Category: St Mo’s

Up and out before 11am – 25 November 2019

Posted on by Zogman

Well, that didn’t happen.

It was a great plan and would have worked too if it hadn’t been raining. To be honest, it had been raining all night and the morning was just the continuation of the deluge. Maybe I shouldn’t call it a deluge, it was mainly just rain in all its glorious variations, but whatever variation it was in, I wasn’t going out in it, at least not yet.

By lunchtime and with Gems looming, I decided I’d go “For the messages”. Scamp gave me a list. I put on my big Bergy jacket and drove off to get some food. Raided Tesco and got everything on the list and a few more things too, and still it rained. Came home, put away the messages, grabbed my camera and went for a walk in the rain.

They were actually laying tarmac on the paths round St Mo’s pond when I went over and I saw the strangest sight. My brother has a saying “The things you see when you haven’t got a gun.” The thing I saw today was a bloke in the full hi-vis rain suit lying stretched out on the freshly tarmacked path while the aforementioned rain fell continuously. I was just getting worried for his safety or mental state when he got up and stretched in a leisurely way. I imagine the warm tarmac was quite comfortable to lie on. I just hope there’s not a man shaped depression on the finished footpath. Maybe a ‘tarmac angel’. Of course I had a camera, but I’d only brought a short lens with me and wouldn’t have been able to get a good shot of it, but what a shot that would have been!

Found a few bits of wildlife around and about, mainly in and on the trees. Tiny wee snail about 4mm long, a fly that presumably had hatched in the relatively warm spell we’re having. Similarly a shield bug, bright green underneath and dull green and brown on top. Perfect camouflage when sitting on the bark of a tree. The fly won PoD.

After dinner we drove in to Glasgow to find that Shannon was taking the class. Big disappointment and big surprise to even the other young teachers. We vamoosed to the kitchen area and practised our jive, quickstep and waltz for a while. Scamp hadn’t been feeling too good today because she has waterworks problems and they were making theirselves felt towards the end of our enforced practise, so we left early after warning everyone coming in that Shannon was taking Jamie’s class. We’re guessing after some research by Scamp that he’d been caught out by a train blockage between Aberdeen and Edinburgh. We’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and let it be.

Scamp may be going to lunch with Mags tomorrow all being well and I might be having coffee with Val and Fred all being well. We’ll wait and see. It’s still raining!

Dull, Foggy and Wet – 24 November 2019

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Typical Sunday!

Drove to B&Q in the morning to get some Jeyes Fluid to clean our smelly dustbin. We’ve definitely got some. I know because I bought it last year. After spending about an hour searching everywhere it could have been we gave up and bit the bullet. I went to B&Q to spend £3.50 on a new bottle. Hardly worth the effort of searching every cupboard in the house, only to come up empty handed. It was just as I reached B&Q that I drove into the fog. The motorway had been misty, but B&Q’s microclimate turned that into thick fog. Drove back out of it on the way home and it remained misty here for the rest of the day.

Took a walk to St Mo’s in the afternoon to try for some moody shots in the rain. The light was a bit too low for the new Teazer2 to do its best work, but the Oly came up trumps and got the best shot of the day, the little spider on its wet web. That became PoD

Spoke to JIC in the evening and discussed managing people, Welsh folk with guns and sports massage! Watched another slow episode of His Dark Materials. It’s certainly dark, but does it have to be so slow? I don’t remember the book dragging on like this. It’s becoming too tedious to watch.

There wasn’t much more you could say about the day, in fact the title of the blog sort of summed it up. Dull, Foggy and Wet. These days, realistically, if you don’t get up and out by about 11am, you’re not going to get any worthwhile photos. That’s what I might do tomorrow.  One good thing that happened was Scamp making a lovely Coq au Vin for dinner.  We were very restrained and managed to keep some for tomorrow’s lunch.  A great sacrifice!

Gems tomorrow and hopefully dancing at night.

Falkirk for Food – 21 November 2019

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Today we went for the messages.

Drove to Falkirk to get the ingredients for tomorrow’s dinner with Crawford, Nancy, June and Ian. Scamp wanted to get some Cod Loin and Morrison’s is the place for fresh fish, except not today. Yes, they did have cod, but it didn’t look like there would be enough. They had enough hake, but it didn’t look fresh. They even had cod loin, but it had been pre-packed before being frozen and she really wanted to see what it looked like and preferred it fresh. I had to agree with her decision to reject it.

