Category: Humour

Souda for Chania – 10 June 2023

Posted on by Zogman

The first Greek town this year, although Scamp does remind me that it’s Crete, not Greece!

We had breakfast in the posh restaurant we ate in last night. Sensible plates of food for once. Then we watched the sail in on a beautiful morning.

With no tours booked, we just watched until the queue for the bus calmed down then walked out and caught the €1.50 bus from Souda, where we were docked, into Chania town. We had to stand for the 15min journey which was a pain in the legs.

It was a bit busy in the town, In fact it was very busy, but it was Saturday and you have to remember that. My watch wasn’t syncing yet with my phone, so I also had to remember to add on an extra two hours to the time.

We walked through the shops, all of which seemed to sell leather goods, but didn’t buy anything. We did go for coffee in a wee cafe in a town square. We walked as far as the harbour and watched the horse drawn carriages going past. We both felt sorry for the horses.

At night we had another posh dinner sat next to a crazy man and his wife. He was telling the steward how he had a machine gun fitted to the front of his mini. He said it kept everyone out of his way. Scamp tapped him on the shoulder and he jumped as if he’d been slapped and shouted “Don’t touch me!” If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was Ray Furminger’s brother. That same kind of sarcastic humour. Great fun was had by all apart from his wife who smiled and shook her head at everything he said.

Dancing at night to music by a girl from the entertainment team. Sitting with two women who were dancers, certainly better than me, but they had the advantage of being sober.

Tomorrow it’s Piraeus

Things we’ll remember:

  • The sail in.
  • The man with the Barrel Organ.
  • Horses pulling two seater gigs in Chania.
  • Old church or cathedral. Beautiful, but dark inside.
  • Two weans chasing pigeons across the church square.
  • Watching the wee fish swimming in the harbour.
  • Overcrowded buses, going in to town and returning to Souda.
  • Mad Saturday traffic.
  • Being served ‘sit down’ breakfast in the posh restaurant.

An invitation – 24 October 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Scamp and I were watching the US F1 GP this morning when my phone rang and I got an invitation.

Fred was heading to Tesco in half an hour and did I fancy meeting him for coffee. Of course I did! Got myself organised with the books I’d borrowed from him and hadn’t got round to returning then drove over to Tesco where I was also instructed to bring back a loaf, pancakes and a bottle of milk.

I met Fred in the car park and after I dumped my bag of books in the boot of his car, we went to the cafe. He was buying and I had a cappuccino which I realised too late was coming from what looked like a Costa machine. That meant it was more of a Babyccino than a Cappuccino. Next time I’ll get a flat white. I let him peruse my Inktober sketch book that I’d brought with me and for once he was less than critical. It must have been good, because he usually finds something to criticise. But that’s good. He’s always fair with his crits. Eventually, now that it had been all but confirmed that Sunak was to be the new PM, he turned the conversation to politics, that and the gormless council being his two pet subjects. He’s really suffering with his leg now, especially his knee and is having a hard time of it trying to keep moving. It’s worrying that of the six of us that are left from the Auld Guys. Three of us need walking sticks just to get around. We are an ageing group now.

After we’d drunk our warm milk and set the world to rights, we went to do our shopping, vowing to meet up again soon. I managed to get the three items that were on my list and added in a packet of doughnuts just for the fun of it.

Lunch for Scamp and I was Just Soup, then we needed to get ready to go and visit Margie. I dropped Scamp off at the entrance to Monklands and then went to park the car. I gave up on the car park after about fifteen minutes of driving round and round and round. The galling part about it was that I’d driven past a space and ignored it. Of course, it was long gone when I went back for a look. I remembered parking at the roadside down a quiet cul-de-sac. Maybe I’d be lucky again. I was. A space just the right size for the wee blue car. Perfect.

Walking back to the hospital, I saw today’s PoD lighting up in front of me and grabbed a few shots with my phone camera, not having a ‘real’ camera with me. I could never have achieved that quality with my old phone camera. Sat and talked to Margie and showed her my sketches so far in Inktober. Again, Margie is quite a critical sketcher and doesn’t give praise lightly. I’m so glad she liked my efforts.

Drove home through the awkward road junctions in Airdrie and found there were no spaces in our car park either. I did find a space further on. Dinner tonight was a rather good Pasta Carbonara. Finally got round to writing to Alex and asking where we were going this week for a photo walk.

Today’s prompt was ‘Fairy’. This happy wee fairy lives in our bedroom. She’s always smiling and wears a pretty pink dress with matching bright red boots. I do believe she enjoyed being a model for a day.

