Category: Driving

A confusing day – 4 November 2021

Posted on by Zogman

Today we were driving to East Kilbride to Hairmyres hospital for Scamp to get her eye test. She has a cataract in one eye and our optician had written to the hospital recommending her for cataract surgery. Last week we got the letter inviting her to go for a check up. We had to cancel a tea dance in Paisley, so we were hoping the test would be the first step to the removal of the cataract. We were making a big sacrifice here, you understand.

But before any of this could happen I had to go and see the bank manager and apply for a bank loan to pay for the tank full of petrol I’d need. Well, I didn’t need a full tank, but a considerable amount and it costs a lot of money these days to run a car. The bank manager ok’d the loan which I can pay back at a reasonable 55% interest. I may have to put a padlock on the filler cap now to prevent folk syphoning off this precious liquid.

We drove to the hospital and got parked, then went looking for the clinic. Of course I couldn’t stay with Scamp because of whatever restrictions they’d enforced now, so I left her to it and went looking for something to photograph. As I was finding my way out of the labyrinth that is Hairmyres, I thought my phone beeped at me, but no message showed up on the screen. Then I got a phone call from Scamp to say ‘Just wait, I won’t be long. I’ll explain.’

The explanation was that they couldn’t do the assessment because she was wearing contact lenses. She should have been told to stop wearing them for four weeks before she came for the assessment (two weeks for normal lenses, four for gas permeable). Otherwise they couldn’t take measurements from her eyes for the replacement lens(es). I’m sure she’ll explain much better than I can to you two. Disappointed, relieved, angry, all these emotions seemed to come to the fore as we drove home. She admits herself that she just ranted at me most of the way home. Which was fine. What it did do was give her a chance to get it out of her system and plan ahead. She’s managed to get an appointment with the optician for tomorrow morning. After that we will know better what the situation is and possibly have a way forward.

We discussed the whole thing at length when we got home and agreed that things would become clearer after we’d spoken to the optician tomorrow. We might even go for lunch in Hamilton afterwards.

Because of the mixed up day, today’s PoD became the last rose to flower in the garden. The last rose of summer, one of this year’s purchases and a replacement for one we used to have in one of our gardens, years ago, Prima Ballerina. A pretty little rose with a nice scent.

That’s all for now. It’s been a busy, mixed up sort of day. Hoping for some clarity if not resolution tomorrow (apologies for two unintended puns!)

A lovely autumn day – 2 November 2021

Posted on by Zogman

It was a cold day, but a clear one with blue sky and sunshine. A great surprise and a day we wouldn’t waste.

Scamp suggested three places we might go today. Either Culross, Dunfermline or Kirkcaldy. I had a few things to do on the computer first, but after that we could go. We decided that we were a bit late to go to Kirkcaldy, and I settled on Dunfermline, with the possibility of visiting Culross on the way back. Scamp agreed.

On the way there, we again met a cavalcade coming in the opposite direction. Fewer this time, but still with that ’do not get in our way’ attitude. Our drive went well until we were on the outskirts of Dunfermline and got stopped at a set of temporary traffic lights. Temperamental traffic lights with their own sequence of operations:

Red, Amber, All Off, Green. At this point, I started to move forward, but couldn’t see the road ahead for a traffic sign in front of me. Luckily Scamp could see and told me to stop because there was traffic coming towards us on the single open lane. The lights were still on Green for us, but still the traffic flowed past us coming in the other direction. Finally the lights changed to Red, Green, Amber and Red again, but the traffic coming the other way just kept coming. Eventually there was lull in the flow and a works lorry came out of our line and drove part way down the road before cutting in to the closed lane. I was right behind him and then everyone else followed me. We got through unscathed. It was a most bizarre situation and could have been really dangerous. I’ve saved the dash cam footage just in case some jobsworth decides I had run a red light. Maybe it’s a special light sequence for COP26, who knows.

