Category: Oofery

A walk in the woods again – 16 May 2021

Posted on by Zogman

Out before I’d even had my morning coffee.

The weather looked good and it wasn’t forecast to last, so we got up and went for a walk round Broadwood. Scamp suggested the walk because on good weekends like this one, you have to be out really early to get a parking place that allows a walk along the canal, her first preference. Even at 10.30am we would have been too late. So it was the second choice which was the extended walk round Broadwood Loch.

Unfortunately we didn’t see any deer down for a morning drink at the wee pond, but we did enjoy a walk in the warm sunshine through the pines. The path was a bit muddy in places, but we were both well shod and the water and mud weren’t too deep. No cormorants on the island because the swans seem to have taken control of their island again and Mrs Swan was sitting on her nest. As is our wont, we walked clockwise while everyone else in the world seemed to want to walk counter-clockwise. That just shows how little they know.

Back home for lunch and after watching the belligerent Andrew Marr terrorising Matt Hancock we chose different paths for the afternoon. I was cooking stew for my dinner then going for a walk to the shops to get potatoes and veg for tonight’s dinner. Scamp was itching to get the front grass cut. We both achieved our stated goals. The grass was cut and the veg was bought. With the hard work done, we settled in the garden with a beer each. Scamp was reading and I was listening to a book being read to me, The Reluctant Assassin by Eoin Colfer. I’m getting the hang of this Audible malarkey. It’s really quite good having a book read to you.

A glass of wine with dinner which was Scallops, mixed veg and potatoes for Scamp. Replace the scallops with Stew and you have my dinner. Scallops were deemed “nice, but not worth the money” and my take on the Lidl stew was “get it from a butcher next time”.

Dancing tonight was a bit of a shambles for us. Both of us made mistakes but both of us also managed to dance a whole routine without too many errors. Not our finest hour, but not our worst either.

Spoke to JIC and heard that he’s actually going to have to go in to work next week. That will be a change for him I’m sure. I’m not all that sure that working from home is the way to go. It’s much better if you can separate the two. That way the work is less likely to be carried into your home time. Believe me, I know, I’ve done it.

PoD is one of Scamp’s Allium flowers just about to burst out of its protective sheath. Sketch today asked for a crumpled piece of paper and that’s what I drew.

Tomorrow Scamp and her witch friends are meeting up for the first time since August 2020 at Annette’s. I’m the driver who’s bringing them back in the afternoon. That’s the plan anyway. Things may change, of course.

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!

Another lovely spring day – 18 March 2021

Posted on by Zogman

A bit of scattered cloud in the morning, but that soon burned off.

It was a lazy start to the day for me, but Scamp had done a load of washing ready for hanging it out to dry. I was just messing around with the iMac. It’s getting to the time when I have to upgrade the OS. There are fewer and fewer updates for my apps that will work on Sierra which I’ve been running since I got this computer. I think I’m ready now in my head for a jump up to Mojave. It’s a big jump because even the format of the hard drive will change. I think tomorrow may be the day.

Scamp was going out with Veronica for a walk around Broadwood are, but no all the way round the loch. I was staying in. I was intending starting a painting, but instead I began finding out what was causing two of Scamp’s light balls to stop working. The light balls are roughly spherical shapes made from a spiral of steel with a line of tiny white LEDs wound round them. They are connected to a solar cell which should power them during the day and turn them on at night, except they are not turning on. The first one was easy. The NiCad battery in it was dead. I thought we had a spare, but couldn’t find one. I fitted a standard Duracell and it worked fine, so the ‘tronics were ok. We just need to get a couple of cheap NiCad batteries somewhere. The second ball was different. It had a similar type of battery, but in a smaller size. I did have a spare for that. The problem with this light was water ingress. Scamp reckons it’s due to all that snow in January. I replaced the battery and the light winked of then wouldn’t light again. Getting a bit of external light on the problem and with a magnifier I discovered the problem. A small chip had come loose from the circuit board. I guessed I could solder it back on until I found that the metal conduction tracks were coming away from the fibre substrate. In technical terms it was gubbed. No point in wasting any time on it. Put it in the bin.

By then I’d found two problems and solved none. I went out for a walk to Condorrat to get chicken for dinner which would be Neil’s Italian Chicken. So called because it’s got the colours of the Italian flag, Green, White and Red. Green is Pesto. White is Mozzarella. Red is Marinara sauce. It’s Neil’s because he was the first one to cook it for us. Got the chicken, some mince and some beef olives at the butchers. Put them in the freezer and went out to get photos.

