Category: Lost and Found

Bussing it around Glasgow – 16 July 2022

Posted on by Zogman

We got the bus in to Glasgow and went all cultural.

Like I said, we got the bus in to Glasgow and then another bus out to the West End. We had a walk round the paintings in Kelvingrove Art Galleries. Found some of the Glasgow Boys paintings. Neither of us had realised that there were around twenty Glasgow Boys. Hornel, Peploe and Fergusson were the one’s that I’d heard of, but few others of the twenty were familiar names. Scamp wasn’t all that interested in hearing the organ recital today, so instead we went for lunch in the restaurant at Kelvingrove which was Beer Battered Haddock and Chips with a glass of wine each since neither of us was driving. It was really good, and even better, it was in the conservatory.

After lunch, we walked through the park and up to Kelvinbridge where a toy car became PoD. Over the bridge we walked on to the Botanic Gardens which were really busy. On the way we bumped into Dr Barbara who initially diagnosed Scamp’s malignant mole. Long time since we’ve seen her. I’m not sure she knew exactly who we were, but she knew that she knew us. Ships in the night.

We usually go round the Kibble palace at the Botanic Gardens, but today we walked through the bigger glass houses instead. Each area inside was set out for a different region, from temperate to steamy jungle with desert heat in between. Lots to photograph.

From there we walked down Gt Western Road and caught a bus that took us to the bus station. We waited there in vain for a fast bus to take us to Condorrat. It never came. Instead we got the X3 slow bus that takes 50 minutes to go fifteen or so miles. Worse than that, instead of using my bus pass, I plonked my credit card on the pad and had to pay a fiver or thereabouts for the privilege. I won’t do that again!

Back home, the day that had started cloudy and overcast but had promised a bit of blue skies and sunshine when we were walking round the West End, had returned to the dull clouds we had started out with. A bit of a disappointing end to a good day.

Tonight we watched The Duke. An entertaining film with Jim Broadbent as a socialist trying to get free TV licenses for OAPs. Based on a true story, it was so much better than the rest of the rubbish the BBC were offering. It cost us about a fiver, probably the same as my bus ticket from Glasgow, and probably lasted almost as long as that journey!

No plans for tomorrow. It depends on the weather, as usual.

 

Out for a curry – 8 July 2022

Posted on by Zogman

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!

 

Showers – 28 June 2022

Posted on by Zogman

It rained today, not all day, but occasional heavy showers all day.

We spent the morning looking for a pair of glasses. My glasses. My good glasses, not the cheapo readers I use most of the time, the ones I’m wearing now. No, they were the much more expensive ones I got from the opticians and the ones that, I now realise, don’t give me eye strain. We searched high and low for them, literally. We searched up on the top of cupboards and down under the settee in the living room. We looked in the kitchen, in the toilet, in the bathroom and worst of all in ‘my’ room where strange things are buried under more strange things. Eventually we gave up and had a cup of coffee each and didn’t speak about where they could be or where we hadn’t looked yet. For about half an hour we tried to put the glasses out of our heads instead of on our heads. Finally I frisked the bed for the second, or was that the third time? There, in the middle of the bed I felt a bump that shouldn’t be there. That bump was my glasses. They had been playing ‘hide and seek’ with me, and had chosen a smart hiding place, where I’d left them after I was finished reading in bed this morning. It only took us about three hours to find them. The good thing about the search was that it vastly increased my step count for the day. So, if I found my glasses, why am I wearing readers? Because the ‘lost’ pair had been bad and have been shut in the bedroom all day as a punishment. Furthermore, they have been warned that if they try that ‘hide and seek’ game again, they will be banished to ‘my’ room with all the terrors it contains!

After a lovely lunch of fried potatoes and the leftover chicken goujons from Sunday, Scamp declared that rather than go for a walk round St Mo’s, she’d rather do the ironing. I chose St Mo’s and took the Sony with its big, heavy macro lens, hoping for some wet weather shots taken in the sun during one of the dry spells. The dry spells occurred, but the sun was absent today. Instead I found a Ringlet butterfly, some more spider nests and best of all, a Plume Moth. So small and insignificant you’d pass it by, but if you look closely at this insect you will see its wings are far to narrow to carry it aloft. The reason is that when it lands, it doesn’t fold its wings along its body as most moths do, it rolls them up neatly and holds them out at its side, making a sort of cross shape.

Two of the great things about the Sony A7iii are Silent Shooting and Continuous Shooting. I won’t make Jamie yawn by explaining what they mean, although you can probably guess, I’ll just say that it means you can take lots of pictures in a very short time if you keep the shutter pressed. I managed to take about 200 shots of the Plume Moth in about two minutes. That meant I had 200 shots to look through when I got home.

