to do the same. Maybe I’m so good there’s nothing they can teach me. Maybe pigs do fly? Anyway, once she’d been returned, we danced a few tracks of the waltz. Actually I’d have been happy to spend the entire 90 minutes just going through that dance, but after another sequence dance we knew that the leisurely dancing was over and we were going to be forced into the Samba.

I really, really, REALLY don’t think I will ever get to like, far less love this dance although Stewart says I will. It is fast, confusing and furious at times and totally outside my comfort zone. I’m still at the second part of it, having successfully managed to make a decent fist of the basic steps at the start. This is after three weeks of teaching. Sometimes you just have to accept that this doesn’t fit in my head, apart from Jamie’s oft times quoted complaint that: “Scottish hips don’t move that way”. That, is an excellent get-out clause for not knowing what the hell you are doing, and I thank you for that, Jamie.

Eventually the Samba ground to a halt and another cool-down sequence dance finished off the torture. We were done for today and, hopefully for three glorious weeks.

We drove home, almost in silence, letting the music from Spotify’s random Discover Weekly guide us along the M8, M74, M73 and then home. Lunch for me was a roll ’n’ cheese and for Scamp, a roll ’n’ egg, with both of us having a dessert of roll ’n’ bramble jam.

It was a dull day. The sun had threatened to break through the clouds, but didn’t really have the energy, so the clouds covered it and tucked it in. I did manage a few shots in St Mo’s, but none of them were award winners. PoD was a sepia toned discarded swan’s feather.

Dinner tonight came from Bombay Dreams and it was quite poor by their standard. Probably would have been better walking down to M&S and bringing back a heat-in-the-oven curry. I think we’ll let Bombay Dreams rest for a while to see if they can improve their recipes.

It’s raining quite heavily as I’m writing this and it’s expected to rain all through the night. Strong winds forecast for tomorrow. I may go out early(ish) to avoid getting blown away.

 

 

A slow awakening, then Samba – 13 January 2024

Posted on by Zogman

It was a slow climb out of the depths of sleep to the reality of morning.

It certainly took me a long time to clear my head enough to realise that it was morning. Too much to eat and too much to drink. I’m usually careful when I know I’m going to be driving in the morning the next day, but I’d so enjoyed the company last night that I’d kind of overindulged.

Once I was showered and dressed I felt better and we drove in to Brookfield in good time. Beautiful blue skies with white fluffy clouds all the way. First dance was a Blue Angel Rumba which I’m coming to terms with. Next was what, before we joined this class, was called the Christmas Waltz, but which has now been renamed the Spring Waltz. Again, I was a lost soul to start with, but I’ve grown to realise it’s not as complicated as I thought, even if it does have a Back Corté. Whatever that is.

Next was the Samba. I used to hate the Cha-Cha until I realised I could dance it fairly competently. Now the Samba is my most hated dance. It doesn’t help when one of the teachers seems to be more critical than is really necessary when ‘helping’ us. She really needs to remember that we are giving her money each week to be taught, not to be criticised for everything we do. Not the most friendly person I’ve ever met. Maybe I just have a thing about some dance teachers. Anyway, I much prefer anything in the Cha-Cha to the Hopalong Cassidy ‘Voltas’ that seem to delight everyone in the Samba. I honestly do not see myself ever dancing this in public!

Drove home under blue skies and white fluffy clouds again, just the same as yesterday and spent the early afternoon clearing up the living room and the kitchen. I went for a walk to St Mo’s later for some photos with the intention of coming home with a loaf. I actually came home with a bit more than that, but with a potential PoD or two.

In M&S I bumped (almost literally) into a former colleague who is now deputy head in Glasgow and commiserated with her because her school is being inspected soon. Right now the big news is the Post Office postmasters and mistresses who have been accused of stealing money. It wasn’t really stolen, it was a dodgy computer program called Horizon that went ‘ape’ for a while. But when I heard about those folk being accused of what amounted to theft by the investigators, I remembered how I felt when the HMI (Her Majesty’s Inspectors) came to interrogate us. These people should be ashamed of themselves.

