Category: Perth

Quart into a pint pot – 12 April 2017

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Trying to cram too much into today.  I got up fairly early and drove to Perth to get some coffee (for JIC) and tea (Scamp was off into town to meet up with Annette).  Got the coffee and tea and also got myself a book.   Another book.  My final purchase was some mounting board to frame up a few of my masterpieces.  Oh, yes, and I finally handed in some books and DVDs to a charity shop.  See Hazy, I’m doing it, almost like the book says a little at a time.  “Start with your sock drawer”.

Perth was beautiful in the morning light.  Cold and windy, but clear blue sky.  It matched my new blue jacket, worn for the first time in public.  Like all things, it’s a compromise.  There are some things I like about it and some I’m not so sure about, but the labels have been cut off and it’s been worn now, so it’s a ‘keeper’.
The book I bought was about sketching, especially portraiture which is one of my big stumbling blocks at the moment.  I’m taking Fred’s advice and trying to build the face from the bone and muscle structure, because that makes sense.  Rules, it’s all about rules.  If you’re good, you can ignore them and just draw.  I need those supporting scaffolding lines.

Drove home, but unfortunately left the brilliant blue skies behind and gathered more cloud and showers as I drove south.  Went to B&Q to look for materials and prices for Scamp’s idea of duckboard to put some of the myriad of plant pots on.  Saw some decking that might provide the surface and some treated square timber that will be the support.  Meant to get some beetroot seeds to plant in the raised bed, oh yes, and some peas too.  See what I mean?  That’s what happens when you try to cram too much in.

Lunch was a grabbed roll ’n’ sausage and a cup of tea, before measuring the space in the back garden that the duckboard would have to go on and found that indeed one length of decking and one length of square support would provide one square plant support 800mm x 800mm.  Perfect.

Did a wee bit of painting and then Scamp sent me a text to say that she was on the way home.  Where did the afternoon go?

Went out to salsa tonight but met Colin in the carpark.  Oh no, It looked like Jamie wasn’t taking the class and it would be another of Colin’s “Slow – Quick – Quick” Salsa/Ballroom classes.  It was worse, it was a Cha-Cha class.  Some of the women weren’t too pleased.  I just grabbed my jacket and left.  The man needs to realise that salsa is totally different from cha-cha.  He’s a good teacher and very inventive, he’s simply on the wrong track these days.  We don’t want ballroom.  That’s not what we signed up for and that’s why the company is called Academia de SALSA.

Beautiful sky on the way home, but I didn’t have a camera, so this morning’s shot of a lane in Perth is my PoD.

In Training – 7 March 2017

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It was Scamp’s idea.  We had booked lunch at Cafe Tabou in Perth.  How about, she said, How about getting the train instead of driving there?  It sounded like a good idea, a great idea.  I added to it.  Why don’t we get a taxi to the station?  You can never get parked on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday.  Mondays and Fridays aren’t too bad.  So it was settled.  A day in Perth without driving and without the drudgery of travelling on the bus.

The journey was really good.  Taxi to the station, train to Stirling, quick connection to Perth.  Brilliant.  Visited my favourite second-hand bookshop and then a quick visit to Waterstones.  One of my favourite Scottish authors, James Oswald was there talking to a readers group.  I don’t do readers groups, neither do I read the ‘Questions to the author’ at the back of a good book.  If the author didn’t explain everything in his book, either he wanted it that way or else he wasn’t such a great writer after all.  Either way, questions aren’t going to provide the answers you want.  Went for coffee in Nero before we went for a walk through the park.  Then more coffee – beans this time in The Bean Shop.  Finally, it was lunch time.  Mine was Venison Stovies, then Saddle of Rabbit stuffed with Pork and Chorizo <Posh Word meaning Sausage> served with Roasted Root Vegetables and Sliced Potatoes washed down with a couple of glasses of Rose D’ Anjou.  Simply delicious.

After lunch I returned to Waterstones and used up my Christmas present from Scamp.  I turned out that James Oswald was promoting his new book so I decided to buy it, along with another two ‘real’ books.  Time to get used to books that don’t self illuminate or automatically remember your page or even provide a dictionary, but ‘real books’ are a great idea.  I think they’ll catch on.

