Category: St Mo’s

A Toy off the Rack – 12 June 2020

Posted on by Zogman

Ah, but all is not as it seems. Read on dear reader!

I got a text message this morning from Parcelforce: “Sorry but there’s been a delay to your parcel and we are no longer able to deliver it today …”. Blah, blah, blah “… it will now be delivered next working day (Monday to Friday)”. Can’t say I was all that surprised, I’d read the comments about Parcelforce, but as it was the only option for a decent timeslot, I took it. Should have known. My only previous dealings with Wex, the supplier of the lens, was before the New World Order started and then I could get my stuff delivered free to the Glasgow shop. Of course, now the shop is shut and I have to rely on flaky Parcelforce. I complained to Wex and they agreed to reimburse me for the fiver I’d paid for next day delivery, but I think this is the last time I’ll buy from them until they use someone who can actually deliver the goods (no pun intended.). I live in hope.

So, if that wasn’t the Toy, what was? Well, Scamp started searching through Which to find a new tablet. Her old one only has 8GB storage and although you can bung in a 64GB micro SD card, the OS and most of the apps must go on the on-board storage. It’s daft, but true. Even a quarter of the way into the 21st century, we’re still living with these unnecessary restrictions. She did find one that suited her and her price range and we could actually get it today from Currys. We had to pay for it up front and then wait for an email telling us to drive to the nominated Currys to get the handover. It was all very hush-hush. You drive to the store and park in one of the bays. Send a message to Currys to say that you have arrived, adding the make, model and colour of your car as well as the last three characters of its licence plate. Then a black clad attendant approaches and tells you to open the boot. Another operative approaches with the item you’ve purchased and places it in the boot and tells you you are free to leave. I felt like switching on Sport mode and doing the smoking tyres take-off out of the area in case there were snipers or at the very least NPR cameras tracking our every move. It was all a bit like a dodgy drug deal (not that I’ve ever participated in such a thing, of course, but a friend of mine told me that …).

Safely home we unboxed the tablet and plugged it in. Thankfully it uses a USB-C connector. At last there’s a hint that someone is making technology for use by humans, not tech savvy nerds. With it plugged in and a smile on Scamp’s face, I walked over to St Mo’s with my Oly and the old macro lens looking for something interesting to photograph. The something turned out to be a Marsh Orchid. Not something rare, but it does look quite exotic. They grow on a lot of the waste land in St Mo’s.

Tonight was spent transferring data and apps from the old tablet to the new one. We’re almost there now and I think I might even treat myself to a new tablet soon too. My old one is getting slow. My ancient one is almost dead and suffers from even more problems than Scamp’s old tablet. Maybe I’m just dying to wear the black polo neck sweater and the dark glasses and talk in passwords again to black clad operatives outside Currys.

Tomorrow it looks like rain.

Another gardening day – 9 June 2020

Posted on by Zogman

For Scamp it was. I was only the labourer.

Scamp set out in the morning with her tool belt on ready to do battle with the Pieris and the Rhododendron. She worked like a trojan scraping away the moss and compacted top soil on both, then pruned the pieris then together we hauled it around until it was sitting in a better position. My job for the day was to repot the Rosemary which had been stuck in a rather small pot for quite some time now and we’d been promising it a new pot with fresh compost for a while now. Today was the day. Again, it was moved to a sunnier spot in the garden, although there wasn’t a lot of sun for it to sit in today. It was all a bit dull and grey.

After lunch we walked to the shops to get tortilla wraps, broccoli and smoked salmon for tonight’s dinner which was to be quick quiche. Found the recipe in an old newspaper where they used a tortilla wrap instead of shortcrust pastry for the base and sides of the quiche. What a difference it makes. Done in half the time with no faffing around chilling the pastry or blind baking.

Walked back and it felt like there was just the hint of rain in the wind. I decided to ignore it and go for a walk in St Mo’s just to make sure I had a photo for today. I saw a bloke fly fishing in the pond. I’ve heard of Fly Fishing in Yemen, but this must be the first time I’ve seen anyone fly fishing in the pond at St Mo’s. I suppose it’s possible to catch perch or maybe even a small pike with a fly, but usually it’s blokes with umbrellas, gigantic bait boxes and a six pack of Tennents or the sneaky little bottle of Bucky who sit there all day. This bloke was standing and moving. He was doing some nifty casts too. It might take you some time to see him, he’s well camouflaged! That photo got PoD. Those eagle eyed out there might have noticed in the photo that there were a lot of rain splashes in the water. I decided to cut short my walk and head for home, only having a hoodie as rain protection.

