Category: Fannyside

Out to lunch – Out in the wilds – 28 October 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Scamp was going out to lunch today. I was going out into the wilds.

The clouds were rolling in when Scamp set out on the trek to Brodens in Condorrat. I stayed at home to see if the rain was going to come to anything or if the clouds would clear. In the meantime I got a needle and thread and sewed a necklace of my red chillies. I’d watch part of a Gardeners World program where a woman was stitching a chain of chillies. I didn’t see exactly what she was doing, but I got the gist of it and now I have two strings of chillies drying in the back room.

By the time I’d finished the weather looked a lot more settled to sunshine. I drove up to the back of Fannyside Moor and watched the light scud across the landscape as the clouds were broken up and blown about by a strong westerly wind. When I was sure that the light was getting better, I took my camera bag and walked along the road that leads to a farm. I didn’t actually go as far as the farm, because it was the walk back to the car, into the wind, but also in to the more photogenic landscape. It’s just a few hundred metres of straight road, but in that time the light on the hills and woods was changing all the time. PoD turned out to be a view down the road I’d driven up with the light coming from the right, through the trees. Of course the image has been ‘fiddled with’ just a bit, but it is certainly improved by my digital interventions.

On the way home I stopped at the shops to get tonight’s dinner which was a ‘bake at home’ deep pan pizza. Not the healthiest of meals, but fairly tasty and very filling. I was only home for about five minutes when Scamp arrived from her lunch. I think we may wander along the road to Brodens this week for a Pensioner’s Lunch. It sounds just the job.

Scamp was determined to plant up her pansies today when she came home. They are now sitting on the back step settling in to their new home. Tomorrow they get the airlift to their true place on the fence. The snowdrops have already been planted in a trough by the back step.

While the pizza was in the oven I was trying to get the new OS backed up on a spare section of another SSD, without success. The OS copied perfectly, but it wasn’t bootable. I was on my third try and it was just after dinner, that the work “Legacy” popped into my head. You don’t need to know what it is or how it works, but if I’m ever looking for a way to make a bootable OS copy, remind me the key word it “Legacy”. When this revelation appeared, I had just started making a sort of OS copy from the original ‘spinning rust’ hard disk. When I stopped it and put it out of its misery it was telling me is still had five hours to go. The Legacy OS took 25 minutes to do the same thing … and it worked.

The prompt today was ‘Camping’.
We used to do a fair bit of camping when we were younger, but the world was a different place then. I’m not sure I’d want to go camping in the wilderness in 2022. Having said that, we still have a tent somewhere in the house, just in case we get that sudden urge to spend a night or two in the great outdoors … in the rain.

Tomorrow it looks like the dance class is ready to go ahead and we’ve had a bit of a practise tonight to make sure we know the rudiments at least. Other than that, we have no plans. It looks wet again.

The Fort and The Phone – 7 September 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Scamp was looking for a bag. I wanted to look at a phone.

Armed with a measuring tape we went looking for a bag, a paper bag that would be big enough to hold another bag which would hold a yellow bag. She was also looking for a birthday card for her sister. She found a really funny one. Maybe she does have a sense of humour after all.

Meanwhile I went to EE to look at a prospective phone. The assistant asked me how she could help and I told her I was looking for a new phone because I was reaching the end of my contract. With the words “… end of my contract.” I saw her shutters come down. I’m guessing that there is far less kudos attached to an Upgrade than there is to a New Customer. She did show me the phone I was looking for, but it was a bolted down dummy with a picture of the screen glued on the front. She apologised and said if I wanted to see a “Live” phone, I could go next door to O2 where they had live ones that actually worked. I noticed that she didn’t say “Then you can come back and we can work out the details of what you need.” It was more like “We don’t do upgrades. Goodbye.”
I did go to O2. I did see the phone working, but nobody there was interested in getting my business. Maybe they are just fed up with punters coming in from EE to play with their phones!