We got parked easily at Pittencrief Park in Dunfermline and went for a walk in the autumn sunshine. We walked down to see the peacocks. There was only one male strutting around, but the colours in his tail feathers was incredible, sparkling in the sunshine. Three or four peahens came out to see us too. Their plumage is much duller than the show-offy peacocks, but I did get one shot I liked, this one

We walked round the formal gardens of the park and I got a few shots, but when I got them home they were disappointing, just not as crisp as usual, Scamp said that and I think she’s right. Mostly they were shot at around f16 which isn’t recommended. I must have twiddled the dial accidentally when the camera was in my pocket. That’s the only thing I can think of.

We had coffee in the posh new extension to the park pavilion. Coffee wasn’t all that posh. Mine was meant to be a cappuccino, but it looked like Scamp’s latte with some chocolate sprinkled on top. No foam and not much coffee either. However, the scones were lovely and fresh.
I did hear an interesting conversation there. An American bloke said to one of the servers “What is Coronation Chicken.” Her reply was “It chicken with a Coronation Sauce.” Well, that cleared it up nicely! He chose a chicken salad instead. I would have too.

We decided to take the longer, but safer route home via Culross. It was lovely just sitting watching the water and the light changing on the far shore. I took some shots from the start of the pier, and it was there I found the settings error. Fixed it and everything settled down after that. PoD was a shot taken there with some daisy-like flowers on the pier wall. I think now they were Chamomile.  Sorry Hazy, I hope that Culro$$ word doesn’t give you nightmares!

Drove home and decided I had enough time to wash both cars before the rain came on. As it turned out I had plenty of time, because the rain held off all afternoon. They look a lot better now, although I think I might take Scamp’s wee red car through the carwash next time.

No plans for tomorrow.

Jagging in the Rain – 30 October 2021

Posted on by Zogman

Scamp’s turn this time.

Drove up to The Link and Scamp joined the queue that took her through the different stages of the procedure for getting your booster jag and her flu jag. An experience we’ve both been through a couple of times now. She hadn’t been feeling brilliant earlier in the morning, but after the magic jags she was a lot better and improved throughout the day. It might be her new meds that don’t agree with her.

Of course it was raining all morning, but as we were driving home it did appear that the clouds were breaking and there was blue sky up there. After a light lunch I volunteered to go out and get dinner. Go out with a camera and get dinner, that is. I drove up to Fannyside and gawped at the colours and sharpness of everything. That’s what happens when you have three or four days of heavy rain, light rain and drizzle to wash the landscape clean. Not just the landscape, the sky too seems to get a wash down. All the dust in the atmosphere gets removed and you can see for miles. Late afternoon sunshine does help too, as do the scattered clouds being blown along by a strong, cold, western wind. It’s holes in those clouds that create little spots of sunshine on the land and give it texture. That’s what I was hoping for and that’s what I got today. It was a photo of an old ruined farmhouse on a hillock that got PoD, or rather, it was the lighting on the landscape that got PoD. The hillock and the old ruined farm were just props in the picture. “It’s all about the light”, someone once said.

When I got home, Scamp was feeling better, certainly well enough to enjoy a Bigham’s Fish Pie. I had a Lasagne. Both of them are expensive for what they are, but they’re worth it for the taste.

Watched another episode of Shetland and the plot thickens. After that it was time for Strictly, and as we hadn’t been able to get to the dance class today, this was our dance fix. I couldn’t be bothered with it after a while and gave up to write this and think about what today’s sketch, the second last one for this year’s Inktober, would be. I also listened to a track from A Momentary Lapse of Reason by Pink Floyd. Superb, although I never really understood what it was all about.

Tonight, the penultimate prompt in Inktober 2021 was ‘Slither’. I chose a snail as my muse. In the past month I’ve resorted to Google for some of my images, but this was one of my own photos, for a change.

Tomorrow I’m told we may be going for the messages. I’m hoping for some sun, I’m always looking for some sun or at least decent light, but I’ll settle for ‘dry’.

Another early one – 28 October 2021

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Taking the wee red car to get its yearly checkup. Always a case for heart in the mouth.

