Category: Food

Walking the canal – 3 April 2021

Posted on by Zogman

It was too good a day to spend inside reading.

Indeed it was a day, for getting your boots on and going for a walk along the canal bank. Drove to Auchinstarry and rejected the first car park without looking. Not nearly enough space there. Luckily, at about 10am we found a space in the car park at the quarry. Boots on, new boots for me, and off along the canal tow path. There were crowds of people out there making the best use of the warm weather and the sun. Some were walking in groups, some were in twos, like us and some were going solo. It didn’t matter, as long as they were out, taking advantage of the Easter holiday and the sun. A little note here: As far as I’m concerned, this is the Easter holiday. For as long as I can remember it’s been the Easter holiday because it falls at Easter. I realise there are some who will say it should be called the Spring holiday because Easter may cause offence to those who are not Christian. I don’t consider myself a Christian, but I still say it’s the Easter holiday, because that’s what I was brought up to call it. If you don’t like that, then call it what you think it should be, just don’t expect me to change my opinion.

It wasn’t just walkers out in the fresh air, there were cyclists and joggers too. It seemed that everyone wanted a slice of this warm weather and the feeling that the world was changing for the better. Yes, I know there is forecast to be an Arctic Blast tomorrow, but we’ll deal with that when/if it comes.

We walked along as far as Twechar, then crossed the road and took a different path back, along the old mineral railway line. It was supposed to be upgraded by January past, but they’re still working on it. However, I must say it looks a lot more accessible than it used to. There’s even a tarmac path along part of it, which might be going a bit far for a rural pathway. A good solid hardcore base with some gravel on top would have sufficed as long as it was done properly. Let’s see if it survives the first hard frost.

When we got back to the car, the car park that had been only half full was now chockablock. Cars everywhere and at least two cars cruising up and down hoping for a space. One of them would manage to get into the space we left, but which one would be quick enough, I couldn’t say. We were heading to Kilsyth and Lidl. We went looking for bread and a bottle of gin. We put a whole lot more than that into the trolley. Why are we the ones who trundle forward in the queue only to find that the computer till goes down just as we’re about to put our purchases on the conveyer belt? It mainly seems to happen in Lidl. Last time it was an idiot woman who tried to use a cancelled credit card to pay for her goods. That caused the computer to have a hissy fit and the woman to say she couldn’t see what she’d done wrong. Maybe it’s Kilsyth people who don’t understand how these things work. Today it was the receipt dispenser that went on strike. The manager did his best. He pushed a pen into it, but that didn’t seem to work. I can’t see why. Then, I think he went for his tea because he went into his office and didn’t come back, leaving the till operator to punch button after button on the till to no avail. I’d imaging Ctrl Alt Del key combination, pressed twice would fix things. Either that or pull the plug and push it back in, then wait twenty minutes. Tills are probably running on Windows Vista. (In joke!) When we finally sneaked into another queue and got served, we drove home for lunch.

After lunch we sat on the front step reading. Totally different from sitting inside reading. Scamp had a Pimms and I had a can of Guinness to cool us down, it really was that hot. All the while the iMac was doing a complete backup now I was sure Mojave was working. I knew it would take hours, so I just let it get on with it. I got fed up with just sitting there reading and the Guinness was finished anyway, so I slunk away with the camera to walk a circuit of St Mo’s. Yes, the Fairy Garden is still there, looking pristine. After a couple of photos and one circuit of the pond I wandered over to Condorrat and got a bag of chips to share with Scamp and also a box of Cannoli. This was greeted with great smiles when I returned home. We sat on the front steps in the sun eating chips. What could be more natural.

The bloke next door appears to have discovered fire. He had built a log fire in a big metal bowl in the garden yesterday and again tonight he did the same. It stinks the whole street. I don’t expect it will last long, I hope it doesn’t. When the rain arrives, possibly tomorrow, it will put the fire out and by the time the wood dries out he’ll have forgotten how to make fire again, I’m sure.

PoD was taken as we started our walk along the canal at Auchinstarry.

Weather is forecast to take a turn to the worse tomorrow with high winds blowing from the Arctic and threats of snow even down to low levels. I don’t think it will reach us, but you never know. May do some baking!

