Category: Family

Walk on through the rain – 13 September 2020

Posted on by Zogman

We climbed halfway up a mountain today to see a waterfall.

Not your typical Sunday morning. Sat upstairs in the lounge willing the weather to improve for our second walk of the week. This one to Caultney Spout which is an impressive waterfall. JIC drove us to the parking place and we decanted into the rain. Crossed a narrow footbridge over a river. JIC and I noted the carcass of a deer, we think, impaled on a tree branch,just upstream from the bridge. Note to self: Don’t drink any of the water in this stream today.

Once across the bridge we turned face on to the wind and the rain and plodded onward along the path, passing other walkers going the other way. Probably they had already climbed the mountain and were on their way to the next. They all looked happy, cheerful hikers in their cagoules and shorts. Shorts? In weather like this? You have to be hardy to play that game. We trudged on. Then I found that the Teazer had mysteriously managed to extend its lens. Even worse, it wouldn’t shut down. Finally got it to behave, but the battery level was showing nearly empty. What it had been doing in my pocket all the time, I have no idea. Never mind, I still had the Oly 1.

Further on and the wind and rain were lessening. At first I thought (hoped) the weather was improving, but we were just entering the lee of another hill and that was sheltering us. It was round about then the Oly 1’s screen went black. Switched off and on again, but still nothing. Removed the battery and pushed it back into place and got the message to set the date and time, not a good sign. Set them and all seemed well, full three bars on the power icon.

The path became steeper and wetter after that. We also had to cross a few streams. As the slope increased even more, Scamp suggested that the other two (plus Vixen) go on as we were just holding them back. They pointed out where they were going and we just nodded. Were those orange and red dots really people? Apparently they were. We let them go on, leaving us the opportunity to take our time. The Oly turned off again. This time I plugged in a replacement battery, reset date and time and it was operational again. Thankfully it remained working for the rest of the walk.

We could see that Sim and JIC were on their way back down again led by the four wheel drive of Vixen. The rest of the walk was uneventful and we were soon on our way back home after turning at the Cross Keys which is a Temperance Inn. A real one. No alcohol served, not that we were bothered, we were heading home for lunch. Got stuck behind a tractor travelling at a sedate 20mph for mile after mile on twisty turny roads with lots of traffic coming the other way. No chance to overtake, but the patient JIC took it in his stride, but we all breathed a sigh of relief when it turned off into a housing estate.

Tonight’s dinner was cooked by JIC and Sim and was Bacon and Borlotti Beans. After dinner we watched the New Monkey Magic. Not a patch on the original.

Tomorrow the hill climbers are heading for the Nine Standards and we’re heading for Kirkby Stephen.

Saying goodbye over the internet – 28 August 2020

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Strange days.

The day started with a webinar with the man from Falkirk. For once he didn’t have a lot to say for himself and the topics discussed by the man from Puma were way above my head. All about inheritance tax and the avoidance thereof. I don’t think that will bother us.

After lunch we said goodbye to an good friend, not a very old friend, we’d only known her for a few years, but she meant a lot to both of us and opened our eyes to a whole new world, literally. Who would have thought when we met her and Jaime that we’d be watching a live feed of her funeral in a nearly empty church in Trinidad from our own home, 4000 miles distant. Strange days.

After the service we went out for a walk round St Mo’s. Twice round the pond in the sunshine. Took some photos of the lazy dragonflies checking each other out. PoD was two competing males.

Tomorrow is an early rise for a drive to St Andrews to see Annette’s caravan.

A Sunny Spell – 24 August 2020

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Neither of us expected such a sunny day today, but we took it gladly.

Scamp was out this morning for coffee with her sister and her cousin. While they were out I completed my thumbnail sketch for my architectural painting and then worked on the light pencil sketch. None of the chunky sketch work of the Palomino Blackwing pencil, this was all done with a 0.7mm mechanical pencil. The groundwork is now almost finished, I just have to convince myself that the perspective at the front of the building is true. Once that’s done I can go on to the ink work. Phoned John and had a chat with him about the joys of retirement. Managed to finalise a date for them to come over for dinner. The last date was rather spoiled by a lockdown some time in March.

When Scamp returned with two plants from Isobel, we had lunch. After that we did a bit of gardening. Heavy duty pruning for me, using the loppers to get stuck into the big climbing rose at the back door. It’s now chopped down to head height and a bit straggly in places, but we’ll leave that until later in the year before we do the final tidying up, all being well. Scamp was finding places for the new plants to go.

