Category: photography

Cold, not Corona – 10 March 2020

Posted on by Zogman

Woke with a stuffed up nose and clogged ears. Not the symptoms of Covid 19, just a common cold.  Still felt miserable.

I’d said I’d go with Scamp to see how Isobel was faring with her new knee, but decided it would be better to self-isolate to use the new term for ‘stay at home’. Scamp left early to have coffee with Shona before she went to see the invalid. I took some Haliborange tablets and searched for a ball and socket head I was sure I had somewhere for the new tripod, without success (it lets you turn the camera to almost any angle). When I got fed up with searching I sat and watched the rain showers thumping down then made a pot of soup for dinner tonight, so at least all my time wasn’t wasted.

Finally took some sketch paper upstairs to draw and while telling myself that it wouldn’t be there, I searched through some boxes in the chest of drawers and immediately proved myself wrong, because there was the ball and socket head! Things are never where you expect to find them. Forgot about the drawing and started trying out the new fitment on the tripod and it worked perfectly. It was about that time I started to feel better. I also started to watch the sky in the hopes that there would be some blue among the clouds. There was none, but the clouds were clearing above the Campsie and that’s usually a good sign. A couple of hours later I made the decision to go out. The sun was shining and the clouds had cleared. So had my head.

Got the tripod set up perfectly in an awkward wee gully at the outfall of water from the pond at St Mo’s. There was a fair volume of water coursing down and it looked a likely place for a moody slow shutter shot of moving water. I shot a few at different exposure times, but wasn’t really happy with any of them. I made a mental note to take a pair of secateurs with me next time because the barbs on the bramble stems were tearing into my ankles. Spoke to Susan G who was out walking her dogs and wondering what the hell I was doing prancing around a mucky burn.

Walked round the upper path and found a much better run of water. Just a little drainage ditch with water pouring round a boulder. Another tricky position for a ‘normal’ tripod, but easy peasy for the Benbo. It’s what that tripod is made for. By the time I’d shot my fill of oily looking water, I realised it had started raining. Walked back along the boardwalk and the heavens opened. That’s when I got today’s PoD. It’s a three shot hand-held HDR image, but you probably guessed that, so I won’t bore you with the details. Second place went to the oily water shot, taken with the camera on the new tripod. Brilliant piece of British engineering.

Soup, bread and a baked potato for dinner as we listened to the news that Italy was now basically cut off from the rest of the world for at least two weeks. So strange to see the Colosseum in Rome with about four people standing beside it. Similarly St Mark’s Square in Venice virtually deserted. Strange days.

No plans for tomorrow. Hoping I’ve not passed the cold on to anyone else. If I get the all clear from Scamp, we’ll maybe go dancing at the British Legion, our new venue for Wednesday night classes.

A new toy – 9 March 2020

Posted on by Zogman

I got the email this morning that my new tripod would be delivered today to the WEX shop in Glasgow. So I knew what the day held for me at least.

First, Scamp was off to Tesco to see if there was any food left on the shelves. Thankfully there was still some cold meat and there were bags of rolls, so lunch was sorted. While she was off on her food hunt I did the hoovering and cleaning that’s become part of Mondays for us.  A parcel arrived with the final bag of coffee that Hazy & Neil-D gave me for Christmas.  I haven’t started it yet, because I’m just finishing off the last bag which was very nice.  It took me a while to get used to the taste, because it was much lighter and fruitier than my usual ones.  I will give you an honest opinion when I’ve tried it. The email from WEX to say that the tripod was ready for collection appeared just after the cleaning business was completed.

After lunch I had a chat with Margie and she gave me an honest critique of my sketches and paintings from EDiF. It’s refreshing to have someone who paints and draws and who also has no axe to grind, tell you what you already knew. Sometimes I delude myself into thinking I’m better than I know I am. I’m not an artist. I never will be. I’ve seen real artists working and know that my work sometimes looks decent, but nothing more than that. Some of it is just plain crap and I cringe when I look back through old sketchbooks and see what I thought then was brilliant. Some of it is good though. I’ll take good, any day.

When the full complement of Gems arrived, I made my excuses and left for a drive to Glasgow. As I left the house the rain was just starting, but when I reached the motorway it was on full blast and on for the rest of the day. Picked up a far lighter tripod than I’d anticipated. This was going to be portable after all. Drove home through more rain and hauled the tripod out of its box. No instructions, but hey, it’s a tripod, how difficult could it be. Well, according to the majority of the reviews I’d read it could be very difficult. It’s been likened to “wrestling with an octopus” and “controlling a drunken giraffe”. Actually I thought it was simplicity itself to work with. Bear in mind, this was in a bedroom in a house, not in the teeth of a gale on a blasted moor, so maybe it will be difficult when I actually have to deal with it ‘in the field’. That wasn’t going to be today. Still raining.

