Category: photography

Dancin’ – 27 January 2025

Posted on by Zogman

Out fairly early to speak to Mr Dickson.

As usual on a Monday, Jim Dickson’s garage was mobbed. Not with people today, but with cars all waiting for their time slot to get up onto the jack and have their innards examined. I guessed the Blue car wouldn’t be getting worked on today. The place was just far too busy, especially after the stormy Friday we’d just had when folk were told not to travel. That meant there would be a backlog of work to be done today, because Dickson’s doesn’t open at weekends. I did manage to buttonhole Jim D and explain what I wanted looked at. He agreed to do it on Wednesday. That would be a problem for Alex.

I just arrived home when Alex’s WhatsApp arrived asking if I was free this week. I phoned him to tell him it was unlikely I’d be able to go for a photo-walk this week. Every day is booked except Friday and I knew that Alex is always busy with grandkids on Fridays. After I’d explained the situation, we had a blether and compared Éowyn stories.

Scamp and I drove over to Tesco to get a trolley load of veg and fruit and the usual assortment of odds and ends. It also gave us a chance to have a look around the area and see just how lucky we had been not to have any serious problems with the wind.

Scamp had a phone call booked with Jackie for the afternoon, so I put on my boots and went for a walk over St Mo’s. I didn’t expect to see much and I wasn’t disappointed. Nobody was walking around the paths today, nobody but me, that is. I did see a Treecreeper going from tree to tree. They seem to climb around the tree in a helical direction looking for insects in crevices. When they get to the top, they fly down to another tree and start again. I hadn’t seen any of these secretive wee birds for a couple of years and I thought I could maybe get a photo of this one. Unfortunately I slid on my bum down the steep banking and by the time I’d righted myself the bird was long gone. Thankfully there was nobody to see me!

Back home it was almost time to get changed to go dancing with Kirsty’s class. Tonight started with a reprise of last week’s waltz, followed with a short introduction to the Foxtrot. It wasn’t really an intro to it, because we’d all danced it last year. This year’s routine was a bit different and was slightly more difficult too. We both enjoyed it, but sometimes we didn’t agree on the finer points.

We drove home in a dark, gloomy winter’s night. Scamp made Haggis Neeps and Tatties, but although Scamp thought the veggie haggis was ok, if dry, I thought it was like eating cardboard. Now I haven’t eaten cardboard recently, but I imagine it tastes better than the haggis. No taste and no spice.

PoD should have been a treecreeper, but it ended up being some Cladonia growing out of a carpet of sphagnum moss.

Tomorrow we may go out somewhere.

Late start to the day – 26 January 2025

Posted on by Zogman

At least there was no snow and no high winds. In the late morning we went for a walk down to the shops. On the way we found our next door neighbour’s wheelie bin lying across the road and in a hedge. I managed to haul it out and take it back to its rightful place.

It was a cold walk down to the shops. Temperature had started at 0.3ºc when I was making breakfast and it didn’t feel as if it had risen much above 1ºc all day. Paths were icy although the wheel tracks of the little grit sprayer were clear to see, unfortunately there was no sign of any grit being sprayed. Probably the council told them to drive around and folk would think that the paths had been gritted. Fly barstewards.

By the time we returned with the food for lunch and dinner, the light was improving, so I went out with the A6500 and the long Tamron lens, hoping for something interesting. A group of maddies were using the BMX track to race radio controlled cars and I thought I might get some photos there, but by the time I found my way round the fallen trees and the slippery paths, they were heading for home.

I did get a photo of a wee robin, all puffed up against the windchill and that made PoD on Flickr, but more interesting for me were the fallen trees scattered all around one side of St Mo’s park, the other side was barely touched. Something to do with the direction and angle of the wind I think. I took a few photos of the destruction on my iPhone, because the Tamron was not covering a big enough area.

Just past the boardwalk there were three trees all large and fairly mature, ripped out of the ground or broken blocking the path. Somebody before me had worked out a route that took me round the trees and water filled holes on to the path on the far side. I imagine the tree surgeons will have their work cut out clearing the path this coming week.

I walked back to the house after one circuit of the pond and by that time the sun was dipping behind the clouds and the temperature was dropping again.

Lunch was bacon and black pudding with a handful of mini tomatoes, while Scamp had black pudding, egg and those mini tomatoes.

