Category: landscape

Christmas Eve – 24 December 2020

Posted on by Zogman

We looked out the window and nobody else had moved from their parking spaces, so why should we?

I’d planned a drive over to the Carron Reservoir for a walk today, but with the prospect of sub zero temperatures all day I changed my mind I didn’t mind driving up the Tak Ma Doon road with its single track sections and the blind 90º bends. But the thought of all the recent rain we’d had freezing made me think “Another day perhaps”. With discretion the better part of valour on this occasion, it was walking boots on and a wander down around Broadwood instead, with the possibility of dropping in at the shops on the way home.

That’s what we did and I did get a chance to try out the Tamron at its 300mm length to grab some waterfowl pictures. Some goosanders and coots posed for me and I gratefully took their offers. However I forgot to check the aperture and good though the Tamron is, it needs to be stopped down a few notches to produce its best work. Although the temperature didn’t rise much above zero, it didn’t feel that cold, although, as Scamp reminded me, that was probably due to the lack of wind.

Back home and it was soup for lunch then, after I’d checked the photos and declared them wanting, I went out again to St Mo’s. I gave in to temptation and carefully placed my Sony A7M2 on the ice of the wee pond, set the timer to 10 seconds and the focus spot on a wee bunch of weeds frozen in the ice, held my breath and pressed the shutter. Over £1000 worth of camera sitting on a thin sheet of ice produced the shot. Was it worth it? Only because the ice held! Don’t try this at home kids. If you like you can check it out on Flickr. PoD was from the same spot, but looking the opposite way. It’s an old hawthorn bush, bent out of shape by the wind howling in from the west. I loved the rim lighting effect from the moss on the trunk and that little hole that allows the sun to shine through. Instant PoD.

Back home for the second time today and a parcel was needing wrapped. I knew I would get in a fankle with sellotape and crinkly Xmas paper. I was right, I did, but the parcel is now wrapped. And wrapped to my satisfaction too.

Sirloin steak for dinner 3 minutes per side in the new pan and then rested for another 3 minutes. Scamp had a nice looking thick slice of lightly smoked salmon. Both accompanied by our favourite potato wedges with Italian rosemary salt. Honestly that was the best steak I’ve had, possibly ever. It came from Lidl. I thought Aldi did the best meat. Lidl are hot on their heels. Nothing to do with the pan this time or the (lack of) skill my cooking brings to the final result. It’s down to the quality of the meat.

That was about it for today. The day before Christmas. In the past it was about trying to keep children occupied and tiring them out before bedtime while one of us was wrapping up bikes and dolls and even a garage that I just managed to finish before midnight. Now it’s a frantic fight with sellotape and wrapping paper followed by a G&T watching a documentary about Central Station. How things change.

Tomorrow is Christmas with all that entails. It’s still fun though!  Hope all my readers have a relaxing day tomorrow.

On the pan – 23 December 2020

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My new pan gets its first real test.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A walk in the rain – 22 December 2020

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Up early to get a new window in the Micra.

Not my Micra, this was Scamp’s. It had a crack on the driver’s side of the windscreen, just above the dashboard that looked as if it would increase in size after the first heavy frost. Today the man was coming from Autoglass to fix it. He phoned about 8.15 to say he was on his way. Scamp’s car was jammed into a fairly small space, so I took the opportunity to steal Scott the taxi driver’s space at the end of the row and give the bloke a fighting chance of getting the screens exchanged. I had to scrape the windscreen first after the first hard frost we’ve had in ages. I was a bit gentle with it, not wanting to make the crack any worse than it needed to be. He arrived on time and it took him almost exactly the 45 minutes he predicted and it looks a nice clean job. He said we should leave it for 30 minutes before driving it, but it was unlikely to move far today.

I’d cleared Scamp’s car’s screen, so I started on mine and drove up to Boots for our meds and Tesco for bread then back home with the air con blowing a gale, a warm gale. We wouldn’t go hungry today. Leftover tomato soup and croutons for lunch, then after letting that settle we got our boots on and went for a walk in St Mo’s.