The quiche was lovely. Broccoli and smoked salmon. Something Jackie taught me up in Skye. It’s a very good combination. Scamp made another quiche, a Quiche Lorraine, but the flavours weren’t as strong as the first one.

Target for today was to Draw Something Huge. After a great deal of thought, I decided on the head-up kelpie. I can’t remember if he is Duke or Baron, all I know is that the head-down kelpie likes to be called Harry the Happy Kelpie, but that’s something he told me and it’s supposed to be a secret, so don’t go blabbing it. Pencil rough then Lamy ABC kids fountain pen (great for sketching), then a gentle water wash to give some light shadows. Always difficult to sketch such an icon, but I think I got away with it.

Tomorrow it looks wet for most of the afternoon. Maybe I’ll be proven wrong. I hope I am.

Domain disaster averted – 5 June 2020

Posted on by Zogman

You’re lucky to be reading this!

It all started with an email this morning telling me that my domain name (the bit that starts ‘dhcampbell’) had expired and if I didn’t do something about it, i.e. pay them money, I’d lose the website. Well, that was a nice thing to read on a Saturday morning. I checked the address the email had come from and it was genuine, so I tried to contact my domain name provider, but couldn’t find an email address for them on their site. I did find a ‘chat’ box, but that timed out after a few minutes. After waiting for 20mins on the phone to them, I gave up on that too. Long story short, I eventually found that I could log a return call from them and did that. Had lunch and then Scamp and I went out for a walk. A very quiet walk on my part. Came home and checked for a reply, but there were none. Then I found a message to the effect that the message that started it all off was not about my domain at all, it was about a site they’d held for me “as a goodwill gesture”! It would have possibly have been an good idea to tell me that some time in the last year. I got the phone call from the help line exactly on time and the person on the other end confirmed what it said on the message. A message that had only been posted at 3.08pm today. I think I now know why. I’m guessing their switchboard was jammed with irate callers wanting to know what the hell they were doing. I may be looking for another domain name provider soon.

Our walk in the afternoon was round St Mo’s pond and then Scamp told me she was going to go to the butchers to get me a steak for dinner and I was to walk round the pond again and get some photos. There was nothing really worth photographing today, but I went anyway. It was only on the way home I found today’s PoD when a bee landed on the Marguerite flower I was photographing and made it much more interesting.

Scamp potted up her new rose today and it does look very elegant. Beautiful big pink flowers and what a perfume. I think she likes it!

Steak was very nice. Just on the over side of medium rare. Juicy and just what I needed to calm down.

Quick sketch today of two garlic bulbs. Couldn’t find anything I wanted to draw, so I reverted to another list. An old EDiM list this time. Looks much better than the 2020 list, although it was written at a time ago when we were free, there were shops, great metal birds flew in the sky and every year we were allowed to go on holiday. Seems like a long time ago, doesn’t it.

Tomorrow looks a bit warmer and calmer than today. It was a bit breezy!

A fair bit cooler – 3 June 2020

Posted on by Zogman

It was a bit of a culture shock the 10º drop in temperature, but it made a pleasant change … sort of!

Watched a social distanced Cheltenham Science Festival which was compéred by a friend of ours Jamie G. It was about colour and the various presenters produced a great show with limited resources. Impressed

Spoke to Hazy later in the morning and caught up with a few things like gardens and temperatures. For once, we were warmer than down south, well, we had been warmer before today.

After the phone went down I set to work putting the bathroom back to the way it had been before Monday. That took a bit longer than I anticipated because most of the tubes of silicone I was going to use as adhesive to stick the plastic boards back on were either going off, or had been used before and were solid. I found one more expensive tube that had been part used, but was still liquid inside and that got the job done. It sometimes pays to use the full price materials rather than B&Q own brand. With the bathroom sorted, I had to do the same thing with the cupboard in the back bedroom. The boxed-in part of the cupboard had been ripped out when I was trying in vain to find an isolator to turn the water off to the toilet on Monday. That’s why I was replacing the panels in the toilet. This was easier. I just drilled a few holes in the plywood and screwed it in place with wood screws. Oh, the benefit of having a power drill with screwdriver bits. Pity the batteries are so bog awful.

After lunch we went out for a walk round St Mo’s. We went round once and then Scamp went home for coffee and cake, while I did another circuit to get a PoD which turned out to be the spider you see here.