On the way home I was watching a big swathe of pink/white cloud stretching up behind a bunch of Scots Pine trees and trying to find the best angle to shoot them from. Finally found it and that became PoD, relegating a photo of the setting sun to “almost a PoD”.

That was about it for today. Dinner was much more restrained than last night and was a pizza with a glass of wine.

Hoping to get out for walk tomorrow.

Dancin’ – 11 January 2024

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It was going to be a busy day, so I took the opportunity to go for an early walk in the woods.

The sky was clear and the sun was shining, but it was cold when I was walking over to the park just before 11am. That’s early enough for me, these days. There was a time when I was driving to work just after 7am. Thankfully those days are gone now and in the past they will remain. Fewer dog walkers in the morning, although there were some. Mostly it was couples or single walkers unfettered by canine accomplices. Although the weather was good, there were very few opportunities for photos. I took a few, but when I got home and inspected them, there wasn’t much of interest. Anyway, time was marching on and we were going to Glanburn just after midday for the first tea dance of the year.

The hall was filling up nicely for today’s dance. First up was a waltz and we opted for Kirsty’s Waltz Nioli. First track was a bit of a mess, but in the second track I found my feet or more likely, my feet found the script and it turned out fine. In fact, the Rumba, Cha-Cha and even the Quickstep all fell in to place today. I hope it’s not an isolated instance.

It seems that Stewart & Jane have started a new regime where the first half of the dance is devoted almost entirely to Ballroom and Latin. After the tea break, the second half is now almost all sequence dances. I’m not sure I like that approach, I prefer mixing the styles, but I don’t run the show and possibly that’s for the best. All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed today’s dance and it’s not often I say that. I think it was that I’m beginning to become more confident in the routines and a lot of that is down to the work Scamp and Kirsty put in pointing me in the right direction. Short routines that can have extra parts added to them or awkward ones removed. After all we are doing this so that we can dance, not so that we can blindly follow the teachings of others.

Drove home feeling that we’d achieved something today. Then when we got home, Scamp got a text from Kirsty to say that she’d fallen today and broken a bone in her wrist and would be in plaster for at least two weeks! Poor Kirsty will be distraught, and so will we! One day back in her class and disaster strikes.

Since Scamp was going to be busy getting ready for Crawford and Nancy on Friday, I suggested an M&S curry might be best for dinner and the suggestion was accepted.

I eventually settled on a picture of a path through the woods at St Mo’s for PoD. It was the best of a bad lot, but not really all that bad.

Tonight the prep for Friday started for Scamp, but tomorrow I’m intending to make my half of the bargain, the main course.

Shopping – 10 January 2024

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We were off to Waitrose today for some (for some, read a lot of) shopping.

I felt the wee blue car squeal when I put the message bags in the boot after we left Waitrose. There were a lot of bags in there and quite a few of them were full. Despite that, I challenged the wee car by driving up the back road from Stirling to the top of the Tak ma Doon road. It’s a long and sometimes quite steep climb, but before we reached that, I gave it a rest at the entrance to Loch Coulter where I wanted to take photos, not of the loch, but of the wee farm across to the north-west. It’s a favourite place of mine to photograph and today the mountains off behind the farm were covered with snow, which was even better. Two or three photos of the landscape were enough in the cold breeze that was coming in from the north, so we drove on past Carron Bridge and on to the Tak ma Doon road, the twisting single track road with few passing places and great craters where NLC can’t be bothered to fill them in. But at the summit it gives a great 180º uninterrupted view from the Forth estuary in the east all the way to Glasgow in the west. Except, not today. It was too cold to take advantage of the views, even if they were stunning. We had reached the highest point in the road and it was downhill all the way now and I’m sure I heard the wee blue car give a sigh of relief.

Dinner tonight was Haddock Chowder. It’s one of those recipes where you have to have everything prepared in advance because once you start you’ve just got to keep going until you serve it in bowls after about 45 minutes of constant stirring and mixing. It wasn’t my best today, I admit that. Too much flour in the roux we think. However, as Scamp said “It’ll stick to yer ribs”. Very Scottish!

