Category: Driving

Fort Apache, Glasgow – 8 December 2021

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Today Scamp wanted to go to The Fort today.

Before we went I added some air to the Blue car’s tyres. They’d all been down by about 4psi. Strange that they should all be down by exactly the same amount. It makes me think that all the tyres had their pressure reduced during their service in September. I hadn’t checked, but who checks the pressure in their tyres unless they look a bit flat and mine didn’t, but I felt the steering was a bit heavy last week and noticed the drop. Thankfully Scamp had a fairly new automatic inflater and it didn’t take long to get them up to snuff.

Drove to The Fort and Scamp masked up and walked into M&S while I went for a walk along the curving frontage of the retail park, looking for Paperchase or any shop that sold pens. No Paperchase and not much luck finding a pen. Does nobody write any more? Oh dear, that makes me sound so old 🧐. Plenty of clothes shops and if you’re looking for a pair of trainers you’d be well catered for, but no pen shops. I walked back empty handed. Met Scamp in Waterstones then we went to NEXT and Boots then I was dismissed to go to Costa and get the coffees in. As we were walking to the car after the coffee, I saw this sign with part of it obliterated by a parked car. I laughed, glad that I’d pocketed the A6000 before we left the house. We also saw the bronze deer statues and one of them with raindrops became PoD.

Back home and after lunch I got my boots on and grabbed the big camera, then went for a walk round part of St Mo’s, took a few photos, knowing that they’d have to be good to beat the ones from The Fort. Then I waked to Condorrat to post the 25 cards we’d written and stamped at a ridiculous cost. When I was buying the 25 stamps at the post office I laughingly complained that they cost almost 10 times what the cards had cost. The lady behind the counter replied “But they have to go a long way”. That got me thinking what would the total mileage all those 25 cards travelled? Thought for the day!

Dinner was slow cooked Prawn & Pea Risotto. Done the proper way in a pot with loads of butter and a great deal of care. Not like my usual method of letting the oven do the hard work. Tasted good though, so worth the care and attention.

Tomorrow we’re off to Hairmyres early in the morning. Hoping to get some answers to questions that have been buzzing round both of our heads for over a month now.

 

Out in the morning again – 7 December 2021

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The weather didn’t look too clever, but then, neither am I. So I went out.

It was really dull this morning. In fact it turned out to be really dull all day. I took two cameras, but ended up only really using the small A6000. As insurance I took my Gorilla pod and was glad I did. I found a patch of Stag Horn fungus on a well rotted log. Light was really low already and it was only 11am. Since there was no wind to move the fungus, I could use the Gorilla pod on the ground to hold the camera and take the shot at a very low shutter speed but an equally low ISO. That gave me a sharp smooth photo in very low light. Suffice to say that I only took one shot and was satisfied that I had a potential PoD.

With one in the bag, I went for a walk in the woods and to my surprise I found a ladybird hibernating deep in a crevice in a tree. It was a 14 spot Orange Ladybird (Halyzia sedecimguttata). I’ve seen them before in the woods, in fact for the last two years I’ve seen them hibernating from November through to March. I had to get a photo, but the 50mm lens was a wee bit short for the task and I couldn’t use my Gorilla pod on the tree to steady the camera. I eventually got a reasonable image after hiking up the ISO to noisy levels.

By this time the rain was starting, so I put the hood up on my Bergy and walked home. As I was getting near to the house, the rain changed to sleet and the temperature was dropping. I was just taking my jacket off in the house when I looked out the window and it was snowing. Big fat flakes of the white stuff. We weren’t due any snow until nearly midnight, this isn’t what we signed up to. Never mind, it was tomato soup for lunch and it tasted good. Felt warm again. I think it’s the colour of the soup as much as the taste that makes you feel warm. Whatever it is, it worked.

