Category: Technology

More junk goes – 2 November 2020

Posted on by Zogman

Even more junk will arrive to fill its place, that’s inevitable, of course.

The junk in question was my Linx 12×64 laptop(ish) computer. The (ish) refers to the fact that it won’t sit comfortably on your lap, because it takes up a fairly large footprint with its kick down stand extended. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but like all ‘good ideas’ there were drawbacks. It was fairly light with a decent sized screen. It wasn’t fast, but I knew that at the time. It could run from an emergency phone charger battery quite happily. The killer was that it was Windows 10 and constantly wanted to ”Get you going again” only it didn’t. The downloads nearly always failed for some unexplained reason and with every successful download it got slower and slower. I finally decided it had to go and today was the day. Scamp was out having coffee with her sister in the morning, so I’d plenty of time to get it organised. I did my final check to make sure the battery was 100% and that it would charge if needed, polished the screen, swept the crumbs out of the keyboard (terrible keyboard) then packed it in its box, ready to go.

It was still looking good outside when I was finished, so I grabbed the camera and headed off to see how much water was in St Mo’s pond. The answer was really quite a lot of water. In fact, all the weeds and assorted rubbish in the pond had blocked the outlet and the pond was overflowing onto the path and cascading down the other side into the gulley that takes it out to somewhere else. I have no idea where. Didn’t get many photos because the trees were looking a bit bare after the buffeting they’ve had from our recent gales. I did try a few landscapes, but I wasn’t impressed with the look through the viewfinder.

Back home, Scamp had arrived just before me and we had lunch. My first look at the photos on the computer confirmed my suspicions that quite a lot of work would be needed to find anything worthwhile there. Took the Linx up to CEX which are the easiest company to deal with for small electrical and electronic gadgets. The next best, I’ve found, are the workers at the council skips, but CEX give you a few quid more for your unwanted electronic junk, and there’s not such a big queue. Left the Linx to be checked and GS23’d and came home to close down Inktober 2020 on Flickr. It hasn’t been such an easy job being admin for the group this year. Too many punters seem to think that slapping some coloured ink on a page is drawing/sketching. It’s not, it’s just being a poser and if you keep doing it, I will remove your ‘artwork’. That’s what happened to an irate Italian bloke last night who seemed to think that he could unload his entire back catalog into my Inktober site. He got barred.

With Inktober sorted, Scamp and I turned our attention to additional storage space needed in the front bedroom. I suggested we get another bookcase and create an organised shelf system. That seemed to meet with her approval.

Back up at CEX the nice lady handed over the readies and I took some of them round to B&M where I exchanged them for a cheap chipboard bookcase. Strangely I met Emma, an FP (Former Pupil). I’d been reading last year’s blog the other night and had written about meeting her in the Beech Tree restaurant a year ago last week. She was one of my nicer FPs. I stopped on the way home when I saw what might just be a decent sunset forming. It got a few shots, and that’s what you see here. Sunset over the Pylons! Scamp approved the purchase of the bookcase. We’ll build it tomorrow.

Watched and interesting video on YouTube tonight that showed how to adjust lens adapters. The first one I bought was very loose. I fixed it tonight after watching the video. Very happy with it now. I’ll be able to use my Nikon lenses on the new camera until I save up enough pennies to buy Sony ones.

Tomorrow the Gas Man is booked to do the maintenance on the boiler. We know he’ll probably try to encourage us to get a new one. We may just let him make an appointment for us. Don’t know how that will work with Covid restrictions. We are now in Tier 3 of the Scottish system. England go into full lockdown later in the week for a month. Wales are just coming out of a ‘Circuit Breaker’. It’s complicated!

Old Tech meets New Tech – 29 October 2020

Posted on by Zogman

It was obvious from early morning that today was going to be wet.

