Category: photography

Just tidying up – 3 September 2025

Posted on by Zogman

Or at least, my version of tidying up, which just means doing it on the computer, not in real life.

After we’d worked out the twisted games of Wordle, Spelling Bee and all the other assorted puzzles we play in the morning, Scamp was off to meet the rest of the witches and I was going to Tesco to get the messages. I’d a little list already made up under Scamp’s careful instructions. It was one of those days that looked as if it was just about to rain, but never did. At least, it didn’t do it until later. I’d some computer stuff to get my head round first.

<Technospeak>
Last week I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best when I removed one of my the old iMacs from the safety of the Adobe corral. Adobe allows you to have three Macs open at the same time. However, you can only use two of those three at the same time. The other one can not use Adobe software until you choose to remove one of the other two first. Confused? Yes, so was I, but them’s the rules apparently. I wanted to check to see if it was the old computer I’d removed and it was. That meant that the new iMac and my MacBook were now able to work together. I’ve more or less stopped using the old iMac now. It is getting slower than frozen treacle and crashes if you look at it the wrong way.
</Technospeak>

By the time I’d struggled through all that, Scamp was back from her meeting with the witches and just as I was heading into the garden to take some photos, the rain started. I managed to get four shots before I gave up. Out of those four shots, I kept two. The PoD was a couple of white Cosmos flowers. Not great, but done and posted.

I made dinner tonight which was Cod & Prawns with Fennel & White Wine. It’s an old recipe we’ve used a fair amount, but not for a long time. It still works, though.

I got an email from one of the Flickr managers asking if I was going to run Inktober again this year. I’d already decided that I wasn’t going to do it this year. I’d too many thing to do this October, so had to bow out. I may participate for some of the time, but not for the whole month. Pity.

Tomorrow I’m intending to meet Alex. We may go for a walk around Paisley.

A spot of lunch and a walk in the park – 2 September 2025

Posted on by Zogman

Travelling by bus to Dunfermline today.

We were on the ball for a change today. Caught the bus to the town centre and then picked up another bus that took us to Dunfermline. There were heavy clouds when we left Cumbersheugh, but the further north and east we went, the lighter the sky became.

We walked from the bus station down towards Pittencrieff Park. On the way we were hoping to find some decent trainers for sale, but there wasn’t much to choose from. Scamp thought there were a few styles that might be useful, but not many. I may go back to Go Outdoors this week and have a look there.

The park was a different place to the High Street. Well kept grass and great views over the Forth to Edinburgh. We walked round the gardens and Scamp got a few ideas for plants for next year, all being well. Echinops was the main thing she was interested in. Big blue globe thistles that seem to attract the bees. I can see why she would like a few of them in the garden.

For me the heated greenhouse was the draw. I love walking round the pond, watching the carp and goldfish. The flowers too are just that bit more glamorous and bright than most of our garden flowers. My favourite, and PoD was the Gloriosa Flame Lily. Such a statement plant with its bright reds and yellows.

Lunch was in Wetherspoons. Fish ’n’ Chips for Scamp and Chicken Jalfrezi for me. Scamp had a glass of Barossa Ink and I had a pint of Innis & Gunn for me. A lunch that didn’t cost the earth.

We left Wetherspoons with plenty of time to cross the road and catch the bus back to Cumbersheugh, except, that bus just never came. Half hour wait for the next one and, of course, two of them came at the same time. The traffic was a bit heavy as we neared Cumbersheugh, but we weren’t driving, so we didn’t care. The X3 arrive about five minutes later and it took us home.

We watched the Great British Bake-off, or at least Scamp did. I was too busy posting the PoD on Flickr, and anyway, I couldn’t be bothered with all the giggles from the ‘bakers’. We also watched the Great British Sewing Bee just to finish off the day. It was much better.

That was a great day. Great idea Scamp, giving the wee Blue car a rest for a day!

Tomorrow, Scamp is intending to meet the witches for lunch. I may be sweating over a hot keyboard because I’ve still got a lot to do yet.

