Category: Folk

Bird Watching and Lockdown – 4 January 2021

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Well, let’s face it, the wasn’t much else to watch.

At first it looked like the ice had all but gone this morning, then we realised that wasn’t the black asphalt of the path we were seeing, it was the path with a clear layer of ice. No point in rushing out then, better to go back to bed and finish a chapter of our books. However, not everyone is as luck as us retired folk. Scott, the taxi driver, needed to get to and from his car safely and often during the day, so he started clearing the ice and shovelling salt and grit onto the path. It seemed to do the trick where it fell, but because there wasn’t a very active footfall on the paths, the grit and salt was not being spread by pedestrians, and wasn’t doing its job as efficiently as it should.

The reason for the layer of ice was explained in the midday weather forecast. It was all down to freezing rain, caused when rain hits an already frozen ground. A ground so cold that the rain instantly freezes. I remember this being talked about ten years or so ago in the winter of 2010/11. It looks as if it’s back again.

We had spent most of the morning and early afternoon taking down the decorations and packing them away. It never ceases to amaze me the number of things Scamp can pack into those big plastic storage boxes. Most of them are now in the loft, with only a few left to go. The room looks quite bare now and quite dull, although I must say it was a dull day.

On top of the weather problems, in the afternoon Nic the Chick explained in great detail why she had taken the decision to put all of mainland Scotland into full lockdown again. It seems like exactly the same rules as in March ’20 with no unnecessary travel no leaving the house unless for exercise or to buy food and all non-essential shops to remain closed. No meeting more than one person from another household outside. Schools to remain closed until the end of January at the earliest. It’s not a great deal different from what we, at least, have been living with for the past month or so. Oh yes, and we’ve to expect more snow by the end of the week.

So, to the birds. I wasn’t going to risk a walk today. It was really dull anyway and Scamp didn’t want to go far. We’d been watching and feeding the birds in the garden over the cold spell and today it was their turn to pay us back by posing for some photos. We’ve had a thrush who visits every day and also our resident robin who seems to think he/she owns the garden and patrols it vigorously. Blue tits, great tits and, of course, the ever present starlings. Today’s PoD is of a thoughtful looking Starling. Taken through the kitchen window.

The diet has started. We are doing our best to eat and drink healthily. No alcohol until Friday and smaller portions at mealtimes. We’ll see how long it lasts.

Tomorrow we may go out for that ‘exercise walk’ if the paths are safe to walk.

On the pan – 23 December 2020

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My new pan gets its first real test.

In the morning Scamp set to and iced the Christmas cake. It was much smaller than our usual one, but Christmas cakes are a bit like turkeys, in that you feel obliged to keep eating them days and days after they were cut on Christmas Day. We each got a chance to put some items onto, well really Into the finished icing. My choice was the Santa and reindeer and also the little corner house. Scamp chose the children on the sledge and the snowman who now looms over the little house! A tradition returns to the table.

I’d bought an interesting pan for roasting and also for other stuff. It looked like a bargain, but I hadn’t really had a chance to test it out properly, until today. Lunch was black pudding and haggis fried in a ‘normal’ pan and an omelette made in the new pan. The eggs were unused leftovers from this morning’s icing, and it seemed a good way to use them up.. I wasn’t sure if the omelette would work in a griddle, but I’d seen a video online and it looked easy. Surprisingly it was almost that easy and the omelette folded over perfectly, sliced up easily and went down satisfactorily. We have success.

After lunch, Scamp went over to Condorrat to post a card and I fitted the dash cam back on her clean, new windscreen.  I didn’t linger in the car too long because it was pretty cold. When scamp returned I got dressed for the cold and went to St Mo’s to get some photos. The PoD was of the wee pond with ice crusting on its surface. I thought I’d allowed myself more time that I had and the light was fading fast, but the photo looked ok, if a little dark. Lightroom soon made it look a lot better. While I was out walking my two circuits of the big pond, I stopped a while to talk to a bloke I bump into there. He does lots more circuits than I do. I do two and occasionally three, he does up to ten at different speeds. Everyone has their own way of easing the stress of these lockdowns.