After dinner we drove up to the dance class. I was thinking when I was driving home from Glasgow “Thank goodness I don’t have to drive in to Glasgow and back out again tonight for salsa.” It was a bit of a wrench leaving the AdS, but there were parts of it that were a total pain. Like driving into Glasgow in the rain in a traffic jam. Ten minutes up the road and we were parked and in the dance hall. Brilliant. Tonight was almost entirely devoted to a new routine to bolt on to our existing Waltz routine. It was a bit more demanding, but that’s to be expected, we are moving on after all. Scamp and I took lots of videos of the different ‘figures’ and how they are put together. Neither of us was perfect tonight, but it will get better, I’m sure.

PoD was the BENt BOlt that gives the Benbo it’s name. Apparently based on the pivot of a WW1 gun carriage!

Hopefully tomorrow I will get a chance to get it dirty in the wild world!!

Final bit of news. A dental practice in Cumbersheugh village is temporarily closed as a precaution after as positive case had been identified there. I didn’t know there were any pangolins in Scotland!

Lunch at The Cotton House – 7 March 2020

Posted on by Zogman

That’s what I was looking forward to.

A lazy morning watching the rain and, for me, testing out the sketch book I got yesterday. The rain just kept coming and the sketch book didn’t hold a wash very well, but did respond nicely to pencil, so that was ok.

Drove through the rain and darkening skies to The Cotton House. The “The” appears to be important, no just Cotton House. The definite article seems to be important here, possibly because it is the only definite article in the English language. There, you probably didn’t know that and now you do. You’ve learned something today.

Scamp had Thai Spring Rolls followed by Chicken Chow Mein. For me it was Chicken Noodle Soup followed by Chicken Green Pepper in Black Bean Sauce with Noodles. Both were deemed excellent, but that’s what you expect at TCH. Inside it’s gone through some changes, but the food is just as good as it always was. That’s why we booked a table today, because you just have to on a Saturday. Scamp’s coffee and my Chinese tea afterwards were disappointing, but I suppose some corners have to be cut to keep the price of lunch to an acceptable level. I’ll forgive them.

After that we drove home via Tesco for essentials like milk and stuff for tomorrow’s dinner. Oh yes, and toilet rolls. Because we need them. Nothing to do with the dreaded Coronavirus or Covid 19, whichever you prefer. It seems that shelves in supermarkets across the world are becoming depleted and the most sought after articles are toilet rolls. That’s a load of shite if you ask me. Come on, you expected that, didn’t you?

Scamp was selling her old keyboard and asking a ridiculously small amount of money, but it was her keyboard to sell (don’t panic people, it’s not the Clavinova) and the woman arrived this afternoon to buy it. I think it was much bigger and more complicated than she realised. She seemed overwhelmed by it, but money crossed hands and there’s more space now in the front bedroom.

I’d thought of going out for a walk in St Mo’s today when we got back from lunch, but the light was failing even at about 4pm, so I gave up on that. We’ve had almost a week of dry shiny weather and we’ve forgotten just how dull it can get by 4 o’clock. Today reminded us. With that in mind I took a bit of broccoli, a bag of yellowing parsley, a few mushrooms and a bag of coffee beans upstairs and arranged them, tastefully on an A3 piece of cartridge paper and photographed them. Then, in ON1, I added a bit of grassy field to the foreground. Imported the resulting image into Luminar 4 and added one of my skies, but missed a bit of it and that bit rankled with me, so … I exported the image to an old version of Photoshop, cut out that bit and then pasted a new bit in behind the hole then exported the image back into Lightroom. Cropped it, adjusted the levels and that’s what you see up at the top. Photography took about 15 minutes. Post-processing took a couple of hours. That’s what digital photography is all about. A PoD was created.

On Netflix we watched three episodes of a documentary about the 2019 F1 GPs from the viewpoint of the smaller teams, not the big three. Really interesting. Also watched another video about an actor chef being tutored by a real chef. How to make an omelette, followed by how to cook a steak. A massive steak, but it was set in America where they don’t do things by half.

Tomorrow we aren’t going dancing, but we may be practising. More rain forecast.