After I’d done the first cull and got rid of about 150 of them, I started making tonight’s dinner which was Carrot and Lentil Curry. An old favourite and although it wasn’t as good as Scamp’s version, it filled a wee space.

PoD went to the Plume Moth.

Almost felt sorry for Serena Williams getting beat in the first round at Wimbledon. That must be a tough fall from grace.

No plans for tomorrow yet. Weather looks similar to today with perhaps less rain.

 

 

The middle way – 6 March 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Another beautiful morning that turned into a beautiful day.

It seemed a shame to waste such a beautiful day sitting in the house wondering where to go, or sitting in the car driving to somewhere that would be full of other folk out doing the same thing. The ‘doing the same thing’ wasn’t the problem, it was the sitting in the car that was just another way of wasting a good day. We took the middle way. We drove over to Kilsyth, to Colzium estate and walked round the various paths in this once private estate. So many different areas in what is really quite a small park. Enough steep climbs to make your legs ache and then the gentle descents to the sound of rushing water. Then there were the woods to walk through with their banks of snowdrops just beginning to fade, but with the promise of daffodils to take their place. Just a Sunday morning in the fresh air.

Back home I was planning to wash the car, but that did not come to pass. Instead, after lunch, I did a bit of gentle pruning of some of the rose bushes. It was a first prune with the chance of a more aggressive one after the risk of a late frost is gone. I also cut back the pieris which had been battered in the winds of a couple of weeks ago and become quite ‘leggy’. It seemed a shame to cut it back when it was just coming in to flower, but hopefully some of that energy will go into making new growth later in the year. I went looking for a basin to help with washing yesterday’s mud off my boots and in the process found half a dozen seed potatoes we’d bought weeks ago and forgotten about. They are now chitting on the window ledge of my room. After that, Scamp asked me to make a loaf and as I’d a kit for making a Fougasse which is a fancy French flatbread containing caramelised red onions. Unfortunately, our red onion was a bit smelly, so I substituted a shallot instead and it worked! The kit I had made two, but I only baked one. There’s one waiting in the fridge for tomorrow. With the fougasse dough proving, I got started on the stew for my dinner while Scamp hung out the washing, rejoicing in the fact that the sun had come round fare enough to shine on the sheets on the Whirly! Then she was off with the secateurs to dead head the Spirea. I never did find enough time to wash the car. Maybe tomorrow.

Spoke to Jamie later and found out that it had been more of a restful week than it has of late. That’s good to know. I’m glad they are getting settled into the new house.

Scamp is off to meet the rest of The Witches for lunch tomorrow. I might send out an invitation to the extended Auld Guys to see if anyone is free for coffee. Other than that, nothing much planned, except maybe a bit of splashing on of paint on a canvas, perhaps.  By the way, the Fougasse was delicious

Lost and Found – 23 January 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Another dull day with a little bit of sunshine.

Not a lot to report today. Scamp didn’t go out at all today, I think we were still recovering from the excesses of Friday. Also the exercise that was the dance class on Saturday morning after a late night the day before must have contributed to our ‘rather relaxed’ Sunday.

I did push myself to get out and take some photos in the afternoon, but the light wasn’t all that good. I really should have gone out in the morning. Maybe tomorrow. But back to today. I did a walk around St Mo’s and got a few shots, one of which became PoD. Earlier in the week I lost the lens hood from my little 18mm Samyang lens. Just like the skip on a cap stops the sun from shining in your eyes, a lens hood keeps the sun from shining on to the camera lens and causing light coloured blobs on the photo. They don’t look good. The lens hood I’d lost is called a ‘petal’ hood, because it looks like the petals on a flower and it’s quite small, and it’s lost!

For three days now I’ve walked the route I took round the back of St Mo’s and couldn’t find it. I was pretty sure I knew where I’d lost it, but today I tried a different tack. Instead of following the route I took, today I walked it in the other direction and surprise, surprise I found it, intact and nowhere near the spot I was sure I dropped it. It probable needs a good wash now, but apart from a little bit of dirt it’s fine. Isn’t it a great feeling when you find something you thought you’d lost.

Dinner for Scamp was two veggie sausages with potatoes and beans and for me was a burger made by my own fair hands with potatoes and beans. We both had sticky toffee pudding for dessert. Now I’ve got heartburn caused with far too much fatty meaty stuff and then an overload of sugar. It was almost worth it though.

Spoke to Jamie later and heard about a new short term trouble shooting position in the Big Apple and a 4am taxi ride to the airport tomorrow morning. Such a jet setter life style he leads!

PoD was a shot of three little seed heads from a Silver Birch. Sitting on top of the one on the right is a little spider. I only spotted it after it was loaded into the computer and viewed full size. Spiders do get everywhere.

Scamp is off to a Witches lunch in Dennyloanhead tomorrow, not as glamorous as NY, but no need for a 4am rise either!