We’d been in for most of the morning and then we’d waited for a while before we left on our walk. The weather in all that time had been beautiful. Cold but clear and clean. As we walked round St Mo’s pond for the second time we could definitely feel rain. We just continued on, hoping that it was just the edge of a cloud we were catching, but it wasn’t. We were wet by now, so we just walked home. We’d done our two circuits of the pond and on the last one I’d got PoD of the light through the trees with the rain falling.

That was about it. We checked the TV schedules to see if there any decent films to watch, but there were none, at least none that I wanted to watch. We switched to Netflix and were grateful that we did. Thank you Hazy for adding some films to our list. Hopefully that will keep us from watching The Snowman one more time.

Spoke to my cousin Margaret and heard about her troubled year.  Sometimes we forget about other people’s problems, constantly bemoaning our own.  Then you hear from someone who has overcome much more serious troubles and it puts your own life into a clearer perspective.  Thankfully she’s on the mend again and has avoided Covid-19.  As she says, she’s just battling on.

Tomorrow we have no plans. Hoping we won’t have an early rise.

Lockdown Blues – 20 December 2020

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We’re not really there yet, but we know it’s coming.

I suppose I should get the pencils sharpened and the pens refilled for more lockdown sketches, because we are being condemned to at least three weeks of virtual lockdown as Nic puts most of Scotland into level 4 as a precaution. Yes, it makes sense, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

We were entertained by Andrew Marr this morning tearing at the poor health minister Matt Hancock like a demented Jack Russell. The poor man hardly got a chance to answer one question before another two were being fired at him by Marr. I think we both felt just a little bit sorry for him. He managed to parry a few of Marr’s thrusts, but I’m sure he felt punch drunk after doing down for the third time in round two.

It was a dull day weather wise too. A bit wet at times, but mainly just grey. However I got my boots on, grabbed the camera bag and headed off to get some photos. My first stop was the tree where the little ladybird had been hibernating before my too bright light disturbed it. At first I couldn’t see it, then I found it about 50cm further up the trunk. Grabbed a few shots, both with the old Sigma lens and also with the Sony. The Sony won hands down, but now I realise that the anti-shake wasn’t set to the correct focal length for the Nikon which is quite an old lens and doesn’t send all its information to the camera electronically. Still, I got a few shots to remind me of where it was.

The ladybird didn’t make PoD, but another spot in the woods gave me a pretty landscape type shot. It looks so calm, but beyond that fence there is a four lane motorway with all sorts of vehicular transport rumbling along it day and night, summer and winter. There’s hardly a ripple on that wee stream to distort the tree reflections. PoD, even before I processed it. I also grabbed a mono shot of some weeds which completes a full week of monochromatic images.

Spoke to JIC in the evening and found out that both he and his sister are in level 4. That’s the whole family in it! Have we been bad or something? Is it because I called the respective leaders Bumbling Boris and The Littlest Witch? If so, I’m sorry, but they both deserve it. The leaders, not the siblings, that is.

Dinner tonight was Haggis, Neeps and Tatties. What a brilliant brightener for a dull day. Just as long as you don’t ask what was in the haggis. You don’t want to know.

That was about it for today. Hoping to meet Val for coffee and some technological chat tomorrow and then Scamp and I might visit Tesco to look for a turkey, a small one, if such a thing exists.

Priority Pass – 19 December 2020

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Scamp had a spot booked at M&S. A spot for one!

We drove to M&S and Scamp waltzed to the front of the queue, showed the pass on her phone and walked in. I joined the rest of the proles out in the cold. We’d intending to have a look for a small turkey crown for Christmas Day. I’m afraid was look. Prices ranged from around £40 to around £70. Just a bit more than we’d intended paying. We did buy a fair load of stuff though, just to make our visit worthwhile. I got a couple of those big fat dumpy sausage rolls that used to be all the rage a year or so ago. Got them for half the price of one single Christmas version. Scamp picked up a bottle of wine too with an interesting label I’m sure we’ve seen on our table before.