Drove home and found some decent looking cod fillets in M&S that passed muster. Other things too, passed muster and were added to the message bag. Came for one thing, went out with many. We also were served by Sharlene who was at pains to tell us that M&S had a website with a competition we could enter and win £500 and her name was Sharlene. Every time we visit M&S we get the same spiel and I’m getting really tired with it. I’m also sorry for folk like Sharlene who have to trot out this story to every customer trying to increase the (I forget the three letter abbreviation) efficiency of the sales experience. I’d hate to be working now and have to go through this excruciating and ultimately demeaning plea for ‘likes’. By the way, her name is Sharlene.

I guessed I had an hour to get some decent photo in St Mo’s when I got back and today’s PoD is a shot of an old apple tree in the park with a Lightroom generated sky behind. They’re beginning to dig up all the paths in St Mo’s and it looks a proper mess.  However, it’s not being done by NLC, so hopefully they will stay within the four week allocation for the work and also it will be done properly.  We live in hope.

Made eight panna cottas tonight for tomorrow’s dinner. They’re in the fridge now cooling and hopefully setting.

Tomorrow is Masterchef day when we’ll be slaving over a hot stove all day.

Bad coffee and good cakes – 10 November 2019

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That seems to be the story of our outings recently. Why do so many people make such bad coffee?

We went to The Fort today, more to get out of the house than anything. It was a cold morning with -1ºc on the outside temperature when I got up. By the time we were heading for The Fort it had warmed up, but it was still single figures centigrade, thankfully positive single figures though. We were going to Boots. We could have gone to Cumbersheugh Boots, but a wee run in the car could just brighten our day.

After our Boots visit we went for coffee in Costa, but the queue was even longer than usual. Gave up and went to Pret a Manger, because the other option was Starbucks and we wanted a coffee, not a Starbucks. Maybe we’d have been better taking the risk, because the brown liquid in a paper cup I got didn’t taste of anything, not even Costa’s burnt water tastes that thin. The cakes were good, but that’s not a reason to go back.

Back home and after our lunch with Real coffee, I worked on a shot I’d taken in the morning of some Japanese maple seeds. Ones we’d picked at Colzium a week or two ago. I used the Sony to take them and they turned out ok. There’s a lot to this camera. A lot of complicated looking menus that I’m beginning to get my head round. For how much longer, I still don’t know. Scamp said tonight that she’s never seen me so undecided about any purchase. Anyway, that photo made PoD.

Later I walked over to St Mo’s to see if there was anything more worthwhile, but the light was fading rapidly and the cold and damp were making the walk uncomfortable. Some blokes, adults were racing little dune buggies, radio controlled with petrol engines on the BMX track. I’ve seen them there before, but there were about half a dozen of them today. I’ll maybe have a go at photographing them some day. Some day with better light, I mean.

To increase my step count, Scamp and I went over last Wednesday’s Jive routine. It works now and we’ve got the video to help us clean it up. I did manage to get my “8 Active Hours” because of the practise. Still well away from achieving my 10,000 steps.

Tomorrow it’s Gems in the afternoon and perhaps dancing at night. It depends on how we’re feeling.

Pythagoras, Roast Chicken and a Baked Potato – 9 November 2019

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It was a cold start to the day and it only gradually got warmer. The best thing that happened today was Roast Chicken and a baked potato. Pythagoras was useful too.

It was one of those days that my dad used to warn me about. “When you’re retired,” he told me, “you don’t get weekends.” It’s true. Weekends are just like any other day … almost. Mondays are different. Mondays are days to wake early. Walk to the window and look at the rain streaming down, then go back to bed for an hour. Today was Saturday and we didn’t have anywhere we wanted to go. So we got up and sat and read the news on tablet or on computer.

I decided I’d best take the new piece of technology out for a test drive. It performed well enough, but not enough to convince me not to return it to JL. It might get packed up tonight, but more likely tomorrow morning. It’s good, but not worth the money that’s being asked for it. It’s touted as being a 1” sensor, but the actual dimensions of the sensor are 13.2mm by 8.8mm. Now, applying Pythagoras to that will give you a diagonal size of 15.86mm. As far as I can remember, 1” = 25.4mm, so the diagonal of the sensor in this camera and others like it is in fact 0.62 of an inch. That’s if and only if the entire sensor is used, because it never is! Do you realise that the ‘camera’ inside a phone is actually smaller than your pinkie nail? Like all things photographic, it’s a con. One of the photos I took with the ‘medium dog’, the Oly E-M1 graces the top of this page and became PoD. It’s a close up of the seed head of cow parsley. Shot against the sun it’s quite pretty IMO.