Later in the warm afternoon we went for a walk round St Mo’s pond. Found two relaxed dragonflies and got a few shots. It turned out they were Common Darters, one male and one female. Just for future references, the male is smaller and red, the female is yellow ochre with red stripes down her back. They didn’t get PoD though. That went to a Harvestman which is not a spider although it looks like one. It’s in the order Opiliones and joins the spiders in the Arachnid group. It’s amazing what you learn. If you look closely you’ll notice that it only has seven legs. It appears it sacrificed one, probably to save its life.

Dinner was chicken curry made from a Holy Cow mix and half the left over chicken from last night. It was hot, but tasty. Excellent flatbread, even if I say so myself with the additional secret ingredient of two dollops of coconut yogurt.

Tomorrow I’m intending meeting Val for coffee. Tried to phone Colin but it went to voicemail and Val hasn’t managed to get a reply from Fred.

Not the best day – 21 August 2020

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This morning we had sad news.

We got a phone call from Jamie this morning to say that Madeleine, Sim’s mum had died. She was a lovely person who introduced us to Trinidad and Tobago. She and Jaime took us into their house and treated us like royalty. We will never never forget her kindness and the energy she put into everything she did. The woman with two phones, making sure the wedding reception ran as smoothly as possible. A great loss. Our thoughts go to Jamie and Simonne and the rest of the family.

Today’s PoD is a little seedpod I saw in St Mo’s this afternoon.

Tomorrow is another day.

Bob the Builder strikes again – 13 August 2020

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A slow day to start as far as the weather was concerned, but lots to do.

Got an email from the garage with my order form for the new Micra attached. Just a formality really, but at least I now have a proper breakdown of the deal.

Shona had sent a text late in the afternoon, yesterday. Ben had broken the lock on the bathroom door. He likes to play with the water in the bath, but doesn’t realise that it’s running through into the flat below. It was mid June when I was last called to the fix the door and I screwed a hasp on to the door frame and a staple on to the door itself. It seemed ok at the time, but as I predicted at the time, the now twelve year old Ben has demonstrated that he can tear those screws out. I went to B&Q to get a couple of bolts. That meant a bag of bolts, of course. A bag of washers too. As I’d left the house without a screwdriver, I had to add one to the list as well. Unbelievably, the bag of washers which are simple steel discs about 15mm diameter with a hole in the centre was nearly twelve quid! Outrageous, but I needed them for the job. Back at the flat it was a simple job to drill the door, then drill out the staple itself to fit the bolts. Then I assembled the whole thing with a couple of those expensive washers in place and tightened one nut and a lock nut to keep the other nut from breaking in to the bathroom again. If this doesn’t work I’ll have to source a manacle to fit a twelve year old.

Back home the coffee maker was on and my roll was already buttered for me to fill with corned beef. Quite delicious and washed down with a nice strong espresso. Scamp is so good to me. While I’d been out being Bob the Builder, she’d done some washing and had thrown out some stale bread for the birds. Instead of birds, there was a Peacock butterfly perched on the slice of what had been nice Italian bread. I can’t imagine that butterflies eat bread. I took a few pics with two cameras “belts and braces” style. One of them became PoD.

After lunch we walked down to the shops, because Scamp wanted a new stiff broom to sweep the paving stones, because as we all know: A New Broom Sweeps Clean. She seemed happy with the brush and because I was in the mood for drilling holes and driving screws into things, I fixed up a hook on the fence to hold it.

No slide show tonight. This will be a long one, it’s Venice. The main reason we had a balcony cabin last year if the truth be told, and the reason we’d have had one this year if Covid-19 hadn’t reared its ugly head.

Tomorrow we may be going for lunch – to a restaurant!

A less frantic day – 6 August 2020

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We were out earlier this morning and hopefully I’ll get to bed the same day I woke up.

We were out early to go for coffee with Isobel. Coffee in Costa no less, and in the Antonine Centre in Cumbersheugh and Scamp drove. We had to sign in to the Test and Trace system, but it was fairly quick and easy. The coffee, though, was the usual poor quality. Maybe I’m just getting used to my own (better) coffee or maybe it’s just Costa. Isobel kept us entertained for an hour or so and then we went our own ways. She to Tesco for the messages and us to go back home for lunch.

I’d intended to drive in to Glasgow in the afternoon to have a look at a camera in Jessops, but after checking, I found that the nearest Jessops that was open was in Gateshead. Just a wee bit too far to travel, so instead we walked down to the shops to get the requirements for tonight’s dinner, Chicken Legs with Potatoes and Cheesy Spinach. It was a lovely warm afternoon but by the time we got back to the house the clouds were gathering and it was looking like it might rain. I’d grabbed a couple of hoverfly pictures earlier in the afternoon, so instead of a walk I pruned the rose at the back door It was really needing cut back and I think today’s ‘Short Back and Sides’ will force some new growth. Scamp was also pruning and dead-heading some of the flowers. We both thought we felt the occasional spit of rain, but it never appeared.