We were going dancing to the first dance class with Kirsty this year. After everyone had quietened down, Kirsty announced that today’s dance was to be a Foxtrot. As usual, she demonstrated the men’s part then the women’s part and after that we were pitched into the dance. I admit that I was flummoxed at first, but then realised I’d done all this, or something very like it with Stewart & Jane. After that, when things were baffling me, I just let muscle memory take over and while it wasn’t perfect, it was near enough.

Later we watched the first Landscape Artist of the Year with Dunnottar Castle in Aberdeenshire being the subject. For once, Scamp and I were in agreement about today’s winner.

PoD was a photo of that wee farm.

Tomorrow we might be going dancing. First tea dance of the year.

Dancin’ – 6 January 2024

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Scamp was out first to defrost the car. We were driving to Brookfield for the first dance classs of 2024.

The temperature was hovering around zero when we drove out to Brookfield, but the sun was almost blinding, shining from a bright blue sky. Thankfully we got there without any roadworks apart from the usual 40mph drag through central Glasgow.

First surprise was that the tiny dancers, who usually take ages to leave the hall, had already gone! Maybe someone had complained. I should have asked Jane if it was her. Only four couples ready and waiting to go dancing. Last in were Peter and Gillian who travel almost the same distance as us.

First dance was the Blue Angel Rumba which we’ve almost mastered and was the gentle entry into this years dances. Next was the, new to us, Christmas Waltz. It looked complicated, but taken in bite sized pieces it wasn’t so bad, although there were a few unpronounceable and complicated bits to it. In retrospect, I think we managed not too bad in it, but it will need some practise during the week to cement it into my head. Finally a fast and frantic Samba with Samba Walks, Botafogos and Voltas. Voltas were described by Jane as “Like kids pretending to ride a horse”. A sort of “John Wayne dance step.” Google it and you’ll see what I mean. By then, my little brain was full to bursting and I was glad to change my dance shoes for clumpy black street shoes and drive us home.

Lunch was two bits of bread with a slice of square sausage between them. Scamp had similar with an egg substituting for the square sausage.

I struggled for a while trying to work out what was going wrong with the 2024 catalog on Lightroom. Eventually I gave up and as the sun was still shining I went for a walk in St Mo’s. The road and paths were quite slippery, but the boots coped with it. The sun was low by the time I was walking along the path behind the woods and I got a few decent shots of the trees and the shadows they were casting. One of them became PoD.

Dinner came from a cold walk over to Condorrat to Golden Bowl. As I was coming back I could see the mist lying about a metre above the grass. Quite creepy looking. I tried to photograph it, but failed to get the impression I was looking for.

Later in the evening I tried again and almost managed to repair the damage to the catalog. I gave up and left it until tomorrow when hopefully a night’s sleep will make things clearer

Temperatures around zero predicted for tomorrow. That will decide what we do.

 

Dull day that brightened up later – 5 January 2024

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It started off misty and cloudy, but later in the day the sun came out and it was fairly bright.

The task for today was to take down the decorations, pack up the tree and get everything ready to go up into the loft later in the week. Scamp was in charge of operations and as usual she was organised. Cards were taken down and left in a pile for checking later. Tree decorations went into their box and then into their bag. Batteries were removed from lights to stop them corroding. I took the lights down from the wee tree outside and from the fence. They are still drying out, hanging over any vertical surface that will carry them. It really was a military operation.

By lunch time it was all done and I’d had enough time left to go for a walk in St Mo’s. Today’s PoD turned out to be fern fronds glowing in the sunshine. There wasn’t much else to photograph today. I should have taken a macro lens with me, but I forgot. After that it was computer time.

