Category: Shopping

Butterflies, Viaducts and Beer – 17 September 2020

Posted on by Zogman

In that order!

The butterflies were feeding on ivy flowers on Frank’s Bridge in Kirkby Stephen. As far as I could tell they were all Red Admirals. They were taking a fair bashing from the honeybees whose territory they seemed to have invaded. The bees made their displeasure felt by apparently deliberately bumping them off the flowers. A strange behaviour I’ve never witnessed before.

Over the bridge, we were discussing which way to go, when a dog walker told us there was a great view from the hill beside the cricket ground. We thanked her and climbed the hill to the viewpoint at the top and she was correct. There was a great view all around from the top. Because the hill was fairly high, it was an uninterrupted view too. We met a couple from Durham who were also admiring the view. I took a few photos which turned into a 360º panorama which in turn would turn into a Tiny Planet. A bit of a cliché, but I haven’t done one in a long time, so that makes it ok. It became PoD, despite the fact that Scamp doesn’t like it.

Said goodbye to the Durham couple and walked down the other side of the hill and basically retraced our steps from Monday’s visit. Aha, but Scamp had other plans. After reaching the part where we would have turned right and walked back into town, we continued on using a wee lane to cut off a long corner on the road and almost reached a quarry entrance before we turned on to the old railway path. I like old railways, especially ones that have been turned into safe walkways that cut across country. It’s usually easy to imagine steam trains running along these arteries before Dr Beeching and his cuts destroyed the British rail network, back in the ‘60s. This one led immediately on to the Merrygill Viaduct over the Hartley Beck. We continued on to the Podgill Viaduct which crosses the Podgill Hole (!) which is another tributary of the River Eden.

There was a viewing gallery at the Podgill Viaduct, down 42 steps from the path. Fairly easy going down, but a killer coming back up. However it did give us a good view of the viaduct from below.

Climbed back up those 42 killer steps and walked back into the town. Got a seat quickly at the wee café Scamp had her eye on since Monday and had lunch there washed down with a half pint of Bitter & Twisted each, before heading back to the house. Well, we also had to stop for some bread and a cake each at the town bakers and some bulbs and another pot of marmalade from the deli.

Dinner tonight was a carry-out. Sim had phoned in an order for Chinese which JIC went to collect while I waited at Coast to Coast for three Fish & Chips. One door and a queue where you wait to place and pay for your order. Another where you queue to collect that order. One woman who shouts at you because you obviously don’t know how this works (she seems to be the only one who does) and one woman who for some reason treats you like a human. Good chips and excellent fish though.

More TV tonight and more pyrotechnics from the battlefield too.

Packing tonight, because it’s the long way home tomorrow.

The hill that keeps giving – 12 September 2020

Posted on by Zogman

That’s how Sim described it and that’s how it felt.

After breakfast and coffee JIC drove us in to Kirby Steven. Walked through the town and then up the hill past the cricket ground in beautiful sunshine, then up, up and even more up we went round the quarry and eventually finished up beside a field with two alpacas, or maybe they were llamas. I didn’t know the difference. They made this really strange whistling sound, not at all like any of us expected. We declared at that point that we had reached our target for the day and headed back down, down and further down that hill. walked back through the town and then drove to the Coop where we bought supplies for tonight’s dinner. I’ll remember it as having the slowest self-service till I’ve ever used.

Back home and after lunch we recovered from the exercise of climbing that hill. Later I made veg chilli although I’d forgotten to get kidney beans. Everyone was complimentary, but I think it was the consolation prize.

Watched Netflix at night on JIC’s new Roko stick.

The end of August – 31 August 2020

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Autumn is just around the corner.

There, that’s cheered you up hasn’t it!

First things I noticed this morning were the bumps on the Habanero peppers I’ve been growing on the window ledges in the house. This looks as if it’s the first successful pollination of the habanero. I’ve tried everything to get them to fruit.
First I tried dumping them in the garden and hoping the bees would do the job for me (and sometimes forgetting to bring the plants in again at night). That didn’t seem to work
Next I tried shaking the plants vigorously to encourage to the pollen to drop from the stamen on to the stigma. Either I shook too hard and all the pollen got knocked off the flower completely or I shook too softly and the pollen stayed where it was. For whatever reason, it didn’t work.
I tried tickling the inside of the flower with a very fine paintbrush (that’s what Colin C told me to do) and although it made the flower giggle, it didn’t produce fruit.
My last attempt was to brush my finger across the ‘naughty parts’ of the flower to force fertilisation and that may finally have done the business.
It looks like the Habaneros, both of them have succeeded in producing fruit. I’d love to know which of the tricks worked its magic. Maybe it’s a combination.
So now I have two Cayennes peppers, two Jalapeños and two Habaneros. Let’s hope there’s more on the way.