Lunch could have been in a restaurant or cafe somewhere, but ended up being a piece ’n’ black pudding for Scamp and a piece ’n’ bacon for me. Suitably refreshed, we started making plans for dinner and my suggestion of roast chicken met with Scamp’s approval. We walked down to the shops and got a chicken and other stuff for dinner. The car park was full, absolutely full. Maybe some folk were hoping for a glimpse and perhaps a selfie with Denise Van Outen whoever she is, because she was opening Matalan this morning, but I imagine she would be well gone by the time we arrived.

It’s a pleasant walk down to the shops now. I imagine Tesco is feeling a slight pinch, but nothing too serious. The roast chicken and baked potatoes were lovely. Even better, there’s more for tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow, I have no plans, but I my parcel up the Sony camera and give someone else the chance to be disappointed with it. Scamp is doing stuff in the house, I believe.

I thought I’d have a day in town today – 24 October 2019

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Just window shopping mainly, but with intent.

Drove up to the station to see if there were any spaces. There weren’t, there were cars everywhere. Cars parked up on two wheels on the verges, cars in the flower beds, cars double parked. This is just carnage from Tuesday to Thursday. I think a lot of folk either work from home or take a holiday on Mondays and Fridays, because I can usually get parked without a problem then. However, there is always the worry that when you come back some moron has parked in front of you. Maybe a ‘ten pence coach line’ would remind them that behaviour like that is not acceptable. Sooo I had to drive in to Glasgow.

I was give a list of shower gels to get for Scamp in Molton Brown. Of course they don’t call them ‘shower gels’, they call them Body Wash. Isn’t that what shower gels do, wash your body? Anyway, today was the start of their annual 20% off offer so that’s why I was given the list. With the job done I wandered my way back up Bucky Street to see what goodies Jessops had for me. My attention was a girl interrogating an older couple. Then I felt a hand on my chest. It was attached to a woman about my age and it was there to stop me walking into her! I hate folk that don’t look where they’re going, and here was I doing exactly that thing. I apologised and laughed and thankfully she did too. Never did find out what the girl was doing.

I hadn’t heard that Jessops were on the point of being put into administration – for the second time. It was only when another customer asked one of the assistants if the shop was closing. His reaction gave the lie to his explanation that nothing was certain yet. Another one bites the dust, I think.

I had another look at the Sony RX 100 camera and for once the salesman I was talking to didn’t push me to try the version 5 of the camera, but said the best bargain was the version 3. I’m still not sure if it’s what I’m looking for. It has a silly little pop up viewfinder that I’m sure I’d break within the first month and then regret shelling out my money for it for the rest of the ownership.

Back home via Tesco to get the makings of dinner. Then I just had to visit the new Aldi store. It was a bit smelly and that could have been the veg counter, or just the great unwashed. I’m not sure which.

Back home I was in the middle of making a pot of Scamp’s Just Soup when the lady herself returned from her gig. It seemed to be a resounding success as it always is in Abronhill.

I left her to cool down and talk to her sister on the phone while I went to get today’s PoD. It turned out to be a little bush which grows wild around here with white berries and pink flowers. It’s called a Snowberry Bush. I liked the flower and the composition.

Apart from fish and prawns, I ‘m not a great fan of seafood, especially shellfish. However, that was today’s topic and needs must … Most of the bits and pieces were cobbled together from various photos of shellfish on the Internet. A splash or two of paint and we’re done!

No plans for tomorrow.

Dancing and a screamer – 23 October 2019

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Wednesday is dancing day. Screamers are just nutters with a different name.

My new phone vibrated just after 12 noon to tell me it had changed numbers, back to the one I’ve had for the last eight(?) years. A result. Thank you to the bloke in EE who sorted it. Now I can go ahead and unlock the old phone.

Drove in to Glasgow and started again into the new routine, adding the subtly named Bump and Grind. After that is was a practise session for the Quickstep and the Waltz. I had problems with them both, but the room is simply too small to be able to go over these steps. Add two speaker stacks and a piano and it becomes more challenging. If you add the third complication of the thick couple Gary and Freda who will happily stop anywhere and discuss who was making the mistakes. Actually, like most couples both were at fault, but do they really need to block everyone else’s path while the blame each other? It appears they do.