Dinner tonight was chicken breasts, red peppers, mushrooms and courgettes, all done in the new pan. They worked fine and there was just enough room for them all. Carbohydrate intake was a baked potato each.

The pan is a Whatever Pan by Jean Patrique ( or John Patrick as he’s know down the Barras). That’s me used it three times and I’ve not broken it yet, so it must be sturdy. It’s cast aluminium and let me tell you that it gets bloody hot!

Tomorrow looks good. Clear skies predicted. We may go for a walk, somewhere quiet. If there is such a place on Christmas Eve!

Coffee with the family – 18 December 2020

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Today we were out early (10.30am) is early, to have coffee with Shona, but more of the clan were already there.

I wasn’t going to go, then I felt bad about it and changed my mind at the last moment. Scamp said she was going to take the blue car anyway, because her red micra has a crack in the windscreen. Not a bit crack, but enough to put her off driving it, just in case. When I agreed to come, I told her she was driving. We weren’t going far, just up to the town centre. Got there almost on time (my fault for my procrastination) and found that not only was Shona there, but Isobel was too. I wondered if Scamp had got her days mixed up, but no, it was Isobel who had her time mixed up. She got there for 10am to meet one of her friends and it turned out she should have been there for 11am. She didn’t mind, she said, she’d just wait. And she did. Because of the Covid rules in Scotland, she wasn’t allowed to join Shona, Scamp and I as that would have made an outlawed 3 families at a table. It gets so complicated with all these rules, not to mention the fact that all four nations in the UK have their own rules and none of the four seem to have a common ground. That’s what happens when you have headless chickens and Bumbling Boris in charge. Chaos!

We sat for an hour listening to Shona telling all her news and there was lots of it too. You don’t realise how lucky you are until you hear someone explaining all the tangled web of their own life. After about an hour we were all up to date with what had happened recently and we had a few laughs too. Shona always finds something to laugh at. We said our goodbyes and Scamp drove us home. When we left the carpark at around midday, the automatic headlights came on. That will tell you how little daylight there is in Scotland in mid December.

After lunch two parcels arrived in quick succession. One from Hazy and, we think, one from Canute. The light, which had improved when we arrived home was failing at around 2pm, so I packed my camera bag and went for a walk in St Mo’s. I wanted a mono shot to continue my week of black & white photos. Then I got talking to one of the two guys who was running RC (Radio Control) cars on the BMX track and I took a few photos of the car running over the jumps. One of the photos made PoD.  The mono shot didn’t quite make the cut, but it’s on Flickr.

Back home I’d volunteered to make a veg curry from scratch and got started with the flat bread dough before I made the curry. It took longer than I thought (it usually does!) but by 7pm we were eating a fairly decent veg curry with potatoes, butternut squash, courgettes and chickpeas in it. Like I said, it was a bit hot, but not too hot … just! More left for tomorrow, but it will need some yoghurt to cool it down I think.

That was about it for today. Looks wet for tomorrow and we’ve nowhere to go. Scamp has booked a slot at M&S, so we may do some shopping.

 

Man in the red coat – 16 December 2020

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But not the one you might think off at this time of year.

Spoke to Hazy in the morning. Covid seems to be on the rise in London, especially in the schools where both staff and pupils seem to be the badly affected. Thankfully, they will be on their Christmas break from Friday, so that might give things a chance to calm down. We exchanged updates on parcels and Hazy suggested we might like Chocolate Tortillas from M&S. I’m not sure it’s quite my sort of thing, but I’m willing to have a go because there is chocolate involved.