After lunch I drove Scamp to the dentist through the sleet that had come after the snow, and then drove to Tesco to get some messages. I was just at the checkout when I got the phone call to say she was ready to come home. This was a lot earlier than we’d anticipated, but there was a reason for that. She hadn’t got her tooth fixed. The dentist had examined it and told her she’d need to come back to have the work done. The appointment is for the 25th of February 2022! That’s three months in the future!! Of course, Covid was blamed for the delay. They are short staffed just now and they need to wipe down all the surfaces after a consultation, etc, etc. She still had to pay for the ‘consultation’ though. Really it’s getting ridiculous now. Three months wait to get a tooth fixed. Maybe we need a different dentist.

I drove back and picked up Scamp who was just disappointed, but resigned to her wait. I looked at my photos from the morning with the occasional glance outside, but the sleet had stopped and the sky was actually lightening, but it didn’t last. The sun was low on the horizon now and night was closing in.

Dinner tonight was a Scamp speciality, Chicken, Mushrooms and Rice. It was ages since we’d had it and it tasted great. Posted my photos early, which was lucky, because Flickr is down now. And the fungus did get PoD.

Ordered myself a new-to-me lens mainly for the A6000 it’s a Sony 55-210mm zoom. Not best quality, but it’s got built in anti-shake and I can afford it. Coming on Friday hopefully.

Jamie phoned tonight to say that his interview in Doncaster had gone quite well and he was satisfies with his performance. Now he has to wait until January. It seems that everyone has to wait for something these days.

No plans for tomorrow. Threats of heavy snow overnight have been removed, but will the snow know that? We’ll have to wait for that too!

Dancin’ Class – 4 December 2021

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“Hooray!” Said Scamp.

This morning we drove through sleet and rain all the way over to Brookfield for the Saturday morning dance class. We got a rousing reception from Stewart and Jane. Maybe that was partly because there were only a few of us dancers there, five couples in total, not counting the teachers. We started with a couple of sequence dance tracks to get us warmed up, then it was into the Christmas Pudding Rock. I was glad of yesterday’s teaching session from Scamp and even with that it took me a few dances to get into the swing of it.

Next was the Rumba. What we’d started calling the Lockdown Rumba, but this was a more polished version of that dance and it had also been lengthened too with some tricky steps, mainly aimed at the ladies, thankfully. We made not a bad fist of it all in all, but with lots of phone videos to fall back on, I’m sure an hour of so’s practise at home will help us put it all together for next week. We finished off with another sequence dance and we were done for today. It’s not often I say this about dance class, but I did enjoy today.

Drove home through traffic that was just a little worse than our usual return journey. Weather was poor again, but I think the Christmas ‘run to the shops at the weekend’ has begun in earnest now. However with a bit of judicious lane changing we managed to get back in about an hour.

After lunch, the light was disappearing fast, if it had appeared at all. I gave up any hope of getting an outside photo today, then Scamp commented that there was a lovely break in the clouds, over to the west. I knew I didn’t have time to kit up and go looking for that light, so I had a look out the back bedroom window and that’s where today’s PoD came from. It’s a four frame panorama of the Campsie Fells bathed in the light from the ‘golden hour’. It only lasted about fifteen minutes and it was gone, but the photos recorded it.

Dinner was Sweet Potato, Chilli Flakes and Lime soup. It was a bit thin, but tasted fine, if a little spicy. More in the pot for tomorrow. Scamp had made Sultana Cake yesterday and pudding was that cake with custard. Just a Saturday night dinner.

Watched an interesting Dubai GP. Lots of thrills and spills. Driving like it should be without too much politics.

I think the iMac has just finished backing up to an external SSD drive. I’ll be interested to see how fast it boots from that.

We have no plans for tomorrow but I hope it’s a bit warmer than today when the temperature rose to a magnificent 5ºc.

A birthday and going for the messages – 2 December 2021

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Just a normal shopping day at Tesco, after the singing.