We could have gone to Tesco, but it would have been jumping, I’m sure so we just drove home. Sausage roll for me for lunch and Scamp had an egg on a tattie scone. It was a bit fatty, full of breadcrumb and overall simply tasteless. I’d probably have been better getting the single Christmas version of the sausage roll. In fact I’d probably have been better with the egg on a tattie scone! What we did find was where M&S hide the Milk Chocolate & Cinnamon Tortillas, recommended by Hazy.  No, don’t make that face you lot out there. I didn’t think it would work either, but Hazy is a connoisseur of chocolate things and she said it worked. It does. Half a packet later tonight, I can vouch for that.

It was raining after lunch and we waited a while before committing to a walk. Usual fairly short walk down to the loch, back along the boardwalk and the long way round the exercise machines. One of the machines found its way on to Flickr after it had been converted to B&W, but wasn’t PoD. On the way home, Scamp suggested that she was going back to the house, but if I wanted I could do a lap of St Mo’s pond. I did two laps but it was on the first one that I found the PoD. It had been raining on and off when we were walking round Broadwood, but when I reached St Mo’s the sun came out and gave a beautiful light show on the trees of the far bank. Knew I didn’t have time to switch lenses to capture the whole scene, so took a series of shots to be made into a panorama later. That panorama worked well and became PoD.

While I was re-heating the leftover curry from last night I was half listening to Nic laying down the law for the next three or four weeks. I’d previously listened to Boris’s bumbling and at times incoherent ramblings that pretended to be a press briefing. At times I think that Nicola is too cautious and too quick to shut things down, but oh my, I’m so glad we have her sensible approach rather than what has been described as Boris’s “Battle of Britain rhetoric”. The man simply does not inspire confidence. She does. So, basically from the end of next week we’ll almost all be in lockdown again. You can give it a number if you like, but basically it’s lockdown again. I suppose it has to be done. For England, to control the virus. For Scotland, to prevent the virus spreading north. You know it makes sense (unless you’re listening to Boris).

Tomorrow the weather looks wet again. We may go out for a walk.

The Ladies – 15 December 2020

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Parcels to send today. Going down south by different routes.

Parcels loaded into the car this morning and off to post them. One going by Royal Mail because the postman knows where our son and his wife live. One going by DPD because they are cheaper. It’s a race then. Which one wins. Which one gets there quickest. We’ll find out later in the week, hopefully.

With the heavy posting done, it was time for a drive into the wilds. The wilds of Fannyside Moor. It was a beautiful morning with blue sky and just a little cloud or two. Once we got there we just sat in the car and listened. Listened to nothing. Just the distant sound of the occasional car running across the moss. That’s the peat moss, the moorland road across the peat moss. A single track road with passing places in the middle of the Central Belt in Scotland. Not ten miles from Cumbersheugh and it’s a single track road with passing places. This is the 21st century isn’t it. Anyway, we sat and listened to the radio for a while and then let the silence rule us. Perfect peace.

When we got out we found a bunch of ladies standing watching. Lady sheep, that is. Some black and some white, but all waiting and watching. Sheep have this disturbing way of looking at you that makes you think you should really turn round because something may be creeping up on you from behind. They also look as if they’re sizing you up, challenging you. Actually, I think they were just waiting for the farmer to bring their lunch. I took some photos and we walked down the road a way. Took some photos of an old ruined farmhouse and then came back. They were still there, the ladies. Still watching. Still waiting. Took some more photos and they all drifted away, bored with the show.

Drove home for lunch and Scamp went to visit her sister while I filled my birthday pen and started on the pile of unwritten Christmas cards. I got halfway through them when Scamp returned. I’d had enough of that for now, so I grabbed my camera and went to bolster my collection of photos. I needn’t have bothered. It was too late and the rain came on. I get the feeling it just waits for me some times. Came home and had a look at the photos, but as I suspected, they weren’t worth the bother. Went back to finish off the cards.

I don’t usually approve of the ‘one size fits all’ catch up ‘what we did this year’ stories that used to be all the rage at Christmas, but I decided that this year had been such a momentous one it was worthwhile cataloging it. If for nothing else, it showed our friends that they are not alone. We’ve all had a terrible year. Some worse that others, but nobody got away lightly in 2020. I’ll include it in some of the Christmas cards, just to keep folk in the loop.

Tomorrow we pay another whack of money to Royal Mail when we have to buy the second dose of stamps for this load of cards.