The return journey was equally as good as the one this morning with nicely timed connections.  Even the wait for the taxi was minimal.  A great day out.

Today’s flower photos came from the park at Perth and the bottle pic?  It came from Cafe Nero’s window.  Like I said on my Flickr description, I wondered How?  I also wondered Who?  I finally wondered Why?

Tomorrow?  I think we might be getting in training properly as we return to the gym.

Perf – 17 January 2017

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Today we went to Perf, Perth to you.  It was a really dull, dreary day when we left the Cumbernauld Cloud, but true to form, the weather brightened up about halfway to Stirling and from then on it was a lovely day.

Walked from the carpark to the coffee shop to start our visit in the time-honoured fashion and stopped at Clarks shoe shop to see if there were any bargains.  There were and a new pair of shoes and trainers were soon bagged and paid for.  I think the trainers may replace the ones I got last week.  Both are Goretex which I think is the bees knees as far as walking in Scotland is concerned, in fact all three new pieces of footwear are Goretex.  Coffee scoffed we wandered for a while around Perf and decided on an early lunch.  We went to a new (to us) cafe and I had a lamb burger (which I am suffering for now) topped with feta cheese.  Not sure it’s a great combination.  I get the link: Feta – cheese made from sheep’s milk and Lamb, but it just didn’t taste that good.  Maybe it’s just me.  Scamp had a chicken burger which seemed to go down well.  Coffee was on a par with Callander Coffee!

After lunch we split up Scamp went shopping for a bag and I went looking for books.  Didn’t find any, but I did pick up a lovely Dylan album in  the Bootleg series.  From the Philharmonic Hall in New York 1964.  An all acoustic set.  Brilliant.  Scamp didn’t find a bag – the search continues.   I also got today’s trilogy.  The girl in the mono shots was busking next to the the iconic street architecture in the main street of Perf.  Actually she was quite good and I really should have dropped some money in her guitar bag.  I liked the graphical nature of the the square window overseen by the security camera.

When we met up again, I went and got some coffee and tea and also dropped in at a fabric shop and bought some blue cotton with white spots to make another bow tie, a keeper this time I hope.  By the time we got on to the main street, the light was failing and it was time to drive home.  I felt quite sorry for the old church at the end of the main street.  I’ve photographed it a few times.  It used to provide great shots of pigeons sitting in the broken stained glass windows.  The last time we were in Perf there was scaffolding on it and I hoped it would be renovated, but today there was a security fence round it and the scaffolding was gone.  Soon, I think the church will be too.  Such a pity.

I finally managed to rip the Monty Python DVD tonight.  I used an old program that I’ve used in the past and also one that Hazy suggested, ‘Make MKV’.  It wouldn’t work on the Mac, I think it didn’t like the DVD player being connected by USB.  Maybe the information stream wasn’t quick enough.  However, when I used the PC laptop, MakeMKV got to work right away and after half an hour or so later I had the rip.  Unfortunately it was a 4Gb rip.  Compressing it into an MP4 file looks like it’s going to take a couple of hours, but that’s a job for tomorrow.

No plans for tomorrow yet, apart from converting from MKV to MP4.

Perf – 8 December 2016

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8 Dec

Today we went to Perth.  We drove there this time.  I needed coffee, it seems like I always need coffee.  I’ve got the blending bug and am happy to mix and match my beans, sometimes coming up something that tastes better than the constituent parts … sometimes.

We’d booked a table at Cafe Tabou for 12.30 but because we were a bit late getting out this morning, we were running a bit behind schedule and didn’t have time for a coffee on arrival, but the other side of the coin was that we didn’t have as long to wait for lunch!  Speaking of lunch, it was:

Scamp

Starter:  Mussels with smoked haddock and leek in a mustard sauce

Main:  Baked cod steak with leek and smoked salmon risotto with hazelnut butter

Me

Starter:  Seasonal salad leaves with beef cheek, roast beetroot, giant cous cous, croutons and garlic dressing

Main:  Pan fried venison escalope served with braised red cabbage, potato gratin and bramble jus

Both were delicious.