Dancing in Paisley – 5 March 2020

Posted on by Zogman

Not exactly the place that springs to mind when you think of dancing.

Scamp was out early this morning to check that Isobel was all right after her first night back home after she got here new knee. She said that the patient hadn’t realised just how painful the recuperation would be, but that she was not going to be beaten by something as simple as a replacement knee.

After lunch we changed into dancing clothes, because although these tea dances are informal, there seems to be a standard of dress that it’s as well not to drop below. Today we were in Paisley, far side of Paisley really. I put my trust in the sat nav, because I don’t know that area of the central belt at all. It seemed to know where it was going and I didn’t, so I was happy to let it direct me. I usually drive by the map, but Paisley is an old town where the road intersections are not as clear cut as they are in places like Glasgow. With only one missed turning, we arrived at the community centre where our tea dance was waiting for us.

We got invited to sit with another couple and soon the room was beginning to fill up. Many of the faces were becoming known to us, plus, of course we already knew Stewart and Jane who were running the dance. We started off with a waltz and managed to get round the floor without too many slip ups. We danced quite a few sequence dances, something I wouldn’t have admitted to a year ago. Sat and talked to a couple we were on nodding acquaintance with from salsa. Overall, it was a good day, plus Jane’s homemade dumpling made the tea much tastier. The only fly in the ointment was the traffic on the way home. Basically it was a crawl from the community centre all the way to the motorway. A few miles of clear road then the usual crawl through Glasgow city centre.

Scamp wanted a new plant, a Skimmia she’d seen at the garden centre we were at yesterday, so we stopped there on the way home. I’d spotted a nice beech tree there and thought it might make a decent PoD. It looked ok through the viewfinder, but the final result wasn’t all that it could have been. Must try harder.

Fish ’n’ chips from the chip shop for dinner tonight and it was greasy, hot and delicious.

Tomorrow we may go in to Glasgow. With the warning from the Scottish government that the Coronavirus will escalate quickly now, we may have to look for hand sanitiser and some face masks first 😉

Storage, Lunch, Compost and Bridges – 28 February 2020

Posted on by Zogman

In that order. Oh yes, and Snow.

So what of the day then? Well, I fancied a trip to somewhere with technology. Somewhere with computers and hard drives and vacant sales people with limited knowledge of those things. Currys, that would fit the bill. My ever expanding photo collection would soon be in need of some extra storage space. Almost fifteen years of photos were almost completely filling the 2TB hard drive they are presently stored in. More accommodation is required and if you know what you want, how much you need and how much you’re prepared to spend, Curry’s is probably the best place to go, just don’t expect any help from the sales folk. They are there to sell, not advise. If you do ask them for advice on what desktop external hard drive to buy, you might come home with a washing machine instead, because logically, the person you spoke to hasn’t been on the computer external storage course yet, but they have successfully completed the one on washing machines. I Knew, I Wanted, I Bought … a Seagate 4TB USB3 Drive and it looks very swish.

With the purchase safely in the boot of the Juke, we went for lunch. Two Fish ’n’ Chips, one latte and one Americano. We think the indeterminate fish was River Cobbler whatever that is. It certainly wasn’t cod or haddock, but it tasted ‘fishy’ and it was hot, so were the chips and the coffee and that was all we were bothered about. Outside, the snow was pelting down. It had started as sleet, but had now graduated to real snow. Next stop Compost.

Scamp has decided that even though the weather thinks it’s still winter, in a couple of days it will be March and that’s effectively Spring, so it’s time to plant some seeds and for that you need lots of little plastic pockets, forty of them per propagator and lots of compost to fill those pockets. She already has the seeds, they’ve become a traditional Christmas present for Scamp. I’ve a packets too I think, somewhere, so I might be able to borrow one or two of those little pockets for my Teasels. I’d imagine the little seeds will be sown soon and kept inside until the temperature realises that it’s soon to be spring.

Today’s topic for sketching was ‘Bridge’. I searched my Flickr photo stream this morning for possible subjects and arrived at a shortlist of six. After browsing them, I settled on one of Mauldslie Bridge and Gatehouse. It took about an hour to sketch and paint and ultimately reject. Redrew it and repainted it and it became SoD.

PoD was taken earlier in the day and was of a rather snowy and unimpressive Campsie Fells covered in snow. It’s a poor showing, I know, but some people have decided that the photos must go on, so I do what I can with the cards I’d dealt. Not my best work, but done and on time.