Yesterday I did do a sketch. It was a quick pen sketch of my well worn Palomino Blackwing soft pencil. A Christmas present from Hazy and Neil-D. Great sketching pencil, probably the best ones I’ve ever used. I still have nine left, but will keep using this one until it’s right down to a nub. I’ve got a pencil extender ready for that eventuality, but it’s actually quite comfortable using a small pencil. Try it sometime.
Today’s sketch was a pencil sketch of my baseball hat. Bought about this time last year to take on holiday. I don’t think it will be going far this year.

Tomorrow we may go out somewhere for a drive. More rain forecast. If I have time I’ll take the bike out for that trial run.

Up early again for the last day in May – 31 May 2020

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That didn’t mean that we were doing much more than getting up, but it was a start.

We finally chose to go for a walk after Scamp had spoken to her wee sister and told her she’s been talking to her big sister yesterday. Also after I’d hung out most of the washing. It was much cooler and much breezier than yesterday with the wind coming from the east. We walked round St Mo’s and then paused for fifteen to twenty minutes watching half a dozen dragonflies, not damselflies, big dragonflies clattering about the wee pond. Some were obviously females, busy egg laying and some were males chasing off the competition, but they all combined to show off their aerial skills as they flew round and between the various obstructions in their path, which included us. Utterly fascinating and perfect for taking you out of yourself and the problems of this new world we are living in.

Back home and time for a Sunday lunch of eggs, black pudding, beef-ham, sausage and tattie scones, all fried. It’s ok to eat healthy six days of the week but on the seventh you can fry your food.

We knew the good weather wasn’t going to last, so Scamp made the most of it. She slapped on the Factor 50 and took herself and her book out into the garden to soak up some rays. I adjourned to the ‘Painting Room’ to sketch today’s drawing which was ‘A Phone’. My choice was an old black bakelite rotary dial phone. They have so much more soul than the black glass slabs we use for everything from sending messages to photographing everything and occasionally even speaking to people. The old black bakelite phones were used for speaking to people and nothing else. I got the basic shape drawn and photographed, then put some black watercolour on it to give some tonal gradation. Happy with the result, I went out for a walk with the ‘big dog’ to see if the dragons had calmed down.

Thankfully they had calmed down and I did get a handful of decent shots, but only after rejecting a bucket load of junk. Today’s PoD was one of the best. It’s a Four Spotted Chaser and it was resting after a strenuous morning.

Got back just in time for dinner to be served. It was Neil-D’s lovely summer style rice and chicken with a variety of veg and condiments. Avocado as starter and Churros as a dessert. A nice bottle of Malbec to wash it down and then a seat outside to watch the sun go down. That’s what the last day of metrological spring is made for.

I watered the back garden afterwards while Scamp fed the front garden plants with some seaweed fertiliser. Coffee to finish off, with a drop of alcohol to take the edge off it.

Not a bad day, all in all. Hopefully we’ll manage one more day of this early heat before the rain comes in the middle of the week. May go and see a man about a bike wheel tomorrow.

The early bird get the photo – 30 May 2020

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Out at around 7.30am because Scamp wanted a photo of her trio of azaleas and I had worked out that 7.30am would be as near as damnit the right time. It was … nearly. Took the photo and went back to bed.

Shock, Horror! No breakfast in bed today. Up before 8.30 and breakfast in the living room. Next, we’ll be having breakfast at the table, or is that a step too far?

After breakfast we went for a walk. What’s become our ‘new normal’ walk. Down around the football stadium and back up the hill. It’s a good mile or so and is not too busy. Apart from joggers, I think we only passed three people today. If we’d crossed the dam we’d have been dodging the socially un-distancing hordes. It was a pleasant day with a slight breeze. Enough to cool you without feeling cold. When we passed the shops the queues were extraordinary. It was a Saturday and it was warm and there were no other kinds of shops open yet, so I suppose it was just the desire to buy something … anything! We didn’t feel the need, so we didn’t join them at this point.

Back home for coffee and a plan for the day. Scamp wanted walk over and visit her sister after lunch. That would give me time to get today’s sketch of a geranium completed with a bit of luck. Luck was on my side for once and, although not as satisfying as yesterday’s painting, todays was ‘adequate’. That’s all, just adequate. I had just finished it and was sitting in the garden with a pair of bluetooth headphones on so I didn’t need to listen to ‘Brain of Britain’ next door proving that empty barrels do indeed make the most noise, when Scamp phoned to ask if she should get a chicken for dinner. Apparently the queues from this morning had decreased significantly. I agreed that it would be good and walked down to the shops to meet her. We just had a basket this time, so bought more or less what we needed and no more.

