Category: Folk

Butterflies, Viaducts and Beer – 17 September 2020

Posted on by Zogman

In that order!

The butterflies were feeding on ivy flowers on Frank’s Bridge in Kirkby Stephen. As far as I could tell they were all Red Admirals. They were taking a fair bashing from the honeybees whose territory they seemed to have invaded. The bees made their displeasure felt by apparently deliberately bumping them off the flowers. A strange behaviour I’ve never witnessed before.

Over the bridge, we were discussing which way to go, when a dog walker told us there was a great view from the hill beside the cricket ground. We thanked her and climbed the hill to the viewpoint at the top and she was correct. There was a great view all around from the top. Because the hill was fairly high, it was an uninterrupted view too. We met a couple from Durham who were also admiring the view. I took a few photos which turned into a 360º panorama which in turn would turn into a Tiny Planet. A bit of a cliché, but I haven’t done one in a long time, so that makes it ok. It became PoD, despite the fact that Scamp doesn’t like it.

Said goodbye to the Durham couple and walked down the other side of the hill and basically retraced our steps from Monday’s visit. Aha, but Scamp had other plans. After reaching the part where we would have turned right and walked back into town, we continued on using a wee lane to cut off a long corner on the road and almost reached a quarry entrance before we turned on to the old railway path. I like old railways, especially ones that have been turned into safe walkways that cut across country. It’s usually easy to imagine steam trains running along these arteries before Dr Beeching and his cuts destroyed the British rail network, back in the ‘60s. This one led immediately on to the Merrygill Viaduct over the Hartley Beck. We continued on to the Podgill Viaduct which crosses the Podgill Hole (!) which is another tributary of the River Eden.

There was a viewing gallery at the Podgill Viaduct, down 42 steps from the path. Fairly easy going down, but a killer coming back up. However it did give us a good view of the viaduct from below.

Climbed back up those 42 killer steps and walked back into the town. Got a seat quickly at the wee café Scamp had her eye on since Monday and had lunch there washed down with a half pint of Bitter & Twisted each, before heading back to the house. Well, we also had to stop for some bread and a cake each at the town bakers and some bulbs and another pot of marmalade from the deli.

Dinner tonight was a carry-out. Sim had phoned in an order for Chinese which JIC went to collect while I waited at Coast to Coast for three Fish & Chips. One door and a queue where you wait to place and pay for your order. Another where you queue to collect that order. One woman who shouts at you because you obviously don’t know how this works (she seems to be the only one who does) and one woman who for some reason treats you like a human. Good chips and excellent fish though.

More TV tonight and more pyrotechnics from the battlefield too.

Packing tonight, because it’s the long way home tomorrow.

Kirkby Stephen on our own – 14 September 2020

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The other two were off climbing mountains, we were being tourists, in the sun.

Parked at the car park JIC had used on Saturday and then headed along the main street, which didn’t take very long. There wasn’t much to see. Walked back and had a look through the Cloisters, went through and had a look at the old church behind them. Took the path round the lawn and then exited on to the path that took us over Frank’s Bridge. Don’t know who Frank was, but he made a good job of the bridge. The air was full of the buzzing of bees in the bushes beside the bridge. A few butterflies too. Lots of ducks swimming in the River Eden underneath, but we didn’t have time for ducks. Instead we were following the path we’d travelled a couple of days before, except …

Except, instead of turning right after crossing a bridge over a stream and climbing up, up, up, we turned left and followed the stream past pretty houses whose gardens ran right down to the stream. How brilliant that would be to have a stream at the end of your garden, until it floods, then it might be a different story. We walked on and took a left turn at what seemed to be the end of the village. That eventually took us round past the cricket ground back to Frank’s Bridge. Took some photos of the ducks in the river under the bridge and watched a dog called Betty charging into the water and scaring the living daylights out of the ducks. I know this is boring, and means nothing to you, but remember whose blog this is!

Back in the town again it looked like there had been a funeral because lots of people dressed in black and the men with black ties had commandeered all the tables in the café Scamp wanted to have lunch in. Instead, we had a lunch in a Costa across the street. After a toastie and a coffee for me and a millionaire’s shortbread and latte for Scamp we crossed the road again. Scamp bought a sieve for fishing out poached eggs (that’s the best description I can muster) from an ironmongers. Then we found a deli where I got some marmalade that didn’t taste as home-made as it was advertised and a couple of russets, plus some veg for tonight’s risotto. Walked to the car, drove to the Coop and got some nice beer Lost Lager, plus other stuff, as usual when in foreign climes.

