Category: St Mo’s

We have snow – 27 December 2020

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Just a little scraping of snow, but it’s there.

It must have arrived during the night, but thankfully the tanker that brought it must have been almost empty, because there was so little there. We expected more to arrive during the day, but were disappointed, although there were some who rejoiced in the fact that the paths would be clear of the white stuff.

We didn’t do all that much today. I did finally put on my boots and take a camera with a couple of lenses out to St Mo’s in the afternoon. One of the lenses I took was my favourite wide angle Sigma 10-20mm. It works really well with the adapter. It focuses and responds to aperture adjustments. I realise this means nothing to most folk, but I’ve always liked this lens. It’s big and heavy and was expensive when I bought it, but it produces great images. Thanks to a fairly cheap adapter it still produces them. The Sony recognises its firmware and crops the frame to an APS-C size. It’s a pity it doesn’t fill the full frame, but there’s nothing I can do about that. I’m just delighted it still takes great photos. It was the lens that took PoD which was in the woods behind the pond at St Mo’s. Behind me was a clutter of broken Bucky bottles, beer cans and deodorant cans that allegedly some people sniff for a cheap high that has the benefit of making you a nicely perfumed corpse.

Back home, Scamp was making a trifle with pieces of Pandoro which is Italian Christmas cake. Very light and fluffy and usually dusted with icing sugar. Today it formed the base of a beautiful trifle. It was Turkey Casserole for dinner, but it wasn’t the best turkey in the flock I think. Nothing to do with the cooking, it appears from a few complaints that Tesco wasn’t the best place for turkeys this year. I suppose you could say it WAS the turkey!

Tonight we played Tin Pin Bowls, so called because all the component parts fitted neatly into a small tin. Scamp won, but I think she cheated. After her resounding win we made origami Christmas Trees, and then origami Penguins. Another of her impressive Christmas Prezzies. Great fun was had by both. The penguins actually looked fairly realistic, when viewed at the correct angle … and from a distance!

Tomorrow we may move on to more advanced origami and after a couple of bowling lessons I might manage to get a strike. It’s forecast for more snow.

The shortest day – 21 December 2020

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We don’t get much light at the best of times, but today was dark.

When I started the car this morning to drive up to the town centre, the headlights came on. It was just after 10.30am. Today was the Shortest Day.  The Winter Equinox.  I was going to meet Val for coffee and a wee technology catchup. When we were waiting to be served one of the staff in Costa was a bit too aggressive, shouting at us to step back, step back. He seemed to think that the 2m distance measures on the floor were underestimates. I realise they are under pressure, but they have to realise that their customers are people and treat them appropriately. I didn’t shout at him, why should he shout at me. The rest of the staff were relaxed and treated all the customers with good humour. “One bad apple … “

We spent an interesting hour or so, catching up and discussing Val’s new electronics projects using Arduino kits which remind me of the electronics boards we used in school for a while in Tech Studies. He’s really getting into this area of experimentation which is not surprising with his electronics background and his programming skills learned from the Raspberry Pi.

After I left him I went to look for a pair of walking boots to replace the leaky Merrells. The only place in Cumbersheugh where you can get them is Sports Direct. None of the boots they had on display looked like they would be better than the Merrells, in fact one of them proudly displayed the fact that they weren’t waterproof. Really? What use are walking boots that don’t even claim to be waterproof? Are they only for wearing indoors. I could almost forgive them if they had been fashionable, but they just look like big clumpy brown boots, boots that would melt in the rain, though. I went home.

After lunch we headed back out again, this time to Tesco and got a turkey crown that didn’t cost as much as the Queen’s Crown. It was a bit smaller and didn’t have the bacon wrapping that the M&S offering had, but I’m sure it will be dressed up well once Scamp gets started.

After we got back and stored all the food away, I went for a walk in St Mo’s. It was already growing dark, but I wanted to take a photo outside on the shortest day of the year. I got a few candidates, but PoD went to an almost monochrome shot of reeds reflected in the still waters of the pond. A few ripples too to add some texture. If you look carefully you can see little green leaves showing above the water.

I made tomato soup for dinner and it was so good, Scamp, after finishing her first bowl, immediately refilled it. Having said that, it could have been the croutons that brightened it up. More left for lunch tomorrow.