Drove down to the garage and waited. It was supposed to open at 9am, and although one of the mechanics appeared, it was still locked up. Eventually we left the car key with him and just at that moment someone arrived with the key to the garage, so we headed off home for breakfast, stopping at Tesco on the way for milk and bread. Unfortunately it was still before 10am so the other essential (alcoholic beverages) weren’t available.

A while after breakfast I eventually decided that it was dry enough to risk a walk in St Mo’s to get some photos. If the day brightened up later I’d get some more, but that looked unlikely to say the least. I did get some photos, but none of them were really contenders for the PoD.

Came home and we had lunch. Finished today’s Sudoku and started investigating the possibility of getting my phone to get itself an upgrade. I’d put a dodgy piece of software in it about a year ago that would prevent Samsung doing upgrades every second day. Now that software had disappeared, but its effect was still there. Eventually after consulting with the inter web I found that it hadn’t really gone. It was just hiding deep in the settings. When I too the plunge and switched it off the updates screen lit up. BUT I needed the phone because that was the number I’d given the garage, but once I got the word that the car was ready to pick up, I’d start the installation.

Hazy phoned not long after and she and Scamp had a long discussion about dresses for weddings. You will notice that the ‘wedding’ word is in the plural and it’s no surprise then to discover that the ‘dress’ word is also in its plural form. After the fashionistas had completed their discussion I managed to get involved in the conversation too. We talked for a while about family stuff, just catching up, really. Then my phone rang. The car had passed and been serviced, so was ready to collect. We talked to Hazy for a while longer then said our “cheerios”. Drove to the garage, paid our dues and drove home.

When I was driving back, the sky was definitely clearing from the west. By the time I got home blue sky was visible. I waited for Scamp to return then took my camera for its second walk today in St Mo’s. It was quite warm with beautiful light and I did manage to get a PoD. It was just a little weed that had been washed for days by the torrential rain and all its neighbours had been washed clean at the same time. They really sparkled in the late afternoon sun.

Dinner was Bubble ’n’ Squeak, a long time favourite of mine, but something I haven’t had for years. I even learned to make it myself a long time ago. I may have to relearn it.

The prompt for today asked for ‘Crispy’. I gave them a Crispy Cake. Made with Corn Flakes or Rice Krispies, it fits the bill for me. One of the few cakes Hazy can eat. It mush have been your phone call that put it in my head.

Tomorrow I go to see the health centre vampires who will want to take some of my blood. It’s almost Halloween, so it’s quite fitting.

Life in the twilight zone – 26 October 2021

Posted on by Zogman

Not the scary one, just the one where the sun never seems to rise.

Scamp was out early to go to the Post Office in Eastfield which is where she’d been told there was a parcel waiting for her, the one she’d missed yesterday. When she got there the woman in the PO said she didn’t have it or couldn’t find it, but would have another look and would phone her to update her. We didn’t hold out much hope for that happening. We’ve not had a great deal of success with Parcelforce.

Scamp was going out to lunch with the witches later, and I was off the leash. Yesterday I’d a couple of things in mind for today. I was intending to fix a grip on the cooker top and maybe get round to taking up my walking trousers, because they are way too long. If time and weather permitted I thought I might go up to the Carron reservoir to get some photos and some fresh air. One look out the window in the morning put paid to that last idea. Time might have permitted, but the weather certainly wouldn’t. It really looked like the sun had forgotten to rise. The other ideas would be the fallbacks.

When Scamp had left for lunch with Jeanette, I drove down to Wardpark to book Scamp’s car in for MOT. I drove rather than phoned because the sky might have brightened up and I might manage to get some photos, but it didn’t and I didn’t. I just drove home again and started cutting up my walking trousers. It sounds a bit drastic, but it really wasn’t. I had a plan and it involved sewing and cutting and pressing and it worked. The trousers are now a good 40mm shorter than they were and don’t get caught in the heels of my boots. By the time I’d done that and cleared up the back bedroom a bit, because that’s where I draw at night in October and also where I photograph the drawings to go in the blog and on Flickr. Even I get fed up with tripping over cables, although Scamp won’t believe that. I was just finishing and making a late lunch when Scamp reappeared. I hadn’t noticed the time, but two and a half hours had passed since she left.