We were just sitting in the living room when I heard a plane engine that sounded faintly familiar, but unusual too.  Checked on Flightradar and it was a Spitfire passing almost directly overhead and heading south.  Dived to the door but realised the trees would be in the way and by the time we got to where we might get a clear view the warplane cruising at around 200knots would be well gone.  An opportunity missed.  The sound was the engine note of a Merlin, the legendary Spitfire power unit.

After lunch we took a walk to the shops just to get the usual essentials (without the gin this time). After we got back I decided it was time to remove the wiring for the dash cam from the Red Juke. It looked so easy, but it was an absolute nightmare getting the cable out intact. Eventually I gave up and cut the cable because I knew I’d need a new one when I was ready to fit the camera in the Micra. When I’d finally removed the last bit of the cable and its “piggy back” fuse connector, I realised that the bit that was blocking the cable’s removal was actually the ferrite choke and if I’d read the instructions on fitting the cable in the first place I’d have noticed that it was possible to unclip it from the cable and then the rest would have been easily removed. Oh well, it’s done now. To contradict the usual Haynes manual statement, in this case “Removal is the reverse of assembly”. You’d be amazed at the amount of razor sharp steel there is hidden behind the facia panels of a modern car. My hands are testament to its cutting ability.

Scamp made an Apple & Bramble pie to be the pudding for tonight’s dinner of Veg Chilli (with Flatbread).  The chilli was better today, but oh, that pie was beautiful.  Our own windfall apples and a handful of brambles.  Superb!

Fairly satisfied with my work, I grabbed my camera which seems to have the 60mm macro lens welded to it these days and went for a walk in St Mo’s. Found a conducive dragonfly and a photogenic seed head, but the PoD went to a photo of two Shield Bugs making babies, or else playing Tug O’ War.

Off to Larky tomorrow with a bit of luck to get Scamp’s new contact lenses.

Nothing to do, Nowhere to go – 22 August 2020

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Just one of those days.

Would we go out? Would we stay in? If we’re going out, then where? Eventually Scamp suggested we go to Drumpellier for a walk. We tried, but the car park was full again and there were folk everywhere. Not exactly what we were looking for. Instead of a walk, we turned around and drove through Easterhouse to The Fort. A lot had changed in Easterhouse since the last time we’d been there. Lots more housed, but still some vacant lots. Lots of new schools too. Still the same mentality though. One woman driving her Merc on the wrong side of the road, just to get into a parking space before me. I’d no intention of parking there, but still she looked ready to fight for that space. You couldn’t have got a Smart car in that space, let alone a Mercedes. The mentality definitely hadn’t changed.

The Fort was almost as busy as Drumpellier, but we did eventually find a space. I joined the queue for Hobbycraft and bought a roll of Craft Paper which we used to call Brown Paper or Wrapping Paper, 50 A2 sheets of cartridge paper and a bag of chocolate buttons. There’s probably a reason why they sell chocolate buttons in a craft shop, but I can’t quite put my finger on it at this moment. We drove home.

Back home, I grabbed two cameras and went for a walk in St Mo’s. Got a few photos using the really old E-PL5 and a fisheye lens. One of them got PoD. Quite liked the ultra wide angle effect.

Dinner was fried potatoes and tomatoes with fish fingers for Scamp and a beef burger for me. Both washed down with a glass of wine. Speaking of wine, we got our £24 box of wine from Naked Wine today. A box of six bottles for £24 is not to be sniffed at. We’ll maybe try the first bottle tomorrow, all things being equal. I don’t expect the next six bottles will be quite so inexpensive, but we’ll see what the quality is like.

Tomorrow we’re hoping to go for a walk somewhere more interesting than The Fort, and also more interesting than a jam packed Drumpellier.