We missed the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn tonight. It happened around 5pm and apparently would have looked like the Star of Bethlehem, except in the north-west not the east. Perhaps it did look spectacular, but we wouldn’t have been able to see it because it was raining at the time of the conjunction. The rain coming from the big black clouds that covered the whole sky. Gallingly, those clouds rolled away later, once both planets were below the horizon.

Tomorrow Scamp’s car is getting its windscreen repaired. It’s got a crack , down near the dashboard and that crack isn’t going to get any smaller, so she bit the bullet and paid the excess so that person from Autoglass would come to the house and repair it. Other than that, nothing else we need to do, except watch the days lengthen as we head towards Spring.

Lockdown Blues – 20 December 2020

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We’re not really there yet, but we know it’s coming.

I suppose I should get the pencils sharpened and the pens refilled for more lockdown sketches, because we are being condemned to at least three weeks of virtual lockdown as Nic puts most of Scotland into level 4 as a precaution. Yes, it makes sense, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

We were entertained by Andrew Marr this morning tearing at the poor health minister Matt Hancock like a demented Jack Russell. The poor man hardly got a chance to answer one question before another two were being fired at him by Marr. I think we both felt just a little bit sorry for him. He managed to parry a few of Marr’s thrusts, but I’m sure he felt punch drunk after doing down for the third time in round two.

It was a dull day weather wise too. A bit wet at times, but mainly just grey. However I got my boots on, grabbed the camera bag and headed off to get some photos. My first stop was the tree where the little ladybird had been hibernating before my too bright light disturbed it. At first I couldn’t see it, then I found it about 50cm further up the trunk. Grabbed a few shots, both with the old Sigma lens and also with the Sony. The Sony won hands down, but now I realise that the anti-shake wasn’t set to the correct focal length for the Nikon which is quite an old lens and doesn’t send all its information to the camera electronically. Still, I got a few shots to remind me of where it was.

The ladybird didn’t make PoD, but another spot in the woods gave me a pretty landscape type shot. It looks so calm, but beyond that fence there is a four lane motorway with all sorts of vehicular transport rumbling along it day and night, summer and winter. There’s hardly a ripple on that wee stream to distort the tree reflections. PoD, even before I processed it. I also grabbed a mono shot of some weeds which completes a full week of monochromatic images.

Spoke to JIC in the evening and found out that both he and his sister are in level 4. That’s the whole family in it! Have we been bad or something? Is it because I called the respective leaders Bumbling Boris and The Littlest Witch? If so, I’m sorry, but they both deserve it. The leaders, not the siblings, that is.

Dinner tonight was Haggis, Neeps and Tatties. What a brilliant brightener for a dull day. Just as long as you don’t ask what was in the haggis. You don’t want to know.

That was about it for today. Hoping to meet Val for coffee and some technological chat tomorrow and then Scamp and I might visit Tesco to look for a turkey, a small one, if such a thing exists.

Back to my old self – 14 December 2020

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I felt a lot better when I got up this morning, thankfully.

Scamp was out early to meet Isobel for coffee. Although I feel fine, I didn’t want to risk spreading my cold germ with Isobel and anyway, you probably know my thoughts on Costa coffee. With some peace and quiet, I managed to tweak some of the settings on the Synology NAS to make it run a bit quieter while still doing its technological housekeeping. Now I just have to work out how to get it to clean the shower and empty the dishwasher.

When Scamp came home she brought with her half a dozen rolls and a packet of square sliced sausage. Well, that was my lunch sorted. Actually I was a bit more careful than normal and only had the one roll and one sausage. The rest of the sausages I’ve frozen and bagged. After lunch the sky was clearing from its usual featureless milky white. Scamp was getting herself organised to start packing boxes for delivery down south. I was getting myself organised for taking photos.

I did a couple of circuits of the pond at St Mo’s, then I had a walk into the woods to see if the ladybird was still there. It was, but when I turned on my portable LED light it started moving, maybe the light was just too bright. I decided enough was enough and took my leave. PoD went to an initially dodgy shot of a couple of trees. Initially dodgy, but with a bit of work in Lightroom it turned out ok. It’s mono, but that ticks the ‘Mono Monday’ box in my Flickr albums. Next time I might remember to check my settings BEFORE taking the shot, rather than after. It’s a bit like the snooker player’s maxim, “Chalk the cue before you take the shot.”

Although I feel a lot better, I’m going to have another early night with extra vitamin C and maybe a couple of paracetamol.

I’m just watching the weather forecast as I write this and it looks set fair for us tomorrow. We might get out for a walk somewhere it it keeps dry.