Coffee afterwards and coming back from the toilet, I noticed an iPhone on the floor behind where a woman was sitting. I tapped her on the shoulder to tell her and she let out this cutting scream. Honest, I just tapped her on the shoulder. I didn’t think I was that scary, although years of S1 pupils at school might disagree. Some folk just want to be the centre of attention. Nutters by any other name.

Back home I went out for a walk with the “Big Dog”. Thinking that as it was really dull, the bigger sensor on the Nikon would handle it better than the Oly. I was wrong. Lots of grain showing on the images. I finally chose a shot of a swan as PoD.

When I got back it was time to get the sketch sorted out. The topic was “A Fried Egg”. Where do these people get their ideas from (it was an old list for EDIM actually)? It should have been fairly easy, but I’m not that good at getting eggs into the frying pan without breaking the yolk, (and that’s what I did with the first one.) Tomorrow I’m expected to continue the food theme!

I packed in early and that’s why this blog post is a catch up. Sorry!

Tomorrow Scamp has a gig and I may go in to Glasgow.

Dancing – 16 October 2019

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Unlike yesterday, we woke to rain.

However, as the morning progressed, so the weather improved and by midday the sun was shining. Time to go out and do some dancing.

No Michael today, so we had Anne Marie. Today we went over Somewhere Over The Rainbow again, and again we wore away some of the rough edges of the routine. I think it’s about as good as it’s going to get. I just hope we can remember:

a. The sequence of the moves.
b. The little tweaks we learned today.

If we can do that, I think we can progress on to the moves we learned today. New moves for an, as yet unnamed, Jive routine. One of the moves we’d done before, but the name evades Scamp and I and the second one we’re calling Knee, 3 kicks, because that’s a basic description of it. That was all Jive. We didn’t have time to do any waltz, but we did cover a new routine we’re learning for Quickstep. As with all quickstep routines, it’s the combination of Slow and Quick that cause me the most of my problems. Scamp seems to have no difficulty with them at all. It ’s just the way her brain works I think. Wired differently from mine.

Back home there was just enough time for a quick walk over to St Mo’s to feed the ducks on the remains of my loaf and some other bread that was as dry as a bone in the kitchen. The ducks didn’t seem to mind in the slightest. I got today’s PoD walking in the woods. I’d have liked to have used the 9mm lens, but I hadn’t brought it. The 14mm did a fairly good job and I was happy with the result.

Today’s sketch task was “A Frog”. I tried a quick sketch in the morning of Kermit who holds some lavender in the back bedroom. It wasn’t very successful and Scamp told me the head was the wrong shape. This confirmed what I already thought. After dinner I had another go and took more time to get the proportions of the poor frog’s head a bit better. Yes, it worked better this time. The only problem is the poor soul looks a bit sad. It’s hard to get Kermit’s quizzical expression just the way he looks on TV. Never mind, it’s a fair likeness. Tomorrow it’s “Crumpled Paper”. Inktober brings loads of that!

Tomorrow we’re hoping to be up and out early because the weather looks better in the morning.

Deone’s Seat – 11 October 2019

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Today’s topic from my list was “Butterfly”. In October, in Scotland? Really?

Then I remembered Deone’s Seat. It’s to remember Deone MacRae who died, aged 15, from cancer. The story is much longer. Google her name if you’re interested. It’s not a memorial. First and foremost it’s a seat. It’s been powder coated a cheerful bright pink and it sits beside the pond at St Maurices park. The seat is cut and welded from 1/4″ sheet steel and is a fitting tribute. I went out this morning to sketch it and then added some colour later. It was my interpretation of the prompt.

Came back and Scamp was getting herself ready for a trip in to Glasgow, solo. That suited me. I’d a bit of virus killing to do on the iMac. Probably only the second time I’ve had to resort to a virus killer. I’d tried Bitdefender last night, but it’s a bit of a sledgehammer to crack a nut. It took 25 minutes last night and it still was only about 75% through on a short scan. Nah, I needed something quicker. I’d found the offending article, it was an extension in Safari, Apple’s worthless browser. Worthless or not it was harbouring a piece of dodgy software that needed excising. I’d read that Malwarebites was good, so I downloaded that and it quickly found, not one, but two pieces of malware and deleted them, or to be precise, quarantined them. I don’t like quarantine, I prefer deletion. So that’s what I did. Malwarebites it’s the way to go.