Huntigowk – 1 April 2021

Posted on by Zogman

Or April Fool’s day if you’re not Scottish.

We had a late rise today, because although the weather looked good, it might be trying to fool us into going out and getting wet. Just to be sure, we had an extra lazier morning than usual. However I did manage to get Thursday’s Sudoku completed. I also kneaded some dough for a loaf, so maybe not all that lazy after all.

As lunchtime approached Scamp volunteered to drive down to the shops to get some ‘messages’. While she was out I backed up the nearly five hundred photos I’d taken in March, and that was after I’d culled an extra three hundred! Belts and braces style, they are backed up twice in two different drives, so this took quite a while. When Scamp arrived home, in addition to the usual stuff, she also brought a chicken. So that was tonight’s dinner sorted.

After lunch, Scamp wanted to get started again in the garden. Especially she wanted to plant some flower seeds and chop out a chunk of the Astilbe plant that grows beside the kitchen steps. I like the plant, she doesn’t, but I allowed her to chop out a section to give to Isobel who doesn’t have one in her garden. It’s a pretty plant to my eyes, but I agree it does spread quite aggressively. I hope she warns Isobel about that.

While she was working on the planting table in the back garden potting up flowers I got ready to go for a walk. I’ve been waiting for weeks for Tiso to open because I really need a new, decent pair of boots. I checked on line to see when they would be allowed to open and found to my surprise they had been open since 1st March! Just to be sure I was right, I phoned the shop and sure enough, they were open from 9am to 5pm all week. I think there is a loophole here. Cycle shops have been allowed to open for some time and Tiso has a large bike shop in their building. Whatever the reason, I’m intending going in to visit them tomorrow to get the aforementioned new pair of boots.

Walked over to St Mo’s and expected to see the tribes of braves and squaws slugging their firewater and practising swearing at each other, BUT… Instead of tribes of marauding teenagers, I found a neatly stencilled sign announcing a Pop-Up Fairy Garden. Behind the sign, and around all the trees were fairies, fairy doors, magic treasure chests and even a fairy washing line. Absolutely gobsmackingly brilliant. It must have been a lot of work by someone. I had to take some photos of it, because it was a Pop-Up and because it was done by fairies, I knew it might not be there tomorrow. My favourite was the fairy washing line and it made PoD. Thank you, whoever you are.

After the photoshoot at the Fairy Garden I went for a short walk in the woods, found the Larch Pineapple and got a few shots of it in a gentle breeze. Much easier than trying to hold the branch still in a gale with one hand while operating the camera with the other. Happier with this photo. It’s on Flickr too.

The bread was baked in the oven and when it came out, the chicken replaced it. As usual, it was delicious served with broccoli and rustic chips.

A parcel arrived by DPD from Perth. I ordered coffee on Tuesday night and it arrived today. That is consistently good service and consistently great coffee.

Quick practise of the Telemark Turn in Tango. It took a few tries to get that spin to work again, but we haven’t practised for a few days. I have to keep working at these things otherwise the muscle memory fades.

Tomorrow, hopefully, a visit to a cycle shop for a new pair of walking boots.

 

 

 

Welcome to the fairy dell – 30 March 2021

Posted on by Zogman

We have twinkling lights all round the garden. Now it’s a veritable fairy dell.

This morning we were working in the garden. Scamp was doing the directing and I was doing the heavy lifting and the digging. We were moving pots around to make better use of the space we have. One of the Azaleas was travelling out near the back fence to provide some colour until the Buddleia comes into flower. That left more space between the other two azaleas. The space where the plant was moving to was very uneven and it took a bit of spade work to level it off, but that little bit of earth shifting helped provided a more stable bed for it. The place it’s in was once hidden by a metal clothes pole which I cut down last year. This new planting makes good use of a bit of wasted space.

Still on a garden theme, I got my old multi-meter out and checked the voltage of one of the batteries in the solar powered lights that ring the tree. They seemed ok and the solar cell was producing just under a volt, which should have been enough to charge the single 1.2v NiMh battery. I replaced the battery and put it all back together. Weeks ago I bought Scamp some warm white lights to run along the fence. Today I tacked them to the fence with the staple gun. With the electrical work and the landscaping done, we had lunch.