Lunch was a nuked roll ’n’ sausage for me and a nuked chicken wrap for Scamp with a coffee each in Costa. Which apparently doubles as a creche judging by the number of prams parked in the aisles.

Back home, Scamp was going to do some ironing. I grabbed both cameras and took them for a photo walk in Fannyside Moor. No insect life today, but lots of birds massing on the telephone lines (they still have telephone lines in these rural areas). I think the majority of the birds were swallows. It must be getting close to the time for them to fly back down south for the winter. I always try to record the day when I see the first swallow every year, but it’s much more difficult to set the date you saw the last swallow! A landscape shot of the cloudscape at Fannyside got PoD.

On my way home I went to see what Tesco Mobile had to offer and managed to muddy the water, because they didn’t have the phone I was ogling in O2, but did have a newer and allegedly better, but cheaper model. Now I’m going to spend waste another day comparing and contrasting both the phones and the providers!

Dinner tonight was Fish Fingers, Egg and Chips with Tinned Spaghetti on the side. A fall back when you can’t decide what you fancy for dinner and a common occurrence in this house.

Tomorrow we’re driving what Scamp calls “That awful road” because we’re hoping to go dancing!

An Explanation.
Later in the evening when I was writing this blog, I inadvertently clicked the wrong button on the menu and wiped today’s entire blog. Despite my best efforts searching for the text, it had gone. I know it’s not really gone, all the app has done is remove the header from it and the bulk of the writing is still there, but this morning I did a deeper search and eventually rewrote it.

 

 

Keeping Fit – 22 July 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Not me! This was Scamp’s adventure into dancing fitness.

Scamp was out just after 11am to go to a Fitsteps Tone. I have a Fitbit, so I don’t need Fitsteps too. My Fitbit keeps me toned to perfection. However, while she was away I spent a worthwhile hour or so running up and down the stairs, lifting stuff and searching through other stuff, looking for my Kindle. I thought I’d done almost as much exercise as Scamp had. That was until she came home still sweating from her class. About half an hour after that, I found my Kindle buried under a load of cartridge paper in my room. I really must tidy it up THIS WEEK! Apparently the class was a great success and she really enjoyed it. It certainly looked strenuous.

After lunch, I drove over to Fannyside and got some photos of what I though were sheep, but which turned out to be goats. Very nosy goats that came right up to the fence and one in particular more or less demanded that I take its picture, which I did, of course. I’d intended getting some landscape photos, but there was a van parked in my usual parking space so I went for a drive along the single track road to Arns which is a couple of houses about 50m apart. I eventually gave up looking for somewhere scenic to photograph and drove back to see if Van Man had moved on. Thankfully he had and I got my landscape photos. The lighting had been better earlier, but since there is only room in the parking place for one vehicle, I couldn’t stop.

I drove back after getting some moody cloudscapes. I stopped just after the boatyard at Fannyside Loch and got some better shots with the loch sparkling in the sunshine that had appeared. Behind the sun I could see the rain clouds looming and sure enough, as I was driving down towards Cumbersheugh the first splashes of rain hit the windscreen.

The rain stopped. I, too, stopped, at Tesco and tried to get a pizza and two litres of milk, but with a queue of twelve folk, some with the weekly shop in their trolleys, waiting for a slot in the self-service checkouts, and only two of the ten main checkouts in operation, I put the milk and pizza back in the racks and left empty handed. You’d think that a company like Tesco would be able to organise its staff better. It’s not as if they wouldn’t know that Fridays were going to be busy. The shop is usually jumping on a Friday. Or, do we blame it all on Covid again?

I went to Iceland, got the pizza and the milk and got served in a quarter the time it would have taken in Tesco. Maybe I’m just in a ranting mood today because Van Man stole my parking space in Fannyside!

Pizza was ok, but the glass of cheap Malbec wine was better. All was well with the world again. The PoD went to the photogenic goat, and second prize went to the landscape shot I took of Fannyside Loch.

