Category: Driving

Christmas Eve – 24 December 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Seemingly going against all the things I complained about yesterday, we drove to Tesco today.

However, we weren’t going to fill our trolley with loads of unnecessary foodstuffs, we were going to find out if some kind soul had handed in a purple leather glove that Scamp had dropped in the store a couple of days ago. Luckily some kind soul had indeed handed it in and along came a smiling Scamp to show off that very glove. We restricted ourselves to a few veggies and a jug of filtered milk, then drove home. More madcap driving as we were leaving the car park with cars abandoned in every space that looked as if you could get at least one of your tyres on to it. Apparently the shop is going to be closed tomorrow for a full day! We’ll all going to starve to death if we don’t but everything we can get our hands on NOW!

After we got home and found places for the veg and stuff to go, we went for a walk in St Mo’s because the weather was reasonable for the time of year, it was dry and there was only a light wind. A good day for a gentle walk into the woods and back along the boardwalk. Not into the deep woods, you realise, because we weren’t kitted out with walking boots, just a gentle walk round the pond. I did think of taking a second circuit and allowing Scamp to go home alone, but I’d got a few photos of weeds dripping wet from the overnight rain, so we went home together.

After lunch I post processed the photos and found I had two worth posting on Flickr. Also, for this last week and a bit in 2022, I tidied up an image I’d processed, but hadn’t previously posted and it’s on Flickr now too. A weed picture got PoD.

By 3.15pm the house lights had come on and it was looking like early evening. Dinner was discussed and we decided to have Pasta Carbonara using fresh pasta we bought in Waitrose. It only takes minutes to make with the fresh pasta but it takes well over fifteen minutes with the dried stuff.

Tonight I wrapped up Scamp’s parcels for tomorrow and they are sitting next to the tree. I’m supposed to be making the dessert for tomorrow’s dinner if I remember to get organised in the morning.

All four of our invalids seem to be recovering from their respective ailments, which is good to hear and Hazy has organised a three way Zoom link-up for tomorrow. It will be good to see and hear from everyone. We’re looking forward to it.

Happy Christmas to all my readers!

 

 

Postman and Driving Mayhem – 22 December 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Off to hand deliver a Christmas card and then driving to the Fort.

I’d left it too late for Elizabeth Gough’s card to be delivered by Christmas, but as I was going to be passing her house on my way to the last purchases at The Fort, I dropped it through her letter box. I was caught in the act by her daughter and then all three of us had a blether at her front door. I was invited in for coffee, but I declined as I knew it would be difficult to park at the Fort and if I’d accepted, I would have been there for an hour at least. It must be well over a year since I’ve met the pair of them and we had a lot to catch up on. Eventually I took my leave and headed back on the road to Easterhouse.

The parking was worse than I’d anticipated, much worse. There must have been about a hundred cars circling the gigantic parking areas and nobody was finding any spaces. I eventually had to give up and I thought I’d head out towards Drumpellier park and from there to Currys at Coatbridge to get some photo paper for the calendars. When I got near Drumpellier I could see there was low lying mist over the loch and, as I did have a camera with me today I drove in to the park. The light was lovely and the mist gave a great backdrop. Even better still, the car park was running at about a quarter capacity. I got a few photos and then headed back to see if Scamp wanted to go fro a walk. I wasn’t in a rush to get the photo paper anyway.

Instead of a walk we had lunch. Scamp wasn’t feeling too good and thought she had a wee infection. She had phoned the doc’s and was waiting for a call back from the nurse. The call eventually came about 5pm and the nurse said she’d leave a prescription at the surgery reception. I drove over there, picked it up and got it filled at the chemist, next door to the surgery. Then came drove home. It was getting cold by the time I was leaving the house and colder on the way home. I’m expecting the temperature will be below zero tonight, although it’s just about 4ºc just now.

I made celeriac soup for dinner. Thick and warming, but not getting much of the celeriac taste from it. Anyway that and some toast with a half a pizza later was a substantial mid-week dinner.

Good to hear that you’ve got your heating fixed, even if it is only short time, Hazel. Good advice from your mum to get a few local quotes too. Remember that the firms like our Scottish Gas like to put doubts in your head, saying that it’s difficult to get the parts now for older boilers. Sometimes that’s just to scare you.

PoD was a photo of four gulls sitting on the ‘Whale Tail’ in Drumpellier park. The sculpture was created in 1989 by artist Neil McLeod and entitled ‘Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea’.