After lunch we walked down and around the boardwalk at Broadwood Loch, then over the dam and back up home. Three goons were flying kites with SNP logos from the path across the dam. That about sums up the SNP it these, its troubled times. Flying a kite indeed!

Later in the afternoon I went for a walk in St Mo’s because I didn’t have many photos from the Broadwood walk, but found very little to interest me. That seems to be a theme these days: “very little to interest me”. I blame the restrictions on movement. I think I’ve photographed every interesting thing in St Mo’s. We need to get out somewhere else. I ended up taking the PoD in the front garden. One of the flowers on our Forsythia bush. It’s the bush where the flowers appear before the leaves.

Interesting microwave curry ready-meal from M&S tonight. Really very tasty. Must look for it cheap again some time.

Watched Line of Duty and am still confused about who did what, when, to whom and why. Are they all lying, and why does this new DCI Davidson sound as if she’s English, pretending she’s Scottish when she is actually Scottish?

It’s all too much for me, but the fairy lights are looking good. Scamp likes them. Tomorrow we may go for a walk somewhere south.

Some days you just can’t be bothered going out – 27 March 2021

Posted on by Zogman

Not a day for going out

I knew there were things I should do, but it was cold outside, in fact it hardly rose above 7º all day. In the morning I gave in to the lethargy and made the excuse that I was catching up on things I had to do in the house, but I knew that was a lie. Eventually I dragged myself and the potting table out into the garden to plant two pots of chillies. One pot of Birds Eye and one pot of Jalapeños. Then there was the basil.

I’d bought the basil from M&S or Tesco, I can’t remember which, but that doesn’t really matter, does it? They’re all probably grown in the same nursery, or more likely these days, the same factory. Anyway, it’s been producing a lot of greenery for pasta and pizzas since I bought it and is having to be watered every second day instead of once a week as it was at the start. That means it’s probably ‘pot bound’ which means its roots have used up all the food in the meagre soil it was planted in and it’s starting to strangle itself in its small pot. I released it from its prison and planted it in a bigger pot with more room for expansion. I was using peat-less compost. If you really look at this stuff, you’ll wonder what exactly is in it. It seem to be mostly stuff that comes out of the hoover bag when it gets tipped in the bin. It’s about 50% grit and sand with a few bits of chopped up organic material and some coconut fibre added for good luck. I hope the basil likes it, because we’re doing our best to preserve the peat bogs and that’s why we’re paying good money for what looks like the stuff that comes out of Dyson once the carpets have had a good going over.

After a lunch of a piece ’n’ sausage for me and a piece ’n’ egg for Scamp, we went for a walk round St Mo’s. You could actually feel that the 7º was before the subtraction for windchill. It was freezing. Of course Scamp didn’t feel it. Only one tribe was out today. Some of the braves were standing around on a mucky path drinking firewater (Buckfast). The oldest was about 16. The youngest about 11. These are the people we’re going to rely on in the a few years to be paying their way to provide for our pension. I’m not feeling confident about that. Further down the path we met three squaws (I just checked the spelling there and Google says the word ‘Squaw’ is offensive! Sorry Google, but the Squaws were offensive too.)

Once round was enough today. The weather and the gathering of the tribe was off-putting and earlier I’d snapped a photo of a flowering currant with the actual flowers open, so POD was sorted.

Dinner was Prawn & Pea Risotto followed by Apple Crumble. First made by me and second made by Scamp, with an apple pie for tomorrow!

Watched the last of the Drawers Off series tonight and really was happy to see the back of it. I know it was just a bit of Channel 4 fun, but the ‘teacher’, Diane Ali has as much artistic talent as a tin of black paint. Her helpful hints are vague and sometimes contradictory. I think I’ve seen three good painters in the series the rest were only there to be on the telly. Hope it doesn’t come back.

What is back is F1 and tonight was the first qualifying race with the full race tomorrow. Lots of new names and some hopeful new faces, a few hopeless new faces and then there was Sebastian Vettel bringing up the rear. Somebody should tell him his time has come and gone.