I did a bit more research on the Micra, but found out very little of interest. Scamp’s dinner was deemed “Ok, but needing a bit more flavouring. More paprika and definitely more salt.”

A much less frantic day than yesterday, but a fairly full one too. The first time we’ve had coffee in a coffee shop (or Costa) since February! It felt a bit strange, but not as alien as it might have been.  One of the hoverfly photos made PoD.

Tomorrow we’ve to phone for a test drive and then the day is our own. What will we do? Where will we go? Who knows.

F1 Frolics – 2 August 2020

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First and perhaps only Live F1 broadcast this year.

Weather before that was mixed. A bit windy, a bit cloudy and the occasional splash of rain on the window just to remind us that it’s never far away in Scotland. Scamp was reduced to watching the build up to the GP because Andrew Marr was on holiday, so no political cut and thrust today. I’m sure some politicians would be breathing a sigh of relief. If you haven’t watched the GP then I won’t spoil things for you. All I’ll say is watch the first five minutes and the last five minutes, but just fast-forward past the other hour and a bit, unless you want to set the alarm and have a wee snooze.

With that done, and with nothing else to do, I took an old camera, the almost pensioned-off Oly E-M10 out for a spin round St Mo’s. It’s only when you return to an old classic like this that you realise why you sidelined it in the first place. The E-M1 has a much quieter IBIS system (image stabiliser) and a more reliable focusing power. The GX 80 has a much quieter shutter. I think the E-M10 can go back in the box for now. It’s smaller than the other two, but smaller isn’t always better. I have plans for it, so it won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. It managed to take today’s PoD with a little help from me. They are the seed pods of the Meadow Cranesbill (Geranium pratense ).

Dinner came courtesy of Holy Cow curry mixes. The only place we’ve found them is Waitrose, but they are worth searching out, and, of course, Amazon has them. Today’s variety was Delhi Tikka Masala and it was just as good as the rest, just a little milder. A decent curry made in around 10 minutes without the faff of cooking from scratch. You can probably tell that I was cooking tonight – always looking for the easy life.

Spoke to JIC and pondered the modern way of going through an interview. First a telephone interview followed by a Zoom interview and maybe a third virtual interview. Then if you are lucky enough, being offered a position in a company you have never seen outside of a computer screen. Changed days from when, one morning, I dressed in a suit then put on waterproof trousers, waterproof jacket and motorcycle boots and set off from Larky to ride about 100miles to an interview in Creetown on a motorbike with a bag of my architectural drawings on my back. Rode back the same night. I got the job though and our family started on a big adventure in the south of Scotland. Changed days indeed.

Tomorrow I simply must hoover out the car because we’re we’ve got a meeting in Stirling on Tuesday to speak to a man about cars and money.

One really wet day – 27 July 2020

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Dreich – a well used Scottish word summed up today.

Rain in all its forms today. Heavy rain, light rain, smirr, drizzle, we had them all. Then after a full day of the wet stuff it dried up about 8pm and gave us a beautiful sunset. That’s Scotland for you.

Spoke to Hazy on the phone for a while in the morning and spoke to JIC in the evening, so it was a fairly phone filled day as you will find out below.

Scamp’s sister came over from Eastfield to have her lunch and a natter, leaving me a chance to get the sewing machine out and create another face mask. I wasn’t totally happy with it, in fact it’s one of the worst designs I’ve seen so far. It goes in the bin.

Because of the weather, there wasn’t much chance to take any outside photos. The closest I got was taking out my chilli plants to get watered with clean, unchlorinated stuff, but I had a look around and couldn’t see anything worth switching the camera on for.

Later in the afternoon Scamp brought a Ruby Wedding rose in from the garden to prevent it being battered by the rain. I took one look and decided I’d found my PoD. Beautiful texture and colours with a few raindrops to give some highlights. Done!

Most of the rest of the day was spent tweaking the last few apps on Scamp’s new A41 phone. It’s much like mine, but her apps are nothing like my collection, so I was working with one eye on the phone and one on the help files I’d found on the net. Together the two eyes finally got the better of the phone demons and everything fell into place.  I think that’s us all set.  The phone number is updated. Most, if not all the apps are in place and working.  Just a few more checks and we’re done.

Struggling with Luminar 4 now on the Mac.  It used to work really well, now after an update it’s going like an arthritic slug.  Do slugs get arthritis, I wonder? If they don’t, they should. They’ve eaten holes in my kale plants and I’m sure its them that are responsible for  the disappearing carrots.  I’ve had enough for one day.  I’m off to bed.

Scamp is out with the Witches tomorrow and it looks like a good day.  I may go out and take some photos.

