Category: St Mo’s

Windy Willie – 6 July 2022

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Windy Willie was out and about today, gusting around the houses and making the trees sway. Thankfully he’s now away to annoy some other people, but he was a nuisance for a while for photographers trying to capture images of insects on flowers.

Unbelievably, despite the occasionally torrential rain we’ve had recently, the back garden was suffering a drought. Because of the wind, using the hose wasn’t practical, so Scamp and I were carting full watering cans around the garden to refresh the poor plants. I think the potatoes were the worst and that wasn’t obvious until we emptied on of the ‘tattie bags’ and found the soil was bone dry right down to the bottom. The bag produced enough potatoes for dinner tonight, but a lot of them were the size of buttons. That’s what gave us the idea to just water the whole garden.

After lunch I thought it was time I shifted my backside from the couch and went for a walk. Unusually, Scamp agreed to come with me. I know that she doesn’t really enjoy a walk round St Mo’s, so I suggested we walk down to Broadwood and walk over the dam and up past the exercise machines. That got her approval. Out of the wind, it was quite pleasant with temperature in the mid teens. In the wind it was a different story. On the final leg of the walk, Scamp suggested she would go home and I could do a circuit of St Mo’s. That sounded like a good idea. The best of both worlds.

My first circuit didn’t raise any interesting insects or, indeed anything. On the second round, there was more insect life on the hogweed and cow parsley. That’s where today’s PoD came from. It’s just a wee hover fly, but it was in focus and it was sharp, mainly because I was sheltered by a few trees which stopped the flower heads from bouncing around. Also, I was using the kit lens, not a dedicated macro lens, which meant I wasn’t going as close as I’d have liked and this helped the sharpness of the photo. It wasn’t the most productive day with 34 photos taken and 28 of those rejected for various reasons.

Dinner tonight for Scamp was Omelette with Cabbage and New Potatoes, for me it was Wild Boar Burger with Cabbage and New Potatoes. The potatoes were really very good. I only wish I’d earthed them up earlier and, of course, taken more care with the watering.

Boris still bumbles on despite having almost no support from his colleagues. He’s a bit like the visitor who doesn’t know when to leave the party and has to be ushered out the door. Maybe he needs the money!

Tomorrow Scamp is out in the morning to the dentist, hoping to get the long running saga of the broken tooth finally sorted.

A Pencil – 4 July 2022

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I found a pencil today. I’d searched everywhere I could think of yesterday to no avail, but today it was found.

I’d been roughing out a sketch of Jacki and Allan’s house and been using a giant A2 sheet of paper which meant I needed a nice big, thick pencil. I knew that Hazy had given me a lovely wee stubby clutch pencil many years ago and I thought it would be ideal for the purposes, but like I said in the intro, despite Scamp’s and my intensive search, we couldn’t find it. Even this morning, with the sketch half finished, I still couldn’t lay my hands on that pencil. Yesterday we had hauled out loads of boxes and chucked out lots of stuff in the process, but the pencil wasn’t to be found. This morning, after another hour’s fruitless search I remembered two places it could be. Both of them were leather shoulder bags and it was in a zipper pocket in the second bag that I found the pencil. I swear the lines I drew with that pencil were the best in the whole sketch.

What had started out as a rough, now has a splash of paint on it, but it’s still going to be a rough. I don’t think I like the photo I’m working from and need a better view. It was taken in a rush on the day before we left to come home. I don’t think I can use that as an excuse for a few days in Skye, but it’s a nice idea.

I took a walk over to St Mo’s this afternoon to clear my head and because Scamp wanted to walk over to the shops. I walked with her halfway there and then walked round St Mo’s a couple of times while she went round the shops. Lots of cow parsley flowerhead on show in St Mo’s, all bobbing around in the gusty wind, but that didn’t seem to deter the hover flies and beetles from landing on them and having lunch. It was a nightmare trying to get photos in that wind, even more challenging than yesterday along the canal. Then I found my PoD which is a plant called St John’s Wort whose main claim to fame is as a herbalist source of anti-depressant. Something to do with the flowers, it would have to be, because the seeds are deadly poison. I’ve seen those black berries in the winter and wondered why no animal or bird was eating them and now I know why. Look, but don’t touch.