Saw some pictures of Hazy’s new kitchen tonight. Most impressed. I hope it doesn’t put Scamp in the mood for a kitchen renovation!

It’s raining again tonight and it’s forecast for more of the wet stuff tomorrow. I’d better close now because we’re going to lose an hour’s sleep tonight.

Blue skies and sunshine – 26 March 2021

Posted on by Zogman

Also rain, sleet and hail in varying quantities, because it’s Scotland.

It was raining when we woke and it had been the same during the night, so there was no rush to get up and go out. However, later in the morning the clouds part, the sky was blue and the sun was shining. We went shopping.

We went via St Mo’s so I could get some photos. Today I was toting only the 18mm very wide angle. For once it was the right lens to have. There were some lovely cloudscapes over St Mo’s pond and I grabbed a few until the camera reported “Disk Full”. Aha, but I’d come prepared with a spare 32GB card. Plugged it in and we were in business again. One of those shots became PoD. Hardly any editing needed, almost straight out of the camera.

We walked out of the park and across the road, then down the way we’d walked on Wednesday and I’d walked yesterday, but still no deer. That didn’t matter, I was sure I had a PoD and that’s more important than the flighty deer. Walked round to the shops, just as the school was coming out for lunchtime. Thankfully they are at half capacity until after the Easter Holidays, when the whole contingent will be invited to return to lessons. That’s not to say they will all come back. I don’t see some of them ever returning after almost a year’s freedom. Feral, that’s what they’ll be. The new cavemen and women.

Got what we went for at the shops and came home for lunch. I took a few close up shots of some alstroemeria flowers, just to bolster the collectio. Later in the afternoon I got itchy feet and went out for a late walk in St Mo’s and saw a skein of geese heading north. Then as one, they turned and flew west, losing altitude all the time. They were heading for a large open field near Moodiesburn where they often break their journey north in autumn and south in spring. Another photo opportunity.

Came home to the news that Alex Salmond has announced that he’s standing for the Holyrood elections with a new party he’s created called something pretending to be Gaelic. What a Wally! It’s so transparent what he’s trying to do – to screw up Nic the Chick’s plans for world domination. Who would vote for that eejit? Then I think, but what about Trump? Millions voted for him. Maybe … No, that’s unthinkable. Isn’t it??

The remains of the Carrot & Lentil Curry for dinner but the panna cotta was finished as were the tuiles. Never mind. Hopefully there will be more some day.

Tomorrow the weather looks much the same as today, probably even worse. We may get out for a walk.

A dull day – 23 March 2021

Posted on by Zogman

After all those lovely sunny days it was a bit of a downer to have a couple of dull days. Not to worry, the sun might come back tomorrow.

Scamp went on a raiding party to Tesco in the morning while I went on a fruitless search for a very old Mac installation disk. Found lots of disks, most of them junk, but some that we’d been looking for last week, but no sign of the iLife disk. However I did find a small app on the App Store that did what I needed to do, which if you’re interested, was to put markers on a video so we could quickly go to different sections. Very useful for the dance teachers instruction videos. By that time Scamp had returned with only one bag of shopping. Very restrained for her!

A couple of parcels arrived for Scamp just before lunch. One remains unopened as yet, we’ll reveal all the secrets tomorrow.

After lunch we went for a walk round St Mo’s. It was a bit cold, and the weather, although promising great things, remained firmly grey. We watched one of the resident swans chasing away some hoping to be resident geese. It all got a bit fiery for a while, then calmed down again. Twice round the pond sufficed for Scamp, but I had business to do at the shops, so I left her to return home by herself while I went off on a secret mission.

When I returned, dinner was being prepared. Mince ’n’ tatties with beetroot for me and veg sausage and tatties with beans for Scamp. After dinner I had some more secret stuff to do upstairs and that took up most of the evening.

PoD went to a shot of flowers on the whin bushes at the back of St Mo’s.

Mojave seems to be behaving itself. It had a wee hissy fit last night, but eventually cooled down. Lightroom seems to be clashing with it a bit, but we’ll get by that in due course.