When I got back from the garage, there was a note to say that a parcel weIt was in the bin store. I wasn’t sure if it was for me or her, but was pretty sure this was the missing one. It was for me, and it was a bottle of the hand wash that I’d been raving about after we left Bombay Cottage last week, or was that the week before? Anyway, here was the very bottle and it was just the same perfume. That was a brilliant surprise! Thank you, Scamp. I’m still not all that clear on the details of the travels of this parcel, but all’s well that ends well.

PoD turned out to be a detail from a vase of flowers that I sat on the worktop in the kitchen, catching what light was available at the time. It needed 20 seconds of exposure to get the shot, but it was worth it.

Sketch prompt was ‘Connect’. Have you ever stopped to count all the different cables and connectors you have? I don’t have the time to do it, but there must be close on a hundred different pieces of wire and plastic that connect something to something else in the house. Then there are all the duplicates and triplicates and … ! These are some of mine.

No plans for tomorrow because the weather fairies are predicting that tomorrow will be episode two of Life In The Twilight Zone

 

Dancing Central – 25 October 2021

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But first the doc’s.

Drove Scamp to her appointment with the doc. The doc shook her hand, gave her a prescription for some pills and said she hoped Scamp would feel better. It was a blustery day with occasional rain showers that came thumping down, seemingly from nowhere. We drove to the chemist which is conveniently next to Tesco and while she was in the chemist, I went to get some messages then we drove home and it was just after 10am! Unluckily for Scamp she had just missed the Parcelforce man who was supposed to be delivering a parcel today. Now she’ll have to wait until tomorrow.

We had a late breakfast and I messed about with the computer for a while, bought The Hidden Palace by Helene Wecker. Yes, Hazy, you talked me into it and I needed something well written after having ploughed through the latest John Connolly. I used to like his stories, but too much padding, too much history and too little story in this one. After that we watched yesterday’s F1 GP from Austin. Quite and exciting race for once with lots of action and a good finish.

After lunch it was a case of pack up your dance shoes and drive to another tea dance. This one was in Falkirk, in Central Region, hence the cryptic title to this blog. We’d been to a tea dance in Falkirk before the first lockdown, but only one, then everything shut down. That one had been in the Council Offices, but today’s was in a church hall in the centre of Falkirk. Lovely looking church with a reasonably sized hall but the bonus was the live music. A bloke playing an organ, not a keyboard, but an organ with foot pedals and stuff. Apparently he’s an opera singer, but makes a bob or two running tea dances in local churches. He was good, but hadn’t quite got the mark of the clientele. Twice he tried to get people up to dance Scottish country dance tunes. Once couple got up for the first one, but nobody did for the second! Just a bit embarrassing. We did all the dances that I was sure I knew and one or two that I was a bit rust on. Big bonus of this tea dance was that they actually had tea. Gorbals didn’t and that was a black mark against them. Extra big bonus, they had Tunnocks Caramel Wafers and also Snowballs. Scamp was peeved that she didn’t get a snowball. The company was a lot less friendly than other places we’ve been too. Insular or maybe inbred, difficult to tell, but none of the dancers spoke to us. Black mark against them, then.

We had got soaked walking from the carpark to the church, but when we came out the sun was shining. Not so shiny was Falkirk Main Street. If this had been America, there would have been tumbleweed rolling down the streets. Shop after shop was closed and boarded up. These days you only need one or two big shops to close and you’ve started on the slippery slope. It was really depressing. There were a lot of smaller shops on some of the streets off the main street, but some of them were almost certainly on a short let. The only shop that was busy was the big party shop. People were queueing all the way down its frontage, almost all with children in tow, desperate to get their Halloween costumes. We drove home and agreed that we’d go back to the next tea dance in the church, all being well.

Back home there was just enough light to allow a safari to St Mo’s. I got today’s PoD of a spider there. I think that was the last of the light just disappearing.