Drove home, to our home for the week. I’d bought a sim card for my old iPhone and spent a lost half an hour trying to get it to accept my credit card details to top-up Eventually I got exasperated and after checking with my bank that I hadn’t been spoofed out of my worldly goods, I shut the phone down. Thank you ‘Kenneth’ from O2 customer help who did his level best to get me sorted out. Went outside into the sunshine and while Scamp read, I sketched Pinfold Cottage where we are staying.

Dinner tonight was Prawn & Pea Risotto, cooked by Scamp.

Tomorrow we are hoping to go back to the waterfall, but this time we’re taking the more leisurely route.

Pizza! – 10 September 2020

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Today we were heading for Glasgow.

A bit of window shopping in JL but nothing even barely whetted my appetite, so we went for a walk down Bucky Street and then I suggested we see if we could get a table in Paesano. We got there just after it opened, so we could get a table. We had our details taken and our temperature checked and were deemed fit and healthy enough to eat a pizza. We had our favourites. Scamp had her own design No1: (Tomato sugo, oregano, olive oil, no garlic, no cheese, extra rocket.)
I had a No 3: (Tomato sugo, capers, olives, anchovies, mozzarella and olive oil)
They arrive about three minutes after we ordered them. Even after we had finished and paid and were on our way out, the place wasn’t nearly as busy as it used to be. Surely this new-normal can’t stay this way. Things must change.

I had a wander round CassArt and got the Posca white acrylic paint brush I was looking for, a sketchbook of kraft paper and a white marker. Rather a frugal amount. I was being careful. Just a few things I can’t get anywhere else.

Had a coffee in Nero but it felt watery and tasteless, partly because it was filling the entire cardboard cup which must have been a ‘large’ size and the server probably thought that a ‘regular’ in that big cup looked a bit mean. Next time I’ll ask for a ‘regular’ size in a half cup. Maybe I’m spoilt now by my own version of coffee from the De’Longhi, but before Covid, Nero made good coffee. This stuff tasted like Costa. Not impressed.

Grabbed a couple of street shots outside the GOMA in Queen Street, but wasn’t all that impressed with the result. Also tried to get some reflections from the frontage of the new Queen Street Station, but there was too much rubbish lying around, destroying the effect. Once it get’s cleaned up, possibly by the end of the century it might be possible to get better shots. As it was, a digitally altered shot of the GOMA got PoD.

Had the second batch of our potatoes for dinner tonight. Mine with bacon and mixed beans, Scamp chose not to have the bacon and stuck to Potatoes and Beans. Both were very nice, but then again, these were Artisan Potatoes!

That’s about it for today. Tomorrow there is rain forecast and lots of it too. Lovely!

Problems solved – 27 August 2020

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Boxes ticked.

Last night after I posted the blog I’d one thing still to do. I needed to print off and sign a document to send to the garage to register my new car. The printer refused to connect. Aha, the printer, being a WiFi printer needs to be connected to the new modem. Easy, or so I thought. An hour later, much later than I intended, I climbed the stairs to my bed with the document unprinted and unsigned and a printer still refusing to connect to the modem. In that hour I’d deleted the printer driver, downloaded a fresh shiny new one from the Epson site and run the program to install the printer. I’d done it three times and each time it failed to gain access to the modem at the same point in the installation sequence. I finally resorted to connecting using the WPS button on the modem. I’d used this before on the old modem with limited success, in other words, sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. Tonight it seemed to work until I tried to print, then was back to the start again. No Printer Found. Frustrated I climbed the wooden mountain. Tomorrow would be a better day, wouldn’t it?

Woke at 7am with that sinking feeling that I’d have to go through that bloody setup again. Later when we were both up and the day had started, Scamp said “Let me try.” I tried to explain that the connection had nothing to do with PCs or Macs, but had everything to do with that bloody new Virgin Media modem. I barely got started when I heard the printer give that ‘beep’ that heralds the output of a printed sheet. Yes, her HP, Windows 10 laptop printed no problem. I tried my iMac and it printed too, so did my old MacBook Pro. The connection had been made. What had happened during the night? I reckon the Good Fairy came in through the keyhole, waved her magic wand and said “You shall print again little Epson 2600.” Well, that’s as good an explanation as any I can provide. Box Ticked.

Printed the document, signed it, scanned it to a PDF and sent the resulting document off to the garage. Box Ticked.