Another of those days when the rain was heavy and continuous. There was no point in going out, far less travelling a distance. We just contented ourselves with staying at home, but were buoyed by the news that Nick the Chick wasn’t going to put us in Level 4 which is almost a total lockdown. It appeared at first that we’d be allowed the right to roam across all the Level 3 regions, i.e. all of Central Scotland. Now it looks like we will be restricted to travel in North Lanarkshire. That wasn’t in the original bill, but that’s what it is now. She, the witch, is also warning that all of Scotland may go back into lockdown. Isn’t she just a bundle of fun?

The furthest I got today was down to the shops for stuff to make tonight’s Thai Fishcakes. I’d intended walking down, but swiftly changed my mind when I met the wall of water falling from the sky. That’s what we buy a car for, to drive to the shops in, instead of getting soaked. So it was down to the shops, get the essentials (and a bottle of wine) and get home.

The Amazon man had been when I was out for that 15 minute jaunt and he’d brought me another adapter. This one takes old M42 (i.e. ancient) lenses and allows them to work on the Sony A7. The lens in question is a Helios 58mm f2 that used to be on the front of a Zenit EM that may or may not have belonged to JIC. If it was yours JIC, I hope you don’t mind me borrowing it. This adapter cost half the price of the Nikon adapter and feels a lot more solid. I used it to take today’s PoD which is the last of Scamp’s Lady Emma Hamilton’s from the back garden. I was amazed at the quality of this camera / lens combination. Old Tech meets New Tech, indeed.

Thanks for the email JIC. The video on the website was just at my level. No big words, lots of easy to understand graphics and nice colours. I approve. Just a pity you didn’t get a mention.

Message for Hazy. The Big Scottish Book Club, has guests including Neil Gaiman who will be discussing The Graveyard Book. (Sunday 1st November 10pm BBC Scotland. Also available on iPlayer) If you can’t get it, let me know and I’ll try to ‘obtain’ a copy.

Today’s prompt for Inktober was Shoes. I decided to rebel and sketch boots instead, my Merrell Moab boots. Like I said on Flickr:

Ok, they’re boots, not shoes, but arguing about that is just splitting hairs. Merrell Moab boots. Really comfortable and as waterproof as blotting paper. Goretex? Don’t make me laugh Merrell.

Tonight it’s getting a bit windy, as was predicted by the weather fairies. However, the wind is supposed to blow away most of the rain over the night, leaving us a clear, dry day tomorrow. Then more wet stuff arrives on Saturday. Hoping to get out somewhere (in North Lanarkshire only ;o) for a wee run.

Out to Brunch – 22 October 2020

Posted on by Zogman

Another day to get out and about fairly early.

We were picking up Isobel at 10.15 and then we were all heading off to Calders for either a late breakfast or an early lunch, it was unclear which. I’d been warned beforehand not to order coffee because I’d be disappointed with the quality and the quantity of actual coffee in my cup. The other two had scrambled eggs and a latté each while I went for poached eggs on sourdough bread with a pot of tea. Even the tea was a bit thin and to be even more critical, the eggs were a bit underdone and tepid. Maybe a bit harsh, but I am one half of the Foodie pair. As usual, Isobel regaled us with stories about her family.

We dropped her off and drove home for a cup of real coffee each. Then I went upstairs to check out a bag full of old hard disks that had been torn from ancient computers over the years. Two went in the ‘skip bag’ and two were given a reprieve until I get a chance to download the useful stuff, then they will probably be ‘skipped’ too. In the process I discovered that one of my old removable drives was also destined for the ‘skip bag’. It had had a question mark hanging over it for a while and now it wasn’t booting up, so it is with regret that it goes in the ‘skip bag’ too. However, as Scamp keeps reminding me, that’s what’s wrong with our house. Holding on to too many things that have outlived their usefulness. That’s why I make the breakfast every second day and do my fair share of the cooking too. Otherwise I might find myself in that big blue Ikea bag with the hard disks one of these days.