Dinner was Saturday’s soup with croutons and a pizza to follow. Today’s prompt was ’Splat’. My sketch of a splatted egg got Scamp’s approval with a couple of suggestions that I agree with, but by then it was too late to change things. The sketch this time is drawn on an A2 sheet of cartridge paper. A bit bigger than my usual A5! No eggs were harmed in making this sketch, only virtual ones!

Tomorrow Scamp is booked with the Witches for lunch. I have a few jobs to do in the house and also a prospective drive into the country if weather permits.

 

 

Relentless – 23 October 2021

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Today would be no-stop.

Up early today because, before we did anything today, there was a loaf to make, or at least the dough to prepare. John and Marion were coming for dinner tonight and I was in charge of the bread and the soup. The bread just had to be the Tear & Share. The soup was to be tomato and red pepper, but the prep of that could wait until we returned from dance class. Scamp was ahead of the game having made the main course yesterday and was preparing the Lime Cheesecake while I was kneading the bread dough.

Out a bit earlier for our trip to Bridge of Weir for the dance class. Hoping there wouldn’t be too much congestion on the M8 because to f the COP26 stramash happening across the river at the SEC. Actually there was very little traffic.

Dance class was ok to start with. Strange complicated sequence dance called Mambo Magic. Much, much more energetic and frantic than any I’ve encountered so far. Very disjointed too, as if it had been designed by a committee! Lots if disparate routines that didn’t seem to gel. Even teacher Jane agreed with this complaint.
Next was Tango and a fault finding and tuning of the basic tango. This was very useful because it changed a simple dance into a much more sophisticated one.
Final teaching session was for the Quickstep which is my bête noire of the moment. We’d practised this at home, yesterday and I’d managed to get all the bits in the right place, but today all Scamp’s teaching went out the window. By the end of the session and with Scamp and Jane’s help it began to come together again, but this will need some more practise sessions at home before I’m ready to progress.

Drove home through Glasgow and the only time we met any substantial amount of traffic was just before the Kingston Bridge where it’s usually busy anyway. We stopped at Tesco on the way home, but were still parked and in the house much, much earlier than a usual Saturday. I wonder if all the talk of road closures and long delays had made some people stay at home today or at least choose a different route that avoided the motorways. Whatever it was, it was a pleasant surprise.

Dough was rising for the bread and Scamp was hard at work getting the table set while I chopped tomatoes and peppers for the soup. I was trialing a new method for the soup. Just chop all the veg sprinkle with oil and bake in the oven for 60mins at gas 6. After that, add the stock and a tin of tomatoes and cook for 20mins before blitzing. Much less faff which leaves time for other things, like photography!

PoD was a shot of a single rose stem with one bud and one blown flower. Used Potatoshop to put a nice blue sky (from another of my photos) in the background and there you have it!

Visitors arrived on time and we had a great, relaxing evening eating, talking an generally catching up with everything that’s been going on in all of our lives over the past two years. Found out about the May wedding too.

After the visitors left and the dishwasher was chugging away with the first load, we had a chance to sit and relax for a while. I managed to get the sketch finished and posted just before midnight. The prompt was “Leak” and I drew the leaky tap you see here. A bit rushed and no watercolour this time, but finished (just) in time and fulfilling the prompt.

Tomorrow (today, you realise!) we will probably load up the dishwasher again and try to put the house back to its normal relaxed state!

A lazy start to the day – 21 October 2021

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After a quick lunch we were off and the lazy start was behind us.

We set off thinking that the COP26 extravaganza would cause chaos with the traffic on the M8, but actually the road was just the usual snarl ups and then clear. The problem came in deepest Paisley where roadworks closed part of the road we were intending driving on. That meant a long detour to get to the hall where our tea dance was taking place. After such a good start it was annoying to have to start finding a way through the maze of Paisley’s traffic. Eventually we arrived about fifteen minutes late. That in itself was a success, just fifteen minutes!