My first task was to get the Christmas cards organised with the “Our 2020” sheets. Scamp had agreed to post them for me. That left me free to start my email to my brother and select some photos to go with it. I’d been getting on quite happily with my task when Scamp returned from posting the cards, carrying a big cardboard box of chips. The chip shop had been open she said, as if that was reason enough. We shared them and they were lovely, and definitely not fattening, because they were our lunch.

Later I went back to my epistle and after finishing at a reasonable juncture, I grabbed the camera bag and took a walk in St Mo’s. There wasn’t much to photograph, but I liked the absurdity of a M&S shopping trolley (without Chocolate Tortillas) standing at the starting gate of the BMX track. Is this a new dangerous sport? Shopping trolley BMX? That might just do for a fun picture. Further on I walked along the outlet burn of the pond. I was looking to see if there was any prospect of a slow shutter speed shot of the moving water. There was, but it would need some careful descending to get there without sliding on my bum down the steep sides of the burn. Then I found a tiny wee toadstool, slightly the worse for wear poking through the leaf litter. That would make a challenging photo with only a kit lens. The burn is virtually on the edge of the school fence and as I was kneeling down trying to achieve focus on this wee toadstool I heard someone, definitely a child and probably a boy, cry “Hey!”. Then “Hey! Man in the red coat.” Then the sound of running feet before I could shout “Aye, but not the one you were thinking of.” Maybe he thought I’d been out warming up the sleigh and had fallen out into the muck beside the burn. He’ll probably go home tonight and say “Mum. Guess who I saw today …”

Well, I did get focus on the wee toadstool and it became PoD. Santa was never found and My brother’s email winged its way off to Motherwell soon after I got back.

Tonight we were disappointed with the judges choice of Portrait Artist of 2020. We were equally disappointed with his portrait of Carlos Acosta. I suppose it was fitting because 2020 has been such a disappointing year in so many ways.

Tomorrow we may go out for a spin, although we need to be back for a Tesco order that’s due to arrive around 5pm.

Dull December – 9 December 2020

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Out for a walk around Broadwood.

We thought it would be a good idea to go out for a walk in the morning when there is at least a chance of getting back in the light. It sort of worked. I took the Sony with me, but it never got out of the bag. We walked round the boardwalk and watched the goosanders and the tufted ducks diving into the sludgy water, fishing for minnows or small perch.  Then  along the dam  past the walkers having their tea and blocking the whole width of the path.  From there we went down the other side and up along the exercise machines path before going through the tunnels under the roundabout and back home. About an hour in all and fairly comfortable temperature, but the sun never shone all the way. Dull and cloudy, but good company and conversation.  I suppose this sort of weather is all you can expect at this time of year in Scotland. Scotland in Lockdown in Winter. What a marvellous time of the year.

After lunch I was determined to get a photo, so while Scamp walked over to get stamps at the post office, I walked around St Mo’s and found today’s PoD. Tiny little toadstools growing on the branch of a dead tree. Managed to find some light behind them and it helped a bit, but not a lot. Without some real sunshine there is no colour. And also  without some decent light you are really pushing even a good camera like the Sony.  Maybe tomorrow the sun will break through and we’ll get some decent photos.

Those two walks were the highlights of the day. Actually the first one was so much better than the second. I’m becoming fed up with St Mo’s. The whole place is like a quagmire. The continuous rain every two or three days doesn’t get a chance to drain away on the occasional dry days then more rain piles in on already saturated ground. However, Scamp keeps reminding me that it’s only a couple of weeks until the shortest day and after that the days will begin to lengthen and lighten.

Today felt like a repeat of yesterday. Went for a walk. Came home. Even dinner today was just the same as yesterday. Tomorrow we may have something different and maybe a walk in a different place if it’s dry.

Freedom looms large – 8 December 2020

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Nic the Chick has spoken.

We watched the news and heard that all of Scotland will now be on level 3 or lower. It must have been the worst kept secret of the year. However, it was good to hear that it was true. We return to level 3 after Friday. It’s a pity that she didn’t do the decent thing for the hospitality sector and drop us to level 2 as a wee early Christmas prezzy. That would have allowed folk to have a glass of wine with their meal. I hope the big fat man with the red coat and the reindeer puts ashes in her stocking on the 25th and that’s not Alex Salmond I’m talking about either!