Bumped into Scamp on the way to St Mo’s, then carried on to see what photo opportunities were in the park. There were lots of ‘tribes’ wandering round the pond. Some of the male persuasion and some of the female. All dressed for the warm weather and all with their ghetto blasters (yes, we still have them up here in the north) turned up to the max. They were out celebrating the start of the Easter holidays, although:

  1. The holidays don’t actually start for another week and a half.
  2. They haven’t been to school for months now.

Still, any excuse for a party and a battle with another ‘tribe’.

PoD turned out to be a pretty wee pink flower. I must try to find out what it is. It looked as if it was just unwrapping itself in the sunshine and the out of focus ’bokeh’ in the background was a bonus.

Back home Scamp and I put our heads together and decided what changes need to made to the back garden. Just now it’s a bit of a mess. We are in agreement that we need to have a clear out of old and failing plants and that creates space for new ones. We start tomorrow with the first stages of that.

So, if tomorrow is as good as today, a day in the garden is called for.

More dancing – 24 January 2021

Posted on by Zogman

A lesson this time, not a dance.

Yet another cold morning. It was -4ºc when Scamp was making the breakfast.

Of course we weren’t getting up at that time. Never on a Sunday! However, once we’d had breakfast showered and were ready to face the day I did take a walk to examine the frost on the car and managed to get a couple of photos of the little ice crystals. One was posted on Flickr, but it didn’t achieve PoD.

It wasn’t until well after midday that we steeled ourselves and went for a walk around St Mo’s pond. I took a few more frosty photos there and it was one of them that produced the tiny frozen trees that made PoD. It was a close run thing with my other favourite photo, a leaf covered with hoar frost.

It was just above freezing when we arrived back at the house. Dinner tonight was Bacon and Borlotti Beans. Now becoming a firm favourite. Then we had to move all the furniture around for tonight’s dance class. First off was a reprise of last week’s Mambo Marina followed by our ongoing stumbles through Rumba and finished off with the Midnight Jive. We weren’t too bad at that. It was me stumbling round the rumba that was the low point. Even with Stewart and Jane’s encouragement, we are finding it hard. Not insurmountable, just difficult. It doesn’t help that we are dancing on a carpet and they are demonstrating on a polished wooden floor. However, the hour passed fairly quickly and with a bit of practise over the next few days we’ll get there, I’m sure. If not, we’ll have invented an new dance, The Stumble Rumba. It does have a certain ring to it!

Spoke to JIC at night and were surprised to hear that they had had a full day of snow and we had none. Maybe I shouldn’t say that. You never know what we’ll wake up to tomorrow!

Tomorrow morning I’m supposed to be doing a rubbish uplift for Shona. Hope the skips have been emptied over the weekend to make room for it all.

 

 

A hot day after a fiery night – 12 August 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just sitting in the sun – 25 July 2020

Posted on by Zogman

Listening to music.

After yesterday’s frantic hither and thither driving and wheeler dealing, today was quite placid by comparison. No plans, just some stuff to take to the skip, quite a lot of stuff, actually. Loads of cardboard boxes, some garden rubbish and the old grass hoover.

By the time I’d had my morning coffee and made inroads into today’s Sudoku it was time to get started. I loaded the car up and drove off to the skips. Noticed the line of cars when I got there, but didn’t realise this was the queue for the dump. Drove to the end of the queue and parked with the engine off. Played some music from Spotify to have something to do while I sat in the sun and waited. Actually it didn’t take long for the queue to start moving. The sun was out, it was pleasantly warm sitting in the car listening to some music I’d put into a playlist and flicking past the ones that didn’t inspire me. Then a bloke from NLC asked me for ID. It felt a bit like Alice’s Restaurant, but most of you are too young to understand the implications there. Look it up and if you get the chance, listen to Alice’s Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie. I didn’t really have proof of address with me, then I hit on my bus pass. That confirmed that I lived in North Lanarkshire Council area. Would that do? The bloke said yes that was fine. Finally he asked, almost as an aside where did I live. I told him and he smiled and waved me on. I’m guessing that as we are right next to three other council areas, they don’t want ‘outsiders’ dumping their rubbish in Cumbersheugh. As if anyone would notice. Anyway, half an hour had passed fairly quickly. We had nowhere else to go today anyway and I’d added three more songs to my latest playlist. Dumped the stuff and was on my way home.