No plans to go anywhere special tomorrow and definitely no driving to shops if today’s experience is anything to go by. We’ll probably do some local shopping.

Shopping – 19 December 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Today we were going out in the wide world, maybe even as far as Stirling.

The rain that started last night had continued all night and into this morning. It had done a good job of removing most of the ice that had held us in its grip for the last week. Today we were driving to Stirling to get some messages, but as Waitrose is posh, we’ll have to call it “Shopping”.

Waitrose was utter madness. There were cars circling the parking area just hoping to get lucky and find a space. I dropped Scamp off near the door and told her I’d pay to park at the council car park just along the road and bring the car round when we were ready to go home. That was the plan, but instead of leaving, I found a space just being exited right in front of me. I took it and said “thank you” to the crazy driver who had reversed out of it at speed and nearly “tee boned” the bloke in front of me. I let Crazy Driver go and slipped into his space.

After almost an hour of wandering round the shop and with a full trolley we loaded everything into the boot of the blue car and drove home. Lunch was the remainder of yesterday’s quiches and they tasted better today, well, mine did anyway. Scamp made no disparaging comments about her’s, so I guess she agreed. By about 2pm it felt like the sun was setting, so it was boots on and out to St Mo’s for a photo before the little photons disappeared entirely. PoD became two Dogwood branches with their very wet berries. The bright red stems do a lot to brighten the landscape.

Back home I got a phone call from what looked like Margaret Kent, but it was her husband, Bill who spoke. Margaret had passed away at the end of June and he was apologising for not telling me about it at the time. The poor man sounded devastated and I felt so sorry for him. Margaret was my second cousin. Her mother and my mum were cousins, but I always knew her as my cousin. Then Billy told me that Maureen, another second cousin had died in September. Both of them had been seriously ill for a couple of years, but we occasionally bumped into each other. That put a bit of a damper on the day.

The snow has now all gone and most of the ice too. We might go in to Glasgow on the bus tomorrow, all being well.

Dancin’ times two – 10 December 2022

Posted on by Zogman

I think the wee car thought we’d gone mad today.

We drove in to Brookfield this morning. It was snowing a bit when we left the house. Not heavy snowfall, but those light fluffy snowflakes that always make you think there is more to come. It didn’t happen though, in fact by the time we reached Glasgow it had stopped and the temperature was rising. Then it changed as we got to Brookfield and we had to navigate an icy car park.

Inside and after the warm-up sequence dance, it was into the Quickstep which were are definitely getting to grips with. Not quite perfect yet, but we’re on our way. I thought we might have to put up with the Christmas Pudding Rock with “I Want A Hippopotamus for Christmas” as the ear worm, but thankfully we were saved from that. Instead we did the Charnwood Cha-cha which is a sequence ballroom dance. Next it was the Jetlag Waltz which is not one of my favourites, but we worked our way through it.

Drove home through the crowds of folk heading to Glasgow, because it is Xmas and you simply have to worship at the alter of mammon. After switching lanes and taking short cuts that were never short and rarely cut any time we ended up on the north end of the Kingston Bridge and into a traffic jam that was ostensibly caused by one broken down car, but was really caused by shutting down two lanes of a four lane motorway because the council hadn’t the resources to repair a bridge. That’s the honest truth of it. Bridges these days, like buildings are built to have a 50 year lifespan and this one is reaching that fifty year limit. They will say that work is progressing to repair the bridges, but as anyone who travels this route frequently will tell you, nothing is being done, nor has been done for years. Anyway, we did get through eventually and arrived home to a slight covering of the white stuff.

After lunch and after a really dull afternoon with cloudy skies and and a temperature that barely reached above zero, I chose not to go out into the dreary world to take today’s photo, but decided that a bright pink flower on the Christmas Cactus was far more interesting. That was PoD sorted, post-processed and posted online. With that done we had to decide on dinner and Scamp’s suggestion of Fish Fingers, and Spaghetti was the winner. We were, after all, going out to the Christmas Ball afterwards and didn’t want to spoil our appetite.

We were heading off to Brookfield for the second time today. Better dressed this time. We had an allocated table and were sitting with one couple we see quite often at tea dances and another couple who we’ve seen before in Perth Ball. We managed to circle the floor with a waltz and a social foxtrot and even had a fair go at the quickstep. Just after the intermission we got a chance to show off our salsa moves to the surprise of quite a few others. However, the weather was closing in and we wanted to be home before the white stuff fell again. With that in mind, we left just after 10pm and drove home via the M74 because the M8 was closed just before the Kingston Bridge. Traffic was much quieter at 10.30pm than it had been at 1pm, and despite the slightly longer route, we got home and parked just after 11pm.