The hall was very busy with a new group of tea dancers ready to strut their stuff. We both found the floor very slippery, so slippery that I changed from my old shoes to my new black and white shoes. That made it a bit better, but still not right. When you looked at the parquet flooring with the glancing light from the window, it looked as if the floor had been newly waxed. That might account for the problem. The other problem was that we were making more mistakes than normal. We tried Social Foxtrot, we completed two tracks of Ballroom Foxtrot and we achieved success with waltz with whispered instructions to each other. Tango wasn’t as good as it could have been, but it too is getting there. Lots of sequence dances and for the first time I danced the Sally Anne Cha Cha or to give it another name, FIREBALL! because that’s what you’re supposed to shout at the end of each sequence. I didn’t just in case I got it wrong. Two Scottish country dances and a waltz finished the dancing for today.

I was hoping to grab some of the late afternoon sun when we got home, but the traffic through Paisley and on the eastbound M8 was a crawl. If you can find a space in the fast lane to sneak into, you can get up to 40mph for a while, but it doesn’t last. That said, it was better than the M74 beside us was doing, it was almost at a halt, and this is before COP26 gets into full swing with its road closures all over the city.

An hour and a quarter after we left, we arrived home. The light was all but gone, but I managed a few shots taken along the lane down to the shops. A bit of jiggery pokery in Potatoshop and it became PoD.

Sketch prompt was ‘Fuzzy’, and that’s what my little caterpillar is. It was just a ten minute sketch, but it covered the basics and the prompt.

Tomorrow we may go for the messages at The Fort with the chance of lunch there too.

An afternoon at the seaside – 16 October 2021

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Off to dancing class first.

I was a bit late off the mark this morning. Honest, it wasn’t a Freudian slip, it was just a touch of brain fade, but by cutting a few corners we did get on the road about ten minutes late. Just as we were driving past the Irn Bru factory we chanced to see some head case in a bright yellow car testing his vehicle’s 0-60 capabilities. Usually this is done of a perfectly straight and level piece of track, like a runway or something similar, not on a fairly busy ring road with a bend about 50m from his starting point. Also the greater than normal chance of HGVs crossing the road just past that bend. I pity the folk who will eventually have to scrape him off a lamp post. We drove sedately on.

Arrived with about five minutes to spare. Today we were tackling Tango and I was given a reminder of one of the finer points of the man’s part, the pull back on the leading foot after the first three forward steps < that’s my reminder to me. It doesn’t have to mean anything to you.> With that fixed we got a thumbs up! We must have spent almost an hour on the tango, I didn’t check. Next was a sequence dance that we’ve done many times, but which I still occasionally get wrong, the Mayfair Quickstep. We did the Bellisima Cha-Cha after that. I think we’re both fairly ok with it now. After that we went on to a real Quickstep. We haven’t done the quickstep with Stewart and Jane, but we did eventually get the first set of steps right. It will need some practise at home to hammer it into my head, but we should have it by next week. Another couple of sequence dances later and we were done. My little head was full.

We’d planned on going to Irvine if the weather was fairly decent after the class and although the little patches of sun that had appeared in the morning had disappeared to be replaced with milky white cloud, we did continue down through long convoluted road the sat nav picked for us and ended up at the seafront at Irvine. We parked near a little trailer selling New Mexican food. I had a beef taco and Scamp had a chicken one with a couple of coffees. The food was lovely. We both really did enjoy it. After that, it was coats on and a walk down to the pier. I took some photos of the bridge to nowhere. It’s a steel bridge with hand burned steel panels on the side depicting different inventors who originated from Scotland. It used to lead across the estuary to an island with a kind of Science Centre on it, partly buried in a man made hill. The bridge had a removable middle section to allow yachts to sail through, but now that removal has become permanent and the science centre has closed. Such a pity. Such short sightedness on the part of the councils. We saw a family walking a strange looking dog. I thought it was a Borzoi, but Mr Google says it could have been a Saluki. It was the shape of a greyhound with long hair and had a tail that looked like a fan. Strange looking beast.