When the cactus is in bloom – 10 December 2020

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When there’s nothing else to photograph, you have to resort to flowers.

Today was another dull day. Not surprising, just disappointing. We had to wait in because I was getting coffee delivered from The Bean Shop in Perth and I didn’t want it to be left in the bin shed. It’s far too important for that, besides, I had lots of stuff to do. Computer stuff.

I was going to try to access that bloody Linux based hard drive – Now don’t switch off JIC. There is going to be the barest minimum Technospeak here. I won’t go into the details of what I was going to do, just that I was going to get the MacBook Pro to speak Linux for a while. To do that I had to clear away a bit of its memory so I could fit in some Linux language there. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all do that. Just clear away a bit of our brain and put in, say, a French module and then we’d be able to speak and understand English and French. I think it’s a great idea. Maybe I should suggest it to Boris Johnson. Then he’d be able to understand what the French are really saying about him. That might make him sit back on his heels for a while instead of just bumbling on.
I didn’t actually get the task completed, although I’m in a better place to ‘Get Linux Done’ tomorrow, to quote the aforementioned Bumbler.

We went for a walk after the coffee arrived, just down to the shops for the essentials for dinner which strangely enough contained a bottle of wine! I wonder how that happened. On the way back we split up. Scamp went home and I went to walk round St Mo’s. I took a few desultory shots of cow parsley, but didn’t notice that I was shooting wide open – never a good thing. I stole ‘desultory’ from a Paul Simon song “A Simple Desultory Philippic”. Back home I decided on the Christmas Cactus as a subject. It usually manages to keep its flowers until Christmas Day. I wonder how it knows. Maybe it’s a Christian Cactus.

After dinner, Bacon and Borlotti beans thanks to the Stotfold duo’s recipe, I set up a still life in the painting room. I’d bought a little hand held LED light at the shops and it proved very useful for creating directional shadows on the white background of the still life. I actually intended to put it in my camera bag to use for when the light was poor like most of this week. It might just work in to open air too. I’ll probably get plenty of chance to test it in the next few days. I liked the finished photos and one became PoD.

Tomorrow it looks like more rain is on the way, but the good news is the non-essential shops are going to be open. Restaurants have to wait until Saturday, though. Scamp is not pleased. We’ve agreed that we won’t be going crazy in the shops at the weekend but we’ll go and have a look next week, all being well. Until then we’ll stay in, stay safe and ‘Get Linux Done.’

By the way, John Fahey has a guitar piece called “When The Catfish Is In Bloom”. I paraphrased it for the title of today’s blog.

Dull December – 9 December 2020

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Out for a walk around Broadwood.

We thought it would be a good idea to go out for a walk in the morning when there is at least a chance of getting back in the light. It sort of worked. I took the Sony with me, but it never got out of the bag. We walked round the boardwalk and watched the goosanders and the tufted ducks diving into the sludgy water, fishing for minnows or small perch.  Then  along the dam  past the walkers having their tea and blocking the whole width of the path.  From there we went down the other side and up along the exercise machines path before going through the tunnels under the roundabout and back home. About an hour in all and fairly comfortable temperature, but the sun never shone all the way. Dull and cloudy, but good company and conversation.  I suppose this sort of weather is all you can expect at this time of year in Scotland. Scotland in Lockdown in Winter. What a marvellous time of the year.

After lunch I was determined to get a photo, so while Scamp walked over to get stamps at the post office, I walked around St Mo’s and found today’s PoD. Tiny little toadstools growing on the branch of a dead tree. Managed to find some light behind them and it helped a bit, but not a lot. Without some real sunshine there is no colour. And also  without some decent light you are really pushing even a good camera like the Sony.  Maybe tomorrow the sun will break through and we’ll get some decent photos.

Those two walks were the highlights of the day. Actually the first one was so much better than the second. I’m becoming fed up with St Mo’s. The whole place is like a quagmire. The continuous rain every two or three days doesn’t get a chance to drain away on the occasional dry days then more rain piles in on already saturated ground. However, Scamp keeps reminding me that it’s only a couple of weeks until the shortest day and after that the days will begin to lengthen and lighten.

Today felt like a repeat of yesterday. Went for a walk. Came home. Even dinner today was just the same as yesterday. Tomorrow we may have something different and maybe a walk in a different place if it’s dry.

Getting out and about – 7 December 2020

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We went for the messages.