Next task was to sort out the insurance for the new car. Tell me this. If I want to swap the insurance over from the Red Juke to the new car, why does it cost me more money? The insurance for the new car is considerably less than for the Juke. Shouldn’t they be giving me money? Silly question. It’s insurance. They take money, they don’t ever give you money back! Never mind, Box Ticked.

Three boxes ticked in 30 minutes. Time for a coffee.

We were off to Larky today. Scamp was going to get her eyes tested for new contact lenses and I was going to take some photos. It was bucketing down. Never mind, I’ve taken lots of photos in the rain and of the rain itself sometimes. Today would be fine. I dropped Scamp off and drove down to Millheugh which used to be a salmon fishing river on the banks of the Avon Water. My, my those old salmon fishers would have a hard time recognising Millheugh now, especially the river with its clumsy salmon ladder that had to be rebuilt because the old one got swept away. Today the Avon was high. I’ve seen it higher, but not for a long time. I spoke to a trio of hardy fishers who were hoping to net a salmon in the heavy spate, but without much success it seemed. They were complaining about the salmon ladder too because it had changed the entire flow of water in the river, denying them the deep pools where the big fish used to lie and extending sandbanks where there were none before. I left them to it and took some photos, about 70 of them. The one I liked best was the run off from the lade (mill race) and that became PoD.

Picked up Scamp and found that she may need a hospital visit for a second opinion on her eyes. Nothing serious, just checking. I think she’s been looking at things too much, especially gin bottles, two of which arrived today, much to our amazement after all the emails and Facebook posts. Their seals remain unbroken.

Another Line Of Duty tonight and we’re back in the “I don’t remember this one” territory. So many twists and turns.

Tomorrow we have business to attend to in the morning, but hopefully the afternoon will be dry and free for a wee run somewhere.

Nothing to do, Nowhere to go – 22 August 2020

Posted on by Zogman

Just one of those days.

Would we go out? Would we stay in? If we’re going out, then where? Eventually Scamp suggested we go to Drumpellier for a walk. We tried, but the car park was full again and there were folk everywhere. Not exactly what we were looking for. Instead of a walk, we turned around and drove through Easterhouse to The Fort. A lot had changed in Easterhouse since the last time we’d been there. Lots more housed, but still some vacant lots. Lots of new schools too. Still the same mentality though. One woman driving her Merc on the wrong side of the road, just to get into a parking space before me. I’d no intention of parking there, but still she looked ready to fight for that space. You couldn’t have got a Smart car in that space, let alone a Mercedes. The mentality definitely hadn’t changed.

The Fort was almost as busy as Drumpellier, but we did eventually find a space. I joined the queue for Hobbycraft and bought a roll of Craft Paper which we used to call Brown Paper or Wrapping Paper, 50 A2 sheets of cartridge paper and a bag of chocolate buttons. There’s probably a reason why they sell chocolate buttons in a craft shop, but I can’t quite put my finger on it at this moment. We drove home.

Back home, I grabbed two cameras and went for a walk in St Mo’s. Got a few photos using the really old E-PL5 and a fisheye lens. One of them got PoD. Quite liked the ultra wide angle effect.

Dinner was fried potatoes and tomatoes with fish fingers for Scamp and a beef burger for me. Both washed down with a glass of wine. Speaking of wine, we got our £24 box of wine from Naked Wine today. A box of six bottles for £24 is not to be sniffed at. We’ll maybe try the first bottle tomorrow, all things being equal. I don’t expect the next six bottles will be quite so inexpensive, but we’ll see what the quality is like.

Tomorrow we’re hoping to go for a walk somewhere more interesting than The Fort, and also more interesting than a jam packed Drumpellier.

Out to Lunch – 14 August 2020

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Today we were booked for lunch at The Cotton House. Note the capitalised ‘The’. Not just any Cotton House, but The Cotton House!

Drove there and arrive just in time after a quick return to the house “Did I switch off the computer”. Yes, I had switched it off! When we got there, and got parked in an actual space, an event in itself, the restaurant wasn’t even open. Five minutes later the sign on the door was switched from Closed to Open and we were not quite first in the queue, but nearly first. Got a table and were told it was a one hour time slot. No problem. We could scoff anything they’d put down to us in an hour. Scamp went for her usual TCH standard: Thai Spring Rolls followed by Chicken Chow Mein. I decided to be adventurous and had Thai Spring Rolls (I usually have Chicken Noodle Soup) and Salt & Chilli Chicken, rather than the usual Chow Mein. Both starters were fine, although I’d have the soup next time. Scamp’s main was just as good as it usually is. I can vouch for it because she let me have some to taste. I’d definitely order my Salt & Chilli again, we both agreed the chicken was excellent (yes, I did let her have a piece to see what she was missing!) Neither of us was really bothered about tea or coffee and we just paid and left, feeling bad because we had no ‘real’ money to leave a tip and there was no facility in the card machine to do it digitally. They used to bring a wee dish of jelly beans with the bill and I was thinking that in these post Covid days that might pose a problem, but someone was thinking about that and there was a wee plastic disposable tub of multicoloured sugar-heavy sweeties with the bill. Great idea!