Still a very pleasant day and much more comfortable than yesterday. I didn’t think the azaleas would cut it as PoD so went out to find some beasties. Scamp went out to sunbathe. She has this enviable ability to tune out distractions when she’s reading because ‘BoB’ was still droning on to anyone who would listen and also to anyone who wouldn’t.

Managed to get a clean shot of a Common Blue damselfly. Isn’t it a terrible shame calling anything ‘Common’. We humans are so superior in their outlook aren’t we. Well humans in general are, but not me. I’m generous to a fault. I wouldn’t call anything or anyone ‘Common’.

Dinner was brilliant. Roast chicken with roast vegetables and potatoes baked in the oven, followed by real fruit cocktail, not your common tinned stuff!

Tomorrow, weather wise, we are expecting more of the same, but after that there may be rain!! Oh No! But the gardens need the rain.

Another hot one – 28 May 2020

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Out for a walk, but only to the shops today.

Walked down to the shops to get tonight’s dinner and ended up with a fair bit more than that. That’s the problem with having to take a trolley (no baskets). There’s a tendency to lift more than you really need, and that’s what we did. Went to get a curry for dinner and came home with three bags full of stuff and a bunch of flowers. Wore our new facemasks in the shop. First thoughts are that the elastic is too tight and my mask is a bit small. Maybe I’ve just got a big head!

Listened with interest to Nick the Chick’s declaration about what phase 1 of the release from lockdown will mean. I like her delivery. It seems sensible, professional and calculated. Still don’t like her, but despite her small stature and big heels, she is head and shoulders above Bumbling Boris. Some nice little snipes from her about Dominic Cummings too. Nothing that could be seen as libel or slander, but quite pointed none the less.

Spent the afternoon trying to copy Lucy’s mask. I think I made a fair go of it, but I’m still not sure how to easily join the outside skin to the inside like she did. It’s definitely not as neat as her professional looking stitchery. May try a slightly different shape tomorrow.

Went for a walk in St Mo’s while Scamp soaked up the sun in the garden. She was well protected with factor 50, I know, I’m the one who has to rub it in to her back and today I dried my hands by rubbing the remainder into my face. Got some photos of a bright green spider. After some research I discovered it was a Cucumber Green Spider and fairly common. I’ve never seen one here before. Only one damselfly and it was far too skittish to get a decent shot of.

Sat in the garden after dinner which was actually quite good. For once I’d say it needed a bit of salt, but Scamp didn’t! Sat with a glass or red and took in some rays. Then went to do today’s sketch which is poor, very poor. The task was to sketch A Water Tap. I chose the plastic tap on the wash hand basin in the downstairs toilet, because I was fed up with drawing metal. The only good thing about drawing in a toilet is there is a place to sit!

Tomorrow! Tomorrow we will be allowed a tiny smidgin of our freedom back. We may go out for a run somewhere!

Yet another beautiful day – 27 May 2020

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Another day when it was criminal to lie in bed.

So out we went again. Just a short walk this time and fairly local. Didn’t drive 30 miles just to check our eyesight as the ridiculous Dominic Cummings claimed he did. Does he really think we believe him? Does he really think our collective heads button up the back? I’m sure he’s right that Boris’s head does. Just a wee walk then. Got my first damselfly shots of this year and just as I was congratulating myself on the capture, I watched a blur of red as a damselfly appeared from stage left, grabbed a moth or maybe a fly that was sunning itself on a horse tail and scoffed it for its lunch. Amazing! It was all over in a couple of seconds.

Back home well in time for our own lunch (not a moth sandwich), then waited around the house for the Asda driver to discharge his load of groceries. With all the stuff safely stashed away, Scamp went out plastered in factor 50 to read in the sun and I took the ‘big dog’ out to see what we could see. And what we saw was one deer that saw me first and wasn’t ready for its close-up, so it made a sharp exit. Saw some tadpoles that have just the hint of frog legs appearing and also spotted Mr Grey studiously stalking something at the edge of the reed beds. Got a couple of grab shots of a pale coloured damselfly among the gorse bushes, but nothing really sharp.

Spent some time when I got back sketching out the shape of the panels of Lucy’s mask. Used Inkscape which is a free, open source vector graphics package that now runs cleanly on a Mac. Much more sophisticated than it used to be in its previous incarnation. Still more clunky than Corel, but it’s free and it works. A useful tool for the arsenal.