We spoke to John and Marion in the evening and got an invitation to dinner next month. That will be good. That put another smile on my face. Wrote to Alex and sent him some photos.

Just before Marion phoned the rain started again. Not a shower this time but good heavy soaking rain. Good for the garden.

Tomorrow we may go out somewhere, but I also want to clear a space on the sofa in my room.

More rain, more wind – 12 June 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Is this really ‘Flaming’ June, I ask?

One of those days for relaxing and looking out at the weather, but you can’t always be sitting on your bum. You sometimes have to force yourself to go out and do things, to move is enough some times. Today, Scamp was cutting flowers and tidying up in the garden. My part in it was staking the Honey Bells that are all in full flower and providing a great feeding ground for the bees. Unfortunately the wind is bending their stems into weird shapes. This makes the flower heads bob about even more and causes the bees problems as they are coming in to land. A few bamboo canes and some garden twine gave them the support to keep the stems vertical while still allowing a bit of movement.

After lunch I was mooching around the house again and needed to get out and find a photo. I drove up to Fannyside and found my parking space empty this time. I had a walk up the road towards a farm. I’d brought two cameras with me. The A6000 had a Sigma 10-20mm very wide angle lens and the A7iii had the massive Sigma 105mm macro. Two Sigma lenses separated by about 15 years. Both exceptional in their own fields. However, it was the 105mm that got both of todays ‘keeper’ shots, and PoD went to a landscape shot of some stunted trees with the Campsie Fells in the background.

Dinner tonight was a lightly smoked salmon fillet with broccoli and crushed baby potatoes and chives. Light and lovely. This from a man who says he doesn’t really like salmon!

We watched the Azerbaijan GP. It was a race full of failures for the Ferrari powered cars, I lost count of how many failed to finish. Not a good day for the leaping horses!

Spoke to Jamie in the evening and heard more about bat surveys, and their cost. Scamp and I were really impressed by Simonne’s photos from the garden. Some beautiful flowers there, well done the pair of you.

The winds died down in the evening as they have done for the past week, let’s hope they don’t return tomorrow.

I’m taking Scamp to hospital tomorrow to discuss a little problem with her eyes. Apparently it’s been there for a long time, but the cataract surgery has brought it to the optician’s attention. I’ve got a doc’s appointment for a check up in the late afternoon. Twice in a fortnight! I’m getting my money’s worth from the NHS now.

Maybe one more good day – 6 June 2022

Posted on by Zogman

We went for the messages and I posted a parcel. Those were the highlights of another sunny, warm day.

I phoned Jim Dickson’s garage first thing this morning and Scamp’s wee red car goes in to the car hospital on Thursday to have its rear box replaced. No, that’s not a euphemism, it’s the last part of the exhaust system. The bit furthest from the engine. It’s hanging on by a thread at present, so hopefully after Thursday it will be a quieter wee red car.

With that done we drove to Tesco to get the messages. Just the usual things plus a bottle of wine and a bottle of gin. While Scamp was filling the trolley, I paid for, and posted a parcel to Hazy. We piled all the messages into the boot of my car and drove off to Calders garden centre to get some compost. We were also going to get some chopped bark to act as a mulch on the plant pots. The bark forms a layer that stops the water evaporating in the warm sun we’re expecting to stay with us for months, well, weeks. Or to be more realistic, a few days. It didn’t matter, anyway, because they only had a massive bale of the stuff. We bought the compost and left the bark.

Back home and after lunch Scamp was working in the garden and I went out in the car to get some photos up on Fannyside Moor. Unfortunately my parking space had been taken over by two workies lorries because they were repairing a damaged power line. It looked as if they were going to be there all day, so I changed my destination to the Luggie, but I’d forgotten that part of the road was being resurfaced and there was a diversion. As usual with NLC there was one sign pointing left before the roadworks with a bit sign “DIVERSION”. After that, nothing. No indication of how to get where you wanted to go. No more diversion signs. They should have put up one big one that said

YOU’RE ON YOUR OWN NOW MATE!!