Tomorrow is Scamp’s big day. Lots of work for me.

A taste of Japan – 20 March 2021

Posted on by Zogman

Have you ever had one of those days when you wake up feeling that something’s just not right and it follows you all day? I had one of those days today.

Oh dear, milky white sky, but the clouds were low too. The Campsie Fells were covered to about halfway down, but from the cloud line down they were in beautiful sunshine. Very strange indeed.

The clouds seemed to take a long time to lift and disperse, in fact it wasn’t until after lunch that things began to clear and we felt able to go out for a walk, but still that strange feeling irritated me for most of the afternoon. Scamp tried her best to lift it, and eventually a walk round Broadwood Loch and her constant chipping away at it finally broke through and the sun shone. From then on life returned to normal. We walked round the loch, but didn’t venture into the woods because I was pretty sure the path would be flooded and that would be no fun. Instead we walked clockwise against the flow of anticlockwise walkers with their dogs, around the edge of the loch. Then it was up the gentle but continuous climb past the exercise machines and on to the shops.

I suggested to Scamp today that we should perhaps declare Friday and Saturday to be no-cook or easy-cook days. When you’re retired you don’t have weekends. Heavens, many people who are working from home during this pandemic don’t have weekends either. So, to give us something to look forward to and to give the week a structure we should treat dinner at the weekend as a stay-home restaurant meal. Sometimes we should get a take-away delivered or walk over to the food outlets in Condorrat to collect a meal, or like today, we could get an easy-cook meal from M&S. Today’s meal was a Japanese food box with Chicken and Teriyaki sauce, Katsu Chicken Curry, Chicken Miso with noodles and a well named Firecracker Chicken. All served with rice. Sounds complicated, but basically you pierce the film on all the trays and bung the lot into a pre-heated oven for 20mins or thereabouts while you relax with a nice glass of red. Pudding was Bramley apple sponge from the same shop. That worked for me.

Between returning from the shops and cooking this complicated meal, I went over to St Mo’s to see what happens when two tribes go to war, and also to get some photos. Lots of rubber-men and rubber-girls staggering around but nobody seemed to be wearing any warpaint, so I presume:

  1. Peace had been declared.
    Or
  2. The batteries had run out on the ghetto blaster.

Perhaps even both. The woods were silent. The woods I went to were at any rate. Earlier I’d photographed some Flowering Currant bushes (Ribes sanguineum) almost exactly a year after my last Flickr picture of them. I also found some larch pollen buds just opening with a nice bit of side lighting and that was the shot that got PoD.

Altogether, my day was a bit like the weather. It started off cloudy but soon the sun shone and drove the clouds away. Thankfully Scamp has that effect.

Maybe a walk down the Luggie tomorrow. Haven’t been there this year I think!

Gardening, Mojave and Cannoli – 19 March 2021

Posted on by Zogman

Not quite in that order, but does the order matter? Not to me, it doesn’t.

Let’s start with Mojave. On this beautiful spring day I decided I’d back up the iMac and install Mojave. I’d downloaded it a few months ago. Said goodbye to Sierra and ran the installer. Oops. Got this message “This copy of the Install macOS Mojave application is damaged, and can‘t be used to install macOS.” Ok, no problem. I’ll just download another copy, except… Mojave is not listed in the Apple App Store. I finally found out how to download it. You first have to put the original installer in the bin then empty the bin. Next you have to restart the machine. Once it’s restarted, you must use Safari, Apples clumsy browser and then there is a path to the App Store that allows you to download the installer. Why this devious path to a free download?

It’s just a ploy by Apple. They want you to install the most up to date version of the operating system, currently Big Sur. It’s the only version available to download openly from the App Store on Firefox, Chrome or any browser except Safari. It seems that the reason they keep hiding older versions of the OS is to keep you moving on to a new OS every year or so until you can’t upgrade any more and a new computer is the only way to upgrade the OS. I’ve read this explanation many times today in different words, but all with the same theme. Apple was always seen as wearing the white hats, but like politicians, they’re all as bad as each other!