A quick G ’n’ T and a Rum ’n’ Coke brought a busy day to an end.

No great plans for me tomorrow as I’m waiting in for parcel, but Scamp is heading to Glasgow with the Witches for lunch and a concert in the Concert Hall.

Dancin’ – 26 November 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Drove through the rain to Brookfield to find an enormous marquee sitting in the car park.

Thought for a minute the class had been cancelled, or that the marquee was for us to dance in. Neither was the case. It appeared that the marquee was for an event later in the day and unfortunately the class hadn’t been cancelled. We filed into the hall to find tables arranged round the hall. More obstacles for us to dance round or collide with, depending on our dancing skill. The class started with a Melody Foxtrot, two tracks of it. Then it was full pelt into the Cameron Quickstep and almost all of the practise we’d done last night went clear out of my head. Gradually it returned after I listened to Scamp’s whispered directions, but it wasn’t the resounding success I’d hoped for. Although, neither was it the disaster that it could have been, so we’ll take that as a positive.

Midnight Jive was next just to give us a chance to clear our heads before the teachers decided to throw in the Jetlag Waltz, which we’ve only danced once or twice, but like most of these dances, consists of dance ‘units’ that are bolted together to form a complete dance. It’s knowing what order the units are in that makes for the level of difficulty. According to Scamp we have that one on video and so should be able to make more sense of it by next week, all being well.

I thought we were going to be forced into the Christmas Pudding Rock to finish with, but instead we did a round of the Sally Anne Cha Cha. I don’t know who Sally Anne was, but this wasn’t a cha-cha. Again it was a series of dance units bolted together in what seemed like random patterns. Noisy and energetic and fairly good fun. Got our blood flowing ready for the drive home.

The actual drive home wasn’t too bad although the weather wasn’t too clever. Still raining and I really need to replace the wiper blades soon. The way they rattle across the windscreen sets my teeth on edge. We stopped at the shops on the way home to get milk and donuts and cakes, because we’d been good and not made a total mess of the morning’s dances.

I took a walk over to St Mo’s in the late afternoon because the rain had stopped and the sky was clearing for a warm looking sunset. Warm looking, yes, but it was getting cold, so only one circuit of the pond. PoD was a shot of a woman walking her dog along the boardwalk with some early evening light.

Dinner tonight came courtesy of Golden Bowl. Chicken Chop Suey and Fried rice for Scamp and Chicken Chow Mein for me. Very nice, if a bit dry.

We watched Hidden Figures on TV. It’s based on the true story of three women of colour in America attempting, and succeeding in working for NASA to make a success of the first American in space. Yes, we’ve seen it before, but the message was still there and the fact that we’d both lived through such ridiculous bigotry shocked both of us, just as it had on our first viewing.

Tomorrow looks a lot better than today according to the weather fairies. I hope they have it right.

Out to lunch – 24 November 2022

Posted on by Zogman

This going out to lunch is becoming a bit of a habit, I hear you say. We would disagree.

Today after we’d solved Wordle and Spelling Bee we got a bit better dressed and drove over to Motherwell. When we parked at Alex and Carol’s house, Alex told me to park the car and we’d take his daughter’s car to Gouldings for lunch.

It was very, very busy at the restaurant. Usually they hand out a buzzer to tell you when your table is ready. Today that wasn’t going to work. Today we had to queue. Actually it didn’t take that long for the queue to go down and we were seated at table 40 out of 41. Take 41 tables and multiply it by 3 to get an average of 123 people all eating or drinking or just talking at the same time with the kitchen and servers keeping things going smoothly and you see just how efficiently this restaurant works. I’m not going to list what everyone at our table had for today’s lunch, but I’d say that we were eating, drinking (non alcoholic) and talking for a couple of hours and it was really good.

Scamp hadn’t met Alex or Carol for close to twenty years. In that time three children had arrived in their family and two of our ‘children’ had been married. There was a lot for the ladies to catch up with. Alex and I had already talked these things through over the past year and a bit.

We had a walk round Xmas which had been delivered to the nursery, almost replacing the plants that are usually sold there. After the walk through and the disbelieve at the number of light-up reindeer that can be crammed into a given space. Although according to the signs in Xmas, you can run 1,000 LED lights for thirty days for 55p. That’s what they say, but how would they go about proving it? And why?