The rest of the day was spent wandering round the shops.  Obviously for my core readers, the actual shops and shopping must remain redacted.

Driving home the sunset was building all the way.  I stopped off in my favourite place and got a load of shots, the best of which form today’s mosaic.

We had intended to go in to Glasgow tonight to dance at Barca, but after a long day in Perth, we decided not to bother.  Maybe next week.

Tomorrow we are expecting a day of rain, so I may go to wander the streets of Glasgow to source even more prezzies or I may just stay in and paint.

Just for a change – 28 November 2016

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28-nov

Just for a change today, I got the bus to Perth.  Now this may be a spoiler alert for Hazy, but I’m sure you expected I’d have to take the trip to Perth, didn’t you!

These CityLink buses are really comfortable.  Did you know they have heaters that work!  Isn’t that a simply wonderful innovation?  Typically one X3 bus in 100 has working heaters, and that’s the one you get every day in the summer and the heating is on full blast and the windows won’t open.  In the winter, it’s the one with the sign that says “SORRY NOT IN SERVICE” or more often in Scotland “A’HM NO WORKIN’”.  So, a comfortable journey north to the fair city of Perf.  It’s a bit like Embra which is also known by some of its inhabitants as Edinburgh.  Embra is its more usual and useable name.  Perf is much better than Perth IMO and MO is the only one that counts in this blog.  By the way, I once got an irate comment from an Edinburger on Flickr to the effect that: “It’s actually Edinburgh, not Embra, I know, I live there.”
My reply was: “That’s a shame, but I suppose somebody has to live in Embra, and it is Embra, hen.  It’s Embra, it’s always been Embra and it always will be Embra.  I know, because I’ve been there … once.  But it’s alright, I’ve had my jags.”  She didn’t reply to that – too many big words in it, I think.
Perf’s a nice place, I like it.  It’s pretty and has nice buildings, but the folk are not so stuck up as Embra folk.  It’s got a good coffee shop, an independent camera shop and a great second-hand bookshop too.

Anyway, purchases purchased I got the equally comfortable bus back down the road to less than scenic Cumbersheugh where they are painting the lovely butter coloured bricks of the town centre with a coat of ‘nearly black’.  Cooncil must have got a job lot of the paint going cheap.  I think it probably was originally black masonry paint, but they didn’t have enough to finish the job, so they got some equally cheap out-of-date emulsion for B&Q and just mixed it in to make the masonry paint go further.  That would explain the slightly purple tinge to the finished product.  If it looks boggin’ paint it black, that’ll fix it and make it look stylish into the bargain.  Aye Right.

Kizomba was a bit of a shambles tonight.  Class was a bit smaller with a lot of new faces.  Mainly black faces, so maybe friends of one of the teachers.  Also faces that were looking bemused most of the time because it appears this is the first time they had met this dance.  Methinks it might have been Rentamob, there to pad out the numbers.  ‘Left’ and ‘right’ seemed to be new concepts for some.  One girl had to be dragged away from her phone and on to the dance floor to help balance the numbers.  She was irate, because she didn’t know how to do the dance and didn’t want to learn.  Hmm, not impressed.

It also looked like our salsa teacher wasn’t present and no announcement was made about who would be taking his class. This gave us a bit of concern and made us wonder if it would be one of the, how should I put this, less able and teachers of AdS.  We needn’t have worried, Will took it and introduced us to a trio of twisty, turny moves that were a lot of fun.  The next class was not so lucky, but we were out the door by the time the music started.

Maybe going to do a painting tomorrow.  If I can remember how!

From the sublime to the ridiculous – 1 October 2016

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ma013193-flickr-275

Yesterday we had a lovely day.  Today we set out to go to Perth for tea and coffee.  Yes, I know it’s pretentious to go halfway across the country to get something as simple and everyday as tea or coffee – heavens, you can get them in Tesco.  Yes, you can, but I like the taste of loose tea and fresh ground coffee and am quite happy to be called pretentious, after all it’s my money that buys the coffee beans and the leaf tea.  My choice, my money, my caffeine fix.