Looking for a bin – 1 September 2025

Posted on by Zogman

A bread bin, for the kitchen. More difficult to find than you’d imagine!

We drove to Falkirk in the morning because there is a large retail park. We knew we’d be able to pick up a decent bread bin there. Or would we? The first stopping point was The Range. They didn’t have a great selection of bread bins, but they did have a load of ghosts and ghouls and that horrible candy floss looking hanging stuff that every shop seems to drag out when it’s getting near Halloween. Yes, loads of that, but only two or three bread bins.

We tried another retailer further in to the retail park. They had a few wonky looking bins that just didn’t look right. I think they had been dropped a few times before they were put on the shelf and £40 for a bread bin is a bit extortionate. So, reluctantly we drove home and on the way, dropped in to Home Bargains, but there were hardly any there too. Maybe folk just don’t want bread bins these days.

Back home, Scamp started measuring the actual space we had and realised that one of the smaller bins would suit us much better than the large, overpriced ones. Of course Amazon had loads, but sometimes it’s hard to imagine the actual size of things on the Amazon pages, but I can see us biting the bullet and getting a bread bin from Mr Bezos.

I’d intended to go out for a walk, but instead, I found myself sitting at the dining table with a dozen or so cables connecting the new iMac to the laptop and the two of them connected to an SSD and an external Hard Drive. Just to extract two month’s worth of photos from the SD cards on the cameras. Thankfully the experiment worked!

We drove up to The Link to go to Kirsty’s dance class, only to find that we hadn’t brought our dance shoe bag with us. So I drove back to the house while Scamp sent Kirsty a message to say that we WERE coming, but would be a bit late. Eventually we had about a 45 minute class that was very useful for getting the right steps at the right time!

Back home we watched what has become our trilogy on a Monday. Mastermind, Only Connect and University Challenge. We’re brainboxes, us!!!!

Pod was a view of The New Town Hall with some ominous clouds above it . I liked it, Scamp didn’t. You can’t please all of the people, all of the time!

Tomorrow we may go out somewhere that doesn’t have bread bins.

The Constant Gardener – 31 August 2025

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That’s not me, it’s Scamp!

I’m the one who mixes up the compost and sometimes gets the proportions wrong. I’m the one who makes a mess all over the clean, freshly cut grass. I’m the one who forgets where he put the trowel, spade, fork etc. Mainly, I’m the labourer. I carry the pots from the front garden to the back and sometimes from the back to the front. I don’t mind. Scamp’s the clever one. She remembers the names of all the flowers, but I know which of the beasties will nip you and which won’t! Between us we get the garden growing.

Today we were splitting up the Primula Candelabra into two separate plants, repotting the colour changing ’Switch Ophelia’ we also repotted a few of the newly purchased plants from last week. We dug up the potatoes from the first of the big ‘tattie bags’ and were disappointed by the size and quantity of the potatoes themselves. We’d hoped they would be bigger, but the soil they were growing in was a bit dry and dusty because of the lack of decent rain during July and August. Hopefully now that we’ve had almost a week’s worth of rain, the next crop will be better, providing they haven’t become sodden and rotted.

I went out for a walk in the afternoon over to St Mo’s and across the football pitches, hoping for some decent shots of butterflies, but there were very few on the wing today. There were some Peacocks, but none of the more exotic butterflies I’d seen a few days ago. A little drone fly on a Scabious flower got PoD. On the way back I managed to find a couple of grams of brambles that may go into a dessert some day.

Dinner was Chicken Milanese with potatoes and Scamp’s special veg mixture. Very nice it was too. Pudding was Rhubarb Crumble made with a mix of Jamie’s rhubarb and some of our own.

We spoke to Jamie later and heard about final preparations for their visit north to go to a wedding next week. Sounds like an awfully long way to go for a couple of nights. However, they are intending to meet Andrew. Oh to be a fly on that wall!

Tomorrow Scamp and I may go looking for a bread bin that will fit into a corner of our kitchen.

