Category: Technology

Up and out! – 29 August 2020

Posted on by Zogman

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.

Problems solved – 27 August 2020

Posted on by Zogman

Boxes ticked.

Last night after I posted the blog I’d one thing still to do. I needed to print off and sign a document to send to the garage to register my new car. The printer refused to connect. Aha, the printer, being a WiFi printer needs to be connected to the new modem. Easy, or so I thought. An hour later, much later than I intended, I climbed the stairs to my bed with the document unprinted and unsigned and a printer still refusing to connect to the modem. In that hour I’d deleted the printer driver, downloaded a fresh shiny new one from the Epson site and run the program to install the printer. I’d done it three times and each time it failed to gain access to the modem at the same point in the installation sequence. I finally resorted to connecting using the WPS button on the modem. I’d used this before on the old modem with limited success, in other words, sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. Tonight it seemed to work until I tried to print, then was back to the start again. No Printer Found. Frustrated I climbed the wooden mountain. Tomorrow would be a better day, wouldn’t it?

Woke at 7am with that sinking feeling that I’d have to go through that bloody setup again. Later when we were both up and the day had started, Scamp said “Let me try.” I tried to explain that the connection had nothing to do with PCs or Macs, but had everything to do with that bloody new Virgin Media modem. I barely got started when I heard the printer give that ‘beep’ that heralds the output of a printed sheet. Yes, her HP, Windows 10 laptop printed no problem. I tried my iMac and it printed too, so did my old MacBook Pro. The connection had been made. What had happened during the night? I reckon the Good Fairy came in through the keyhole, waved her magic wand and said “You shall print again little Epson 2600.” Well, that’s as good an explanation as any I can provide. Box Ticked.

Printed the document, signed it, scanned it to a PDF and sent the resulting document off to the garage. Box Ticked.

Next task was to sort out the insurance for the new car. Tell me this. If I want to swap the insurance over from the Red Juke to the new car, why does it cost me more money? The insurance for the new car is considerably less than for the Juke. Shouldn’t they be giving me money? Silly question. It’s insurance. They take money, they don’t ever give you money back! Never mind, Box Ticked.

Three boxes ticked in 30 minutes. Time for a coffee.

We were off to Larky today. Scamp was going to get her eyes tested for new contact lenses and I was going to take some photos. It was bucketing down. Never mind, I’ve taken lots of photos in the rain and of the rain itself sometimes. Today would be fine. I dropped Scamp off and drove down to Millheugh which used to be a salmon fishing river on the banks of the Avon Water. My, my those old salmon fishers would have a hard time recognising Millheugh now, especially the river with its clumsy salmon ladder that had to be rebuilt because the old one got swept away. Today the Avon was high. I’ve seen it higher, but not for a long time. I spoke to a trio of hardy fishers who were hoping to net a salmon in the heavy spate, but without much success it seemed. They were complaining about the salmon ladder too because it had changed the entire flow of water in the river, denying them the deep pools where the big fish used to lie and extending sandbanks where there were none before. I left them to it and took some photos, about 70 of them. The one I liked best was the run off from the lade (mill race) and that became PoD.

Picked up Scamp and found that she may need a hospital visit for a second opinion on her eyes. Nothing serious, just checking. I think she’s been looking at things too much, especially gin bottles, two of which arrived today, much to our amazement after all the emails and Facebook posts. Their seals remain unbroken.

Another Line Of Duty tonight and we’re back in the “I don’t remember this one” territory. So many twists and turns.

Tomorrow we have business to attend to in the morning, but hopefully the afternoon will be dry and free for a wee run somewhere.

Coffee with Val again – 25 August 2020

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People will talk!

Nobody else was available today. No reply from Colin (although I did get a very apologetic phone call from him in the evening). Fred couldn’t make it because he had a prior appointment. That left the two of us to drink our cortados and eat our toasted teacakes while discussing every sort of technology that came to mind. Maybe we don’t get out much, but look at how we enjoy life when we do! Finally parted company after an hour and a half of tech talk. You’d have hated it JIC. Hazy, maybe not so much. He did drop into conversation that he’d picked up a new 10” iPad with an Apple Pencil for himself recently! He was fairly dismissive about the pencil. Not impressed, but it takes a lot to impress Val.

When we did go our separate ways, he left to go for a wander round Tesco and I went to get lunch which was a steak bake and a chicken bake from Greggs. I hate to say that my steak bake, while not containing any recognisable steak, did taste good. Not healthy, just good.

Back out of the Antonine Centre I realised that I should have offered Val a run home. The weather was ‘liquid’. It was like walking into a cold shower. Freezing cold rain battering at you on a 40mph wind. Bracing! Well, that’s one word for it, I can think of another, but I’ll leave that to your imagination.

Back home and after lunch, we both just sat watching the rain falling and the trees swaying in the wind. It was a wild day. There was no point in trying to go for a walk. Today was a day for indoor photography. Todays subject was a wee vase of Scamp’s sweet peas. A fair bit of post processing was required to pull a decent image out of the dark photo the camera and I took. I quite liked the result.