Processing the photos showed just how fierce the winds had been on Friday, and I scattered some across the blog.

Dinner for me was a rump steak from M&S and Scamp had ‘Rats’ which we all know is Ratatouille. We shared some sautéd baby potatoes and I pinched some of Scamp’s Rats.

We spoke to Jamie later in the evening and heard that one of our friends is now in a nursing home receiving palliative care. So sorry to hear that Clive. A lovely man.

Tomorrow I’m going to ask Jim Dickson to give me an estimate to repair the blue car. I’m pretty sure there’s damage to a spring and at least one shock absorber after a meeting with a deep pothole last Thursday.

Winds have gone – 25 January 2025

Posted on by Zogman

We should have been driving to Brookfield this morning, but I didn’t fancy the drive in the conditions and thankfully, Scamp didn’t argue.

The ‘conditions’ were that I had to get from Brookfield to East Kilbride after the dance class on a day when the weather didn’t seem to want to “play nice”. As it happened, although the snow did come as predicted, I’d have had plenty of time to drive over to EK. My fault. My bad. I regret it now, but as Scamp says, it’s over, it’s in the past, leave it.

We drove up to Hairmyres about an hour earlier than we needed to, but it was snowing and EK has a reputation to uphold for snow forgetting to turn off once it’s been turned on, so an hour in our pocket seemed like a good idea. And it was.

It was hard driving into the sun after most of the snow had disappeared. Even wearing sunglasses didn’t really help, but we made it out to the edge of Hamilton and up the hill to the Whirlies roundabout. Brilliant name for a roundabout. It was just after that we saw the red lights ahead of us, hundreds of them. After driving in first gear for a few metres, waiting a few minutes and crawling further along what’s really just a mile or two long straight, half an eye on the car in front and half an eye on the clock we saw the blue and red lights of either an ambulance or a polis car. We never did find out which, because it was long gone before we reached the next roundabout where a car was parked half on the road, half on the 200mm high verge of the entrance to the roundabout. That’s the worst parking I’ve ever seen.

After that long crawl, it was a fairly easy drive to the hospital. We were still a bit early, but that was just luck. I got taken right away and the two nurses who did the pressure check on my eyes were impressed with my results.

Then we had a long wait to see the doctor, about an hour I’d reckon. Last time we were there it was football was on the tv. Today it was horse racing. Almost as boring as football, but not quite. Eventually my name was called and Mr Sharma was not quite as dismissive as last time. He even answered some of my questions after he told me that the drops had worked and the pressure in my eye had reduced by a half. I’d still have to keep using the drops for a while, but for now he didn’t want to see me for three weeks or three months, I can’t quite remember which. All I heard was the the pressure in my eye was down by a half.

We drove home, parked the car and did nothing for the rest of the day. Dinner was an omelette for Scamp and a couple of lamb burgers for me with a baked potato each and shared a tin of beans. Great relaxation food.

PoD is a Rhododendron bud in the back garden.

Tomorrow we may go shopping after I do my drops!

Well, that was a scary one – 24 January 2025

Posted on by Zogman

The wind came early in the morning.

We had been well warned about the coming storm Éowyn and boy, it was a corker! It started around 9am and rapidly strengthened up to midday with 60mph winds and gusts in excess of 90mph. It was an uncomfortable morning. Almost a year ago with Storm Isha, I was writing that I was sure the front windows were going to blow in with that. This year I’m writing that I was 100% certain the front windows were going to blow in, but, again, they survived and so did we. After yesterday’s calm, and in the belief that the weather fairies had got it wrong, we told ourselves it wouldn’t really be as bad as last year, but it was, and some.

With our bins scattered around the street, it looked like a bomb had hit us, and I suppose in a way, it was what Americans call a Weather Bomb. Described by the Weather Centre as: “A low pressure system whose central pressure falls 24 millibars in 24 hours in a process known as explosive cyclogenesis.”

Eventually after a good seven or eight hours of battering things began to be just a little bit calmer out there and we began to hope the end was in sight. However, it wasn’t until the Red warning was reduced to an Amber warning we began to breathe a bit easier. The warning level is now Yellow, the lowest warning level. That warning level will remain tomorrow (Saturday) but will be linked with snow and ice rather than wind. Of course, there is another weather system waiting in the wings for next week, just as there was last year. It’s funny how cyclic these warnings are.