While I was doing the technology thing, Scamp was shopping for dinner stuff. The dinner turned out to be Trout en Croûte. They looked a bit like sausage rolls, but tasted so much better. They were so good I was almost won over to be a pescatarian!

Before dinner I risked another soaking by going for a walk in St Mo’s. Got a few shots in among the trees. Some nice looking toadstools (not good enough to eat though) and the PoD which is a spider living life in the upside down. Managed to get my feet soaked trying to get the mud off them by paddling in the shallows of the pond. Merrel is not the company it once was. Quality has really gone downhill in the last few years.

I had found some gems in my search of the hard disks. We spent an hour tonight watching a video we’d made in Amsterdam away back in 2007. Half an hour of seeing life in a different world. Crowds of people not obeying the two metre rule and none of them wearing a mask!

You will notice the lack of a sketch today. This is due to a technical problem (I didn’t have time … or inclination.). Hopefully normal service will be resumed tomorrow. I Lied!

On the subject of tomorrow, we have no plans as yet. Apart from two sketches!!

Comings and goings – 19 October 2020

Posted on by Zogman

A busy day and a wet one, very wet.

Scamp was out in the morning with Veronica for coffee @ Calders. I was left to my own devices. I’d great plans for what I’d to do. Heavens I even left myself some To-Do notes last night. They didn’t take long to achieve and then there was still an hour or so left. I was waiting for two DPD men, they’re always men here, so let’s not have any complaints on that score. Take it up with DPD if you really want. Two DPD personnel, one who would hopefully be bringing my coffee order and one who would be taking away my Nikon D7000 to MPB who have agreed to pay me a fraction of what I bought it for many years ago. But as they say, all things must pass. The third person I had to wait for was the Amazon person carrying an 18mm lens for the Sony A7ii. That’s ultra-wide, but not fisheye for those who understand such things, all three of you. I sat down to struggle through a sudoku that had been bugging me since last week. Then the DPD man delivered my coffee. Life’s too short to drink bad coffee, so I was saved that ignominy. Postman delivered the news that I am booked for a flu jag tomorrow afternoon. With some time to spare, I phoned Fred for a wee chat and discuss the situation with flu jags. He got a letter this morning at 11am telling him he had a flu jag at 11.35! We’d no sooner started setting the world to rights when Scamp phoned to say she was on the way home and did I need anything for lunch. Sorted lunch and got back to sorting the world with Fred.

After lunch the second DPD man came to take away the Nikon. I was brave, I didn’t shed a tear. Scamp suggested I wait for a dry spell and go out for a walk. That’s what I thought I was doing, but I was no sooner out the door when the rain started again. I was out now and I was wet. No point in going back. Just go and get properly wet and get some photos too. I did get wet. I thought I’d got some photos too, but when I got back it looked like I’d about ten sets of three photos. Like trios, all the same, then another set of trios, all the same, but different from the first if you get my drift. Worse than that, they were all crap. All except the one you see here which I resurrected. (It’s a Larch branch with the needles starting to change colour before they fall.) Thank goodness for decent software. Think Silk Purse – Sow’s Ear. It took a while to work out what had gone wrong, but I think I’ve got it sorted now. This is the most awkward camera to get a handle on. Nothing is easy.

It was almost 7.30pm when the Amazon man knocked on the door. What hours to these people work. It almost makes me ashamed to buy things from Amazon. Of course you could argue that I’m keeping these people in a job, but at what cost? Lens looks good and does what it advertises. Ultra-wide and with autofocus and auto exposure but without the fish-eye effect. Means nothing to anyone but me and three other undisclosed photogs.

Sketch tonight was a really rough doodle that followed on from yesterday’s doodle. Not impressed with it, but what else do you draw to complete a prompt like ‘Dizzy’?

Tomorrow we’re hoping for a few dry spells. There will probably be one between 4pm and 5pm when I’ll be in the Town Hall. If there’s a chance of a dry spell earlier in the day, hopefully we’ll be out making the most of it.

An improving picture

Posted on by Zogman

It started off dull, but then the sun found a way through.