When we got to Cumbersheugh bus station, I suggested that we take the bus to Dundee instead.  That turned out to be my undoing.  The trip was good on a comfortable bus, but Dundee should have a big sign saying “Under Construction”.  The entire waterfront area is a building site and a sight too.  I really hope the V&A gallery, museum, atrocity looks good when it’s finished, because it really is an eyesore that this city does not deserve.  The result was that we visited Braithwaites for the aforementioned tea and coffee and got the next bus south.  We’d intended going back to Perth, then Scamp suggested Stirling as there were a few more buses we could get from there to Castle Greyskull.  Mistake 2.  A mother and daughter got on at Perth and talked incessantly for the hour it took to get to Stirling.  When I say talked, I really mean shouted at each other.  If I hear one more time that they had a tape of Pete’s Dragon with Ewoks Adventure immediately afterwards, I’ll go insane.  That tape must have been talked about for about half the journey.  If people must hold a conversation, then let them keep it between themselves.

Unfortunately for the driver, they were going all the way to Glasgow.  Luckily for us we got off at Stirling.  We went for a coffee then parted company to spend some money.  Scamp wanted a new pair of shoes and I wanted a new pair of trainers.  We both achieved our stated goals and headed for the bus again the fourth of the day.  Scamp suggested we get the X39.  Mistake 3.  When I drive from Stirling to home, it usually takes less than 20 min.  This journey on a rattletrap rustbucket  bus took over an hour and a quarter.  We visited every possible village and town between Stirling and Cumbersheugh.

You see the the worst things about public transport are the public and the transport.  If you get less moronic public and real transport that was built this century then the journey will be much more pleasant and more normal folk will use it.

I’m driving tomorrow.

Weather was beautiful today and I’ll remember the Lego men made from hay bales, even if I couldn’t stop to photograph them.

Inktober 2016 - 1Almost forgot this is day one of Inktober 2016.  Must get more organised and spend a bit more time on the sketches.  Luckily the first official topic was “Fast” and this was a fast sketch.  Inktober is a great way to force yourself to put pen to paper in a graphical way.  Click on the image to view the full monsterpiece!  I wouldn’t have remembered if it wasn’t for reading the ‘A Year Ago Today’ link.  You have read it, haven’t you?  It’s at the bottom of the right hand column and is quite the little eye opener for me.

Perf (in the rain) – 10 August 2016

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10 aug bWe intended going to Perf on the bus, but after a slight misunderstanding about bus times, we discovered that we’d just missed the connecting bus, so I drove us instead.

We had just arrived in Perf when the rain came on.  It had been threatening all the way up the road, but now the threat became a reality.  I’d only really come to Perf to get my coffee and tea supplies.  After I’d got those necessities, Perf (in the rain) was our oyster.  I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Perf (in the rain), but it’s not exactly the entertainment centre of the universe.  Once you’ve been round the shops and the St John’s centre, there’s not much more to do.  That was it today.  If we’d gone on the bus, we’d probably have had to wait an hour (in the rain) at the Perf bus station which makes the rest of Perf look like Las Vegas.  Now we could drive home whenever we were ready.  Maybe it was a good idea to drive after all.

The rain didn’t really stop all the way home and so it continued after we got back to Cumbersheugh.  Today’s shots were just grab shots.  One taken in the front garden braced against the window sill and the other taken from the back window in the living room.  Sometimes it’s the grab shots that are the best ones.

Looks like more rain again tomorrow, even for Perf.

Perf – 30 June 2016

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30 June bWe were off to Perf today, mainly to get some coffee and tea, but also to take our colds out for a run in the country and possibly to share them with the posh Perf people (intentional alliteration).  It turned out a pleasant day.  Not totally dry.  It rained for a while during our journey and also just for a short time while we were in the Fair City.