Dancin’ – 30 August 2025

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Back to dancing on a Saturday morning. At last!

We drove through fairly heavy traffic for a Saturday morning and found a very busy dance floor in Brookfield. Lots of faces I’d seen at Evening Socials as well as the occasional Tea Dance.

Today’s recipe was Dancing Tango to Shivers, just to warm us up, then the despicable House of Bamboo which I can now stagger round the floor at, then it was into Real Dancin’. That means Waltz. I admit I have difficulty seeing the actual Waltz in these compositions of Jane’s. This one floored me until I started listening to Scamp’s descriptions, then it began to filter through my head enough for me to direct my feet to, if not the sunny side of the street, at least the right place on the dance floor. With that said, I don’t think I’ll be adding that ‘waltz’ to my dance repertoire any time soon.

I think it was a wee bit of fluff next before we headed into the second serious dance of the morning, the Cha-Cha. I did almost manage to catch up with moves, most of which I could remember from previous Cha-Cha sessions. It was a middle range dance. By which I mean it wasn’t as embarrassing as the House of Bamboo, nor as difficult as the Waltz. It wasn’t all that fast, certainly not as fast as I’ve seen it danced. After all, it was a Latin dance and most of them are fast. A couple of short sequence dances and we were done for the day. No dance next week because the teachers are off on a week’s holiday.

Drove home through three lanes of crawling traffic cursing my change of direction until we saw the length of the queue for the Kingston Bridge, then I didn’t feel so foolish, because I’d chosen the M74/M73 as my chosen route.

Stopped at M&S for lunch supplies and then parked the car and watched the rain falling. The later it was, the heavier the rain. I gave up on the idea of taking an outside photo, then decided that if I wrapped the A6500 in cling wrap, I could get a few photos of the apple tree in the garden without getting it wet. Me? Yes, I was wet, but as someone said, we have waterproof skin!

Watched the Dutch qualification for tomorrow’s GP. Nice to see some crazy driving again.

PoD was one of the photos from the cling wrapped A6500, with some raindrops on the fruit.

May go out somewhere tomorrow if the weather plays nice which is unlikely according to the weather fairies.

Out early again – 29 August 2025

Posted on by Zogman

I’m getting fed up with having to get up and out, and it looks like the dance teachers are home again and we need to go to class tomorrow morning too. It’s just too much. We older folk need out sleep too.

It was a dry morning as most mornings are just now, but by afternoon the rain clouds came rolling in and the day deteriorated.

What I did do today was drive Scamp to her FitSteps class, then I drove to the health centre to pick up some bits and pieces the doctor had left for me. After that I drove back home, filled the test bottle with smelly pee and took it back to the health centre for the nurses to analyse, the second time I’ve had to do it, recently. Maybe they just like the smell of pee!

Back home, and after I’d washed my hands a few times, just to be sure, I made a cup of coffee and settled down to solve the New York Times puzzle selection. We’ve both paid our dues an paid for the puzzles for a year. It’s not something I thought I’d be doing, paying for the right to solve a puzzle, but it has become quite popular with Scamp and me this year.

Scamp made Chick Pea and Spinach Curry from the Mowgli book and it was almost as good as mine. A few things were different, but the main part of it was really good, just not as good as mine (Hopefully Scamp won’t read that)

Today’s PoD was a bunch of pale pink flowers called ‘Daboecia’ or Irish Heath that are sitting on the back step. Another of my wife’s acquisitions, although I admit I had a hand in the choosing of them. They reminded me of Lily of the Valley. Fourteen photos taken and only one saved. The rest went in the bin, or will do soon, I think.

Another problem with the new iMac was put to bed tonight when I successfully sent half a dozen photos to Alex for him to crit. We don’t tear each other’s photos to pieces in a crit, It’s just a gentle nudge to say “I’m not really jealous … Honest)

Tomorrow, as I’ve said we are intending to go to dance class in the morning. Maybe we will stop off at IKEA on the way home. We need a new bread bin and Ikea is probably one of the cheapest places. Scamp also wants to buy a bed sheet. In a clever bit of marketing, Ikea make nice wide beds, but not to standard sizes which means you have to buy an Ikea sheet to fit your Ikea bed. Clever!