I watched two more episodes of Slough House. Some of Lamb’s on-liners are pure gems, or maybe it’s just my sense of humour.

Tomorrow I’ve arranged to meet Alex in Glasgow to go to the Art Galleries. He wants to do some slow shutter arty photos, I want to go and look at a John Byrne exhibition. We’ll probably meet up later for lunch, all being well. Scamp intends to cut the front grass while I’m away.

 

Last Dance – 2 July 2022

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For a while anyway. Three weeks without dance classes while our teachers are off teaching on a cruise to the Baltic.

Drove out to Brookfield this morning. Into low lying cloud and drizzly rain. Not the best start, but that wouldn’t matter once we changed into our dance shoes and had the first couple of sequence dances under our belt. They were familiar, but then they would be. We’d danced them on Thursday afternoon at the tea dance. Next was Waltz. Not either of the waltzes we knew quite well and not any of the other variations on the theme of waltz that we’d experienced in the last year or so. No, this one was new to us and to most of the class too by the sound of things. The first part was really difficult for me at least. A 270º turn that looked so easy when Stewart was demonstrating it, but impossible for me. The next part wasn’t quite so difficult once you broke it down. Oh, and the language! Those esoteric phrases that mean nothing to me and describe nothing either. I’d give you examples, but they don’t stick in my head long enough to be recorded. I’m guessing I’m the same when I’m talking about “Shutter priority” and “three frames focus stack”, but there must be normal words that can describe a “reverse weave” for folk who are still struggling to decide whether they start on left or right foot.

We survived the waltz and then it was Cha-Cha. This used to be my pet hate, but now I’m beginning to enjoy it, although it does all happen fairly fast. We did not too bad with the cha-cha. One thing I like about it is that you don’t travel very far. Another thing is that it doesn’t matter, at our level, which direction you are facing after you finish. You just continue from there. That may not be the what would get you top marks in a competition, but it works for us.

All too soon, we were finished and I’d actually enjoyed most of the class. Next we had to decide how to get home. On the way in we saw the crowds of Orange Order marchers enjoying their legal right to march through Glasgow with their banners. I wondered what would be the easiest way back from Brookfield, avoiding them. I chose to take the shortcut through the Clyde Tunnel and along the Express Way. That usually cuts off the 5mph crawl up and over the Kingston Bridge, but for some reason today both routes were equally free running and we were home much earlier than we expected.

But I’d forgotten we were going to collect my suit from the cleaners and I had to go out again to collect it, perfectly cleaned with the marks, whatever they were, removed. Well worth the £15 it cost. I got some ham for my lunch when I was next door in Tesco.

Watched the live practice for the British F1 GP and got really interested in the final minutes of a race that was run in Scottish weather (ie torrential rain) in an English circuit. It looks like it will be difficult to predict a winner tomorrow.

Went out for a walk in St Mo’s and PoD was a Latticed Heath moth. I’d tried to capture an image of one yesterday, but it evaded me. Not so today. It became PoD.
I came home via the chip shop in Condorrat with two small fish suppers. I know I’ll suffer for them afterwards, but the taste outweighs the inconvenience and there’s always Gaviscon.

Watched the final of Glow Up and wonder if any of these aspiring make up artists really go out dressed as devils and zombies or if it’s just a test to see how off the wall they can be.

Tomorrow we don’t have any plans. If the weather would settle down we could maybe get out for a walk somewhere interesting that isn’t Broadwood or St Mo’s. We live in hope.

Coffee in Costa – 23 June 2022

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We were booked to meet Isobel for coffee in Costa.