In the morning we drove to Tesco for bread, milk and apples. Fairly basic. We came home with a whole lot more than those essentials, but no more gin. Bumped into Colin C and Evelyn and got some of his news. Some of his extended family had picked up the the infection and had to self isolate, so Colin and Evelyn were looking after them, when it should be the other way around. He said he’d seen Fred when he came into the store, but there was no sign of him. He was probably hiding.

Back home and after lunch Scamp decided the paths were safe enough to go for a walk in St Mo’s, just to get some fresh air. We did one circuit of the pond and crossed paths with a bloke I usually bump into there and pass the time of day. He does clockwise circuits, I do anti-clockwise. I hadn’t realised until he said so. We’re both usually there alone, today he was with (I assume) his wife and I was with Scamp. I was just saying to Scamp that I usually bump into him on my circuit of the pond and she said “He’s probably saying that to his wife too.” So it was confirmed, the woman was his wife. Women know these things.

I’d got three photos in all the time we were out and I swithered (Great word it means I couldn’t make up my mind) about using them or going out to get more. Got slightly better photos of the ladybird (still only one) and some fungi with ice on the top, but PoD went to the landscape. Taken about the same time of day as yesterdays and has the same basic colours. Yesterday’s colours were part of the ‘cheating’ today’s colours have not been messed with.

While I was cleaning up the photos, Scamp was talking to her sister on the phone and sharing news and views with Skye. Then I found an excellent set of tutorial videos on the Synology NAS by a bloke on YouTube. If you’re interested, it’s called mydoodads. Much, much better than the tutorials from Synology itself.

Well, it seems that JIC has to wait for a while for his chance to complete his Cranford course. The tutor was in touch to say that he had a ‘family emergency’ and would re-schedule. No luck son. Some folk just have to do it the hard way … every time.

Rain forecast for tomorrow, so we’ll have to wait and see if a walk is on the cards.

F is for Fog – 3 December 2020

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It rolled in on silent wheels today.

When we were having breakfast the snow was crisp and even. The hills were clear and there was just the hint of sun. Within an hour the hills had disappeared, as had the sun. Then the fog drifted down and the snow was turning into slush. I decided to go out and get an early(ish) moody photo in the fog. I waited on the path to St Mo’s to let a girl get past, because the slush was starting to freeze. It also gave me time to frame her into the shot you see here. I didn’t realise then, but that was to be PoD. By the time I’d walked into St Mo’s, the fog was lifting and the temperature was dropping. Scotland, the weather here just can’t stand still, it needs to be constantly changing.

Got another shot in the thinning fog of an old tree in the park with the faded forest in the background. Very moody and etherial. You can see it in Flickr. I wanted to get a shot of the ladybirds I’d seen yesterday (and also on the 3rd of December 2017 – how neat is that!). However, the light was a bit low and the snow was melting on the branches of the trees and it was just too uncomfortable. I got half a dozen shots and decided enough was enough. My feet were wet, my hands were freezing and I was going home. I got a few more icy and snowy shots before I stumbled home.

Scamp wanted some stuff in Tesco and we didn’t have a delivery booked until the 17th, so we decided to do it the old fashioned way and go to the shop. Beside which, Scamp wanted a look around, because sometimes you see things (too many things sometimes) that you’d forgotten to put on your list. So, we drove to Tesco. It’s the first time Blue has been out in the snow and it seemed to perform well. Not a hint of slipping and sliding. There were fairly long queues for the checkouts as we’d thought there might be. We had just reached the front of our queue when this woman appeared and seemed to want to sneak in front of us. Not that’s a red rag to a bull.

“Eh. Excuse me, there’s a queue.”
She looked nonplussed and said “I’ve been waiting here for a while. My husband has been keeping my place.”
“So have I” I said, “And I’ve been waiting IN THE QUEUE.” (the poor bloke hadn’t been in the queue)
She still wouldn’t give in, so I said quite loudly “SO, ARE YOU JUST GOING TO SHOVE IN THEN?” Loud enough that everyone nearby could hear.
At that she harrumphed and said “Well, if you’re going to be like that …” and walked down the aisle to the self service checkouts dragging her husband on his lead. Poor man. He’ll suffer for that later.

Back home we got our first Christmas cards of the year and got the decorations out of the loft. We also changed the upstairs and downstairs curtains. Tomorrow we are hoping to put the tree up. After that, I’m sure we’ll feel a lot better.