Today’s PoD is mating damselflies. Pretty standard, but the colours look more saturated than usual. That’s probably due to the strong sunshine they were taken in. Sketch of the day was ‘Keys’ and was just another attempt at rendering metal in ink and watercolour. Not nearly as good as yesterday’s, but still a worthwhile practise piece.

Tomorrow if the weather is good we may go out walking again. If it’s not I’m going to attempt a Lucy Mask.

No rain today – 24 May 2020

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Well, almost no rain, and there was a fair bit of sun.

Watched the Andrew Marr show while we had lunch and we were both shocked with his ferocity and tenacity when interviewing the Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps. I don’t think he asked him one question about Transport or the effects of Lockdown on it. He constantly attacked the poor guy about what he knew about Dominic Cummings and his Lockdown breaking visit to Durham. What is his problem with the man? Obviously something about him bugs poor Andrew.  Or maybe it’s both Shapps and Cummings that get under his skin, it certainly seemed so today.

We went for a walk today over to St Mo’s and from there down to Craiglinn roundabout and from there round Broadwood Stadium, in fact exactly the same path as last week, except in reverse. It certainly wasn’t cold, but it was still a bit cloudy. Still loads of people wandering around ‘getting exercise’ or to put it another way ‘getting out of the house’, something you couldn’t do yesterday or the day before because of the rash of horizontal rain.

Back home for a while, but despite carrying a camera and two lenses for the entire walk, I’d taken no photos. To right this wrong, I went out for another top-up for my step count round St Mo’s pond. No deer today, but I got a few shots of Mummy Coot feeding one of the baby coots. That provided today’s PoD.

I struggled with today’s Sketch of the Day. The topic was “Where Would You Want To Be Now?” My answer to that would be anywhere but in Lockdown. My sketch turned out to be a bit more abstract. The initial sketch, as is usual with initial sketches, was rough, but painterly. The partly finished sketch was too clinical and stale. A few paint splashes fixed that.

Tomorrow? No real plans, but it is technically a Holiday Weekend, so perhaps we’ll go for a walk if the sun shines as it should.

Not so crazy busy today – 12 May 2020

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I had time to sit down and solve today’s sudoku for a start, then it was the catching-up.

Two drawings needed, but lots of time to get them sorted. The first one I actually planned for once. I roughed it out to make sure everything would fit into a square grid before I got started on the real thing. That’s quite a luxury for me and it helped considerably with the design. Maybe because the prompt was Illustrate a recipe. That meant there needed to be guide lines and such. Anyway, with that done, we went over to Condorrat to get the makings of today’s dinner. It was a second attempt at the Souk Soup and we needed a chicken breast to provide the protein. Cold wind both going and coming back.

After that I started chopping up the veg and bunged everything into the slow cooker and set it for two hours worth of cooking. Then I grabbed my Oly and camera bag and went to investigate the opportunities that St Mo’s would offer a camera man. Walking across the waste ground, I noticed a group of teenage boys heading in the same direction. One had a big bag that was clinking in a bottle-like way. They looked about as apprehensive as I felt, but I told them I wasn’t intending joining them and we all laughed. I was hoping to get some shots of hoverflies on the wing, but the wind was too strong and I had to ditch the idea and come back another day. On the way back I chanced into the group again, this time they had liberated the bottles from the bag and were sitting down with a speaker providing some music. I told them I guessed they were all from the same household and a couple of them twigged and said “Oh aye we are”. “Because”, I said “if you’re not I’ll have to inform Nicola.” Again we all laughed. I wonder what they thought I was doing with a wee brown bag over my shoulder, walking into the woods.

Scamp and I agreed that the Souk Soup was better when it was made in a pot. For some reason it was too watery made in the slow cooker. The Ras el Hanout spice I used was interesting and fairly hot, but I think I prefer my own Moroccan spice mix. We’ll have the rest tomorrow and see if we change our mind.

Two pieces drawn and painted after dinner. First was fairly good and the second was just a place marker. Both posted on Instagram and FB now.

PoD went to a wide landscape taken with the wee 9mm lens cap lens for the Oly. Something went wrong with the lens because a white dot appeared in the sealed unit of the lenses. It’s sitting inside the rear element and I can’t seem to shift it. It shows on the Flickr photo, but only if you know it’s there. I’ve got another, better, lens, but the 9mm was so neat for carrying around. I’ll miss it if I can’t fix it.

We had a sprinkling of rain tonight, but not a lot.  Hoping for more tomorrow.  Other than that, nothing planned.