Speaking of time, it’s running on and I want to get this posted today.

Tomorrow we may go shopping in Stirling.

Coffee and some adult conversation – 24 February 2020

Posted on by Zogman

Coffee at midday with the rest of the Auld Guys.

Topics under discussion were how to fix NLC, health centres and Boris.

  • It was generally agreed that NLC are now BER (Beyond Economic Repair) which is a nice way of saying FUBAR.
  • Health centres seem to be screwing up a lot of people. Within about a 10 mile radius the three centres under discussion were all operating different systems and all of them totally inefficient. Possibly they too are BER.
  • The book I’m reading at present is Real Tigers by Mick Herron. One nasty piece of work in the book is Peter Judd who is Home Secretary — described as ‘a loose cannon with a floppy fringe and a bicycle’ has his eye on Number 10. Now Peter Judd’s initials are PJ. If you say them quickly they’d sound like BJ, then all sorts of similarities are revealed. A nice piece of satire or simply a coincidence? You choose.

With the world once again set to rights, we went our separate ways and vowed that we’d organise our next meeting in a pub in Glasgow. We’ve been saying it for years and it hasn’t transpired yet. Perhaps 2020 will be that year.

When I got home, Gems were in full voice, so I swiftly had a roll ’n’ bacon and went out into the grim sleet to see if there were any pictures out there worth taking. There were as it happened. I’d stopped on one of my favourite places for a view of the Campsie covered in snow when the clouds came down and obscured them. Then I heard the sound of geese and a large skein appeared from behind some trees. There seemed to be hundreds of birds in the group that split up and rejoined as I grabbed my camera and shot off a few frames through the smirr that had started to fog up the lens. A quick wipe with my shirt tail cured that and I go some more before they headed off north. What do they know that I don’t. The resulting image is at the top of the page.

Dancing tonight was a reprise of waltz which I will tentatively say we can now complete without arguing 75% of the time. After that we did some foxtrot and made a bit of hash of it, but nothing that can’t be improved with some more practise. New to us tonight was quickstep. Now we’ve done quickstep with Michael, but this was quickstep with names for all the steps and the figures and it seemed to flow much better than when we were dancing it in Blackfriars. I’m not saying we have it off pat yet, it’s still a work in progress, but we’re about half way there. Feeling much better about this dancing lark.

I’m not publishing my attempt at a Mandala which is today’s challenge. I wasted an hour of my life drawing it and I don’t intend to foist it on anyone else. If you want to see it go to FB or Flickr.

Tomorrow, no plans, but I think we’ll be practising the quickstep figures.

Quarterly blood letting – 27 January 2020

Posted on by Zogman

Some days have a wall. Something that has to be surmounted. Today it was bloodletting at midday.

Today it was time for my quarterly blood test. I felt a bit like Hancock when he hears that he has to give “a whole pint”. As the nurse counted out the four sample tubes and gaily filled them with my vital fluid, I wondered if I had any left in my body. When I got back home I found out that I did have and some of it was leaking past the plaster she’d stuck on. Not a lot, just a dribble, but you can’t go losing blood like that. I need all mine. Now I’ve just to wait until the end of the week to see if I need to meet the nurse to discuss the results or if it’s just an OK over the phone. Expecting the former, hoping for the latter.

After getting past the wall I relaxed a bit. Went out to post my old driving licence back to the DVLA, get my old dance shoes re-soled and heeled and get some more black ink to use with the adapter, or converter to use the correct term, for my collection of Lamy pens. At present the Fisk black ink is winning. It’s permanent, but doesn’t seem to have any shellac in its composition, so doesn’t clog the nib of the fountain pen. Still one more to check and that’s the W&N one I was going to get today in Hobbycraft. Almost got the full set done. Forgot to post the licence, but got the shoes booked in and I got the ink too. Bought myself an LED daylight bulb for use in a lamp in the back bedroom while I was in Hobbycraft.

While I was out I took the chance of dropping in at Drumpellier to grab a photo of some of the waterbirds on the loch. That’s where today’s PoD came from. Entitled “A Tall Tail” it’s a sculpture in the middle of the loch that makes a great perch for the gulls. I think I entertained a couple sitting having coffee in their car. They couldn’t understand what the hell I was doing, apparently taking photos of, well, nothing much. Obviously didn’t understand that that’s what photogs do most of the time with the sole purpose of puzzling the Muggles.