Tomorrow looks wet for most of the morning and early afternoon. What fun today was, though. I wonder if those sheep are still standing. Watching, Waiting.

Back to my old self – 14 December 2020

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I felt a lot better when I got up this morning, thankfully.

Scamp was out early to meet Isobel for coffee. Although I feel fine, I didn’t want to risk spreading my cold germ with Isobel and anyway, you probably know my thoughts on Costa coffee. With some peace and quiet, I managed to tweak some of the settings on the Synology NAS to make it run a bit quieter while still doing its technological housekeeping. Now I just have to work out how to get it to clean the shower and empty the dishwasher.

When Scamp came home she brought with her half a dozen rolls and a packet of square sliced sausage. Well, that was my lunch sorted. Actually I was a bit more careful than normal and only had the one roll and one sausage. The rest of the sausages I’ve frozen and bagged. After lunch the sky was clearing from its usual featureless milky white. Scamp was getting herself organised to start packing boxes for delivery down south. I was getting myself organised for taking photos.

I did a couple of circuits of the pond at St Mo’s, then I had a walk into the woods to see if the ladybird was still there. It was, but when I turned on my portable LED light it started moving, maybe the light was just too bright. I decided enough was enough and took my leave. PoD went to an initially dodgy shot of a couple of trees. Initially dodgy, but with a bit of work in Lightroom it turned out ok. It’s mono, but that ticks the ‘Mono Monday’ box in my Flickr albums. Next time I might remember to check my settings BEFORE taking the shot, rather than after. It’s a bit like the snooker player’s maxim, “Chalk the cue before you take the shot.”

Although I feel a lot better, I’m going to have another early night with extra vitamin C and maybe a couple of paracetamol.

I’m just watching the weather forecast as I write this and it looks set fair for us tomorrow. We might get out for a walk somewhere it it keeps dry.

Out walking in the morning – 11 December 2020

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Scamp decided we should walk the canal this morning.

We drove to Auchinstarry hoping to walk along the railway path since it should nearly be finished by now, but when we got to the plantation path the men in the yellow suits were still wandering around behind the wire fences. I assume they are almost finished, but it’s hard to tell. Anyway, we weren’t getting to go that way today, that was for sure.

Instead, we crossed at the plantation and walked up onto the canal footpath at the other end. From there we walked on heading for Twechar. Found today’s PoD on a dull day. It was a Grey Heron standing on the far side of the canal. Far too far away for the Sony to get a decent image, so it was down to the TZ90 to get the job done. At about the same point I got a dull landscape shot of the Campsie Fells, but once it had been processed in ON1 2020 and then Lightroom, it looked a lot better and it got second place. We stopped and turned not long after that because the canal runs straight and boring after that. The bends are the most interesting areas of this stretch.

We watched a Cormorant fishing as we walked on. We were both amazed at the length of time it managed to stay under water and how far it could swim in that time. It kept its distance from us and as soon as we got too close it would fly off. The rest of the walk was uneventful. After the walk we drove to Lidl for one or two things and came home with two bags full. Lots of meat, fish and chicken mainly. Now we need to find a home for it all in the freezer tomorrow.

Dinner was Chicken Stir Fry form Lidl with me cooking. It wasn’t too bad. A bit spicy, but also tasty. Cooked it with noodles for a change from rice.

Watched the first episode of The Queen’s Gambit. It was ok. I liked the chess play part and well remember Ian McKay, a prodigy when I started at CHS playing ’Simos’. A simultaneous set of games, just like on the film. He also won every one. He could also play Simos blindfolded. I wonder what became of him.

Nic the Chick gave us some bad news this morning. Yes, all the shops were open again. Yes, the restaurants would be open from tomorrow. However it’s against the law for anyone to travel outside their local authority area. How nasty is that. She’s changed her name to The Littlest Witch!

Tomorrow looks even more wet than today. It did rain a bit when we were walking the canal, but tomorrow looks like more serious rain. We’ll have to wait and see just how wet it’s going to be as we joyfully tramp round our local authority area. At least until Monday 😉.

Freedom looms large – 8 December 2020

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Nic the Chick has spoken.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Getting out and about – 7 December 2020

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We went for the messages.

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

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

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

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

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

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