I think it rained today – 4 August 2020

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It did rain today, in fact it didn’t stop raining all day!

It was raining when we woke. It’s still raining now at just about 11.30pm. It hasn’t halted all day. The furthest I’ve been today was a drive to Tesco for ‘the messages’. We had intended walking down to the shops, but that would not have been a sensible thing to do. The smart money was on using a car for what it was bought for, making life easy.

I did manage to get a photo outside today in one of the spells of light drizzle when the weather was catching its breath. Out, grab four quick photos of the rose at the front door and back in again before I got properly soaked.

Schoolgirl is a beautiful climbing rose. I’ve photographed the buds, the opening flowers, the full flowers and what’s left after all the petals have fallen. I think the last one is my favourite stage. Great for a sort of studio setup with plenty of lights and a low ISO to minimise digital noise.

I was amazed by the number of views Schoolgirl got. The highest view count so far is from 2010 with 31,695 views, 0 comments and 0 faves. None of my other flower pictures get near that amount of attention. Could it be something to do with the name, he innocently suggests?

There was nothing else worth noting today apart from the weather forecast. According to the weather fairies, there may be a little less rain tomorrow. Hoping not to get washed away going to Stirling in the afternoon.

27º in Scotland? – 31 July 2020

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That just can’t be right, surely? Yet, that was what the thermometer in the car read. The outside temperature this afternoon was 27ºc.

We knew it was going to be hot today, but although we’d been warned, we just didn’t believe it until it happened. We’d decided that we would go out somewhere for a walk. We’d considered and rejected a few places. There was no point in going to the seaside because everyone would be going there. We finally settled on Chatelherault which was once the hunting lodge of the Dukes of Hamilton. Now it’s a country park in South Lanarkshire. Every time I go there I think it’s obscene that one family should have owned such a house in an enormous tract of land while others, the workers, were living in slum conditions with a tiny postage stamp of a garden to grow basic vegetables if they were lucky. Thankfully this building and its lands are now owned by South Lanarkshire Council and are open to everyone, even the scruffs from North Lanarkshire!

We chose a walk that we’d been on before, down through the gigantic pine trees with the Avon Water flowing below us. At the end of the walk we saw this view and it became PoD. It was good to see the ordinary folk staking their claim to some space in the sun on such a bright and sunny day. Actually it wasn’t all that sunny, but it was bright and warm and a clever bit of software changed the sky from milky white to summer blue with fluffy clouds. That’s the way it should have been anyway!

Once we’d walked “round the policies” as Colin would say, we drove home leaving a parking space for one of the eagle eyed visitors. Drove home and had lunch, then sat in the warm air of the garden for a while reading and listening to weans with their Drum ’n’ Bass ‘thumpy tunes’ as they walked along the footpath behind the house. Were we like that once? I suppose we were. Rebels without a clue. Found a little neon blue weevil in the grass and took its photo before it flew away to its next modelling assignment. Still don’t know exactly what it was.

Dinner tonight was a freezer raid for me. Butcher’s burger from January, butcher’s sausages from May, Waitrose liver from yesterday and an egg from a different butcher and half a portion of fried potatoes. A very mixed grill, but delicious. Scamp had trout fillet with the other half portion of fried potatoes. It was clouding over and attempting to rain by the time we were finished dinner and on to pudding (blackcurrant jelly and ice cream) and soon after that came a flash of lightning and the rumble of thunder. The rain became torrential and I think you could say the heatwave was over, but we did get 27ºc on the way home from Chatelherault.

Tomorrow the temperature is predicted to be a more reasonable 17º to 19º. Warm, but not crazy warm. We’ll see.

Rain in all its forms – 30 July 2020

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Today was wet, really wet, soaking wet in fact.

It was that typical Scottish summer day. Every form of rain you could imagine falling incessantly from the sky. It didn’t come as a surprise, we knew from the weather reports that today was going to be a washout, so we’d planned for it. We went for the messages!

We drove to Waitrose in Stirling in the morning. We needed shopping and there was no point in wasting the warm sunny day that had been promised for Friday, so we thought it made sense to use up Thursday wandering round Waitrose filling a trolley. When we got to the till I thought we’d actually managed to buy Waitrose. We nearly did.