The singing was done in text format over WhatsApp to Hazy and went along the lines of:
“Happy Birthday to you”

I drove us to Tesco and Scamp consulted her Little List as the basis of the shopping. While we were wandering around the aisles I bumped into Fred and found out that things are looking up now at home. Glad to hear that. We’ve agreed to have a coffee sometime soon. The list had about ten items on it and we left an hour or so later with four big bags full of groceries. Drove home in time for a cup of coffee before lunch.

After lunch Hazy sent a message to ask if we wanted to do a Zoom call. Of course we did. Scamp sang “Happy Birthday” to Hazy. I was out of the room at the time, but that was probably for the best. Singing is not my forté I’m afraid. We sat and talked for a quite a while. It was good to speak face to face, even a virtual face to face after such a long time. So much has happened since our family holiday in Cumbria back in July.

After we said our goodbyes and closed down the computer the light had almost disappeared, then the sun broke out through the clouds and all was well again. I grabbed both cameras and headed out looking for deer. I didn’t find any deer. I did find an interesting sky that might make it to Flickr once I get it looking at its best. PoD, however, went to a spear of whin with a strip of sunset orange below it. I liked the picture when I saw it through the viewfinder, but even better for me, was the format. The long narrow strip fitted the subject perfectly in my eyes.

Smoked haddock and cabbage risotto for dinner cooked in the oven. It doesn’t sound very appetising, but you’d be wrong for rejecting it just because of its ingredients. It was lovely, and best of all, no standing stirring the rice for twenty minutes. Just let the oven do the hard work.

I hope you had a lovely day Hazy.

I don’t really know what we’re doing tomorrow. Nothing planned yet.

 

Tea Dancin’ – 29 November 2021

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With a judge called Isobel.

It was a dull morning, but most of the afternoon would be inside, so we weren’t all that worried.

Picked up Isobel and drove through some soaking drizzly rain to Falkirk. Got to the church with a few minutes to spare and dropped the two ladies off as near as I could to the path to the church hall. Then I went to park the car. I walked back to the church and that’s when Scamp told me the bag with the shoes was still in the car’s boot. So I had to walk back and pick up the bag. Missed the first two dances as a result. Probably my fault. On the way back I managed to get a few photos of the church.

We were on the floor for more than a few different dances. Waltz, Tango, Foxtrot and Rumba, we stumbled through them all. Starting off badly, but improving as we went. That’s what happens when you’ve not danced for a couple of weeks. We also joined in with most of the sequence dances we know. The guy playing the keyboard kept everything going really well.

Things started to fall apart when we left. I had told Scamp that I’d bring the car up to the church to pick them up. Because Falkirk is a maze of one way streets and the fact that it was dark by then and raining, I struggled to find a way to the entrance into the church carpark and tried to phone Scamp to tell her to meet me back on the street where I’d dropped them off, but the phone kept going to voicemail. Apparently her phone was in the shoe bag which was now in the boot of the car. Not knowing that, I left a message on the phone. I finally found the street that took me to the entrance to the church carpark, but when I got there, No Scamp or Isobel. I assumed she’d got the message and had gone to the street where I’d dropped them off earlier in the day. I left and headed for the street . That’s when my phone rang and Scamp speaking on Isobel’s phone, asking me why I’d driven away! They had been sheltering in an alcove on the dark side of the church and had seen me drive in and then drive off again. All in all, it was a comedy of errors, just not funny. Not at all funny.

Just to put the tin lid on things, there was a problem with the SD card in the camera and none of my photos had been recorded. It would have been good if Sony had thought to put a big “NO CARD” message in the middle the screen, instead of a tiny little note in the top left corner of the screen.

They say that problems come in threes. I think I’ve had my three today.

The Christmas cactus stepped into the gap left but the dodgy SD card and that made PoD.

Hopefully tomorrow will be better than today.

Glasgow Green – 25 November 2021

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A bright day, but a cold one. You can’t have everything.