That was the morning. Later in the morning we were off to B&M to shop for a new pot for the Pieris that has been looking a bit sad since the end of last year. Also we needed new rechargeable batteries for the solar powered lights in the garden. Got both and both fitted in Scamp’s car. After lunch we were back out again in Blue this time to get ericaceous compost to pot up the plant and another bag of general purpose compost to top up the raised bed. Got both and some other incidentals.

Then the hard work began. We struggled to get that pieris out of its old pot, but it was jammed in solid. There was absolutely no give. Eventually I’d to use a hacksaw to cut the pot away. Then lifted it into the new pot and packed the ericaceous compost gently into the gaps. That should give it some growing space for a year or so. Scamp gave it a good watering, but it will need more tomorrow. I’ve rarely seen roots so packed into a pot.

We agreed that tonight we’d have fish ’n’ chips from the chippy in Condorrat, so I headed off just after 4pm. I saw the daffodils when I was leaving the house. They were shining well in the sun, so they made an easy PoD. While I was waiting at the chippy, I was eyeing up a couple of meringues in the window. Got my order in and while I was waiting I noticed a rack of cannoli, little Italian deep fried pastry shells with a sweet ricotta filling. Just to test them, I got two meringues and two cannoli. They were just as good as any we’ve had in Italy. Only surpassed by ones we bought in a cafe in Venice. The meringues were also delicious.

That was one busy day with a lot of hard work done. The pieris looks happier already. The lights are on in the garden. Hopefully tomorrow will be more relaxing.

Off to the Capital City – 15 March 2021

Posted on by Zogman

Today we were off to the capital city of North Lanarkshire. Motherwell.

Another bright morning encouraged us to get up and go. This time we were going to see where the ‘Supercentre’ for vaccination in North Lanarkshire was and how long it would take to get there. I used to work near where this giant sports centre is now. Then it was a massive steelworks, the biggest steel mill in Europe. On cold mornings in winter, in a cold bus and latterly on my motorbike travelling up Newarthill Road I could look over to ‘The Craig” and see the wagons tipping red hot slag into the slag heaps. It looked like lava coming from a volcano and actually lit up the sky. I wish I’d taken the time to grab some photos of that, but never did. Now it’s been razed to the ground and houses are being built on it. I wonder if the house owners know what chemicals lie under their new homes. This is where NHS Lanarkshire have sited their ‘Supercentre’. It is the strangest looking building. From outside it looks exactly like a stack of partly tumbled dominoes. We just drove past today, but lots of people were there and the car park looked pretty full. We just turned at the end of the road and drove home. Fifty minute round trip with sourdough toast and beans as lunch when we got home.

I was expecting a delivery from Amazon on Wednesday, but after lunch that little spoiler, Alexa reported that a delivery was arriving today. No idea when. Also we had a Tesco delivery scheduled for today, but no notification from them about a delivery time. Unusual for Tesco – par for the course with Amazon. To give me something to do, I used my blower brush to remove the last little bit of dust from the camera’s sensor. Yes, I know it won’t be the last, but I felt better for getting rid of it.

The postman dropped a blue box through the letterbox. My latest Baking Club kit. This one is for Cheese & Garlic Tear and Share. Sounds good and a bit less complicated than the last one. Thanks again JIC & Sim.

The Tesco delivery arrived about halfway through their promised delivery window, immediately followed by the Amazon man. He was delivering patches to repair my Goretex jackets, both of which have a few rips now. Looks simple enough to fix, but we’ll see how long they last. That left just enough sunlight to get half an hour in St Mo’s for some photos before it got too dark.

Today’s PoD came from that visit to St Mo’s. A little spider with his dinner wrapped up neatly, ready for the larder. I had gone looking for Larch Pineapples which are actually called Larch Roses. I thought I’d seen some yesterday, but what I’d seen were the male flowers, the Pollen Cones. Must go back next week to see if any of the female flowers, which will hopefully turn into pine cones, have appeared.

Watched another in the series of Drawers Off. For some reason they have at least four artists who know which end of the paintbrush to use. Not like the last lot. They were only interested in getting their faces seen on the telly. This is only the first of the week, there’s plenty of time for them to screw up.