It wasn’t until the mid afternoon that the rain stopped and the sun started to poke through the clouds. We got our cold weather gear on and went out for a walk. We attempted to walk down the path to the shops, but Cooncil workies were cutting down the bushes and eventually getting round to paring back the undergrowth. No warning signs, that a tractor was pruning the trees. Bloke toting the hedge trimmer didn’t have protective equipment and was just wildly swinging at the snowberry stems. I got pinged on the face with a wee bit of flying debris. No point in complaining, they were just cooncil workies who were pretending to be gardeners today.

Further down the path another mob were just packing up. At least they had the sense to put warning triangles out. Must be “clean up the bushes for Christmas”. Either that or the queen’s coming to visit us. Can’t be, there was no smell of fresh paint.

Anyway, but the time we were walking down the side of the football stadium the sun was sinking into the west and we just managed a walk along the boardwalk in the light. That’s where today’s PoD came from. This one is almost unprocessed. Straight out of the camera.

It was starting to get cold when we got back and almost time to do the prep for dinner. For me it was mince and beef olives. Both from Muirhead butcher. With Scamp’s careful tutelage I managed to get it cooked to perfection. Scamp had ‘pretend mince’ which is made with brown lentils. I don’t know about the lentil mince, but mine was fine, considering I made it.

Weather looks a bit better tomorrow with the chance of sunshine in the early afternoon

Getting out and about – 7 December 2020

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We went for the messages.

In the morning we drove to Tesco for bread, milk and apples. Fairly basic. We came home with a whole lot more than those essentials, but no more gin. Bumped into Colin C and Evelyn and got some of his news. Some of his extended family had picked up the the infection and had to self isolate, so Colin and Evelyn were looking after them, when it should be the other way around. He said he’d seen Fred when he came into the store, but there was no sign of him. He was probably hiding.

Back home and after lunch Scamp decided the paths were safe enough to go for a walk in St Mo’s, just to get some fresh air. We did one circuit of the pond and crossed paths with a bloke I usually bump into there and pass the time of day. He does clockwise circuits, I do anti-clockwise. I hadn’t realised until he said so. We’re both usually there alone, today he was with (I assume) his wife and I was with Scamp. I was just saying to Scamp that I usually bump into him on my circuit of the pond and she said “He’s probably saying that to his wife too.” So it was confirmed, the woman was his wife. Women know these things.

I’d got three photos in all the time we were out and I swithered (Great word it means I couldn’t make up my mind) about using them or going out to get more. Got slightly better photos of the ladybird (still only one) and some fungi with ice on the top, but PoD went to the landscape. Taken about the same time of day as yesterdays and has the same basic colours. Yesterday’s colours were part of the ‘cheating’ today’s colours have not been messed with.

While I was cleaning up the photos, Scamp was talking to her sister on the phone and sharing news and views with Skye. Then I found an excellent set of tutorial videos on the Synology NAS by a bloke on YouTube. If you’re interested, it’s called mydoodads. Much, much better than the tutorials from Synology itself.

Well, it seems that JIC has to wait for a while for his chance to complete his Cranford course. The tutor was in touch to say that he had a ‘family emergency’ and would re-schedule. No luck son. Some folk just have to do it the hard way … every time.

Rain forecast for tomorrow, so we’ll have to wait and see if a walk is on the cards.

Dancin’ – 5 December 2020

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Dancing and a new NAS

Tonight we were going dancing with Stewart & Jane and about twenty other couples. Not physically, but virtually. This was the Christmas Zoom Dance, but more of that later.