We used to go to Perf (ok, it’s real name is Perth, but I prefer Perf and it’s my blog, so live with it).  We used to go to Perf to eat in Cafe Tabou which was a really innovative and slightly expensive French restaurant.  Not its become a quite expensive and slightly innovative restaurant that still produces French food, but cooked by a very good Polish chef.  The big failure for us is that the menu, which used to change every month, now stays the same and the intention seems to be to change it only four times a year.  Admittedly they still have a Plat de Jour and a Poisson de Jour, but the choice isn’t there anymore, so that is why we didn’t dine there today.

I did get my coffee and tea in The Bean Shop.  I’ve been going to this shop for years and the quality and taste of their coffee and tea never changes.  I always buy beans now as JIC gave me a grinder last year and it produces the same grind time after time.

On the way home I took a side road to grab a shot of the corn field and the big daisies probably Marguerites, but always called Big Daisies by my mum.  After I took the shots, I wished I’d brought a tripod to get some movement in the flowers and corn stalks.  Maybe next time.

Perf

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comboToday, unaccompanied, I rode with the grey hairs on the bus to Perf. It took longer than I would have taken in the car, but I didn’t mind, because for the second day in a row, I wasn’t driving. I had freedom to do what I wanted, get sloshed if I felt like it (I didn’t, feel like it, or get sloshed) and spend my time however I pleased just as long as I got back to the bus station for 2.10pm for the bus back. It was a pleasant enough journey both ways except for one two old dears on the way back who complained about the cold draft from the air conditioning. It was a bit cool, but today was an exceptionally hot day, so I didn’t mind, and if I don’t complain about cold, it wasn’t cold – ask Scamp!

I went for coffee and tea at my favourite coffee bean shop. The tea is better in my favourite tea shop in Embra, but maybe that’s a middle class problem 😉 Since I was on my Jack Jones, I could wander unhindered into shops that demand a bit of time. For instance, there’s a decent Oxfam bookshop in Perf where all sort of bargains are to be had if you have the time to winkle them out. I winkled for a while and came away with a bargain.

After loading up on coffee and tea (tea, just in case I don’t get a chance to go to Embra any time soon), I went for a walk in the park. Lots of fancy dresses flouncing about a real fashion parade of girls AND boys. Apparently it was Perf races today. The great and the good were certainly making a day of it, and what a day it was, twenty something degrees centigrade. Isn’t it great not to be working! One of the gainfully unemployed.

Back to Scottish weather tomorrow with temperatures in the ‘teens, the low ‘teens. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

Madness in Perth – 25 March 2016

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combo bToday we went to Perth.  It as a plan.  Today, Good Friday, was forecast to be the best day of the holiday weekend.  I needed coffee and Perth is where my preferred coffee bean shop is.  It was also announced last night on the news that Scamp’s favourite ladies wear shop, McEwan’s of Perth had gone into administration and was opening today for the start of the closing down sale.  Soooo, we were off to Perth today.

The road was busy on the way north and every time the traffic started to jam up, I said “Oh, oh!  This is where the queue for McEwan’s starts.”  Actually, the road wasn’t all that busy, considering it was the start of the Easter holidays and it was a sunny day.   But every car seemed to have bikes on the back or a Thule style rack on the roof.  It looked like everyone seemed to want to get out of Glasgow and Edinburgh and head north to the great wide open.  Maybe that was the plan, but it looked like the ‘great wide open’ was going to be closed by the time they all got there.  When we arrived at Perth, there were roadworks on the road into the city.  Like a few others, I bit the bullet and headed back to the swimming pool and parked there, despite the signs saying that these parking spaces were for ‘users of the facilities only.’  I wasn’t sure what the ‘facilites’ were, but I was using the facilities of Perth itself, so I felt secure in my decision to park there.

When we wandered round Perth after getting the essential coffee beans, we found the real queue for McEwan’s.  Apparently it was estimated that over 400 people were waiting to get in through the doors and because the company had paid off more than half its staff with immediate effect last night, only 20 customers at a time were being allowed in.  There were going to be a lot of long faces in Perth tonight.

After our return from Perth, I managed an hour in St Mo’s in a biting north wind.  Got a few photos of some deer and I fed the ducks.  So, that was Good Friday.  Not so good for the hundred odd McEwan’s staff without jobs after this week.