Another mixed up day – 28 August 2025

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But a day that got results too.

I was out just after 8am today to take the Blue car for a service at a garage in the other end of town. Delivered it and was told I’d get a call when it was ready to collect. Got a taxi back to the house and settled down to wait. I hadn’t dealt with this garage before, but knew one of the owners and was sure he was genuine, Besides, I knew where he lived!

My phone rang at 10.30am to say the car was fine and the service was complete, I could pick it up any time. Scamp had some business to do in the town, so we took a taxi to the garage, paid for the service, picked up the keys and drove back to the town centre. An hour and a bit later we came out with smiles on our faces, a brochure in our hands and the promise that we would go on holiday this year, DV.

Next stop was Tesco for some food and veg to fill up our depleted stock in the fridge and freezer and a bottle or two of beer and wine. When we came out, the sparkling of the roads was evidence of another rain shower we’d just missed.

Back home, we discussed our options and agreed we’d made the correct choice. While Scamp checked the details, I took a camera over to Condorrat where I bought us two small fish suppers. On the way there I got a few photos of bees on the Scabious flowers. I always feel that scabious gets a raw deal. It sound so like Scabby, and these are pretty blue balls on a stem and not at all scabby! One of the photos got PoD.

Tonight we watched another episode of Masterchef that was less than riveting and that is where we are now.

The new computer is working out well. Most things are behaving as they should and the speed of processing photos in Lightroom is quite astounding. My external hard drive is almost full, so I may need a new one soon to become another storage device for this year’s photos.

Tomorrow we may go out to lunch, if the weather sorts itself out. I’ve a few odds and ends to do at the health centre first, but I can probably get them done in the morning, once Scamp is off to FitSteps.

  • 28 August 2025

More rain – 27 August 2025

Posted on by Zogman

We still need more of the wet stuff, just for the plants and the poor frazzled grass.

The rain didn’t start until after midday. Scamp was already out and about meeting Shona for coffee and a blether in Costa. I stayed home and managed to write a wee message to Ray, who’s going through a hard patch just now. Then I caught up with Fred who was just getting home from a shopping trip to Costco. We had a fairly long chat about anything and everything. As usual we finished off by telling each other that we really should meet up for coffee some time soon, but rarely have the time to do it.

By the time I was signing off with Fred, Scamp was returning from her meeting with Shona and I’m glad to say that Scamp says she’s looking much better now that a load has been lifted from her back. She’s another one I should really give some time to.

After that Hazy was on the phone wanting to know what was happening Up North. We’d lots of things to tell her as she had lots of things to tell us. Hope Neil gets some relaxing time before school starts again next week, Hazy.

By the time we’d made all our phone calls and conversations, it was nearly dinner time. I’m struggling with trying to get my new computer speak nice with my old laptop. Especially where Adobe is concerned. I’ve already found that I’ve got a rogue Lightroom app floating around the old laptop. I may have managed to shoot it down today, but Adobe is such a twisted app, I’m not sure I’ve got rid of everything. If all else fails, I’ll get a bit of software that should allow me to store last month’s and this month’s photos without spending another fortune.

What I think I have done is get Adobe to get its ducks in a row and allow the Gmails to get working again. It wasn’t too difficult in the end. Just a case of taking my time (for once) and reading the instructions (which I rarely do)

PoD was a long-lens shot of Seagulls on the roof of a house behind us. I don’t know why we call them Seagulls, because very few of these scavengers have even seen the sea.

Tomorrow I’m intending taking the car to a garage for a service. I think it will need it.

The Rain Came – 26 August 2025

Posted on by Zogman

At last, the long awaited rain came during the early hours of this morning.