We left Longcroft and headed for Glasgow. I wanted to have a look at a camera in JL (no surprise there, say some) and we both wanted a wander round town. It was a great day for it. This morning it had been heavy cloud, but on the way to Glasgow the clouds lifted and the sun shone. We wandered round JL. I had a look at cameras, but the one I was looking for wasn’t there (surprise, surprise.) I heard one of the ‘partners’ (i.e. sales assistants) say to a couple of prospective customers that they “don’t have their full stock in the stores yet.” He added that they were hoping to have it in ‘soon’. That seems to be a problem these days everywhere.

Walked down Bucky Street which is where I got today’s PoD. It’s actually a cut and paste of two images, but Lightroom is so good at this stuff, it would take and expert to see the join. If you are an expert and you can see the join, keep it to yourself. Nobody likes a smarty pants.

After a coffee in Nero – I’m getting like Scamp and beginning to despise disposable cups – we headed up to the car, stopping to allow Scamp a retail opportunity in the Pandora shop. I think she deserved it for surviving Lockdown with me moaning at her about everything I could think of.

Back home and the sun was still shining. I did think of going over to St Mo’s to annoy some beasties, but I had a decent PoD and it was a rather warm and sunny afternoon so I planked myself in the garden along side an already ensconced Scamp and listened to some music. I even did a wee painting that’s available for your perusal on Instagram. I think I’ve inflicted enough pain on friends on Facebook! I also had a beer to accompany Scamp’s Pimms.

Tonight we travelled back a year and a few hundred miles to Venice to remember a sail-in we won’t forget in a long, long time.

Our WiFi died about half an hour ago, so this blog is getting posted late. Checked the state of the connection with Virgin and was given the surprising news that our modem is being upgraded!!! After umpteen phone calls and emails with no response, suddenly out of the blue they say we’re getting a new hub! I’ll believe it when I see it. Of course the signal came back, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this.

No plans for tomorrow and it’s too late to book another lunch out. Hoping for more sunshine. That will do instead.

A hot day after a fiery night – 12 August 2020

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Wild night last night with thunder and lightning around 3am.

As well as the Donner and Blitzen, torrential rain fell for most of the night I’m led to believe. “I didn’t see that, I only heard, but just to be sociable I took their word” (Today’s lyrical poetry comes from Ned Washington & Oliver Wallace). I heard the thunder and saw the lightning but was only vaguely aware of the rain thumping down. That rain though, did a lot of damage all over Central Scotland and even worse in the north east. Train derailed outside Stonehaven with three dead. The weather has not been blamed, but it hasn’t been completely ruled out.

Once the clouds had cleared here it was a lovely sunny day. Humidity was still a bit high, but nothing as bad as yesterday. I met Val up at Costa only to find that there were no seats. All the Yummy Mummies were there with their screaming weans. We decided to walk down to the other Costa, but it was just as bad, but like a dungeon because they thing using the lights will spoil the ambience. Ambience? It’s a coffee shop in Cumbersheugh. Nowhere in Cumbersheugh has ambience. Saving on electricity more like! Walked back towards the first Costa, but actually thinking about going to Calders new restaurant instead. The coffee can only be better than Costa. Surprisingly, there were plenty of seats. Most of the mummies and their weans had disappeared. Val solved the problem of the biz in the coffee shops. “Eat Out to Help Out” applies Mondays to Wednesdays and you get 50% off a meal. We found a seat and ordered £5 for two coffees and two toasted tea cakes. Bargain. Talked about everything from miniature computers to old cameras. Nearly everything we talked about was tech based, as usual. Walked back down the mall then Val said he was going for a walk to waste some time because his wife had girlfriends in and he wanted some peace and quiet. I said we’d meet up later, hopefully all four of us this time.

Back home and after lunch I took myself out to get some photos in St Mo’s. PoD was a picture of a spider I’d taken in the garden in the morning. Liked the pink/red background. Nearly PoD was a shot of a dragonfly resting in St Mo’s. I’d watched it return again and again to this perch, but simply couldn’t get the TZ90 to see it. Finally gave up and used the nuclear option (4K video Post Focus). When I got home I isolated the frame from the video that was as sharp as I was going to get, and here it is! Is this the future of photography?