Spent most of the morning struggling with the Sony menu system and after reading many pages on the net, began to see how to control this full frame beast. Managed to get two Nikon lenses working with it, but the third, the long zoom was uncontrollable and I gave up in frustration and had lunch.

Scamp suggested a walk to calm my nerves, I think and I agreed. We walked a circuit of Broadwood Loch, stopping a couple of times to get some shots. The best one I got IMO was what you see here as PoD. It’s a view of the loch from the car park using the old Nikon 10 – 20mm lens on the Sony A7.

<Technospeak>

The problems are:

  1. The ‘Type G’ lens has no aperture ring, so aperture has to be controlled with a ring on the adaptor. Therefore you, the photog, have no idea what aperture is set and are shooting by eye.
  2. The lens is an APS-C which means the coverage of the lens is meant to be for a smaller sensor than the full frame sensor, so what you get is a sharp image enclosed in a circular frame with a dark surround.

In other words, it’s a bit hit and miss, mostly miss up until now. With that said, once the image has been cropped and exposure adjusted, it looks fairly reasonable, if a bit distorted. Later in the afternoon I discovered that Sony had thought about point 2 above and included a switch, buried deep in the labyrinth of the menu system, to adjust exposure for APS-C lenses. Too late for the afternoon’s photo session.
</Technospeak >

OK JIC, you can come back into the fold again

It was a very pleasant walk for all the photo babble. Sun was shining, birds were singing. A beautiful October day.

However, I’m afraid the lovely A7 has to go back to JL this week. I don’t know who owned it before me, but they didn’t know or care how to keep it clean. Today’s sunshine revealed hundreds of dust bunnies all over the sensor. You don’t notice them on dull days, but on bright days they come out to play. If I was conscientious I’d get out my cleaning swabs and give it a good scrub, but not after I’d paid good money for it. It was cheap, but not that cheap. Lovely though the gradation of tones is, it has to go back and well within the 30 days too. However, before it does go, I’m going to have a good look at that APS-C setting (the one JIC doesn’t know about, because he skipped that part of the blog.)

Dinner tonight was Scamp’s Just Soup followed by Mushroom Risotto. Soup was up to Scamp’s usual high standard, risotto could have been better, a bit stodgy.

Spoke to JIC and got the lowdown on interview technique and things going on down south. Scamp booked a house we’re hoping to have for a week at Easter 2021 all being well.

Today’s Inktober sketch was a Radio. I chose Scamp’s DAB radio. The drawing is a bit rough, but it’s good enough.

Tomorrow it’s going to be dull and wet. I may go to the butchers in Muirhead and get some carnivore food. It will stop me mourning the loss of a dream camera.

A new camera, a dash cam – 25 September 2020

Posted on by Zogman

Dashcam day.

I got to use my dash cam a couple of years ago and I wouldn’t be without one now. Today I went to Halfords to find out when they could fit one in Blue. Luckily, they had a space this afternoon, so confirmed the booking and drove home for a quick lunch before driving up to allow the nice man to fit a brand new dash cam for me. Yes, I could have saved a few quid by using the supplied cable and plug, but it looks untidy and a new car deserves a new neat fitting. Even more unlikely, I could have fitted it myself, but I knew that would have involved a lot of swearing and a fair bit of damage to the inside of Blue. The bloke from Halfords had made a really neat job of the fitting the last time and I trusted him to do the same again.

With him working away in the car, Scamp drove me off in her car to a nice little parking place beside the Forth & Clyde Canal where we could walk along under a fairly blue sky and some sunshine as far as the ill fated Underwood Lock House. It had originally been the lock keeper’s cottage and around 2000 was converted to a pub and restaurant, but after a fire in 2013 it remains a roofless ruin. It seemed a sensible place to turn and walk back. I grabbed a set of seven shots to form into a panorama when we returned.