One of my SSD drives that power the iMac now has a dodgy connector socket, which means that if I’m not careful, and it gets nudged, I lose everything I’ve been working on. Most annoying. What I wanted to do today was transfer the data from the drive to a replacement that doesn’t seem to have the connector problem. It’s a fairly easy procedure to do, but even with the super fast SSDs, it takes time. That means there’s a lot of sitting about. Thankfully I could check the progress on my laptop as I was following an instruction video on YouTube that I’d used before and it worked. It worked again today, but took most of the afternoon to complete. I’ve now got it running fairly well, with just the occasional blip to fix.

It was late when I finally turned the computer off and had dinner which was baked potato with veg chilli. The chilli had been in the freezer for a few months and was really needing used up. It tasted fine, so being frozen for months hadn’t harmed it much.

We did manage a quick practise dance tonight. Part of Joy’s Waltz, part of the Quickstep routines from Stewart & Jane and also from Kirsty, then Kirsty’s Waltz Nioli to finish off.

Tomorrow we’re intending going to dance class in Brookfield, hence today’s practise. Other than that, nothing much planned.

Dancin’ – 21 December 2023

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We were back to a tea dance today after a long lay off.

First, earlier in the morning I went for a walk in St Mo’s to get a photo or two while Storm Pia was still giving Scotland a severe buffeting. It was gradually powering down, but it was taking quite a while. I was glad I hadn’t been there when Pia was at full strength.

I saw a blackbird fly into a tree and I’m sure he saw me too, but he turned away and tried the “If I can’t see him, he can’t see me” trick. As I took a few steps towards him, he caught me and flew away, but not before I had one more shot. How can birds navigate through that maze of branches? That final shot gave me a PoD. One in the bag on a morning walk. That’s good.

By the time I walked home, I had just enough time for a quick lunch before getting dressed for dancing and then we headed off to Glenburn for the last tea dance of the year. Despite the weather, it was a fairly easy drive to Paisley. The hall wasn’t very busy when we arrived, but the dancers gradually trickled in and the dance started with a waltz. I stumbled through the first track, but by the second it was flowing better. We danced Waltz, Rumba, Cha-Cha and three or four sequence dances. Really, the only one I completely messed up was the Quickstep which I knew I could do. Just not today.

As usual we left a few minutes early to avoid the schools coming out. However, it appeared that the traffic was light on both the M80 and the M74, also, thankfully, the wind had reduced to a normal breeze.

We watched what I thought was a tedious Celebrity Sewing Bee tonight. It was probably the worst of the ‘Christmas’ specials foisted on us these days in the name of entertainment. It’s just a bunch of has-been and never-was ‘celebrities’ getting their faces on the TV again. Bah Humbug!

Tomorrow I believe we need some shopping and there’s a chance we may have a pub lunch later.

Wrong day – 13 December 2023

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I decided I’d go with Scamp to meet Isobel, but there was a problem.

We got a phone call from Hazy this morning. Just a quick call to see how things were. She also suggested we should contact the Ombudsman again since we had heard nothing from them for over fortnight now. It was a fairly short phone call, partly because the cats were misbehaving again.

Scamp and I drove up to Costa on a cold but clear winter day and I dropped her off outside, then went to find a place to squeeze the car into. When I walked in to Costa, Scamp was on the phone and Isobel was nowhere to be seen. It appears that she got her wires crossed and thought that Scamp had said it was Friday they were meeting, not Wednesday. After some discussion, they agreed to leave it until New Year. Probably best.

With that done, Scamp asked me to drop her at the train station and she’d get the train in to Glasgow instead because she had some important business to conduct. After I dropped her off, I drove over to Stirling because she wasn’t the only person with important business that needed sorting out. Unfortunately neither of my articles were available and I was just about to do a solo photo walk when my phone rang. It was Scamp asking for a run home from the station. I explained where I was and that I was on my way back to the car, so could pick her up a bit later. We agreed an hour would give me plenty time to get back to Cumbersheugh and give her enough time for a coffee and a cake. So that’s what we did. I stopped at Tesco on the way to get stuff for lunch, then picked her up at the station.