We watched a couple of slide shows from Hvar last year at this time. It’s amazing the things you forget and then remember when you get the stimulus of a picture or a short video. Hvar is a lovely place. We’d love to go back there some time.

Tomorrow I may have to go and see what damage Ben has done to Shona’s bathroom door. I don’t know what else I can do to reinforce the door. Possibly a manacle round his ankle and fixed to a bolt in the living room floor would do the trick. Other than that, no plans.

A Dull Day – 10 August 2020

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Grey sky, low cloud, thunderstorms anticipated. It didn’t look like a fun day and it lived up to that prediction.

Grabbed a shot of two crane flies on the Red Juke. Unfortunately the red colour of the car predominated and wouldn’t be calmed down with software, so the only solution was to turn it into a monochrome image which suited the graphic style of the shot. That was about all that was happening in the morning.

After lunch we waited around for a while hoping the sun would make an appearance and that the clouds would lift. Neither of those things occurred. Finally went out for a walk myself to St Mo’s. Found a very obliging dragonfly, a Common Darter. Maybe even the same one I photographed the other day. It certainly had the same demeanour. It seemed quite happy to be photographed close up. I’d brought the 30mm macro on a Panasonic camera and it needs to be really close to the subject to get the real macro effect. That mean the dragonfly’s head was about 30mm from the front element. It didn’t flinch. I reckon it knew there was nothing in that metal and glass thing that could hurt it and anyway, these creatures live their entire flying lives in a couple of weeks. The are running on fast-forward all the time. It would be off before I could have done anything aggressive, not that I would have. A Terrible Beauty indeed. The front view was a ‘given’ for the PoD. I also got a decent side view as an ‘almost PoD’.

There were a tribe of teenagers wandering home with their half empty bottles of MD (aka Mad Dog) after making the most of the last few days of their extended summer holidays. Some would have been affected by the crazy decision of the SQA to mark down the grades of some of them because they come from an historically poorly performing school. I don’t think John Swinney has actually apologised for the decision, but Nick the Chick has and I applaud her for it. Swinney should really resign now, before he is booted out.  “Robust and Rigorous” were his catchphrases back in his days as an architect of the poorly thought out Curriculum for Excrement. There was nothing Robust or Rigorous about changing the grades teachers had given pupils on the grounds of the school’s previous record.  ‘Teflon John’. Nothing sticks, until it does.

Picked some of our own peas tonight and used them in a Pea & Prawn Risotto. It was quite good, but would have been better if more of the peas were ripe. Hopefully we’ll get them later in the month.

Thunder, Lightning, Rain and Hail forecast for tomorrow. Just another typical Scottish summer’s day.

Confusion Reigns – 3 August 2020

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Confusion may have reigned, but there wasn’t much actual rain. A bit, but not much.

I’d promised to clean up the inside of the car and that’s what I did first this morning. It’s not sparkling clean, but it’s not nearly as dirty and messy as it was. Not quite in the JIC category, more … lived in!

With the future of the Juke in mind, I phoned Nissan to check if I was actually booked in for a meeting tomorrow (not Thursday as I’d reported in yesterday’s blog). I seemed to confuse the receptionist because I didn’t have a department or a sales person she could transfer the call to. She eventually just passed it on to the first available sales person. I then proceeded to confuse him too. Eventually I cut to the chase and asked him: “Do you have an appointment scheduled for me to visit tomorrow?” He said “No.” Not the answer I wanted, but at least we were getting somewhere. He now wanted to hand this confusing and possibly confused customer over to someone else. He opened my file and found the salesman I dealt with three years ago when I bought the Juke. He said he’d contact him and get him to phone me later. I think he went out to have lunch then and left his phone deliberately in the office. Locked in a drawer, no doubt.

Scamp wasn’t feeling so good today. She had been feeling sick during the night and hadn’t slept much. For those reasons, she had a light lunch, and so did I because I was still trying to get my head round what had happened. To clarify things we started looking at options for loans or money transfers, basically working out what was the easiest way to deal with the offloading or keeping of the Juke. With my head spinning in a different way now I suggested we take a run to Bishopbriggs to buy a 2 Terabyte removable drive to let me back up the MacBook Pro and the iMac using Time Machine. It’s an old but reliable way of backing up your entire Apple computer with more options than there are with Carbon Copier. Don’t roll your eyes JIC, I’m not going deep into the technicalities. Carbon Copier is a disaster recovery tool. Time Machine is a file recovery tool. Anyway, we drove to Bishopbriggs and bought the cheapest one I could find with a reputable make.