Felt sorry for Strathclyde Uni just not quite good enough to get through to the semifinals of University Challenge. Maybe next year.

Tomorrow looks like a decent day, so we may go for a longer walk somewhere.

Mothers Day – 14 March 2021

Posted on by Zogman

So like mothers all over the UK, Scamp had her breakfast in bed.

I joined her for a while, but I had ’Things To Do’. Things like finishing today’s Sudoku and making the dough for flatbread to have with tonight’s dinner. Things like clearing away the clutter from the back bedroom. All of which gave me no time to think about cleaning the sensor of the Sony A7M2. Anything to stop me from doing it. Luckily, Hazy phoned to wish her mum a happy Mothers Day. She also gave us an update on the new kitchen which appears to be nearing completion.

After the phone call, Scamp decided we should go for a walk. The length of the walk and the destination would depend on whether or not the rain stayed off. I had my doubts that we would get far before that happened and on this occasion I was right. We had hardly got 100 yards before the first drops fell, but we were out now and the destination was set at St Mo’s Park. Probably the shortest walk and definitely the most sensible, after our foray into the wilderness of Palacerigg during the week.

We did a circuit of the pond, saw some geese that were feeding on the grass beside the path which is quite unusual as they normally stay in the pond itself being carefully monitored by the two resident swans. There were two serious looking fishermen with serious looking kit. First time I’ve seen pole fishing being done at the pond. Most people who fish the pond carry the usual kit which is a spinning rod and reel and a selection of spinners, plus the inevitable half bottle of Buckfast. More serious ones bring a seat and an umbrella, a coarse fishing rod and reel with a collection of floats and half a dozen cans of lager. The blokes today were using fishing poles made of fibreglass or more probably carbon fibre, massive things about ten metres long. They had purpose build and chrome plated rod rests too. Most significantly, neither of them had any alcoholic beverages visible about them. Obviously serious, but not ‘real’ fishermen.

We left them to their Sunday morning entertainment and did two circuits of the pond, sheltering under one of the big conifers between circuits when the rain got too heavy. We declared that two rounds of the pond was sufficient and went home for lunch.

<Technospeak>
With the walk and lunch out of the way, there was no excuse. It was time to perform open heart surgery on the Sony. It’s not that I haven’t done this operation before. Anyone who owns a DSLR or a modern mirrorless camera with more than one lens has had problems with dust on the sensor. Called “Dust Bunnies” they are the irritating black spots that appear on photos. It’s not that I have had any serious problems with the cleaning process either. I did make a tiny scratch on the glass once, but it never made a bit of difference to any of my photos. The process is simple. Remove the camera lens. Put a couple of drops of extortionately priced sensor cleaning liquid on an equally extortionately priced sensor swab. Gently wipe the swab across the camera sensor. Flip the swab over and wipe it again in the opposite direction. Put the swab in the bin. With a bit of luck, you’re done. If not, you might need to go through the operation again with another gold dust swab.

I did all that and was happy with the result. Not perfectly clean, because the sensor never remains perfectly clean, there will always be bunnies somewhere and the replicate at an alarming rate, especially when you change lenses a lot, like I do. Maybe that’s why they’re called ‘bunnies’!
</Technospeak>

I was doing dinner tonight, but it was a simple Holy Cow curry. Simplest curries I’ve ever made. I commend them to you. I also made flat bread to go with it. Scamp did dessert which was meringue nests with tinned apricots. Tastes much better than it sounds.

Dance class tonight was checking on our Waltz and Rumba then Tango. Only about seven or eight steps, but so much to remember, like bend your knees, turn your feet out, tuck your right foot into your left instep. It seemed such a performance for half a dozen or so steps, but it did feel more like a performance than either rumba or waltz did. This was a whole new ball game.

PoD was a photo of catkins over St Mo’s. I took it after I’d done the open heart surgery on the Sony. Just to test that most of the bunnies had gone and that it’s little heart wasn’t broken. If that means nothing to you, it’s because you skipped the interesting Technospeak section!

No plans for tomorrow yet because we have a Tesco order coming some time in the afternoon.