Finally found my way to the station car park at Greenfaulds, got parked and went for a walk along the Luggie Water. Every year at this time some trees beside the water get covered in creepy looking webs, not spider webs, but ones created by Ermine Moth caterpillars. I remember that name because when I used to fish on the Clyde and a hatch of Ermine Moths came on, the fish wouldn’t look at anything other than that particular insect. The Netherburn folk used to call them Herman Mofs. More like Herman Munster!

It wasn’t the caterpillars that got PoD, it was a quick shot of a couple of ants crawling over an unlucky Water Avens wildflower. It’s the wild version of a Geum.

The other remarkable thing was a bright red railway engine, stuck at a signal just before Greenfaulds Station. It had a nameplate that read “Christine” and a message “Hans-Georg Werner – Thank you & Good Luck” After some research I found out that this was a retrial present for Hans-Georg after he left his post as CEO of DB Cargo UK, and Christine is his wife. The engine was covered in pictures of gliders, apparently he is a glider pilot in his spare time. It’s amazing what you find after one chance photo.

I suggested we water the garden because it was such a warm day and the flowers, especially, need the extra moisture. It’s quite a relaxing thing to do on a warm evening.

Tonight we had a traditional Monday dinner of pasta with tomato sauce. I had the basic pasta dinner, but Scamp had some salmon left over from yesterday, so she used that with the pasta. I had some anchovies with just a little bit of Scamp’s salmon.

Maybe we’ll manage just one more warm day before the weather breaks. Scamp is booked for coffee tomorrow morning and we’re both visiting Margie for more of her stories in the afternoon.

Coffee – 16 March 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Yesterday I got a box of coffee. This morning I was drinking it.

Unfortunately it was Costa coffee I was drinking, but the company made up for it. John, Val and I were the trio of Auld Guys today. We just sat and talked for an hour and a half, mainly about folk we knew and worked beside. We also heard about John’s trip to Keswick for Big Ross’s stag party. A relaxed hour and a half for me at least. Eventually we’d talked ourselves out and it was time to go.

I was heading over to Abronhill and Val accepted a lift with me. I think his leg were giving him problems today and he was happy to be driven home on a dull day. I dropped him at his house and headed back to the recycling centre. The reason I was going to Abronhill was to take a DVD player and a bag of other bits and pieces to the skips. For once the recycling centre was fairly quiet and everything got dumped without any problem.

From there I drove up to Fannyside to see if the wee brown ladybird was still there. I though it might have been hibernating, but apparently not, because it was nowhere to be seen. I did find loads of lichen, Stag’s Horn and Cladonia and they kept me busy for a while. Switched to the 18mm wide angle and got some landscapes. Light wasn’t really very good. Quite flat and uninteresting, as were most of the photos. PoD went to a blob of moss with some fruiting bodies on top. Looked like a little green hill.

While I was driving home I got a notion to make Minestrone for dinner. I found the recipe in an old cook book and between us, Scamp and I worked out what we needed to augment the veg we had in the fridge. Then we walked down to the shops and bought just that and nothing that we didn’t need, not even a bottle of gin! We were very good today.

Spent a good hour or so while the soup was simmering away, trying to find a solution to a problem with the 18mm lens. There’s a blue cast at the edges of the frame and although I can fix it quite easily, it shouldn’t be there. After some research, I found out that it’s quite common to have a colour cast on ultra-wide lenses. It’s just something you have to put up with, but there is a fix and it’s built into Lightroom and it’s in the Library module. It’s called ‘Flat-Field Correction’. Google those words and you’ll find directions. Some preparation work needs to be done first before it will work.
Dear readers, that last paragraph was an aide mémoire for me in the future to remind me how to fix the problem of the blue cast.

Hoping to go to see Margie tomorrow and hear more of her madcap stories. I must take my concertina sketch book with me. Other than that, not a lot planned, although weather looks like it’s improving. Sub-zero tonight predicted.