Later in the afternoon we walked over to Condorrat to get a steak for dinner for tomorrow’s dinner for me, some eggs, black pudding, sausages and also some chicken for tonight’s dinner and walked back.

Back home I packed my camera and a long lens just in case I saw something interesting at the pond and walked round St Mo’s then back down behind the school were there are more interesting insects. Grabbed two shots of a little moth. The head was sharp in one and the wings in another. ON1 2020 made light work of joining the two parts into a convincing whole. That became PoD. See if you can see the join.

Painted a trio of sweet pea flowers in the afternoon too. Posted on Instagram and FB. That was our nice lazy Saturday. Weather was fairly pleasant. Not too hot, but dry after last night and early morning torrential showers.

Tomorrow we have no real plans, I’m sure we’ll find something to do.

Sub zero – 10 May 2020

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Temperatures predicted to be below zero tonight and it didn’t feel that much warmer today.

We both did a walk around the garden trying to work out what had gone wrong with the acer which is looking very sorry for itself. Scamp thinks its roots have been too wet and that could be part of the problem, but I think it’s been sitting in the sun too long too. It seems to like the shade. Perhaps it’s a combination of the two. It’s now back in the place it’s been for the last year and has had a change of compost, with more drainage so we’ll keep a watching brief on it for the next wee while. Otherwise, things are progressing well. The cold east wind today was making some of the alliums bob about a bit and we may need to give them a bit more support soon. It was one of allium heads that got PoD.

Under Scamp’s careful tutelage I made a steak pie in the afternoon. It turned out a lot better than I thought it would. Different butcher, slightly different method, but the result was the same, just as good as last time. Even better, there’s enough left over for tomorrow’s dinner.

We needed some potatoes for tonight’s dinner, so I volunteered to go out into the cold and get some. Of course I came back with a lot more than potatoes. That’s the trouble with having to queue for your shopping, you want to make sure you get everything you went for and tend to buy things you didn’t have on your list.

Spoke to JIC tonight and heard how his garden is progressing. It sounds great and I’m sure he’s not exaggerating. His garden is huge compared to ours and I know he spends a lot of time keeping it up to scratch. I don’t think I could expend that amount of energy on a garden, but I’m sure Scamp could.

Sketch for today was a pet or an animal. Damselflies are animals according to some learned people. I took them at their word and painted a blue damselfly. I’m not sure if they, or my artwork is to everyone’s taste, but that’s not the point. It’s the act of painting that it’s all about. Doing something.

I’ve closed down the wee greenhouse tonight, just incase the weather fairies have it right with their -1º in the middle of the night. I’ve got some things to do tomorrow, including cleaning up this computer. It’s running very slowly and needs a good clean out. I think the time for a new OS is getting closer too! Oh yes, and we’re hopefully getting a Tesco order delivered tomorrow as well. A busy day beckons.

Short and sweet – 9 April 2020

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Not a lot to say about today, so this will be short and sweet.

After the excitement of yesterday, today was a bit of a let down as far as the weather was concerned. I presume a lot of work went in to getting the weather just right for my birthday, so today was recompense for that. It started off dull and grey and eventually deteriorated into drizzly rain tonight.

In the afternoon I did manage to drag myself out to St Mo’s to get a few photos, but the PoD was taken earlier in the garden with a little bit of light, not actually very bright light, but light none the less and I’ll take that. The subject is Scamp’s Pieris, variety Forest Flame. It really lives up to its name with bright red leaves in the spring and the promise of its tiny little white bell flowers to come in late April and early May. It’s a real uplifting bush, especially on a dull day.

Yesterday both the usual park benches were in use and today nobody wanted to sit in the damp and decidedly cold east wind. I can’t blame them really. Lots of geese seem to have taken up squatter’s rights in the pond and the two swans are making a show of telling them who’s pond it is. Like two big white polis, they patrol the perimeter of the pond shouting “Move along there. Nothing to see.” In swan-speak, of course.

So that was it for today. Another two prezzies today, one from Neil-D’s mum and dad and another from Gems, well probably Margie really! Lovely lady.