A Visitor – 23 July 2020

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A busy morning in the house.

Visitor coming today, so the house had to be made to look like a house and not a jumble sale. Tables to clear, floors to hoover and work to be done elsewhere. Scamp’s aunt/cousin (It’s complicated as most families are) was coming to visit and Scamp wanted everything looking nice. I did my best. I cleared the table. It took three armfuls and three journeys up and down the stairs to put most of the stuff away in the back room. Now I can’t find anything in the back room, but that’s ok, because I’m the only one who goes in there. Scamp just opens the door, looks in and sighs.
Isobel had been complaining to Scamp the last time they were on the phone that her daughter had bought her a mask, but it was really uncomfortable, so I suggested I make her one as a belated birthday present. That seemed to pass muster as a good idea. So that was my job thing morning after the table clearance. I got it finished just before lunch.

After lunch, Scamp went out to get Isobel. She had a new knee fitted earlier in the year and has some mobility issues as a result, so we’d agreed that Scamp would pick her up and I would drop her back at the house later. While she was out, I grabbed my camera and went out to see if I could get any photos. Found a tiny little orange spider in the middle of its web on a gypsophila plant. Got a few photos of it, but of course it was that first one that got PoD. The raindrops looked like star trails coming out of the web.

When they arrived Scamp gave Isobel the Royal Tour of the front garden. Then it was coffee time and a wee natter before we reviewed the back garden. She seemed quite impressed and the garden did look good in the sunshine. After a while Isobel announced it was time for her to go back home and I was chauffeur. Got her settled and had a walk round her garden, amazed as always at her memory for all the plants names.

Took my leave and drove home via Tesco to fill up the thirsty Juke. I was chef tonight and it was an old favourite, paella. Not real paella, because I can’t eat mussels, but it’s a fair compromise that looks and tastes like a real paella.

No sketch tonight, at least, not one posted. I did sketch half a pepper, but it’s not worth posting. Lockdown Library may be closed, but I still intend to post any decent sketches on Instagram and Facebook. Just not every day.

Tomorrow we may go somewhere nice for a walk.

A walk in the park – 19 July 2020

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The park in question was Glasgow Green. Long time no see.

Today at Scamp’s suggestion, we went for a walk along Glasgow Green. Simply ages since we’ve been down there, but today we did. We walked along to the McLennan arch. I can never remember whether it’s McLellan or McLennan. It’s definitely McLennan because I’ve just checked on Google so you don’t have to. Anyway, before I lose the thread, we walked along to the McLennan arch and from there along beside the river to the suspension bridge where eager joggers were running along it making it bounce. Always a source of amusement as long as you weren’t trying to take a photo with a slow shutter speed. I wasn’t, so it was funny.

Back home it was lunch time, then Scamp was off into the garden, weeding and pruning and generally plant bothering. I was struggling with Friday’s Sudoku. Friday’s!? I must be slipping. Eventually I gave up and wandered down to the shops via the wildflower area behind St Mo’s. Not a lot of insect life there today. A few butterflies and a ladybird that was determined to avoid the big man with the glass tube on a box. Couldn’t blame the poor thing. Imagine if you were being pursued by a giant carrying a glass tube and constantly poking it near you. That’s the stuff of nightmares. Or is that just me?
Anyway, I got the stuff I needed for pasta with meatballs. I’d made the actual meatballs earlier, a mix of pork mince and bacon which actually worked well.

Back home it was time to start making the sauce which was a basic marinara sauce same as I’d made last week. After cooking away for 40 minutes or so it was reduced enough and the meatballs were cooked. It tasted ok, but really needed something more to make it sing. Maybe a few more herbs or some spice to brighten it up. Maybe next time. Scamp has salmon with potatoes and a spoonful of my sauce. She wasn’t impressed with her salmon either. Maybe it was just us. Maybe it was just a bad day.

Pudding was “a sort of Eton Mess”. It didn’t sound all that impressive, but it tasted brilliant. Scamp as usual talking down her culinary expertise. Simple and tasty too.

Big test next. Will Scamp like the Sunday Coffee? I needn’t have worried. It got a definite thumbs up. Especial mention for the creamy foamed milk. She even bragged about it when we talked to JIC later. Found out that he doesn’t have to cool the boiler in his upmarket coffee machine because it has two boilers. One for steam and one for coffee. That explains it. Mine does the job for me and produces great espressos and has the ability to make creamy foamed milk too. You just as Scamp and she’ll tell you.

Apart from the walk in The Green today there wasn’t a lot going on, although I got a PoD which was the second shot I took and achieved about 15,000 steps and eight active hours. Didn’t do a sketch, will cover that tomorrow, hopefully. We may go out.