Well, Sunak did get the PM job. A poisoned chalice if ever there was one. I hope he’s better than the last two inhabitants of No10. I just wonder what Larry the Cat thinks about all the comings and goings in his house!

We’re waiting to see what the weather is going to do tomorrow before we make any rash decisions. Maybe East, maybe West. Who knows.

A Sea Day – 5 August 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Sea days are boring, there’s nothing to do on a sea day.

Breakfast in Smash ’n’ Grab as the ship sailed round the heel of Italy and into the Adriatic. It was hot, early and although there were some sun beds, they were never in pairs. Always a free one, two being used, then another free one. Why do people do that? Eventually we found a couple together, but in the shade and right next to The Sports Hub, which was a man in a blue tee shirt sitting at a desk behind a rope. I don’t know if that rope was to protect him from angry sportsmen and women or the other way round. Whichever, the rope was virtually redundant as was the poor bloke in the blue tee shirt. It wasn’t the most interesting of views and I went looking for another sun bed.

I found one higher up and with a view overlooking one of the big pools. Lots of activity in the pool with kids running in and out of the water. Lots of them swimming, but not many adults. This was a kids area, but that was ok. We stayed there for a while before with a tremendous fanfare, the Sony logo burst onto the massive outdoor screen. It was a noisy version of Cinderella, apparently. We stayed to watch it for a while, but eventually gave up because we were at a very acute angle to the screen and the lip-sync was terrible. Maybe the lack of known faces in the film didn’t help. We left to get fed again, this time in The Peninsular Restaurant.

We got fixed up with a table, right at the back of the room and were given menus. We waited, and waited, and waited again, but nobody came near us to take our order or to offer us drinks. Only half the table had been set and there were no waiters at the station for this area. We agreed to give them 15minutes to sort things out and if we weren’t served in that time we’d walk out. That’s what happened. We walked out and handed back the menus saying they were no use to us as nobody had bothered to take our order. The waiter I handed the menu to started telling me I couldn’t do that, then the manager started to take control and said that he’d find us a table (I know condescension when I hear it) and he’d sort things out. After quite a lot of argument and raised voices, the manager realised that here were two angry customers who were going to take this further. He backed down and we left to go to Customer Services. I thought the customer was always right, but apparently it’s the staff who are always right now in P&O and you have to do what they say.

We did go straight to Customer Services which is just along the corridor and in direct sight of the manager. We only went to fix a dodgy key card, but the manager didn’t know that!

Back to Smash ’n’ Grab and really quite a decent lunch. After lunch we went to reclaim our sun beds which we’d marked as per the German method with towels and towel clips, only to find a family sitting on them. I quickly hoiked them out and we reclaimed our thrones. Then I though, this is just projected anger and these poor folk are getting the brunt of my anger at the Peninsular manager. We took our towels, I said sorry, and we went to have a quick splash in the pool at the front of the ship.

It was just a quick splash, because it’s a small pool, with a stated capacity for 12 people. There were 23 in it, including us. We left to have a couple of beers and found another pair of sun beds.

Posh dinner tonight. Formal dress and Black Tie. Food was just ok tonight. It was so remarkable, I can’t remember what I had. Then we booked a table at The Glass House for Sunday. It’s quite expensive, but hopefully it’ll be worth it. After that we had a drink (Strawberry Daiquiri for Scamp and Laphroaig for me). Then we went dancing.

We had a great time. Ballroom, Sequence and Latin, we danced them all. We even did a solo Salsa spot and we got a cheer for one of the more difficult moves. I was impressed. If we hadn’t been the only couple on the floor, I’d have been sure the applause was for someone else. Eventually just before 11.30pm when the dancing finishes, we finished.  PoD was a photo of the locked area at the rear of our deck where the Covid patients are kept, away from the rest of us.  It’s rumoured they are chained to their oars in there, like galley slaves, and have to row day and night to keep the ship on its course!

Like I said at the start of this blog:
Sea days are boring, there’s nothing to do on a sea day.

Off to bed, ready for Dubrovnik tomorrow.

Unsupervised – 29 July 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Scamp was out all morning and I was left to my own devices.

More likely, I was left with my own devices. It meant I could read my Kindle, do Wordle and Spelling Bee when and if I wanted to. As it happened, I chose to tidy up the back bedroom after yesterday’s setup for Flickr Friday. I was quite pleased with the final result, but it did involve a lot of setting up and now today was tearing down day. Always a delight to tear down something that had been built, but was now just gathering dust.