Tomorrow we must a-foraging for milk, bread and possibly eggs. Just down to the local shops, because it’s unlikely there will be any slots for Tesco and we can’t understand the workings of the ASDA Click ’n’ Collect layout.

There you are. I told you it would be short and sweet, and it was.

Another year over – 31 December 2019

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And a new one about to begin.

Scamp was a bit better this morning which was a relief. She’s so rarely ill and it takes a lot to floor her, but she said she felt better. Not really well enough to get up and make breakfast, but I’ve got a tally of the number of days she’s been shirking.

It looked cold outside and the temperature was still below zero, so we weren’t in any sort of rush to go out. I did eventually go and bring the car down from where I’d parked it last night and we replaced the de-humidifier which now weighed about 400g more than when we’d put it in. That’s 400ml of water its absorbed over about six months. Actually it’s more than that. We’ve already removed about 200ml by heating it up on a radiator. I think the bag contains salt and clay. The salt being hygroscopic draws in the moisture and the clay prevents it from going back out again. Still, it works well in the wee Nissan. Mine has AC and that pumps out dry air summer and winter, so that dries the windscreen, but what is it about Japanese cars that makes them so susceptible to condensation?

We still needed some stuff for dinner tonight, so we walked down to the shops. Glad we did, because the road was just a carpark. Cars, buses and lorries all getting in each other’s way. It was traffic chaos. We found out why when we went in to M&S Food. People everywhere, probably all the ones who were causing all the road chaos. All madly grabbing things, any things, because haven’t you heard? The shops are all shut tomorrow!! Now these shops weren’t even there a few months ago and nobody died of starvation. Still we have to stockpile just in case they decide to shut the shops for two days. We got enough to make dinner. We didn’t need any more.

Walked back home and had lunch then went out to St Mo’s to take the last photos of 2019, the last photos of this 365 and the last photos of the decade. It was a lovely day. Good light again and a wee bit of frost too, just to add some sparkle. PoD was a picture of a curved grass stem with a water bead caught in a leaf joint.

Came home to find that Scamp was feeling a lot better and was making cakes for tonight. I set to and made the stew to fill tomorrow’s steak pie. A couple of weeks ago I made the prototype, this is the real deal. After that I got two of the apps I use a lot on the Mac installed, but one, the main one, Lightroom is installed, but not registered yet. I’m hoping the new year will bring me a brainwave and I’ll get it done. If not, there are always other ways round things, if you know what I mean.

That’s about it. I think we’re ready to face 2020 now the place has been hoovered, the toilet has been cleaned, the bathroom has too. I think we’re ready.

All The Best to all my readers. I hope 2020 is good to you whoever and wherever you are.

Tomorrow? Probably a late start after a late night tonight. Drink will be taken, I’m sure (it already has been!).

A bit more relaxed day – 30 November 2019

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Done my bit for the ‘up early and out’ brigade.

Today was cold, really cold -3ºc when we woke. Sun was shining, but it wasn’t making much of a difference to the frozen cars in the street. Definitely a day for taking things a bit slower.

Finally in the afternoon we decided we needed the basics. Dinner for tonight, some veg and some bread. Dressed for the winter weather which was now a temperate one point something above zero and headed down to the shops. Got the bread, the veg and a chicken for tonight’s dinner and walked back.

After the walk, it didn’t seem all that cold, so rather than taking off all my layers, I simply changed my trainers for boots, grabbed a camera and went to St Mo’s to test out their new footpaths. Actually it was just a compressed hardcore base, not an actual asphalt footpath. Maybe that’s still to come, or maybe that’s as much as the finances will stretch to. After all, NLC councillors annual Christmas junket must be on the horizon now and of course that will take precedence. Anyway, the lighting was good and I got a few moody shots. Enough to give Lightroom and Photo Raw something to get their teeth into.

Got some more detailed shots of the Hair Ice I saw yesterday. Took a quick photo of it on my phone purely to get a GPS fix on it, but the phone placed it about a mile and a half away, in the middle of a housing estate. Weird! But then again, I don’t suppose Mr Android and Mrs Google had ever been to Cumbersheugh, so how would they know.

That was about it for the day. Chicken was lovely. The bread is uneaten as yet and the veg will hopefully go to making soup tomorrow. PoD was a shot of the lovely frosted reed stems poking from a frozen pond, looking like early Christmas trees.

Tomorrow we’re hoping to dance at the Sunday Social in The Record Factory, but it does depend on the weather.