Back home, Gems were gone, leaving only their dirty tea cups and a few uneaten biscuits. Not long after I got there, Scamp returned from dropping them off. Sat for a while tweaking the aforementioned PoD and then we had half the dinner – soup. The other half we’d have when we returned from dance class.

I must admit, although I miss salsa on a Monday night, I don’t miss the drive in to Glasgow or back out again, especially when Rangers are playing and half of Scotland squeezes on to the M8 in front of me. We had been practising the Waltz all week and do you know, the teacher didn’t even ask us to show off our prowess at that dance. However, we have now mastered the first half of the Foxtrot routine and have a fair understanding of how the second half works. We can also Saunter Together quite adequately. Next week we add both halves of that dance together to make our first real sequence dance! The new black and white dance shoes seem to work. We only stayed for an hour tonight, but may try another hour on a Wednesday when she starts another new class in Condorrat.

Just before I started this, the snow began. It was fairly heavy for a while, but it’s just light now and although the temperature is just above freezing, I don’t think it will last until morning. That’s a pity because I could take some snowy pictures.

Tomorrow Scamp is booked for lunch with Mags and I’m determined to post that DVLA letter. Whether I manage that or not is the question!

New Shoes – 25 January 2020

Posted on by Zogman

Off in to Glasgow for a new pair of dancing shoes.

Drove in to town and got parked directly across from the dance shop. Shoes were a good fit and far more comfortable than the old ones they are sort of replacing. Not replacing as much as sharing the limelight with. The old ones will hopefully be off to Timpson’s for new felt soles and heels. I’m going to ask if they will upgrade the memory on them at the same time, because they don’t seem to be retaining the new moves we’re doing!

The rest of the day was spent with taking photos of fence posts over in St Mo’s. Once again there was very little light and once again I forgot to take a portable LED light, so had to resort to using the torch app on the phone. It gives a good light and it’s directional too, the only thing wrong with it is the green colour cast, that’s why I reduced the photo to monochrome. Must check out the LED lights to see if they have a more neutral colour.

Soon it was time to go through the rigmarole of dressing up in 7.3m of itchy, scratchy woollen cloth. We were off tonight to the Tartan Ball. Finally got dressed and on our way. I think we got stopped at every traffic light after we came off the motorway. Parked and walked along to the manky, dirty Classic Grand. Named by someone with an imagination and a sense of humour.

Missed the first salsa hour, but got there in time for the first ceilidh hour. It was hectic. So many clumsy clots stamping out a rhythm that bore no relation to what the band was playing and with steps that the caller had apparently missed out. Bits of it reminded me of a Dashing White Sergeant we taught in Trinidad a few years ago. Some folk just looked as mystified as Blessed Be!

Enjoyed the second salsa hour of the night but as Scamp reminded me later there were much fewer dancers on the floor for that. Strange for an event that was hosted by Academia de Salsa. It was also strange to see very few folk we knew from classes. Perhaps three dance evenings in two months, in addition to normal Sunday Socials is too much. Maybe it’s because we’re not going to classes anymore and losing touch with the crowd.

After the salsa segment, it was back to ceilidh again and more stamping and ignoring of the steps. We’d had enough and Scamp’s shoes had definitely had more than enough. We drove home along an almost empty motorway, most people were still heading in to Glasgow, and arrived home at just after midnight.

As you will have gathered this is a catch-up. Tomorrow (actually today), we’re hoping to practise our waltz and foxtrot for Monday’s class.

On the bus today – 23 January 2020

Posted on by Zogman

Still sticking to the “up and out” ideal, (yes that was Ideal, not Idea!) just not driving today.

Walked to Condorrat to get the fast bus in to Glasgow. In the town we went for coffee first and then went our separate ways for a while. Scamp went looking for a cheap tartan skirt for the tartan ball. I went to look at a camera in Jessops. Found the camera, but the security cable on it was about 20cm long. How am I supposed to try out a camera that I can’t even get up to eye level? Gave up. Next one I wanted to look at had a similarly short steel cable and also the attaching clip was pointed straight at me. If I’d managed to get the camera to eye level, that clip would have caused me an injury. When an assistant asked me if she could help, I tried to explain the danger of the protruding clip. She then explained condescendingly that they need the security because “.. people do try to steal things you know …”. I tried to explain that it wasn’t the security cable, but the protruding clip that I was concerned about. She seemed to realise that a sale was not imminent and finished the conversation by asking if there was anything else she could help me with. I said “Don’t bother, I’ll just take my business elsewhere.” Jessops seems to be in trouble, financially, again. With staff like her, I can understand why.