I’m supposed to go to the hospital tomorrow to have my eyes checked again by Mr Sharmer (The Charmer!) and Scamp want to go dance class first. I hope we can manage to fit both visits in. It’s probably a good idea, really. The dance class might take my mind off the eye drops and Mr S!

PoD turned out to be a picture of the bins scattered along the path outside the front of the garden. It’s called The Massacre of the Wheelie Bins.

Hoping for a calmer day tomorrow.

Snowdrops – 19 January 2025

Posted on by Zogman

The first snowdrop flowers to appear in the garden.

It was Scamp’s idea that I should take a photo of the first snowdrops. I think it was just a ploy to get me to go outside for a while, but I didn’t mind. Finding a decent viewpoint to shoot them from, because they were nestled into a corner of a square pot, that was a challenge. I eventually used a piece of matt black neoprene to give a dark background that would hide the plastic pot, but wouldn’t be too detailed and draw the eye from the plants. Eventually I came up with about six photos. Three from one angle and three from another. The final choice was up to Scamp and she chose this one. I think she was right. She sometimes is!

The remainder of the day was a typical Sunday. Lunch for Scamp was one of yesterday’s fresh eggs, fried with some tomatoes on buttered bread. I had the remainder of Friday’s mince with another of those eggs poached in it. A Larky standard!

Later after Scamp had taken in all that Laura Kuenssberg had to say about the release of hostages from Israel and Gaza and the forthcoming deification of Donald Trump, we went for a walk to the shops. Of course I took a camera with me, but I didn’t use it. I knew the first snowdrop would stand for PoD. It wasn’t as cold as it had been in the morning when I’d been on location in the garden photographing flowers, but on the way back home a chill began to descend.

Dinner was Trout Fillets with Hasselback Potatoes (why do I keep calling them Hasselhoff?), Peppers, Tomatoes and Shallots, roasted in the oven. Absolutely lovely. Why do I keep describing food? Because we are both foodies and good food deserves to be praised.

Spoke to Jamie and heard how he had spent his week weeding and working in the garden while Simonne lived the high life in Florida. Your time will come Jamie!

Tomorrow morning I’m expected to donate a full test tube of my precious blood to demonstrate how wonderful it is!

Dance Class – 18 January 2025

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First one this year and first one for about a month too.

Drove to Brookfield to find that the room was almost full. Neither of us had seen such a busy dance class in a long time, if not ever!

Just as we were driving over to Brookfield, my phone buzzed. By the time I got there the message was long gone and anyway it was just a message to say that NHS Hairmyres Hospital had called and it wasn’t possible to reply to this message. What sort of way is that to run a railroad, or a hospital, for that matter. I phoned the hospital and spoke to a human who told the message was about an appointment I had. By the sound of her, I wasn’t the first to have one of these calls. In fact I’d had one last week and knew what was coming.

Back at dance class, we recognised a few faces from years ago, in for a refresher course. Stewart asked us how many of us could remember the October Waltz. Most of us couldn’t remember how to tie our shoe laces, far less how to dance! That didn’t sway Stewart and Jane and we were soon remembering ‘Back Cortés’ and ‘Spin Turns’. It also gave me a chance to do take some video footage on my new phone. The October Waltz took up most of our time and we may still be perfecting next October if we’re spared.

A wee bit of sequence dancing gave our knotted leg muscles a chance to recover after the waltz, and we were in to the Tango. A new version of the X-Line Tango that we started with a few years ago, but which has been altered an improved in the last year or so. Actually, it feels like a completely new dance now. With Scamp and Jane’s help I did put the steps in the correct place and my feet followed suit. In the end, the tango wasn’t as daunting as I’d feared.

A Midnight Jive or two brought proceedings to a suitable finale and we were still able to walk back to the car. One of the dancers had brought eggs, laid by a neighbour’s hens and was giving them away. Scamp collected half a dozen in a box filled with straw and they survived the journey home. I took a risk and went the Kingston Bridge way home, it being quicker, especially if you claim a space in the outside lane quickly enough. I did.

Back home despondency hung over me because of the complications of the iPhone 15 again. However, a severe talking to by Scamp and the promise of a Golden Bowl supper made me forget.