Watched another part of the Line Of Duty box set on iPlayer. Series 2 Episode 2. I think we’ve now found out where we started watching it the first time, but we need to see another episode, just to be sure. It really is intense and addictive viewing. On a similar tack; Hazy, tell Neil D I’m enjoying the book he recommended.

Tomorrow we have no plans. Yesterday was an early rise for Scamp. Today an early rise for me. Tomorrow we’re hoping for a lazier start to the day.

The Explorer – 20 August 2020

Posted on by Zogman

It’s all about the Views and the Faves and the Comments.

Hazy phoned this morning and if she hadn’t I’d have struggled on with Angry Birds until the phone’s battery died. Caught up with everything that was going on down London way and picked up directions to what sounds like an interesting restaurant in Kingston. Hope the rest of your plans don’t get washed away in Friday’s rain Hazy. Enjoyed the chat and I’ll put the Utopia Avenue back on my ‘possibles’ list.

Do you remember Tuesday’s PoD? I won’t be disappointed if you’ve to rack your brains and then can’t find anything remarkable about it. It was a six frame panorama of Broadwood Loch, which in itself is a totally forgettable manmade loch. Just a big pond really, bounded on one side by a ring road and on the other side by the march of power line pylons. It’s got a ‘business park on its east end, although it looks like business isn’t really booming and on it’s west end is a car park. The least said about it the better. However, if you choose your viewpoint well to disguise the ring road, have the business park behind you and limit your view to avoid the car park and the pylons, it appear that you can take a decent landscape photo that wins a remarkable number of view and faves (favourites) with the bonus of the occasional comment. Today I woke to find that overnight I’d amassed just over 5,000 views, around 250 faves and 8 comments on Flickr. This is almost unheard of for me. On a good day I get about 50 views, half a dozen faves and the occasional comment. The reason for this interest is because some time over the last 24 hours the picture was featured in Explore which is Flickr’s much sought after ‘gold award’. Why it won this accolade and who awarded it is a secret, only known to those in the high echelons of Flickr. Whoever you are, I thank you.

After that, the rest of the day was bound to be a let down, wasn’t it? Well, not all of it. The weather that had been trying to make up its mind whether to rain or shine, settled on Shine. I’ve two old tablets that I occasionally use one, the Nexus 7 is ready to be sent to a place where old tablets go. It was groundbreaking in 2012, but now it’s just ready for breaking. The other is still running. It’s a Samsung Note 10.1 and in 2014 it was an expensive but decent machine. Now it’s sloooow. Too slow to do anything other than draw with. It has its own dedicated pen and the processor is fast enough to keep it working, but the OS is slowing it down. I could downgrade it, but that’s a pain. For less than half what I paid for it back then, I can get a faster, lighter tablet with twice the memory. That’s what I did this afternoon. Drove to Sunny Coatbridge to get a new 10.1, unfortunately without the pen. It’s a lot faster than the 2014 model and the screen is just as detailed.

With it charging, I went for a walk to St Mo’s and got almost nothing. The one shot I liked was of a mummy Coot feeding one of the baby coots. This must be the second brood she’s had because the first lot arrived around the same time as Covid-19 did, not that I’m blaming the coots for that.

Dinner was a new version of Spaghetti a la Carbonara, made without cream. Using cheddar cheese instead of parmesan and with peas. Our peas. The second flush of peas and they tasted ok. Jury is still out on the Carbonara. Scamp thought it was good, I wasn’t so sure. Like yesterday’s curry, it’s worth trying again.

The final count as I write this blog is   6,620 views  276 faves  8 comments.

Looks like wind and rain for all of us tomorrow, so it’s definitely a ‘wait and see’ day.

Making the jump to Lightspeed – 18 August 2020

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New modem today. A little prezzy from Mr Branson

It was a lady from Yodel who handed Scamp the box just before lunch. Over lunch I digested the instructions as well as bacon and an egg. It seemed too easy. Switch off and disconnect the old modem. Connect, plug in and switch on the new one. They even supplied a plastic spanner for the disconnection/connection. Then we waited as little coloured lights flashed across the front of the new black box. Finally they settled down to a plain white (on light) and a couple of green lights. After that and after typing in the long password we were in!

Before the switch over the stats were:

Latency 24ms. Download speed 66.4Mbps. Upload speed 9.8Mbps

After the switch over:

Latency 30ms. Download speed 104.6Mbps. Upload speed 9.6Mbps

Yes, it’s all gobbledegook to me too, but the download speed was over what we’d been promised, so a 6ms lag in response was forgivable … for now.