The two ladies didn’t have coffee, they each had a latte, which is coffee for those who don’t like coffee. I had a cortado which is coffee for those who like cups without handles. I still can’t get used to seeing Isobel without her glasses on. Since she’s had a cataract removed, she doesn’t seem to need glasses. It’s still strange to me. Scamp had driven to the Town Centre in her car, and she drove all three of us down to the Village with me sitting like Lord Muck in the back!

With Isobel saved a walk to the bus stop and then a walk through the Village to her house, we two drove on to the Garden Centre because Scamp wanted a pair of semi-circular metal supports for her roses, to keep the heavy flower heads from falling down. We couldn’t find any. I suggested we try B&Q. They did have what we were looking for, but they weren’t nearly strong enough looking, so we went home via Tesco of course.

After lunch I thought I’d better wash the car, because I’m taking Scamp and Jeanette for afternoon refreshments at Moira’s house, to christen her new summerhouse. I couldn’t have Jeanette sitting in a mucky car, certainly not one covered in seagull crap. That spent a good half hour and gave me a chance to listen to the end of ‘Baggage’ Alan Cumming’s excellent autobiography.

With the wee Blue car glistening in occasional glimpses of sunshine, I went over to St Mo’s with two cameras. One had the long, heavy macro lens and the other had the short, but still heavy Lensbaby 35 attached. Found today’s PoD which I think is either a trap for unwary insects or more likely a nest for mummy spider’s spiderlings when they hatch from their eggs. Either way it made a strange abstract looking object that could actually be a design for a post-modern building! Or am I dreaming?

A seat in the sun in the  garden was calling to us after a fairly successful chicken stir-fry I managed to make. No drinks were drunk this time, just tea for me and coffee for Scamp. Tomorrow may be different for at least one of us.

I watched the first episode of Slough House. Hazy, you can tell Neil that I completely agree. The typecasting of Lamb is perfect. So too was River Cartwright, exactly what I thought he would look like. Roddy Ho is the only one who wasn’t quite spot on, IMHO. Brilliant television.

Tomorrow I’m booked to Scamp and Jeanette and James will bring them back. That leaves me with a free afternoon which would be great but it looks like rain, I’m afraid!

Gardener, Electrician, Bin Man – 21 June 2022

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A few tasks to complete today, but nothing onerous.

First thing to do was to remove the old solar powered lights from the tree and the fence. The tree lights were easy to strip out, but I was a bit concerned when I tried to remove the staples that held the fence lights in place because I found the cable had been cut. Can’t really see how anyone could reach into cut it, so for now I’m keeping an open mind on it. I tried stripping back the insulation on the wires and joining up the copper wire inside, but the lights still won’t work. Cheap and cheerful describes them perfectly.

The new, much shorter set was fairly easy to install and, once Scamp had shown me where she wanted them, they were quickly stapled in place. It’s still not dark enough just now at just after 10.30pm for the sensor to switch from collecting light from the sky to giving out light from the little LED lights.

Next on the list was lunch and after that I’d a trip to the skips to do. One bag of Small Electrical, one big bag of Household, one bag of magazines and a little bag of dead or dying batteries. All done and dusted in ten minutes, plus travelling time of course.

Drove back to see Fred who was cutting his grass with his new battery powered mower. We had a blether for a while and I gave him the latest Slow Horses book I’d finished this morning and he gave me three in return, all by authors I’d read but the book titles were new to me. I think I won in that exchange.

Went home via Tesco for ‘real’ essentials, bread and potatoes but also with a punnet of strawberries and one of raspberries too. Took the Sony and the big macro lens over to St Mo’s and got a few photos of a Common Blue damselfly. That was the only decent photo I got and it automatically became PoD.

It was warm enough to sit in the garden before and after dinner which was the leftovers from Sunday’s dinner, reheated.