Lunch for me was half a Ginsters Christmas Special Chicken and Stuffing pasty thing. Not very substantial, but I wasn’t really all that hungry and Scamp had already had coffee and cake in Glasgow. The sun was still shining, so I took a camera over to St Mo’s hoping for something interesting to take. There wasn’t much of interest, but I stood watching a man and a boy flying drones. Amazing height they reach quite quickly, these tiny flying machines. Still, they wouldn’t make much of a picture. What did make the Picture Of the Day was a purple lost glove hanging on an artistic park bench painted pink. I thought the glove and the bench made a good colour combination, plus it was bright and cheerful. We need Bright and Cheerful these days.

Scamp built the Christmas tree today and started adding all the new and old decorations.  We’d brought some decorations back from our summer cruise to Croatia. They are now on the tree.  It’s looking quite delightful. I’m sitting her finishing the blog in the dark and the lights are lovely.
Dinner was fish ’n’ chips. Home made variety. Very nice indeed.

We were dancing at Kirsty’s class later. We thought we were going to start the Foxtrot or maybe reprise the Tango, Waltz Nioli and Quickstep, bit Kirsty had other ideas. It was three different sequence dances. Just good fun dances we did. Lots of folk in the class tonight and we were definitely kept busy. No more classes until next year!

We watched the semi-final of Portrait Artist later and wonder what is in the heads of the judges. They chose two awful paintings and one decent one. Heaven knows what they’ll paint for the final.

Early shout tomorrow because I’ve a morning telephone consultation with the doc about my review results. After that, maybe shopping.

 

 

Cold – 29 November 2023

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The outside temperature this morning was two below zero.

Scamp was going out to meet Isobel and I was staying home with the intention of going over to St Mo’s to get some morning photos. I had a couple of ideas that I wanted to try.

I did get the photo I wanted, but, as usual it was a different one that got PoD. The winner was a photo of a piece of Oak Moss in a tree. I’t’s called Oak Moss, but it doesn’t just grow on Oak trees and it isn’t a moss. It’s a lichen. It was a once round the pond walk this morning, because the temperature hadn’t lifted by much and I was glad to get back to a warm house.

When Scamp arrived we had a plate of the lentil soup she made yesterday. We had bought rolls yesterday and hadn’t got round to eating any of them, so I had the idea of warming them up in the oven while the soup was warming in the pot. The heat from the oven did warm the rolls and also crisped up the outside skin of them.

We needed some fresh fish for tonight’s dinner and we also needed crème fraîche and white wine. The wine was for cooking with, I must stress that ;-). We walked to the shops to get the requirements and I was glad I’d got some photos in the morning and could just walk home. I was making Cod and Prawns with Fennel and White Wine. It’s a favourite in the house when we can get fennel, because it’s just not the same without its aniseed taste. Tonight it could have done with some extra salt I thought. Scamp said it was only the fish that needed salt. We can never agree with food!

Kirsty’s dance class was down to three couples or two and a half if we’re going to split hairs because one of the girls doesn’t have a partner but Kirsty stepped in to complete the three couples. We danced the Quickstep to begin with, breaking it down into three stages, then joined the three together to form the complete dance. Scamp had a bright idea of raising the tempo and we almost managed a full track at near typical Quickstep speed. I was impressed that I only really made one mistake.
Next was a reprise of the Tango and I know we’re going to argue a bit about the steps in this dance, but a variation that Kirsty put in seemed to simplify it. I could be wrong, and I usually am, but I’m sticking to what the teacher said!
Next was a simple new waltz that felt quite like our “Baby Waltz”. It was was easy and we managed it without difficulty, so we were told to do the Waltz Nioli instead. We finished up with Rumba One, a sequence dance we can do quite well. That was a full dance class today and a good reprise for those who are going to a ball at the weekend. We joined too late to get a ticket, but I don’t think either of us were all that interested.

Watched an episode of “Shetland” and became more confused about who was doing what to whom. Great series.

Tomorrow Scamp is booked for lunch, this time with Denise. Her son flies helicopters, real ones! I’m intending writing to Alex and hopefully to Val.