Coming back, the rain was even worse and the spray thrown up by the cars was like diving through fog. I was amazed at the number of drivers who chose not to use lights. The ones who had no rear lights were bad enough, but it was the ones who didn’t even daytime running lights who were the worst. A grey car driving through heavy spray on a dull day without lights is almost invisible from front or rear. Rant over.

The rain continued into the afternoon and as I didn’t have a photo, I took a walk in the rain to see if I could find some moody raindrop pictures. Instead I found some Yarrow plants. One shot of them became PoD.

After dinner I settled down to paint a wee jam jar of lavender flowers. Scamp had cut them yesterday and I’d dropped them into an jam jar of water to stop them wilting. Today that jam jar and its flowers became the subject of a wee watercolour. It’s up on Instagram, but I’ll let you have a look at it here too. I’m quite pleased with it.

Tomorrow is forecast to be the best day of the week with predicted temperatures in the mid 20s here in the Central Belt. Down in London it’s going to be over 30º. Too hot for me! Hope you enjoy it Hazy and Neil-D. Hope the Cambridge pair have a more sensible temperature.

We may go for a walk somewhere if tomorrow is going to be Summer!

Phone – 24 July 2020

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Today we to get a new phone. That should be easy, shouldn’t it?

Not so in the new world we now live in. First stop was Tesco. The cheapest and easiest to access. Two people working in the Tesco Mobile booth but only one allowed to serve customers. The other was managing the queue, i.e. Scamp. She got a price and they had the phone in stock. We were one step on the way to a successful conclusion.

To get a broader view of the other options we drove to Coatbridge, using my route, not the scenic route we took earlier in the week. Went to Carphone Warehouse at Currys. No queue this time and the girl went through the standard procedure of noting down everything up to and including what Scamp had for breakfast (Kellogg’s Special K with strawberries.). Only once she’d confirmed that Scamp didn’t want a contract with Vodafone and that she didn’t want to go with in-house iD, she told us that they didn’t have the phone she was looking for in stock and they wouldn’t be available until Monday – note, she didn’t say which Monday! We said no thanks and left to go home for lunch, but next door was an Argos where EE are based these days. Lady at the door said there wasn’t anyone at the EE stand as he was at lunch. Only one person selling? And then, only when he was there. Didn’t sound good, but par for the course these days.

After lunch we went to Bishopbriggs to another Carphone Warehouse in Currys. Waited in the queue where only one person was actually selling. After half an hour of standing around a second Carphone Warehouse operative told us that they didn’t have the phone in stock there either. Very popular he said. We’d guessed that.

Drove back to Cumbersheugh and finally sealed the deal for roughly the same price as Carphone Warehouse were promoting with EE, but that was with a ghost phone. PAK code has been entered and the final switch over should happen by Tuesday. Apparently computers don’t work weekends.

A lot of the time was spent standing around waiting in a queue. We can partly blame Covid-19. How can Tesco manage to hold a stock of phones when Carphone Warehouse seem unable to. A what the hell, Scamp has a new phone.

As for the rest of the day. When we got back home we assembled the new grass hoover and Scamp hoovered the front grass. Her first thoughts are that it’s not as good a cut as the old one, but it’s much lighter. We need to make some adjustments to the cut height and after that it should be better.

I managed an hour before dinner taking photos of ‘beasties’. Mainly hover flies and other insects. A couple of shots of a little froglet or toadlet too. It was a dusty little hover fly that got PoD.

No plans for tomorrow. It looks wet in the morning, the aftermath of the rain that’s battering down just now, but better in the afternoon. We won’t be driving far, the poor Red Juke it tired out tonight.

Paint and painting – 13 July 2020

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Once more into The Fort, dear friend, once more.

Despite spending a fair amount on a new full paint box, I still needed more paint. Two of my half pans were empty in my old box. One was Cerulean Blue, a sky blue. I got one in the new box. The other empty pan had held Hooker’s Green Named after an English botanist and illustrator William J Hooker, not for any other reason. Not that I would know about such things, you understand. The new paintbox didn’t have Mr Hooker’s green and the reason the half pan is empty is because I use it a lot. Today I intended to go to The Fort to get a tube. It’s not essential as a colour, because you can mix a fair representation of it using a couple of colours with a third to adjust the intensity, but to have one to hand would be good. Scamp decided she’d come along. She’d spent the morning browsing B&Q looking at lawnmowers. We’d had a discussion and she agreed that the old mower probably needed to be replaced for H&S reasons and she’s still speaking to me!