Alex drove back to Motherwell and we said our goodbyes and then drove home. It was a much brighter day than we’d expected with a sunset beginning at about 3pm. Thankfully I’d grabbed a few shots this morning in the garden and I managed to create a PoD from one of them. It wasn’t what I intended, but it made a decent abstract after being dunked in three pieces of software. Sometimes Ansel Adams quote about ‘Taking’ a photograph and ‘Making’ a photograph rings true.  Just in case you’re interested, it’s a macro of part of a Curly Kale leaf.

Tomorrow Scamp is intending going to FitSteps and I’m hoping to stay home and drink tea!

Dancin’ and Camera Misadventures – 17 November 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Today it was raining, miserable wetting rain and then heavier soaking rain, but it didn’t matter, we were going dancing.

In the morning I cancelled our subscription to Which. We’ve been talking about doing it for ages. It used to be totally independent in its reviews, but recently we’ve noticed a tendency to support ’favourites’ like JL and Apple rather than the less expensive shops and brands. The time had come. Since I’ve emailed them I’ve had two pleading emails telling me what I’m missing and inviting me to rethink. Both of them fell on deaf ears.

Drove over to Glenburn and danced what was probably the worst selection of dances we’ve ever done. Both of us made countless mistakes, even in the sequence dances that we both knew. I think it was something to do with our dancing brains being worn out from the nine hours of gracing the ballroom floor in Perth almost a fortnight ago. I have no other excuse for it. Maybe we do need the weekend off to regroup and forget today’s outing. Or maybe we just need more practise. Either way, today was a “disaaaaster, darling”! But we did have a laugh with David and Carol at the table. Plus we almost, just almost, got a handle on the Cameron Quickstep.

Drove back through the unremitting rain and picked up some ‘bake in the oven’ Katsu Chicken and a bottle of Malbec from M&S to wash away the memory of today. Since we arrived home just after 4pm and the car’s headlights had been on for the journey home, there wasn’t much hope of getting an outside photo. I set up a table-top of my jalapeño plant, looking like a little bonsai tree and left it while we had our dinner.

When I went to take the photo, however, one of my usual settings had disappeared from the menu. I won’t bore you with the details, but the camera was telling me some gobbledegook about movie settings. I’ve only taken one movie with this camera, the A7iii and never touched the settings again. I got so confused by what was going on I just did a ‘factory reset’. Now it works normally again, but it’s going to take me most of tomorrow to get all my dials and buttons reconfigured to the way they were before this thing happened, whatever it was.

Tomorrow we’re booked for lunch with June and Ian and before that the plumber is coming to have a look at the kitchen tap which has been dripping on and off for months.

Another day, another surgery – 11 November 2022

Posted on by Zogman

This time it was the doctor’s surgery for my annual check-up.

That wasn’t until the afternoon. It was a dull, depressing morning, but at least it wasn’t raining. Scamp went off to her FitSteps class and I started hacking into my SSD drives. Not literally, but I wanted to see if there was any advantage to using a new method of forcing Big Sur into a partition of one of the SSDs and that meant finding some space to put the truncated version of the operating system in. Following the instructions by the author, Andrew Tsai, to the letter (for once), after a couple of hours I had the OS in place but there was no appreciable improvement to the boot speed. At least I know that now and I hadn’t spent any money finding it out. That experiment took up most of the morning.

Soup for lunch and then it was time to steel myself for what might be bad news at the doc’s. I needn’t have worried. I’d lost four pounds (lb pounds not £) since last year, my cholesterol was down my glucose levels were also down and my BP was just where it should have been. I got a gold star from the sister for being a good boy. Feeling better, I went to get the makings of tonight’s dinner which was to be Baked Haddock and Cabbage Risotto, which at least a couple of my readers have had before.

Driving back home I realised that the light had gone. It was just after 3pm and I was driving with the auto headlights on! That’s Scotland. The wind was still gust and almost gale-force. The bins that were emptied yesterday were lying where they’d fallen last night. There was no point in lifting them, because they’re top heavy when empty and would just fall down again. Worst of all, there was no point in taking a camera out. It was just too dark. Today would be an indoor photo, and probably Flooers!

The risotto is one of the easiest ones to make, because the oven does most of the work. I’d bought some tomatoes in Tesco and I thought that as the oven was going to be on anyway, I’d use it to roast the tomatoes for making soup tomorrow. In these straitened times you have to do a bit of lateral thinking at times.

One of Scamp’s Pelargonium plants became the PoD. Not the best photo in the world, but it was better that than nothing at all.