I got PoD on the walk to the pier. It was a view of some folk walking out to the end of the pier with that grey sky above. Quite gloomy. We drove home by a different route, one that I knew and not the twisty turny routes the sat nav prefers. I must check the preferences on that device to see if I’ve set a flag for “Choose the most awkward route.”

Today’s sketch prompt was Compass. I drew my old Silva compass which is about fifty years old and although the clear perspex base is broken, the compass works perfectly. It’s little used now that Google Maps and OS maps online make instruments like this almost obsolete. However, it does not need batteries, nor does it lose its signal, so still useful as a backup.

When we were driving home the rain came on, gentle rain, that started off as a drizzle but was getting heavier all the time. Now, at just after 11.30pm it’s raining properly, and has been for a while.

Tomorrow we may go for a walk if it’s dry, and if it’s not, there are lots of things to do at home.

Lights on – 14 October 2021

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Today we were driving in to Gorbals for a tea dance.

If I’d said that thirty or forty years ago you’d have thought I was mad. Gorbals, then had a really bad reputation. Now it’s all high flats, bright colours and roads that seem to take you where you want to go, but don’t. Today Glasgow is a different city.

When we started the car, the headlights came on. It was about 12.20pm. That will give you an indication of how bright it was today! The sat nav took us into Gorbals by M74. Then by a series of zig zags we almost reached the destination. But for some reason it took us round in a circle before dropping us outside the Glasgow Club and we recognised the inelegant building immediately, but had arrived from a completely different direction from the last time we visited.

The Glasgow Club is a giant gym, pool, dance studio sort of place. We’d been there before, just before the first Lockdown, 12th March 2020 to be exact. There were a lot fewer couples this time. Only five of us in total including the couple who were running the dance and an Indian lady who was recovering from a knee operation and wanted to see if there was anything that would give her some gentle exercise. Scamp talked to her while we were waiting for the music to start. I don’t think she realised it was more of less couples only. She didn’t stay long, but I don’t think it was anything Scamp said 😉

As time went on another couple joined our ranks and a really thin lady we recognised from our previous visit in 2020 appeared too. We both remembered that she danced the followers steps, alone. I wouldn’t say the people were the most friendly group I’ve ever met and strangely enough that’s what I said eighteen months ago too! An older couple did speak to us after a while and the bloke who was running the show did too, in fact he was quite encouraging. Maybe he was hoping we’d return and eventually become regulars to help boost their numbers.

We danced the waltz part we already knew and added some walking steps. Scamp would whisper “Four Forward Steps” when she felt we needed the extra distance and to break up the repetition of the few waltz steps we knew. We tried quickstep, but it was beyond me, just a hint of the moves in my memory weren’t strong enough to build a dance on. Foxtrot was good, though, after a while. By the end of the two hours I was beginning to get the hang of it. Sequence dances interspersed the ballroom and latin and we even learned a new sequence routine Catherine Waltz which we learned on Zoom in the living room during Lockdown. I even danced a Cha-Cha line dance. I’m sure you’ve heard me say on many occasions that my least favourite dance is cha-cha and I don’t do line dances. Today I did. I drew the line at Saturday Night Fever, but of course, Scamp joined in.

The sat nav took us home by a completely different route. As far as we could remember, it was the same one the Juke took us back in 2020. Why does this sat nav have two different routes for the same start and destination? Only Smarties have the answer. And yes, the automatic headlights were on again.

Stopped at the shops for a bottle of wine and two pots of sticky toffee pudding, because we deserved them. Another tea dance (without any tea break) under our belt.

Today’s PoD is a wilting carnation, taken on the kitchen window sill. I do believe, for once, it was brighter when we got back to Cumbersheugh than it had been all day! Today’s prompt is “Tick”. I was determined not to draw any little black arachnids, so I chose the Nike ’Tick’ ( ✔︎ ). I sketched my old battered and much maligned Merrell Moab trainers and stuck an orange Nike ‘Tick’ on the side, rather than just draw the tick itself. I hate the ‘swoosh’ word. It’s not even a real word! I’m quite pleased with the result.

Tomorrow we may go looking for an Indian Restaurant we’ve visited in the past in Hamilton.