It was round about there the desire for more clearing and organising came to a halt. Also, Scamp returned from her FitSteps class. We discussed options for what was left of the day and what was up for grabs for dinner. The former was already sorted as far as I was concerned. It was either banana on bread or cold meat on bread. The second option won, not because Scamp had chosen the banana piece, but because I wanted to test out the thermal strength of some Nduja paste we’d bought. ‘Nduja’, just in case you don’t know is a spreadable spicy pork sausage from Calabria in Italy. It varies in strength and this one wasn’t too hot. It went well with cooked ham and some pickled peppers (not necessarily the Pickled Peppers that Peter Piper Picked, though). With lunch done and dusted. What was for dinner?

We settled on pizza. Stuffed crust bake at home pizza. I was intending going out anyway to get some more critical tests done on the new lens, so continuing my walk down to the shops wasn’t a real hardship. On my return I Scamp was reading in the sunshine in the garden. I joined her with a bottle of beer and a rum ’n’ coke for Scamp. Read for a while and got the nudge from my watch to go and complete the final 250 steps in the hour. This I did and that gave me my first ‘8 active hours’ of the week.

Pizza turned out ok, but not really the meat ‘feast’ it promised. Sliced Pepperoni, little squares of Ham and reconstituted chicken is no my idea of a feast. I much prefer the Chicken and Bacon that we usually have. Iceland didn’t have any this time.

PoD was four little sparrows lined up on a fence while the fifth was having dinner from the bird feeder. They were very patient and arguments only erupted when one of them tried to jump the queue.

I’d been fascinated yesterday with the amount of gunge that had accumulated in the radiators, so this morning I thought I’d give the stairs a go with the new flexible brush.  While I was destroying ancient spider webs in places where we didn’t even know we had places, I thought I heard a rustle from one of the unhitherto unaccessible void areas underneath the upstairs floor.  I eventually teased it out and it turned out to be, not a fat bundle of tenners wrapped up with string, but an empty packet of Monster Munch.  I immediately thought that one of my two regular readers might shine some light on the subject, but then I noticed the advert on the back for an offer that closed on the 31st March 1984.  So you pair are in the clear, because we didn’t move to this house until 1986!  Pity, I’d have liked it to have been a bundle of tenners tied up with string!

Tomorrow looks wet … all day wet. We’ll hope the weather fairies have got it wrong.

Out for a curry – 8 July 2022

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Not a good one though.

We drove to Hamilton today to see if the car still worked. It doesn’t do much driving these days with the price of petrol. The other reason we went to Hamilton was to have a curry for lunch. Bad move.

We went to Bombay Cottage just after midday for lunch and it was awful! I had my usual Chicken Rogan Josh. It was tasteless, the sauce was watery and the chicken had been sliced up, usually it’s in chunks. Scamp had Cauliflower Shimla Bhaji and it too was tasteless, but hers was oily. The naan bread was smothered in oil, not ghee and left a smell like paraffin on my hands! Scamp thought it was maybe from firelighters they used to fire up the tandoor. That seemed likely because we were there just after the place opened and maybe they had just started the tandoor. The waiter apologised, but it wasn’t his fault. He didn’t make the curry. We’ve been going to this restaurant for years and have always had good food, but not today. I realise that the hospitality sector, and restaurants in particular have had a hard time in the past two years, but these days, you’re only as good as your last meal. We will give them another chance, we will go back, but not for a while and only because their past record has been so good.

Back home, I took an old friend out for a walk along with my Sony A7iii. The old friend was an Olympus E-PL5, a compact little half frame camera with a Panasonic 30mm macro lens fitted. It worked hard today and produced about 70 photos, all of the inside of my camera bag! My fault. I forgot to turn it off and also forgot just how sensitive the shutter button is. It also captured a few macro shots of hover flies and a series of shots of a grasshopper. Not quite good enough for PoD which went to a wide angle shot of what I thought was a children’s toy, but which turned out to be a dog toy in the form of a gnome. The Laughing Gnome wasn’t laughing any more!

After my walk, Scamp and I sat in the garden. Her with a Pimms and me with a bottle of Estrella. The last bottle. Note To Self: Must go to Morrisons soon to get another box!

Unfortuantely the sun was getting mugged by too many clouds and we had to call a halt to the seat in the sun. However, by that time the the Pimms had been drunk and the Estrella was well gone.

Hazy, I meant to say yesterday that the risotto spatula worked its magic again, and was responsible for that very nice Prawn and Pea Risotto.

The other thing I meant to mention was that the solar light looked really nice casting their glow across the garden. All at different heights and angles. Truly ‘fairy’ lights.

Tomorrow we might go out somewhere if the weather is as good as the weather fairies say. The problem is, they sometimes promise things they cannot provide!

 

Gardener, Electrician, Bin Man – 21 June 2022

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A few tasks to complete today, but nothing onerous.