Back home again, I was just about to go on a ‘beastie hunt’ when my phone rang and it was the salesman who sold me the Juke trying to unravel the mess. The phone call I got last week from Renault finance was actually telling me about a discount event that runs from Wednesday 5th until Saturday. They had got their wires crossed and had also been booking people for the event from today and causing a lot of problems as a result. To simplify things I agreed that we’d to to the VIP event which will also feature an extra discount (probably less than 1%). So, I have until Wednesday to get rid of the remaining seagull crap, dust the inside of the car. Wash it down and tidy up the boot. I might get the seagull crap removed. The rest? No chance!

There were no beasties posing for photos today. The bees were too busy, the beetles were beetling about, the ladybirds were lazing, even the flowers were fading. I came home almost empty handed and with no quality work.

Scamp was feeling better by dinner time and had some light tomato spaghetti. After dinner I was making my coffee when I spotted him. There is a Cyberman in my coffee machine! It took me a few seconds to prise him out and half an hour to get a tripod and camera positioned so that I could record his existence. What you see above is living proof that Cybermen exist!

Later we found that series 1 episode 1 of Line of Duty was on BBC 1 (also on iPlayer). It’s a totally believable storyline about corruption in the police and must be the best cop series on TV. I think we started watching it from about halfway through series 2 or maybe we started at series 3. Worth watching if you haven’t seen it before.

Right, so we aren’t going to Stirling tomorrow. In fact, by the looks of the weather we won’t be going anywhere tomorrow. Certainly not without a good Goretex jacket. It’s going to be wet and windy.

Not as oppressively warm as yesterday – 1 August 2020

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That was my first thought this morning.

Not as warm. A bit fresher perhaps? Yesterday was just a bit too unScottish on the temperature scale. Today was going to be more down to earth.

We had no bread, very little fruit and no fancy little cakes, so I wandered off down to the shops in the morning. Got enough stuff to feed us for today (and a few days more if the truth be told) and a bar of chocolate for going, which I thought was very fair. Lunch was a roll ’n’ cheese for both of us, but not just ordinary rolls, no, these were Ciabatta rolls that had come all the way from Iceland, the frozen food shop, no the northerly island nation. Then we sat and wondered what to do until the live British F1 GP qualifying was due to start. We were then glued to our TV until the end of the qualifying came to a nail biting finish, or at least that’s what we were told. It was the usual faces in the usual grid slots. No nails were bitten in this house.

Later in the afternoon, I took myself and a camera out for a walk in St Mo’s while Scamp waited at home, deciding what to wear for tonight’s Zoom Dance. To be fair to her, she also prepared the “mise en place” (food and dishes preparation) for tonight’s dinner which was Smoked Salmon and Broccoli Quiche. We’d made it before, but it was really good to walk into the kitchen and find everything laid out for me. The actual cookery was easy after all that. It tasted really quite good. Not as good as Jackie’s, but a fair stab at it. Plus, of course she uses the old fashioned shortcrust pastry base while we have a new super fast method which must remain a secret!

After dinner it was a bit of a rush to get the living room rearranged in time for the dance. It’s really a good way of having a socially isolated dance without the need for face masks and all that faff. Just a computer and a space in your own home to dance. It’s amazing the amount of stuff we’d (read “I’d”) forgotten since the last one. It took me one whole track before I got the steps for the basic waltz anywhere like a dance and not just staggering blindly around the living room. The Social Foxtrot is all about dancing in never ending saw-tooth formations, even I can manage that. Salsa was … let’s say it wasn’t as smooth and faultless as it should be. All in all, it was an exercise in not falling over and no, I’d not had anything stronger than a bottle of beer at that point. However, it was great fun and good exercise too. Don’t know what the couple next door in their Jacuzzi thought! I kid you not, they have a jacuzzi in a gazebo in a garden the same size as ours. What is Westfield coming to? I think they have just too many Zs in their heads! When the Zoom dance ended we had to have a wee seat in the quiet just to allow our muscle groups to return to normal. Next one is in a couple of weeks time unless Lockdown finishes before then – we should be so lucky!

Today’s PoD was wee fly on a cow parsley head.

Tomorrow we may be aching so much we won’t be able to go out anywhere, or maybe we should just to ease those dancing muscles.