We drove down to Glasgow Green today, Scamp’s suggestion. It had been quite a while since we’d been there. These days you have to be very calculating or very lucky to get to walk an unmolested Glasgow Green. It seems that every weekend there is preparation for, or demolition of an ‘Event’. We must just have been lucky, because we didn’t do any research for today’s walk, and the ’green’ part of Glasgow Green was just as it should be, empty of scaffolding or wire fences. Wonderful. The old boathouse was being renovated, but that’s ok, because it’s on the edge of the green and didn’t inconvenience anyone.

We walked a fair bit of the periphery of the park as did quite a few others, but the feeling of space today was cheering. It was a shot from The Green that I got today’s PoD which was the reflection of the chimney and the smoke from the Strathclyde Distillery reflected in the Clyde. Another day with that strange yellowy sky. I’m guessing it’s because the sun isn’t rising very high in the sky and is therefore shining through a thicker layer of dust and smoke than in the summer.

We walked almost as far as the bridge over the Clyde to Richmond Park, but we were both feeling the cold by then and decided a warm car would be a better choice and left Richmond Park for another day. We stopped on the way home to have a coffee in Costa at Robroyston and then stocked up of essentials (which didn’t include a bottle of gin, this time) at Lidl before driving home.

After we’d unloaded the car I changed keys and drove Scamp’s Wee Red Car to Boots at Craigmarloch to get Scamp’s prescription and also to give the wee car a run. I made sure the heat was flowing before I made my way back and got home before the St Mo’s weans came out of school.

I was half way through making Fish Curry for dinner when a strange message appeared on the TV. Something about the program being suspended, then Scamp noticed that the modem was off. I checked the electricity hadn’t tripped, but it hadn’t. Then the modem’s lights came on, but stayed at a flashing green. That’s not a good sign. I couldn’t get through to Virgin on my phone and I feared the worst. Eventually, after an hour, I got the message that there was a problem in our area, both Broadband and TV. Nothing to do but wait. Now I know what cold turkey feels like, even if I was eating hot fish curry. Then everything started up again. The electricity had gone off yesterday, for the whole street. Today it looked like the broadband had been the victim. Now, there is a group of council workies digging holes and doing some ‘repair’ work in the next street. Now call me suspicious, but … !

Tomorrow looks stormy. We look as if we’re on the edge of the ‘amber warning’, but that’s by no means certain. We’ll hang onto our hats and hope for the best.

 

Glasses – 19 November 2021

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Driving in Larky on a Friday. Not a task for the faint hearted.

I’ve often thought that the best place in the world to have a driving test area would be Larky. If you can drive there, you can drive anywhere.

At lunchtime today we got the phone call to say that the glasses had been found and were ready to pick up. I was expecting a delivery from Amazon and with their usual helpfulness they gave us a window of about eleven hours. Somewhere between 11am and 10pm. Why bother? With that in mind, Scamp volunteered to wait in for the parcels while I drove to Larky to pick up the glasses. I decided to park at the Co-op because I had a parcel to post and the Co-op houses a the post office for Larky. There were cars abandoned everywhere and although there is a sort of one way system in the car park, nobody paid any heed to it. Lorries, delivery vans and a multitude of little old ladies with steely eyes were determined to either get into their parking space or out onto the road again and they were giving no quarter, but expecting everyone to get out of their way.

There was a queue of ten people all waiting with their parcels and only one person serving. I gave up and went to pick up the glasses. Got them and as I was leaving I asked the assistant where I could post a letter. She told me the sorting office was across the road and I could drop it in there if it was open. It appeared that the sorting office had different opening hours for every day of the week, but luckily it would be open for another half hour. That gave me enough time to go back to the car and collect my parcel and get rid of it too. It was while I was walking back I noticed that nearly everyone seems to park on the wrong side of the road in Larky, some even double park on the wrong side. That’s considered normal in the town. I even saw someone trying to reverse park into a space on the wrong side of the road. Truly, Larky on a Friday afternoon is in a different world.