First there was the little matter of the decorations and the tree to put up. In the tree lights tin was the usual letter. So strange reading it this year. “Nope we didn’t do that … Nope we didn’t go there … Nope we didn’t manage to meet up with them …” and so on. Scamp, of course, did most of the work and I was just there to hand things to her when she needed them. It didn’t take her long and by lunch time most of the work was done. Then the new NAS arrived. I was in two minds about whether to open it or not, because I’d read on the net that the WD drives in it were very slow. However, I did open the box and it looked a lot neater than I’d anticipated. I’d go over to St Mo’s to have a word with myself and see what I thought.

Took a camera over to St Mo’s to see if anything was coming out to play. Well, there were a few toadstools that could have made PoD, but the landscape photos were disappointing. I took them anyway, but wasn’t impressed. I came home and powered up the NAS and immediately knew this was a totally different beast from the My Cloud. So may security protocols to get past and so much jargon and abbreviations. I must talk to Val about it. This might need his AV experience. However, by bungling through I got the whole thing working at the second attempt. Copied a few files and the transferred fine and even better, I could read them back. Best of all, Hazel (the organisation prog I use on the Mac) worked seamlessly with the new NAS after the two were formally introduced. Sighs of relief all round.

In the morning I’d been painting “M is for… “ sketch. It was a scrunched up bag of Maltesers, and at the third or fourth attempt I was fairly happy with it. When I was cleaning yesterday’s mess from the palette I saw a face and that became PoD. This may be the last sketch for a wee while. Too much in my head and not the same interest as there was in March for the sketches, I’m afraid. That doesn’t mean I’m stopping, just have a bit of a rest from it for a day or two.

The Zoom Dance started at 7.30pm and was the usual well organised event we’ve come to expect from Stewart & Jane. I even managed a fairly representative version of the Christmas Pudding Rock. Good to see other folk dancing and enjoying the occasion too. These Zoom dances are great for cheering us all up in the middle of winter and I applaud S&J for all their hard work.

After the dance finished at 10pm we watched the qualifying for the penultimate GP of the year without Hamilton who has contracted Covid and is self-isolating. Then we watched Strictly and that’s the reason this is a catch-up blog.

Tomorrow we’ll be probably be recovering from two and a half hours of dancing.

F is for Fog – 3 December 2020

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It rolled in on silent wheels today.

When we were having breakfast the snow was crisp and even. The hills were clear and there was just the hint of sun. Within an hour the hills had disappeared, as had the sun. Then the fog drifted down and the snow was turning into slush. I decided to go out and get an early(ish) moody photo in the fog. I waited on the path to St Mo’s to let a girl get past, because the slush was starting to freeze. It also gave me time to frame her into the shot you see here. I didn’t realise then, but that was to be PoD. By the time I’d walked into St Mo’s, the fog was lifting and the temperature was dropping. Scotland, the weather here just can’t stand still, it needs to be constantly changing.

Got another shot in the thinning fog of an old tree in the park with the faded forest in the background. Very moody and etherial. You can see it in Flickr. I wanted to get a shot of the ladybirds I’d seen yesterday (and also on the 3rd of December 2017 – how neat is that!). However, the light was a bit low and the snow was melting on the branches of the trees and it was just too uncomfortable. I got half a dozen shots and decided enough was enough. My feet were wet, my hands were freezing and I was going home. I got a few more icy and snowy shots before I stumbled home.

Scamp wanted some stuff in Tesco and we didn’t have a delivery booked until the 17th, so we decided to do it the old fashioned way and go to the shop. Beside which, Scamp wanted a look around, because sometimes you see things (too many things sometimes) that you’d forgotten to put on your list. So, we drove to Tesco. It’s the first time Blue has been out in the snow and it seemed to perform well. Not a hint of slipping and sliding. There were fairly long queues for the checkouts as we’d thought there might be. We had just reached the front of our queue when this woman appeared and seemed to want to sneak in front of us. Not that’s a red rag to a bull.