We got a letter from the bank, addressed to The Manager of a group Scamp used to run. She’s tried to write, phone, email them to say the group was disbanded about fifteen years ago and even then she was no longer involved in it. Still we get the letters once or twice a year. I thought I’d try a little humour (With a bank? I hear you say!). This is the returned letter that will go in the post tomorrow.

Speaking about tomorrow. It looks like being a decent enough day with the chance of dry weather. I think we should take it while it’s on offer. Other than that, we have no plans.

A toy off the rack – 16 June 2022

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In my defense, it’s a long time since I had one.

Scamp was out in the morning having lunch with Mags. While she was out I compared and contrasted the two ‘smart’ watches which would replace the Huawei (not so) smart watch I have just now. To be honest, it’s been a great watch, doing most of the things I needed, then in February came an upgrade and since then the ‘smart’ has gone out of it. It doesn’t record heart rate, it doesn’t record sleep patterns, it doesn’t even have a timer any more. I’ve tried restarting it, factory resetting it and to no avail. Huawei being so secretive, they don’t publish the earlier versions of the OS, and nobody on the net advertises one. Its time has come if you excuse the pun.

By the time Scamp had returned I had decided on a Fitbit Versa3 which was almost the same price as its competitor, the Garmin Venu Sq which is a horrible name for anything. I could get either one in Argos today, so after hearing about the improved food in Wetherspoons in Cumbersheugh, I set off to navigate the labyrinth under the shopping centre of The Toonie. I went with an open mind, knowing that whatever I picked, it would be the wrong one, but the screen was bigger and better quality in the Fitbit, also I’d already had one, two in fact, and knew it would last well for two years, then suddenly die.

I hated it after I got it. The strap has an unusual locking mechanism and is awkward to fasten. The square face is a bit stupid, because all the watch faces for it are round. It was going back. However I had to play-test it and I’d sleep on it, literally.

I took it, and the Sony out for a walk to see if the GPS would work (it did), and while I was out got some photos of Wolf Spiders, the ones that don’t build webs, but ambush their prey instead. Vicious little spiders! Met a lady walking her dog who, the lady that is, was interested to discover that I was photographing spiders, not just lying comatose on the boardwalk! Wolfie made PoD.

Got an email last night from Alex to say that he was laid up. He’d been emptying an old shed that had boxes of weedkiller in it and thinks he may have ingested some! Since you’ll realise that this is a catch-up, I can tell you that he’s feeling a lot better on Friday morning.

I also got a couple of messages from Jamie and Simonne to say that the really love my watercolour picture of their house, which was good to know.

That was about it for Thursday on a lovely warm, sunny day. The Fitbit works for me because I have the records of my old Fitbits to remind me of past walks. From April 2017 until June 2021:

I took 12,814,083 steps
I climbed 32,030 floors
I walked 5,772.65 miles
I burned 4,632,748 calories

That’s not bad, I think.

Tomorrow we’re getting ready for Crawford and Nancy who are coming to dinner. Oh no, more hoovering!!

Visiting Margie – 7 June 2022

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I had the morning to myself and grabbed it with both hands.

Scamp was out for coffee with Annette, which meant I had some time to myself. I’d really meant to pot up my basil plants, but when you’ve got a good book, it’s difficult to put it down. Today’s good book is Bad Actors by Mick Herron, the eighth, and most recent of his Slough House series. That was a good way to use my free time, I thought.

When Scamp came home, and after lunch, we drove up to Margie’s strange wee split level house. She doesn’t get out much now and really seems to enjoy the company. The stories she tells are an entertainment in themselves and time simply flies when we’re there. Two and a bit hours just disappeared today amid stories of drinking Prosecco in the afternoon and dodgy, trouble making family members. We left her to rest before her son came in to make her dinner and keep her company in the evening.

We drove through more roadworks. There seems to be a rash of them these days. It’s like March, when all the excess funding has to be used up before the end of the financial year. But this is June and more needless work is still being done. There must be a reason for it, but it evades me. I got a shock when we went up to Tesco to get petrol and the price at the pump was £1.82 per litre. Last week it was around £1.76! I got enough to do us for the next few days and will shop around for our next fill up.