I got the paint, £5 for a 5ml tube. Multiply £5 by the 18 colours in the new box and you see how much it costs to paint some watercolours. Of course I didn’t pay that for the paintbox. Also, paints come in four price bands. My HG was in band 1 the lowest price. Some are much more expensive, just under £10 for the most expensive (and most poisonous!) paint in the price bands. Still I was happy to pay to be able to mix some good dark greens.

Meanwhile Scamp was off window shopping. She came back empty handed but smiling because she’d been out in the sunshine and seen some pretty dresses. Unfortunately there was no point in buying any because there’s nowhere to wear them to. I think we are now coming down from the high of dancing – virtually – with other people for an hour and a half on Saturday. Now we are realising that it may be some time before we will dance with people again. We were supposed to be trying out dancing in the open air on Wednesday with our dance class, led by the teacher, but we’ve since heard that has been veto’d. Presumably, the dance board wouldn’t allow it on H&S grounds or their insurance wouldn’t cover it. Such a pity. It would have been interesting.

Grabbed a shot of one of Scamp’s favourite roses, Sheila’s Perfume. It looked stunning back lit in the garden this morning. That made PoD. I’d actually completed a painting for Lockdown Library yesterday, but didn’t think it was good enough. Today I had a second look and it’s fine. It has been posted on Instagram. Today’s painting is of the two wee chickens that make up our cruet set. I’ve done them before, but that was a while ago and I don’t mind painting them again. They always make us smile.

Not much more to add today. Doing a Zoom meeting tomorrow with the man from Falkirk. Hopefully it will go well.

A day of two halves – 7 July 2020

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The first half, the morning half we dithered for a while before deciding that it was only threatening. It wasn’t going to rain. Wrong.

We intended to drive to Drumpellier park for a walk round the loch if it wasn’t too busy. Before we were even out of the estate there were raindrops on the windscreen. By the time we were joining the M73 it was coming down in buckets. Decided we’d probably go to The Fort instead to get some more fabric to make us some new masks and a new sketch book for me.

We sat in the car, waiting for the rain to go off. It did lessen a bit and that was good enough for us. There was a queue, but then there is a queue everywhere now. Eventually we got in and got the fabric and the book. By the time we came out the rain had stopped and all the folk who had been waiting in their cars were now wandering around the shops. Too busy, we decided and headed for home. One last discussion before we reached the T junction. Right would take us to Drumpellier and left would take us home. We decided on Left. As we were driving along, we could see the Campsie Fells in the distance with the sun glancing off them. Maybe we’d made the wrong choice. Doesn’t matter, the die had been cast and we were going home for lunch.

After lunch Scamp walked down to the shops to get the makings of today’s dinner. I stayed home and started to make the new mask she wanted. I was just getting to the sewing up stage as she was returning.

Later, since the day had improved greatly from this morning’s heavy rain, we went for a walk round St Mo’s and didn’t even wear a raincoat.  Went round the pond twice and that’s where today’s PoD came from. It’s a hover fly, but I can’t make up my mind which one. Hopefully someone on Flickr will know.

Dinner was an excellent Scamp meal of flattened chicken in panko breadcrumbs. There’s probably a fancy French name for ‘flattened chicken’, but that’s what it is. It was really lovely. My turn to cook tomorrow and my mind is empty. Something will float into that void before tomorrow, I hope.

Tonight’s sketch changed from a pencil sketch to a painting. It’s a house across the road from Isobel in the Village. It’s been empty for a few years and is getting really dilapidated now. Water stains all down the walls and paint daubed all over the plywood covering the walls. I liked the desolation of it and enjoyed the exercise. I was painting on slippery HP (Hot Pressed) paper that doesn’t absorb the paint as much as NOT (Not Hot Pressed) paper.  I don’t use it much, but it’s sitting in a drawer and should be used up.  I must get my new paints unwrapped an put to good use. May do that this week if I get a chance. Don’t know what we’re doing tomorrow. It depends a lot on the weather.