I drove home and handed over the glasses in their case. Scamp was delighted, they fitted, were comfortable and most importantly she could see with them. Not perfectly, some things like door frames are still a bit rounded, but much, much better than the glasses she had been suffering with for the last few days. That was a relief.

I’d taken my own advice today and gone out early to get a photo. I got more than one, but not a lot more. That meant I didn’t need to go looking for pictures on a dull afternoon. I did need to get tonight’s dinner, so I got ready to walk to the shops and just at that moment the Amazon man came to the door. I got the parcels after I’d read out my six digit code, Amazon’s new security system that might last as long as a week. The bloke seemed to breathe a sigh of relief when I read out he number. I imagine he’d seen a few blank faces this week already.

I left the opening of the parcels until I came back from the shops. The external SSD I bought is tiny and has a capacity of 1TB. Really fast too. It’s been play tested tonight.

PoD today was a little mushroom with a tiny beetle sheltering inside.

I’m hoping for a bit brighter day tomorrow. We really deserve some sunshine.

The last dance – 14 November 2021

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One more breakfast of champions, One more morning walk through Perth, One more tea dance. Then home.

Breakfast was a bit quieter than yesterday with a lot more empty tables, but the same selection of fruit and fries. Not all the tables were fully stocked with cups, cutlery and napkins. Just another little niggle that showed this was indeed a three star hotel. I’ll bet Bonnie Prince Charlie didn’t have to go and nick his cutlery from another table!

Fed and watered, we went for a walk along Perth’s riverside. It was a bit colder than yesterday and a lot duller too. Neither of these inconveniences stopped us walking through the park for half an hour and neither did it stop me from getting a photo or five, more like twenty five though. The one that eventually, after some post processing, made PoD was a slow shutter speed shot (alliteration of ’S’) of the upstream bridge over the Tay with the smooth water that only comes with shutter speeds of 1/8th of a second or longer. I knew you’d want to know that Jamie!

Walked back and we were ready for the final dance of the weekend. First we all observed the Minute’s Silence, then the dance began. I was expecting a couple of dozen folk to be there, but there must have been around fifty. All still raring to go. It was only an hour long session, but it finished off the weekend perfectly. Said goodbye to the folk we knew.  After that we handed back our key and got a QR code to scan into the parking ticket machine which gave us a 50% reduction on our parking costs, once we worked out the sequence of scans to do it.

Drove home via M&S in Dunblane to get tonight’s dinner, because apparently we have to make our own dinner, and breakfast here in Cumbersheugh!

It was an interesting and exhausting three days. Now it’s back to “auld claes and purrich” as my dad would say. Tomorrow we’re hoping to have a more relaxing day.

Strictly a dancing day – 12 November 2021

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But first a visit to the doc’s to hear the bad news.

I needn’t have worried. For the first time in years, there was no bad news from the nurse about my annual checkup. She went over my numbers and basically everything was fine. Ok, my weight was a bit higher than ideal, but as she said, “everyone has put on weight over the last year.” I left feeling much better than I had when I went in. Isn’t that what doctors surgeries are meant to do?

Next step was to collect together our latest ‘Small Electrical’ devices and take them on a one way trip to the skips. It was just small things like the old coffee grinder which would no longer switch on. Also my hard working Nexus 7 tablet. Nine years old and still working … well, it really depends what you expect from ‘working’. If you mean that you switch it on and it works, then it’s working. However those who want it to work about thirty seconds after pressing the power button and to keep working for at least five minutes after the screen appears, might be disappointed. I was one of the latter group. It had to go. It’s been replaced by a new Lenovo 8” tablet that is doing everything I expect from a tablet, except taste sugary, but that’s probably a different kind of tablet! The last thing to go was a half bottle of white spirit that I kept meaning to chuck out just for safety reasons. It, too, has now left the building. With all that done and after handing over an arm and a leg for a tank full of petrol, we were ready to go to Perth.