“Eh. Excuse me, there’s a queue.”
She looked nonplussed and said “I’ve been waiting here for a while. My husband has been keeping my place.”
“So have I” I said, “And I’ve been waiting IN THE QUEUE.” (the poor bloke hadn’t been in the queue)
She still wouldn’t give in, so I said quite loudly “SO, ARE YOU JUST GOING TO SHOVE IN THEN?” Loud enough that everyone nearby could hear.
At that she harrumphed and said “Well, if you’re going to be like that …” and walked down the aisle to the self service checkouts dragging her husband on his lead. Poor man. He’ll suffer for that later.

Back home we got our first Christmas cards of the year and got the decorations out of the loft. We also changed the upstairs and downstairs curtains. Tomorrow we are hoping to put the tree up. After that, I’m sure we’ll feel a lot better.

Tonight I painted the landscape that was in my head for yesterday. I really didn’t like the sketch of the tin of lager. The lager is good, but the drawing wasn’t up to standard. Tonight’s landscape, although one of my standards was much more satisfying to paint and also looked better than the tin.

Since I’ve now found a way to extract the data from the old NAS disk, I’m going to make a fresh start with a new NAS. Ordered it from Amazon tonight and it’s not a WD My Cloud. It’s a Synology DS220j. The WD worked quite well for the three or four years I had it, but it was erratic. Let’s hope this one is better.

It looks like more snow is forecast for early tomorrow morning and it’s -0.6º just now, so I doubt if we’ll be going far.

A sunny day. Hooray! – 28 November 2020

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It even rhymes.

A cup of coffee and then we were off out and walking round Broadwood. I was using the Tamron 70-300mm for the first time on the new adapter. Managed to get what turned out to be the PoD in the first fifteen minutes. It’s a female Goosander. Got to the far end and decided we’d walk the extension into the woods. A bit more than halfway round the extension we found a puddle. A fairly large puddle. It was about 2m long and took up almost all of the width of the path. The remainder of the width had been churned up by an army of boots. We attempted a crossing, but when I sank up to my ankle I told Scamp not to even think about it. A bloke we had passed earlier said he wasn’t bothered about it because he’d his work boots on. I think they must have been calf length boots, because he just waded on through the middle of this mini-loch, following his dog. We turned back, feeling like a couple of softies!
We warned a couple of people about the flood. Some carried on regardless, others took our advice and turned back. Next time I’m taking wellies.

We had to walk back the way we’d come, but that wasn’t an onerous task because the light today was beautiful. A low sun meant the light was blinding at times, but it was worth it. Took a few more bird shots with the Tamron and realised just how effective the in-lens anti shake was. Lots of people out walking round the pond, so we avoided most of them by extending our walk even further to take in what we’ve called the Exercise Machine path. It’s got all these brightly coloured, but essentially unused exercise machines all along its length. Mainly they are used by teenagers as seats or by the curious who will suffer the consequences next day. Just as we were coming home my Fitbit pinged to tell me I’d done my 10,000 steps (now I’m up to 14,000, a respectable amount.

It was good to get out in the sunshine, even if it felt quite cold at times. I ended up with a sore back from carrying the heavy lens and a camera bag too, but I shared the load with the bag across my back and the camera on my shoulder strap. Scamp had cramp in her toe on the last leg of the walk, but soldiered on.

That was about it for the day. The morning had turned into afternoon by the time we got back and soon you could feel that the sun was heading for the horizon. Days are short in a Scottish winter and light is always in short supply. I think we made the most of the day.

Today’s letter was ‘H’ and I chose Helmet. I’d already drawn an easy jet-style motorcycle helmet for Inktober, so I chose a Crusader style knight’s helmet today. Imagine having to wear that piece of headgear when you were going into battle. They must have been tough guys those knights. The horses that carried them must have been tougher still. While we moan and groan about having to wear a mask when we go into a shop, or have to wear one to work. We don’t know how lucky we are.

No plans for tomorrow, but there’s rain in the forecast.