Collected the car and paid for the dash cam and the fitting and drove home. I couldn’t see any evidence of how that man fitted the wiring, but he did just as clean a job as last time, if not better. Dash cams are a bit like insurance. It’s something you have to buy these days, but you hope you’ll never need them.

Dinner tonight was Veg Chilli and AGAIN I forgot to add the kidney beans. I did the same last week down at Little Musgrave, so you see JIC and Sim, it was nothing personal, it’s just a mental block I have with veg chilli!

PoD was that seven frame panorama. The other thing I did today was set up Inktober 2020 on Flickr. Hope I don’t have the same problems I had last year with nobody except me being able to find it on the website!

Tomorrow we may go for a walk.

Back in the old routine – 8 September 2020

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Going for the messages in Blue.

I drove to Stirling today with Scamp. We were heading for Waitrose ‘for the messages’. The sky was dull with occasional attempts at rain, but nothing that you could really call precipitation. Parked at Waitrose and walked in to Stirling town (it’s not a real city, even if Mrs McQueen says it is). I went to M&S and Scamp went to Debenhams both for different reasons. Met up again in the Thistle Centre and decided Nero was too busy and Costa was too dark and gloomy, so we went to HSBC to get some English money. I couldn’t tell you the last time I used a ‘hole in the wall’ machine. Some time in early March I think. Thankfully I remembered my pin.

On the walk back we stopped as we usually do to look in the picture gallery.  This shop usually has some good and some not so good artistic works.  However, we’ve neither of us seen anything to match the clumsy painting of a girl and a dog.  I think it’s downright dangerous to give a toddler oil paints to play with.  This ‘painting’ was priced at £450.  Unless, of course the decimal point wasn’t working on the computer used to print the price tag!

I think we did actually buy Waitrose this time. It was really just a test to see how much we could cram into the Micra boot. The answer was quite a lot, or maybe even Too Much! However, at least we got to walk round a fairly quiet shop pushing a trolley. Won’t need a Tesco delivery this week or next.

Came home and I tried to install the supposedly brilliant Nissan Connect Services which is a phone app that can do all sorts of wonderful things. I’d tried and failed to get the last one to work on the Juke. This one was no better. Got as far as creating an account, then things went belly up. You can scan in the VIN from the plate on the windscreen, but the app says it’s wrong. You can scan the VIN from the door upright, but the app says it’s wrong. You can type it in, but … Nothing I did worked, then I read the comments on this 1.2 star app. Almost everyone had the same problem, apart from the obvious ‘ringers’ who said it worked perfectly. With so many people having the same problem, you’d think a warning light would come on for the developers, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. Another lost opportunity, Nissan.

Took my frustrations out on St Mo’s with a couple of circuits of the pond. Not a lot of light at all by 4.30pm. My PoD was a sideways look at a spider on its web, getting bounced about in the breeze.

Beef burger for dinner. What Scamp had dubbed an Artisan Burger. I’d made it myself, with my own fair hands and a pound of mince. It needed salt, but otherwise it was fine. Scamp had a piece of salmon and we both had some of those Home Grown and Artisan Charlotte potatoes. So, a hand-made dinner.

Thought I’d have to de-coke the coffee maker. Orange steam light flashing away apparently means de-scale. I managed to get the light to go out by resetting the water softness setting. Hope that keeps the orange light at bay.

Tomorrow I’m hoping to meet John at Chatelherault outside Hamilton for a walk and a chat about photography and cameras. ‘Hoping’ because it’s torrential rain and high winds here just now.

Going Solo – 5 September 2020

Posted on by Zogman

No co-pilot, no radio operator. Flying solo.

Scamp suggested I go out for a walk along the Luggie today while she went to Tesco. It was her turn to cook and we’d discussed her short list. It seemed like a plan.

Before we went our separate ways in separate cars, we emptied our ‘Tattie Bag’ which we’d planted with three carefully selected Jersey Royals or something that looked like them away back in early May. Not seed potatoes, just some ordinary potatoes that had been chitting on the window ledge in the toilet. We actually got better results than we’ve had with ‘real’ seed potatoes. A nice big bowl full of them. Only one scabby one. I’d consider that a success.