Drove up to a dull, dreich Perth, surely not how it was going to be this weekend? The hotel did nothing to lift my spirits. Allegedly the oldest established hotel in Scotland, it had hosted Bonnie Prince Charlie as a guest back in 1745 and I think it has been painted since then, maybe only once. Just a typical old, old hotel that’s like a maze inside. Ours was a tiny wee room with a lovely view of the carpark and the back of a tenement, but that wasn’t important. We were there to dance.

The was a table plan to consult as we went in to the ballroom and four dancers were already seated when we found our table. Standoffish? Just a bit. Condescending? Just a bit. Who cares, we were there to enjoy the dancing, not the company.

Dinner tonight was typical hotel food, I chose Melon with Midori as a starter, then Haggis Stuffed Chicken as my main course with Meringue and Fresh Fruit for pudding. Typical hotel food! Scamp’s starter was also Melon  but she had a main of Sweet & Sour Vegetables which apparently tasted brilliant. Pudding was a Sticky Toffee one.

With dinner over, dancing began and we threw ourselves in and had a great night. Not great dancing until the opportunity came for a bit of Salsa. Six of us could dance Cuban salsa and about six others who took to the floor danced ballroom salsa. I didn’t get a chance to see what their dancing was like, I was too busy dancing salsa.

By midnight I was totally beat, physically, as was Scamp, but we were both buzzing when we struggled through the maze to go to bed.

PoD was a photo taken in the afternoon, through the bedroom window of the backside of Perth!

Early start tomorrow for a dance lesson then an afternoon free before the formal dance at night.

Driving, Dancing and FPs – 6 November 2021

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Driving to Bridge of Weir at early o’clock in the rain.

The teachers wanted an early start today. Half an hour early to be more precise. I wasn’t too bothered until I realised I had about fifteen minutes to shower, shave and get dressed. I managed it … just! It was a really mucky morning. High winds, lashing rain and when we headed down the street the automatic headlights came on. It was going to be one of those days.

Despite the weather and threats of disruption on the motorway because of COP26, we made good time to the dance class and the room filled up quickly with far more dancers than usual. The teachers had decided that today was a reprise of all we’d learned so far. The only one we really screwed up on was the quickstep. The rest we fumbled our way through, but the quickstep wasn’t quick and most of my steps were in the wrong place. I don’t know if I will ever be able to be totally confident with that dance.
Sometimes, for me, the time drags in class, especially if I’m having problems with a dance, but today the time flew in. However, our lack of practise time in the past fortnight was showing. We need more time on the floor, especially if Scamp is going to be out of class for a month. We might ask the teachers for a private lesson or two to keep us up to date.

The drive back is usually a painful stop and go for about five or six miles as we near Glasgow, but today, perhaps because of the weather or the threat of disruption, it all went remarkably smoothly. In fact we took almost the same time for the return journey as for the outward one in the morning. That won’t happen every day.

There was more light as we left Glasgow and headed for Cumbersheugh and I was beginning to get hopeful that I might get out to take some photos, but the brightness was short lived and we were back in the land of gloom, wind and rain.

After lunch Scamp made some weird sounding Curried Kale soup which we have yet to taste, because it’s intended for Sunday’s starter, but which looks interesting. I took a walk down to the shops in the late afternoon to get a chicken for tonight’s dinner. We also needed potatoes, so that was a heavy bag to lug home. Additionally I took a long way home, hoping to get something worthwhile out of the day because the sky was brightening and the rain had stopped. PoD became A Road Less Travelled a gloomy path through trees heading towards an underpass. Nice bit of gloaming light through the trees warmed it up a bit. Just as I was heading down the path a workie said those worrying words “Were you my techy teacher?” I couldn’t deny it, he obviously knew me. He was great big towering bloke who I remember as a quiet wee pupil. He didn’t have a busy beard then either. Sometimes it’s good to meet FPs, especially when they speak to you. Not so when they shout your name across the street!

Tomorrow looks a bit like today, but hopefully with less liquid falling from the sky. We might get out for a walk.