By this time Scamp was on the bus to Glasgow, so I had time to add some colour to today’s sketch. Plenty of time, so for once, I let one colour dry before adding the next. I was pleased with the result. Yes I know it’s not totally symmetrical and there are some rogue lines, but that’s what happens when you’ve half an eye on the rain clouds, half an eye on the swan that’s sidling up to you looking for an early lunch and half an eye on nosy folk asking “Are you drawing?” Luckily the only person who passed was a bloke jogging around the pond and he just nodded and gave me a Scottish “Aye” which can mean “Good Morning”, “Looks like rain” or just “Hi”. It never means “What are you doing here?” It’s just a nod and an “Aye.” I don’t think they do that anywhere else in the world.

With the sketch and the painting done, I did a bit of flying from Fuerteventura to Lanzarote. Not far, but still taxing until you work out how to do the ILS approach under autopilot. I know this is gibberish, but it’s interesting gibberish to me. Gave up after the third attempt and made my lunch. Piece on brie, apple and honey. Totally heavenly. Home grown apples too, James Grieve.

After lunch I walked down to M&S to get chicken for tonight’s dinner and also a box of their delicious Turkish Delights, bread and a couple of pastries for after dinner. Got a text to say that it was back to business, Scamp had returned.

PoD was a photo of St Mo’s pond that I took after sketching Deone’s seat. Looks very pleasant once you’ve spotted out the Bucky bottles and the crisp wrappers. Swans seem to like it anyway.

Tomorrow we may go to Embra. It depends on the weather, but I expect I’ll be driving part of the way, which means I won’t be able to partake of tomorrows prompt: A Fruity Cocktail.

Just another dancing fool – 9 October 2019

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Driving through the driving rain to dance our hearts out to Michael’s tune.

Just another Wednesday. Weather was almost as bad as yesterday with more high winds blowing more rain clouds our way. Managed to avoid most of the rain on our walk down to Blackfriars. Stood and watched some brave souls abseiling down the City Chambers to give the statues a but of a wash and brush up. Thought it was Extinction Rebellion protesters at first, then realised they were wearing hi-vis jackets with a company logo on them, so they were legit. Below them they seemed to be giving away “Boris Bikes”, but on closer inspection it was just a photo opportunity to show off the new “Electric Boris Bikes”. I can’t imagine what an Electric Boris would be like. Probably he’d short circuit the National Grid.

Even further down the road there were a film crew setting up. We used to get excited when we saw film crews in Glasgow, but now it’s just par for the course and we’ve learned to ignore them. Glasgow is built on an orthogonal grid with roads running North / South and East / West, so with it’s old turn of the last century buildings it makes a decent look alike for some of the older parts of American cities. It must be a lot cheaper to seal off a portion of Glasgow that, say, Chicago. Couldn’t see what or who was being filmed today.

Dancing was quite good, but although the room is fine for Jive, it’s really too small for ballroom. We leaders keep getting told to take bigger steps in Waltz and Quickstep, but when we do, there’s so much clutter in the room we can’t fit in all the steps. Pillars in the way don’t help either. However, today we reprised the entire Over the Rainbow set and we got to dance with some of the advanced dancers which is always good, because they are so exact and so quick. We eventually gave up trying to dance round the room because people would stop and discuss who was right and who was wrong and, coupled with the two speaker stacks, the piano and the pillars there were too many obstacles in the way. Instead, we practised the short routines we’d been learning.

Coffee afterwards for our usual debrief, then back up to the car park. We weren’t so lucky on the way back and got fairly well soaked. In addition I wanted some shots to use for today’s sketch. My Inktober list for today wanted “A bird’s eye view or a worm’s eye view”. In view of the strong winds, I decided that a bird’s eye view was out of the question. Also because of the heavy rain showers, I had to give up on an in-situ sketch, so instead I took some shots to use as reference material for today’s sketch.  It’s the Cranberry’s [sic] Restaurant in Glasgow.  Interesting building with a sort of tower breaking out of the corner of it.

Back home I decided there was enough light to warrant a walk to St Mo’s where I got today’s PoD which is a toadstool I saw emerging on Saturday. It’s grown a fair bit since then. I thought I’d get home dry, but that wasn’t going to happen. I got soaked, but at least it was on the way back.

Tomorrow I go to see the nurse about my blood results and Isobel is coming to lunch.