I still hadn’t a photo for PoD, so after we parked, I took the Sony out for a walk round the pond. Found a spider on its web looking translucent in the afternoon sun. With a bit of jiggery pokery in Lightroom it glowed nicely. Not a lot of insect activity, except from the bees which seemed to be enjoying the afternoon sun. Maybe they’d heard the weather reports, predicting wild weather with high winds and rain that are on the cards for the next few days and are making honey while the sun shines.

Scamp was chef tonight and she made a lovely stir-fry. I can never get the mixture right when I’m making it, but she seems to do it without thinking and gets it right every time. It’s a skill.

Tomorrow the weather starts to turn wet. I may make a loaf from one of my bread kits.

 

Maybe the last sunny day – 5 June 2022

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A bit of a lazy, sunny Sunday, but it looks like it’s downhill for the weather now.

Spoke to Hazy in the morning and caught up on all that was happening with them and the extended family. Neither of them feeling fully fit yet, but that’s to be expected. Sometime you just have to take things a bit easier and let the world turn at its rate.

We started out doing a bit of gentle garden work under a warm sun, but with a cool breeze. For me, today’s work meant pruning away seed heads on the aquilegia just to make sure they don’t seed everywhere as they did last year, dead heading the lupins, and checking that we hadn’t lost any peas, kale or leeks over the past couple of days. It looks to me as if I’ve already lost a pea plant, but there was no sign of slug trails, so maybe it was one of the hungry birds that had done the dirty on me. I’ll maybe do my mum’s trick and stretch some black cotton thread across the raised bed. Scares the living daylights out of the birds! Scamp, of course was right in there in the front garden, digging out weeds and cutting down excess growth in the bushes.

Soon it was lunch time and after that, Scamp went walking down to the shops to get some stuff for tonight’s dinner while I prepared mine. Today I was cooking some diced pork I’d bought months ago. Neither of us had any experience of cooking it, so I stuck fairly close to a recipe I’d downloaded from BBC Food. Basically you fried off the meat to start with and put it in a slow cooker, then it was the turn of some bacon to be fried and added to the slow cooker next the veg was cooked and added with an uncooked peeled, cored and chopped apple. Finally, in went about half a bottle of cider, some herbs and some water and half a chicken stock cube. Put the lid on and cook on low for six hours, it said. I didn’t have six hours, so I cooked it on auto for about four hours and the meat was falling off the fork when it came out.

While Scamp rested I went out with a macro lens on the camera hoping to see that dragonfly again. My backup was some yellow flag irises that I reckoned would be in flower by now. No dragonfly to be seen, but the irises were beautiful. They got PoD I also found that the newly sown grass football park behind St Mo’s school has some lovely wee red poppies in with the grass seed.

Spoke to Jamie later and heard all about bat investigations and preparations for exiting his present employment to head for pastures new. Never easy, although I must say that it’s a very long time since I had to do that. Some time around 1980 I believe!

Tomorrow I think I’m taking the wee Red car down to the village to see about a new exhaust.

Out looking for leeks – 2 June 2022

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Any excuse to get out and have a sneaky bit of lunch, but the wee car was sounding exhausted.

We started out early, because a lady would visit us today and ask us to stick a cotton bud thing down our throat and then up our nose before answering a series of very searching questions which we answered very quite honestly. Then after she went away leaving us with a memorable word picture of India we two went different ways. Scamp went to pick up Isobel to go for coffee and I wanted to do some painting. Neither of those things happened. Scamp phoned to say that she though the car was making a strange noise, maybe exhaust? I agreed because I’d heard it as she drove away. I never quite go round to doing any painting, because I wrote a long email to Alex instead. One thing added to my to-do list and immediately ticked off.