A walk over to Condorrat to collect the supper gave me my first serious shot with the phone of cars on the motorway. I was quite impressed. Not camera quality, but not bad. That was the PoD in the bag.

Remember the phone call that you cannot reply to? We got another one tonight when we were watching last year’s prom on iPlayer. The same message I got last week, so I knew what to expect. Automatic recorded voice which, thankfully wasn’t american, talked me through the procedure an I was booked in.

Scamp was enthralled by Barber’s Adagio and I was similarly fascinated by Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Absolutely fascinating. How can these folk remember all those piano pieces.

In a much better frame of mind tonight. I’m more settled with the phone and with the next appointment at the hospital. It looks like it’s going to be a busy week. Only one free day for a walk with Alex.

Hoping for a bit better day tomorrow, even just a bit of light, even if it’s raining will do.

Wet – 13 January 2025

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We have become so used to dry, cold, icy days that rain is almost a novelty … Almost!

We soon became tired of the constant rain, but couldn’t find the place where you turn it off. Instead we both wandered off into our individual bedrooms. For my part I started gathering old bits of tech, filling a bag with them and dumped the bag in the bin. Scamp had been complaining about the number of jackets of varying age and condition in my room, so the next target was to gather them into two boxes, Keepers and Chuckers. Usually I go back on my promises and keep them all, but surprisingly, this time I kept to my word and put more than half of them in the box to go to the Salvation Army.

I struggled to get WhatsApp into the new phone, and at one point I thought I’d destroyed it, but after a bit of help from Scamp it all became clear and it’s now on computers and phones. I’ve still got a lot of apps to load on, but it looks like being a long drawn out process.

I didn’t go far for today’s photo, just into the garden. It’s a bud from Scamp’s Lady Emma Hamilton rose that never quite got a chance to open and then was frozen solid for a week. Such a pity, but only to be expected in mid winter.

We had intended going to the first night of the dance class, but neither of us were in the mood for it, so Scamp wrote a note of apology to Kirsty and promised we’d do our best to be there next week. Kirsty replied with a couple of videos of the class learning a Waltz in the new, much larger and brighter room in the Link.

Hoping against hope for better weather tomorrow, but I’m told we may need some shopping, but I might manage to get something photographed along the way.

Off to Hairmyres – 12 January 2025

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I’d an appointment with a consultant at Hairmyres hospital.

It was supposed to be at 3pm, but I got a phone call just after 9am to ask if I could come in a little earlier, like 11:15? I readily agreed because I was likely to get drops in my eyes as part of the test and they might blur my vision for an hour or more. Scamp had agreed to drive me home, but I knew she didn’t like driving at night. If I’d been called at 3pm, it was likely that it would be 5pm and dark by the time we were heading home. As it was, we were done and finished by about 12:30 and it was light outside.

I was taken quite quickly and went through the usual tests of scans of both eyes, vision tests with a fixed panel showing letters in decreasing sizes and my real ‘favourite’, the terrible machine with the constantly changing little white spots. The Visual Field Test. A terrifying machine that everyone except children, detest.

We had to wait through a televised football game while some old guy (older than me, that is!) droned on and on arguing with his wife, while we waited to go in to speak to the consultant.

Scamp reckons he wasn’t happy at having the Sunday morning shift, but I just thought he was always Mr Grumpy. He grunted his instructions and didn’t really want to speak to us, but did agree that my right eye was swollen before giving me two bottles one to be dripped twice a day into my eye and one to be dripped once a day. He told me he wanted to see me again after one or two weeks. That was the entire conversation, then we were ushered out and someone else took our place. I dripped both bottles when we got back to the car, just to make Mr Grumpy happy. Then Scamp drove us home with me doing navigator duty. It was good being driven for a change.

Back home and after lunch I went for a quick walk round St Mo’s and found a large plastic Santa sitting beside a waste bin. He made a good PoD.

Dinner was a pizza from M&S and it was so much better than the dodgy one we’d had during the week.

Spoke to Jamie later and heard that Simonne’s plane had been delayed going to Florida by two hours. I told him the story of my eye. I had already written to Hazy, telling her about it, so everyone now knew my tale of woe.

Finally managed to get some apps into the iPhone 15. It will be a long process, I think, but there’s light at the end of the tunnel now.