We practised the Cameron Quickstep tonight and I discovered how to make a slow-mo video on my phone, because you really need to see the steps at half speed. Also it’s quite funny to listen to the teachers’ instructions at half speed. Cleverly the app can reduce the speed while keeping the pitch of music or speech at the normal level. It just sounds a bit slurred.

Tomorrow we are booked for our normal dance class at Brookfield. It hardly seems like a week since we were at Perth!

We did lunch – 9 November 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Wednesday looked like the best day of the week. We thought we’d go for lunch somewhere nice.

We drove over to a cafe Scamp had heard about from Isobel. It was a find! We’d been warned that it was along a narrow country road, and it was. I really didn’t think we were going to get a table, judging by the number of cars that were in the car park, but we did. It was possibly the second last table in the place. Two things caught my eye on the menu. Mince ’n’ Tatties was one and Sri Lankan Lamb Curry was the other. Now I can make mince ’n’ tatties and Scamp can make it far better than me, so working on the theory that it’s now worth paying for something that I can make myself ( that came from Chris, Jamie), I opted for the curry and wasn’t disappointed. Neither was Scamp. She chose one of her favourites Mac ’n’ Cheese. I can only say that was the best lamb curry I’ve ever had. Spices were perfect. Heat was just this side of uncomfortable and the curried pineapple (yes, pineapple) was a brilliant surprise. I hope that’s a regular on the menu. We both had coffee, but since I can never taste coffee after a reasonably hot curry, I cannot comment on it.

We had a walk round the farm shop on the way out, but all we bought was half a dozen large eggs. Lots of expensive alcohol and some interesting sweet things, but nothing we couldn’t get elsewhere … for less, probably. Some decent hardwood furniture too which was a bit incongruous in a farm shop, but heavy stuff. Even the coffee tables would take up too much room in our house. I was on the lookout for a cheap SSD and hoped I’d get one in PC World, but they had none. In fact they had very few of everything. Most of the sales staff were engaged in conversation with each other while Amazon are probably stealing their livelihood away.

Scamp wanted some Neapolitan wafer ice cream in Morrisons, but it looks as if the company that used to make them for all the supermarkets has gone to the wall. None to be had in any of the places where we used to get them. That IS a pity.

I’d got some photos looking over to the Ochil Hills when we came out of the farm shop, so I didn’t really need any more. I was pretty sure I’d a PoD in amongst them, so we drove home in bright autumn sunshine. I made some soup when we got home. What Scamp calls Just Soup. Two leeks, three carrots, some broth mix, a chunk of turnip chopped, some cabbage and half a red pepper boiled up with water and some stock pots and left to simmer. Easy Soup. It was dinner after a large lunch.

Heard from Hazy that Neil got home today about 9pm. A bit later than he’d hoped, but the op had gone according to plan. Which was good and a weight off everyone’s mind.

I’ve got the dentist tomorrow morning, but the rest of the day is our own

On our way home – 6 November 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Up and out for breakfast after a good night’s sleep, then more dancing.

For myself, I’d have been perfectly happy to leave after breakfast, but Scamp wanted one more waltz around the floor. It looked like half last night’s dancers though the same way as her. We had a very pleasant hour of dancing and even got invited by Stewart to dance to a salsa track. Others were up on the floor as well as us, but none of them danced as well as us! They were dancing ballroom salsa while we were dancing Cuban. Then, suddenly, after a Midnight Jive that had been renamed the Midday Jive, it was all over. We said our goodbyes to Stewart and Jane and to the folk who were left from our table and left. I was really glad we’d stayed for that extra hour. It closed off the weekend so well.

We found the car, used the half price ticket we got from the hotel and were on our way south. Driving through an almost deserted Perth on a dull Sunday morning, was quite depressing. Scamp said it was the remains of the endorphins leaving our system that brought our spirits down, and I think there’s some truth in that. A fairly easy run home, but the weather was nowhere near as grand as when we were driving north.

We needed bacon for tonight’s Macaroni Cheese and we also got some pancakes, but really we were just going for the walk. As sometimes happens, I left Scamp to carry the bag home while I went for a circuit of St Mo’s. That’s where today’s PoD came from. It’s the seedhead of a cow parsley plant taken with the Lensbaby Sweet50 which gives that wee bit of controllable blur.

Spoke to Jamie in the evening and found out about his flying visit to Switzerland.

Tomorrow Scamp is meeting Isobel and I’m meeting Val for coffee, in the same Costa but not at the same table!