Tonight I painted the landscape that was in my head for yesterday. I really didn’t like the sketch of the tin of lager. The lager is good, but the drawing wasn’t up to standard. Tonight’s landscape, although one of my standards was much more satisfying to paint and also looked better than the tin.

Since I’ve now found a way to extract the data from the old NAS disk, I’m going to make a fresh start with a new NAS. Ordered it from Amazon tonight and it’s not a WD My Cloud. It’s a Synology DS220j. The WD worked quite well for the three or four years I had it, but it was erratic. Let’s hope this one is better.

It looks like more snow is forecast for early tomorrow morning and it’s -0.6º just now, so I doubt if we’ll be going far.

Cold and Bright – 30 November 2020

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Cloudy and dull to start the day, but later the sky cleared.

Scamp was off to Tesco in the morning, leaving me to start my tidying of my half of the living room. It might not look like it, but it is tidier now than when I started. I was also tasked with some internet research that I cannot divulge as yet. Suffice to say it was successful, I hope. When Scamp returned, there was much rustling of paper and a box was packed. With that done it was my turn to do my part in this project and I had the experience of walking through a town centre with almost every shop closed. While a pre-recorded message was telling anyone who wanted to listen that “The Antonine Centre has all your favourite shops under one roof.” Yes, there are still a few shops in the centre, it’s just that none of them are open! I did my posting and the box changed hands.

By the time I came out the clouds had lifted and I was walking under a blue sky. I did think about going for a drive to take some photos, but decided that lunch would be a better option, so I drove home.

After lunch Scamp wanted to do some gardening and I wanted to take some photos. We decided on a fair division of labour. She did the gardening I did the photography. Couldn’t get any decent photos today. The light was good and the sky was still blue, but things just weren’t working out until I was headed home and saw today’s PoD in front of me. I took three shots of it and this is the only one that was in focus. That didn’t matter to me, I had a PoD.

<Technospeak>
In the evening I got a FB message from Colin (Not Colin C, but Colin B) with a suggestion for a way to get the data off the NAS drive. Basically he had connected his NAS drive to a Raspberry Pi which runs on a subset of Linux and then copied the files from there to a removable drive. Now that would be a lot easier than my idea of dual booting the MBP and doing it that way. I’m thinking it might just work. Thank you Colin, because I know you read this.
</Technospeak>

Today’s Sketch of the Day is “J” for Jelly Beans, traditional jelly beans. Lovely soft, shiny outer sugar shell with the jelly inside. And the colours, oh the colours! What’s not to like?
One of our favourite local Thai/Chinese restaurants, The Cotton House at Longcroft, presents you with a little cardboard tub of these with your bill. Certainly sweetens the paying part!

Tomorrow I must be up early to drive up to the doc’s to get my shingles jag! I don’t like jags, so I hope I get a sweetie for going, or at least a gold star!

Cold and dreary – 29 November 2020

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Frost on the cars and the rooftops this morning.

I thought I’d go out and get some photos, but I waited too long to go and by then almost all that photogenic frost had melted to water. Now that the leaves have lost their autumn colours and are beginning to deteriorate, only a few trees still shine. I’d taken the Oly with me is well as the Sony to hopefully get some macro shots and landscapes, but it looked like the Oly was the only one with a chance of capturing any images. I was right. The PoD is a drip hanging from a pine branch, taken with the Oly and its macro lens. I took about four shots with the Sony and none of them were really successful.

After lunch I spent my time culling the photos, rejecting some and accepting others then processing some of those photos that passed the test. That meant I could post them and get on with the next task which was the sketch of the day.

Sticking with the alphabetic scheme for sketches, I’d already decided that today’s “I” would be “Ink”. W&N ink in this case. I really like their retro little bottles. Unfortunately, I don’t like their ink, just the bottles. My go-to ink is Higgins Fountain Pen Ink. It’s a true black unlike some of the others I’ve tried. It’s water soluble and that allows me to create a nice dark grey with a waterbrush. Annoyingly it comes in a nondescript plastic bottle. So, ink from Higgins and bottle from W&N. That’s what got me to today’s sketch.

Spoke to JIC after dinner and sympathised with him having to go the dentist to repair a broken filling and possibly having to pay for it. Double whammy, JIC.

Scariest GP for ages with Grojean crashing into the barrier on the first lap and the car splitting into two in a great ball of fire. Thankfully he walked away from what could have been a very serious crash.

Rain predicted for tomorrow as the clouds roll in and the temperature rises … a bit. That means we might get a walk, but only might.