No plans for tomorrow … for now!

Decision made – 11 January 2025

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I’ve hummed and hawed for weeks now, but today I made my decision and, of course, immediately regretted it.

We drove to the station and just missed the Glasgow train. Worse still, the next one was cancelled, so we sat in the barely heated waiting room and did what it was intended for, we waited. I expected the train to be mobbed. Folk rammed into the vestibule and the remainder standing on each other’s toes along the carriage, but no. There were plenty seats, we had our pick of them. Scotland knows how to run a railroad!

Once we arrived in Glasgow we headed to the Apple shop in Buchanan Street, but not before I took one three photos of the crowds coming and going on that wide retail avenue, just to make sure the 365 didn’t die off completely. One of the three made PoD. In the shop I buttonholed the bloke I’d been talking to last week. I know he probably wouldn’t remember me, but just in case he was on commission, I gave him a description of the phone I wanted and paid for it there and then. An iPhone 15 with 256GB of space on it was mine. A blue one, but a very weak, watered down blue.

We went to Cafe Nero for coffee and a pastry each to celebrate and in the process, missed the next train home. Another half hour late, because the next one was cancelled too! It was so cold that I encouraged Scamp to walk along with me into Buchanan Galleries to at least be warm while we waited for the train. Queen Street station was freezing.

The train arrived, we jumped on and were swiftly taken to Croy. Then and drove home via M&S. Dinner tonight was the remainder of the soup from earlier in the week.

After dinner, I started into charging the new iPhone and that’s where things got a bit tricky. I managed to get the phone charged, and I even went as far as to get it looking like a phone, but the problems started when I tried to install the data from my android phone. The iPhone refused to see it and it wasn’t until later in the evening I discovered that it can only be done on a completely empty phone, in other words, I had to return the iPhone to Factory Settings, losing all the work I’d done. I decided to do the reset and leave it there until tomorrow, In fact I left the blog until tomorrow as you’ve probably realised by now.

Tomorrow is another day and we’re both off to Hairmyres to get my eye examined by a consultant. It seems there is a bit of swelling that needs looked at.

No iPhones will be fiddled with until we get back.

More frost and more ice. – 10 January 2025

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Out in the morning, then a lazy day.

I went out in the morning to book a face to face meeting with a doc at the health centre. It’s nothing serious, I’m just booking a PSA test. I had a biannual test in the years before Covid put an end to those things and I kept forgetting to get back in the loop. Alex nudged me about it yesterday, so now I have to see a doc next week to get my annual or biannual check-up authorised.

It was very sparkly and frosty when I was out and I was really glad to get back to the warmth of the house. We’d considered going out somewhere for lunch, but eventually talked ourselves out of it. Lunch was more of Scamp’s soup. It tasted better today. Better blended now the veg had softened and mixed together.

Inevitably my thoughts turned to what Hazy and I had been discussing yesterday, a new phone. I did have a look at an iPhone 16, but decided that ‘Apple Intelligence’ wasn’t for me. It all sounded a bit pie in the sky and none of the reviewers I read seemed to have a clear idea where the benefits were. There is advice that says “Never buy version 1 of anything. Wait until version 2 comes out. By then most of the bugs will be ironed out.” That Is how I think Apple Intelligence will pan out.

I did take a camera out for a walk today and took a few of my Dangerous Dan photos. It’s the dangerous practise of placing an expensive camera on the ice of a frozen pond, pressing the shutter button and quickly lifting said camera once the shutter goes click. So far I haven’t sunk any cameras, expensive or otherwise, but there’s still time! That didn’t get PoD. A swan looking as if it was skating across the frozen pond got that.

After I’d photographed the swan and the ice crystals on the pond I walked round the back of St Mo’s school and down to the shops. I was hoping to see some deer, but none were coming out to see me today. Got some veg in M&S to make a stir fry for dinner. It was pronounced good enough to eat by Scamp.

We watched a rather half hearted Grantchester episode and I came away not really knowing what had happened in it. Maybe just the manoeuvrings of the first episode of a new series, putting things in their place and maybe changing some things. Or else it might just have been a crap episode!

No plans for tomorrow. Dance teachers are back in the UK, I think, but not feeling well. There’s a lot of that about, I believe.