I almost believe the flowers and plants in the garden were cheering when those first splashes hit. We’ve had the odd shower or two over the summer months, but today it was a deluge for a while. After that the clouds disappeared and the sun shone, then everything dulled down and a second downpour started. After that there were more showers, but not as heavy nor as long as those first two. The weather fairies are now predicting further showers, some heavy and some light in the coming weeks. Hope you down south folk get your share of the rain.

We drove over to Tesco after the first shower because Scamp wanted more compost to fill those green tubs we bought yesterday. The good thing about buying the compost from Tesco as opposed to garden centres is that Tesco stores their compost bags under the glass shelter at the front of the shop, at least that’s what happens in our Tesco shops. That means the compost bags are much lighter than those in the garden centres where the bags are stacked outside in the rain. I often think that in rainy, wintry weather, some of the goodness is washed out of the bags stacked outside.

I was due a telephone appointment with a doctor from the health centre this afternoon, some time after 2pm, I’d been told. My phone rang just after 6pm. The sister at my recent annual checkup had noted that my iron levels were a bit low and passed the message over to one of the doctors. I’d been given a course of Folic Acid and Ferrous Fumarate. Both seem to bolster the amount of red blood cells in the body. One pill in the morning and another in the evening. That’s in addition to the other pills I’m taking.
I’ve been taking both for about a month now and despite everything being normal in my results, the doc wants me to do the same test again in a month, just to make sure everything is normal. It was my turn to cook tonight and I added some spinach to the pasta to give us both some extra iron. If it’s good enough for Popeye, it’s good enough for me!

PoD was a photo of our latest addition to our garden furniture. ‘Crazy Chicken’ seems happy enough in the back garden, even in the rain!

Tomorrow Scamp is intending meeting Shona for a blether, but I’ve got to get more pills and I’ve even more tests to do.

Looking for plant pots – 25 August 2025

Posted on by Zogman

Out looking for plant pots and came home with a chicken.

We slept last night with just a duvet cover on top of us. Too warm for the actual duvet itself, so the cover provided all the warmth we needed. The weather is due to break in the next few days according to the weather fairies, hopefully that will mean that the weather will return to real Scottish weather. Cold and wet.

Scamp was looking for half a dozen plant pots for the back garden, so we drove to Torwood Garden Centre to source some. A lot of the plant pots we have have suffered in the recent weather. The pots being plastic are easily damaged by bright light. It makes them brittle and it won’t be the first time I’ve picked up a pot and had the bottom fall out of it and be left with just the rim in my hands. Like everything, plastic doesn’t last for ever.

We found exactly the pots Scamp wanted almost right away, so I volunteered to get a trolley because I just knew by the look in her eye that more things would be going into that trolley before the day was through, and I was right. A raspberry bush, pansies, wallflowers some black kale plants, a pot of heather and a chicken. All went into the trolley along with lots of other things.

Once we got them all into places in the boot and the back seat of the car, we went for cup of coffee for me and peppermint tea for Scamp. Then we shared a tipsy cake, tipsy in name only I think because this was a No Alcohol tipsy cake. I’m sure tipsy cakes used to have a distinct whiff of alcohol about them, or maybe I was dreaming.

Drove home via a narrow road just outside Haggs. I wanted to get some photos of the Forth & Clyde canal from one of the locks. I got the shot, but the real interest was a red tractor in a field next to the canal being loaded up with hay bales, presumably for silage. The bloke who was driving the tractor, was also carting the bales onto a low loader with a forklift attachment to the tractor. The light was constantly changing and I duly took around twenty shots from different angles and in different lights. That gave me some photos to turn into a PoD. I was really quite taken with them.

Back home and with the pots, flowers and of course the chicken safely unloaded, it was nearly time for Kirsty’s dance class.

Today was part 4, the final part of the rumba routine. This was the most complicated part so far, but by the end of the hour I was beginning to see how it hung together with parts 1 – 3.

Tomorrow I have a phone consultation with a doctor from the health centre to see how I’m getting on with my two lots of iron tablets.

The chicken has been named Crazy Chicken and is 100% ceramic! It lives in the back garden under some bushes.