First thing to do was to remove the old solar powered lights from the tree and the fence. The tree lights were easy to strip out, but I was a bit concerned when I tried to remove the staples that held the fence lights in place because I found the cable had been cut. Can’t really see how anyone could reach into cut it, so for now I’m keeping an open mind on it. I tried stripping back the insulation on the wires and joining up the copper wire inside, but the lights still won’t work. Cheap and cheerful describes them perfectly.

The new, much shorter set was fairly easy to install and, once Scamp had shown me where she wanted them, they were quickly stapled in place. It’s still not dark enough just now at just after 10.30pm for the sensor to switch from collecting light from the sky to giving out light from the little LED lights.

Next on the list was lunch and after that I’d a trip to the skips to do. One bag of Small Electrical, one big bag of Household, one bag of magazines and a little bag of dead or dying batteries. All done and dusted in ten minutes, plus travelling time of course.

Drove back to see Fred who was cutting his grass with his new battery powered mower. We had a blether for a while and I gave him the latest Slow Horses book I’d finished this morning and he gave me three in return, all by authors I’d read but the book titles were new to me. I think I won in that exchange.

Went home via Tesco for ‘real’ essentials, bread and potatoes but also with a punnet of strawberries and one of raspberries too. Took the Sony and the big macro lens over to St Mo’s and got a few photos of a Common Blue damselfly. That was the only decent photo I got and it automatically became PoD.

It was warm enough to sit in the garden before and after dinner which was the leftovers from Sunday’s dinner, reheated.

We got a letter from the bank, addressed to The Manager of a group Scamp used to run. She’s tried to write, phone, email them to say the group was disbanded about fifteen years ago and even then she was no longer involved in it. Still we get the letters once or twice a year. I thought I’d try a little humour (With a bank? I hear you say!). This is the returned letter that will go in the post tomorrow.

Speaking about tomorrow. It looks like being a decent enough day with the chance of dry weather. I think we should take it while it’s on offer. Other than that, we have no plans.

Meeting a man from the money trade – 31 May 2022

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Our six monthly visit to Falkirk

We had an early morning appointment with a man who knows all the facts and figures and explains them with a large dose of humour. Always entertaining while he’s explaining how the world is turning.

With that done, the day was our own to play with and play in. First visit was to the Kelpies. I wasn’t sure exactly how to get there from deepest Falkirk. Unfortunately the sat nav wasn’t sure where we were. It was giving us the correct street names and the lady behind the map was giving the correct directions, but according to the map we were somewhere just south of Inverness. The electronics in this car are shot. However the lady with the posh voice knew where we were and where we wanted to go and she navigated us onto the road we recognised.

We parked and paid our £3. Three quid is pretty good value for a full day with the silver river horses. They alway radiate such a calm influence, it’s almost impossible to be down when you’re in their presence. We had a coffee and a coconut scone in the cafe and I took a few photos. We browsed the ‘gift’ shop but left without being tempted to buy any of the expensive merchandise. We walked round the ponds that the great beasts live in and that’s where I got PoD. It’s a bit spoilt by the pond scum. The council really should clean it up occasionally, just to make the photogs job easier.

We walked over the bridge that crosses the Forth & Clyde canal and walked along the towpath to the second bridge, recrossed the canal and drove over to Torwood, aided and abetted by that same posh lady who had in the interim fixed the display to show we were in Falkirk. Multi-talented she is.

I wanted some leeks and some curly kale at the garden centre, but there were no leeks to be had, so I had to be satisfied with the kale. Scamp collected some Violas and an orange Osteospermum. After a bit more browsing and deciding we couldn’t quite squeeze another plant pot into either front or back garden, we drove home.

Later in the afternoon Scamp planted out her new acquisitions while I made sure I did have a PoD. Actually I had quite a few contenders for that accolade, but the big wide shot of the Kelpies in their mucky bath won.

Dinner was Potatoes with Bubble & Squeak plus Haddock for Scamp and a Burger for me.

We watched another episode of Silent Witness, but maybe we’re being too critical, but it seems a bit of a fairytale these days. Too many unlikely scenarios. I suppose we must remember, It’s Not Real!

Tomorrow I’m booked to see the nurse at 4pm, but the rest of my time is my own. Scamp might have the whole day to herself!

A bit calmer today – 2 February 2022

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Thankfully the wind had gone to bother someone else today.

I spent the morning getting my photographs organised into the correct folders in the correct place for my new regime. It took a lot more time than I’d anticipated, but it’s done now. In fact it took me until lunchtime to get it completed.