Scamp drove off and I followed suit a few minutes later. Found out a few more things about Blue, like where to find the ‘destinations’ I’d programmed into the satnav. Took a dozen or so photos of the railway bridge over the Luggie from one side and 42 photos of it from the other side. I was intending to create two panoramas from them in an old piece of software I’d found the other day. Surprisingly it handled both sets of images well, although it struggled with the larger of the two. Not surprisingly the finished article weighed in at just under 2GB. That’s a lot of GB. The larger one became PoD.

Scamp’s dinner was Tuna Pasta with Beans (and chilli flakes). Possibly a touch too much chilli flakes, but it tasted very good indeed. I think we were both thankful for the half price trifle she’d bought for dessert!

Apparently NLC in their wisdom have granted permission for an outdoor funfair in Cumbersheugh in these Covid-19 times. What else would you do when Lanarkshire is about to have sanctions imposed to control an increase in infections than encourage crowds of people to attend a funfair? I suppose the council will have been paid royally by the promoters.

Tomorrow we may go for a socially responsible walk down Glasgow Green.

The end of August – 31 August 2020

Posted on by Zogman

Autumn is just around the corner.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Up and out! – 29 August 2020

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Today Scamp was off early to her pal’s caravan in St Andy’s. Posh city. I was nominated driver

There are thing you can believe and trust in, and there’s satnavs. Ours took us through every small village in Fife and missed out none but added in a few small town to even up the score. How in the name of the wee man could this conceivably be the ‘Quickest Route’. An hour and a half to travel 60 miles? Surely that can’t be right. That would mean travelling at approximately 40mph. Any slower and we’d have needed a man (or woman) in front of us waving a red flag. All to go to the posh end of Fife. However, when we got there, the caravan park we were heading for wasn’t quite what I’d expected. This was indeed Posh City. Beautiful views across sandy beaches which, admittedly, did have temperatures just into double digits today. From the panoramic windows of the caravan they look beautiful though.

Stayed a while to see Scamp settled and took the obligatory group photos and then I headed north to Leuchers to see if there were any ‘airies’ to be seen. Leuchers is no longer an official RAF base, but as Lossiemouth is having its runway relaid, Leuchers is now a temporary base to RAF fighters and reconnaissance aircraft. Just as I neared the airfield the call had seemingly gone up and the crew or scanner holding photogs were racing along the side of a farmer’s field to find a space to photograph an aircraft landing. It was definitely military and it was big, which meant it wasn’t a fighter aircraft and therefore I wasn’t interested. Let them run about like ‘maddies’. I’d done my time at that sort of thing and now I’d grown up. At least that’s what I consoled myself with as I headed further north and over the Tay Road Bridge.

I skirted the city itself and stopped to grab a shot of the “Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay!” as McGonagall described it. It was indeed ’silvery’ today. Back on the road I stopped at Perth for coffee beans of the Cuban variety and also some of the Sumatran persuasion before pointing the Red Juke in the direction the satnav suggested which was back north. As it had actually found the caravan site, I trusted it knew where it was going and gave it its head. It did take me on to the south-bound motorway after a few circuitous routes. I can only hope that the Micra’s Tomtom satnav is more sensible in its choice of routes.

Back home I had a slice of pizza to stave off the hunger pangs before I walked down to the shops to buy tonight’s dinner (M&S Chicken Tikka Masala) and the makings of tomorrow’s dinner.  Walked back.  The brilliant blue skies of the morning had gone and were replaced by dirty white clouds.  However it was dry if not all that warm.

PoD was a shot I’d taken this morning before leaving of a Cranefly (Jenny Long Legs in Scotland), beating the Silvery Tay to second place.

Tomorrow I may go looking for brambles while Scamp heads home.