Still fizzing, I met with Scamp further down the road. She hadn’t found a skirt. We tried one of the plethora of cheap ’Scottish’ shops that have invaded Glasgow and Edinburgh. Kilts made from cloth you could spit peas through, for £15. Nothing she would demean herself with there either. We agreed to split up again and meet up in Princes Square.

I was looking for a refillable reservoir for one of my Lamy pens, because ’28 Drawings Later’ is looming next Saturday, the 1st of February. I expected I would get one in The Pen Shop in Princes Square, but I might just pick one up in Cass Art. No, Cass Art failed me on that, none. Walked through to The Pen Shop and on the way got the PoD which is a statue by Shona Kinlock called “As Proud As” with reference to the peacock which stands behind the wee man. On to The Pen Shop. They didn’t have the adapter either. Neither did whatever Millers is called now, but they did have some black ink, so I got that at least. They suggested other places, but as Scamp was on the last stop on her Tartan Tour which was M&S and I was meeting her there and then going for lunch which I hoped would be Paesano, I decided I’d try Amazon instead. We met and it was Paesano who would be graced by our presence. I was delighted!

Just two of our usual pizzas, but because we were bussing, not driving, I was allowed a glass of house red!

Up the road to the bus station and grabbed one of the new route X25 buses. It’s a lot faster than the sluggish X3, but slower that the Stagecoach X something-or-other. Best of all, its new route takes it past the new shops, so as we needed bread we could get the bus to the shops today!

It was jolly exciting sitting in a bus that was driving down past St Mo’s and St Mo’s school, round the roundabout and stopping at the bus stop just at the new shops. You can tell we don’t get out much, can’t you?

That was all the excitement we could stand for one day. Oh by the way, Scamp did get a tartan(ish) skirt. Tomorrow we have no plans.

The Wall – 20 January 2020

Posted on by Zogman

In the afternoon I climbed it and I photographed it. In the evening I hit it.

Gems were in today, as with all Mondays. I had some things to do, and thankfully I have a good pair of headphones, so I could drown out most things that bother me. They also worked on Gems. With the essential stuff done, I grabbed my camera and went for a run in the Juke.

For reasons best known to themselves, somebody has blocked the road to the Antonine Wall. It’s a dead end, but there is a neat little lay-by where I can leave the car while I walk the Antonine Wall. Now I’ve got to leave the car by the side of the road about 200m away. PITA. It’s still possible to walk round the obstruction, but not to drive past it. I wanted to get some photos from the Antonine Wall, but I’d the wrong footwear for the boggy ground, so I restricted myself to climbing part of it and using a fence post as a prop to support my Beadbag™ which would in turn steady The LBJ, which was today’s camera of choice. Got a few photos and one accidental post-focus video. Gave up after that because the light was rapidly disappearing.

Back home the accidental post-focus shot actually produced the best set of photos and that’s what created today’s PoD. It’s not perfect, but it gives an idea of the area and the wall.  This shot was taken from the south side of the wall.  The rampart on the north side is much higher to keep out the wild Picts and Scots. I needed a brighter day with better lighting for a better shot.

After dinner we went off again for another visit to the world of dance. Today’s topic was Waltz, but first, one of my most hated sequence dances, the Saunter Together. It really pains me to say that I felt quite comfortable dancing this little bit of fluff. That’s no’ real dancin’! Tonight’s moves were the first half. Next week we got part two. I can hardly wait 😒. Next was the Waltz and I did quite enjoy it. We very nearly got it right twice. That’s an improvement.

The second half of the night was Tango. We’ve attempted it a couple of times with no success. Tonight it was awful. I felt just so far out of my depth. All those fiddly little steps with kicks and flicks thrown in for good measure. Halfway through the lesson I just hit the wall. Enough! I never want to dance another Tango in my life. I could happily have torn off the uncomfortable dance shoes, thrown the dummy out of the pram and gone home. Except, Scamp was enjoying the dance and really looked good dancing it with the teacher. Maybe if I ask her nicely, Scamp that is, she’ll guide me in the general direction of competence. Maybe I’ll master it in the week I have before the next lesson.

Finished off with the Blue Angel Rumba which I’m almost managing. It just takes a different mindset from Salsa. It’s all about the feet and the hands just float about. Salsa is all about the hands and the feet just keep you moving.

Tomorrow the weather looks cloudy and grey. No plans yet.