Immediately after lunch we drove up to Seafar to visit Margie who is one Scamp’s oldest friends in Cumbersheugh. Old in the sense that they’ve known each other for a long time. Old also in years, but not in outlook. The stories she tells have us in stitches. A great painter too. I took last night’s work to let her critique it and it won some praise from her. Then we discussed the prompts for the week and she gave me a few suggestions for the more obscure ones. Things I’d never have thought of. We stayed for a couple of hours and I think Scamp was careful not to tire her out too much. All in all an entertaining and at times hilarious afternoon on a really dull day.

Dinner tonight was house favourite: Cod with Bacon, Lentils and Braised Peas. Simple and satisfying. Two cheap steamed puddings from Iceland provided the pudding.

Today’s prompt was Brown Eyed Girl. Van Morrison is not my favourite artist, so I stuck with my lyrics theme and added the chorus from the song, but gave a nod to Van the Man with his archetypal hat and dark glasses. The cow is called Daisy. Named by Margie.

PoD is further adventures of The Professor. This time he has discovered the fabled Dragon’s Green Tooth. It’s a sprouting garlic clove and I guess that slight double image is because it moved slightly during the long exposure. Just for fun and because I didn’t have anything else.

The Christmas decorations finally made it up into the loft to rest there until next year.  A bit late this year, but it’s been a busy week for both of us and that’s my excuse.  Not a reason, just an excuse.

No plans for tomorrow. Neither of us has any commitments, but we’re open to offers!

Rain again – 5 February 2021

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We went for a walk anyway. Just a fairly short walk, because the rain got heavier and more persistent.

It was just a walk around St Mo’s pond …in the rain. However, we are lucky, as Scamp keeps telling me, to have the opportunity to walk somewhere nearby with a different view from the one out of our windows. Just once round today was enough because in that time we were soaked and I’d a few things to do. I took a photo in the pouring rain and that became PoD, mainly because it was the only PoD! I did a bit of editing to it before I deemed it good enough for public consumption. Little things, like changing the sky and adding digital rain to the sky. Little things!

I had meant to write to Margie after our phone conversation the other day, so I made time for that after lunch and sent her copies of the first four sketches of the February series. Then I doodled my thoughts on today’s prompt which was “Under Water”. None of them really looked worth progressing with. Then I tried the same idea from a different viewpoint and that was a much better picture. As usually happens, that rough pencil sketch got ink added and then some watercolour and it became the finished article. Yes, I know it’s still a bit rough, but l prefer that look, rather than yesterday’s overworked sketch. Loose, that’s the word I’m looking for.

I recently bought a DTP program and yesterday I downloaded an update for it which had a few neat tricks added, so I watched a video on how to do mail merge using it. Dearie me, that must have been the least clear, most complicated tutorial I’ve ever seen. I came away knowing less than I did when I started. I even watched it again after I’d had a cup of strong coffee, but it made no difference. It was as if I was watching a technical explanation in a different language. Worse still, the video was out of sync with the soundtrack, so it was difficult to see exactly what the disinterested lady was talking about. Great program, poor tutorial.

That was about it for today. Hoping the weather improves a bit tomorrow so we can get out somewhere for a walk in the dry.

Hardly past the door – 20 January 2021

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Well, actually I was out today. I took the bins out tonight, but that was it.

It was such a dull depressing day and then it started raining. Last night it snowed, just as we were going to bed, but you wouldn’t have known it this morning. The thinnest scraping of snow on the cars was all that remained of the fluffy flakes that were falling just before midnight last night. The rain today soon finished even that off.

We had a new Covid reporter today. Sharon arrived just after 11.30 and we did the needful with the swabs, then answered her questions. Thankfully it was only raining today. If she had come tomorrow there’s a good chance she’d have been covered in snow by the time we were finished.

Lunch was a rather tasteless Vegan Pizza from Pizza Express. Some things just don’t work as vegan. Vegetarian, yes, but vegan cheese is a step too far. Afterwards we did think of going for a walk, but it was that horrible clinging drizzle and neither of us could think of a good reason for going out, so we each made a cup of coffee and sat back down.

PoD was a shot from the kitchen window of a starling having its daily bath. Shot through the window using my old 300mm lens on an adapter on the Sony. Not the best prospect, but the photo was useable and it worked, just!

I was nominated to make dinner tonight which was a Chicken Cobbler. The chicken was fine, but the cobbler was a bit stodgy. Lots of work to make and lots of chopping in preparation. Might try it again with some suggestions Scamp made. I can see them working.

Today Joe Biden became President and Donald Trump left under a cloud. Fred sent me this photo. I think it sums up the day perfectly.

We’re expecting heavy snow during the night and the quantity of that snowfall will determine what we do tomorrow.