When she got back from having coffee at Isobel’s rather than at Costa, we drove off in the blue car to Clydeside, looking for somewhere for lunch and also if they had leek plants in that place, it would be a bonus. Gouldings was the first place we went to and it was bedecked with bunting and purple banners declaring that there was a Platinum Jubilee. The other thing they had was a very long queue for food. So we went looking for leek plants, but, eh, that was something they didn’t have. It’s become more and more difficult to find garden centres that sell veg plants. Flowers, yes. Vegetable plants just aren’t sexy enough though. Nor are they pretty enough. We left empty handed.

The next place was Dobbies which used to be Sandyholm. The car park was almost empty, not a good sign, but I did find leeks in their vegetable area. Scamp found a couple of interesting flowers there too and there was no queue for lunch. So we paid for the plants, put them in the car and went back for lunch. Scampi and chips for two and that was lunch sorted. When we drove past Gouldings on the way home, I did wonder if we’d have had our lunch by then if we’d stayed in that queue.

Dropped in at John & Marion’s to hand over a memory stick with a load of wedding photos on it. Then we continued on our way home to plant out today’s leeks, hydrangea and tomato plants. Actually none of these were planted in the soil, but they were watered with the rest of the garden when we dug out the hose and used it on the front and back gardens. Tomorrow I have kale to plant and also some leeks. Scamp has the flowers to deal with. I also have pea plants to transplant along side one pea plant that is growing from seed in the raised bed. Strangely, it looks as if I’ve got a kale plant growing from last year’s sowing!

I took a walk over to St Mo’s after we got home and got PoD which is a shot of Horsetails looking like an alien jungle. Also, if you look in Flickr you’ll find a pugilistic Wolf Spider that just missed PoD and slightly confused mushroom that thinks it’s autumn come early! On the way back, I had a poke at the exhaust in Scamp’s wee Red car and it’s definitely needing a visit to Jim Dickson’s garage. I think it’s hanging by a thread just now.

Tomorrow we’ve decided it will be a gardening day. Lots to do there now that we have some warmth in the soil, so time to start things growing.

 

The morning after – 29 May 2022

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Thankfully I hadn’t had a lot to drink on Saturday, but even so, I did feel better after a shower in the hotel room’s wet-room.

We had a breakfast, the high point of which was watermelon chunks, there was no other fruit option. Dried up sausages, leathery bacon and tasteless black pudding. To quote Scamp “It filled a wee space”. We handed in our keys and drove home.

Travelling over the Kingston Bridge at around 10.30am is quite a delight, compared to the usual mile and a half of stop-go traffic jam that greets us any time after about 11am. For once I had nothing to complain about.

Back home we unloaded the car and Scamp loaded the washing machine, then we had lunch.

After that and after deciding we would eat out of the freezer today, I took a camera and the big macro lens out for a walk in St Mo’s and saw a blue flash when I was walking across the boardwalk. It was a damselfly. A Common Blue. The first one I’d seen this year, and a welcome sight. That made PoD. A walk in the woods couldn’t improve on that picture, so I headed home.

Watched a scary Monaco GP which started under the safety car in full wet conditions and ended with a fairly interesting last few laps. One scary looking crash when Mick Schumacher’s car hit the barrier and split into two. It’s testament to the fitness of these young drivers and to the safety features of modern F1 cars.

Spoke to Jamie later and heard about their short visit to Germany for a wedding and his twisted ankle. Compared and contrasted our gardens and weather. He sounded almost as tired as we felt.

I’d a few photos to look through, about 150 to work through, weeding out the weak and out of focus ones, but really not a bad haul from Saturday’s wedding on a camera that’s a pretty old design and a lens that’s not rated by anyone except me, I think. I’d been using the A6000 and the kit lens. Hoping to get a cheap memory stick tomorrow to stick the photos on for John & Marion.

A wee dram later for me and a rum ’n’ coke for Scamp to help us get a decent night’s sleep.

Tomorrow we may do some grass cutting if the weather stays dry.