With everything ticking along smoothly and both our phones now connected to the new black box we went out for a walk. Just to be on the safe side we both packed a light wet weather jacket, because heavy rain was forecast for the later afternoon. We needn’t have bothered, the rain kindly waited until we’d walked round the boardwalk at Broadwood Loch, walked over the dam, continued down and round the exercise machine circuit (no, we didn’t use any of the machines) and on up to the shops to get some fruit, then home. It was after all that, that the rain came. Lightly at first, then heavier until it was good wetting rain. Scamp had decided not to risk cutting the grass when we got home and I’m sure she knows it was the right thing to do. It means she’ll be out there tomorrow testing the grass to see if it’s dry enough for a short cut.

We spent the evening introducing the various electronic devices in the house to the new black box in the corner. Still got some to do, but it’s all a lot easier than when I brought a little bit of circuit board home one Sunday afternoon long ago, plugged it into the back of my home built PC and found the Internet.

PoD was a panorama of Broadwood Loch made in Lightroom from six frames and with a more interesting sky than nature provided today. That’s what software is for. Ansel Adams reputedly said that “Making a photograph only starts with the camera.” A wise man.

Tomorrow Scamp may be grass cutting. I’m thinking I may be painting. All that may change, of course. It will depend on the weather.

Silencing the alarms – 17 August 2020

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Scamp was out for coffee this afternoon with the core of ‘Gems’. The ‘old guard’ so to speak, although I’d never call them that to their faces.

In the morning we watched and waited for the sun to break through the clouds, but we knew in our heart of hearts that it was never going to happen, but that didn’t stop us watching and waiting some more. We finally gave up and had lunch.

After lunch, Scamp drove off to collect Margie for their coffee afternoon with June. I had great plans to watch and listen to a bit of my new tutorial course on architectural sketching, but first I had to find out what type of battery our CO2 and smoke detectors used. They had been cheeping once or twice a day for about a week, but now they were becoming insistent, beep every hour. Then I’d to wrap up the belated birthday parcel for JIC and post it. The alarms were starting to grate on my nerves, so they were the first to deal with. The smoke alarm was the easiest. It took two AAA batteries and was fixed in a couple of minutes. The CO2 detector took a different battery of course, the only one of the common batteries we didn’t have, the 9v one. I’d get one after I posted the parcel. So, next I dealt with the parcel. With it safely addressed and sealed I walked out into what was now a dreary drizzle, stuck my big clumsy bluetooth headphones and was serenaded all the way to the post office. The architectural sketching would have to wait.

Got the parcel posted and was heading to the Spar shop to get the battery when I saw the little green island in the pavement. Here was my PoD. I called it ‘Island in the Sun’ as it wasn’t an island really and there wasn’t any sun, but at first glance it looked to me like a green tropical island in a rather murky sea. Maybe it was wishful thinking. Got the battery and walked home in a downpour, still being serenaded by Spotify’s Discover Weekly. When I got back, Scamp had returned from her coffee afternoon and seemed to have enjoyed it as much as my visit wit Val, last week. Fixed the CO2 detector and it’s now quietly flashing away every hour or so. Silent at last.

Watched the final episode of series 1 of Line of Duty and I still haven’t watched and listened to the sketching video. Maybe tomorrow.

Tomorrow we may get a new modem delivered. Otherwise no real plans.

Out to Lunch – 14 August 2020

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Today we were booked for lunch at The Cotton House. Note the capitalised ‘The’. Not just any Cotton House, but The Cotton House!

Drove there and arrive just in time after a quick return to the house “Did I switch off the computer”. Yes, I had switched it off! When we got there, and got parked in an actual space, an event in itself, the restaurant wasn’t even open. Five minutes later the sign on the door was switched from Closed to Open and we were not quite first in the queue, but nearly first. Got a table and were told it was a one hour time slot. No problem. We could scoff anything they’d put down to us in an hour. Scamp went for her usual TCH standard: Thai Spring Rolls followed by Chicken Chow Mein. I decided to be adventurous and had Thai Spring Rolls (I usually have Chicken Noodle Soup) and Salt & Chilli Chicken, rather than the usual Chow Mein. Both starters were fine, although I’d have the soup next time. Scamp’s main was just as good as it usually is. I can vouch for it because she let me have some to taste. I’d definitely order my Salt & Chilli again, we both agreed the chicken was excellent (yes, I did let her have a piece to see what she was missing!) Neither of us was really bothered about tea or coffee and we just paid and left, feeling bad because we had no ‘real’ money to leave a tip and there was no facility in the card machine to do it digitally. They used to bring a wee dish of jelly beans with the bill and I was thinking that in these post Covid days that might pose a problem, but someone was thinking about that and there was a wee plastic disposable tub of multicoloured sugar-heavy sweeties with the bill. Great idea!

We left Longcroft and headed for Glasgow. I wanted to have a look at a camera in JL (no surprise there, say some) and we both wanted a wander round town. It was a great day for it. This morning it had been heavy cloud, but on the way to Glasgow the clouds lifted and the sun shone. We wandered round JL. I had a look at cameras, but the one I was looking for wasn’t there (surprise, surprise.) I heard one of the ‘partners’ (i.e. sales assistants) say to a couple of prospective customers that they “don’t have their full stock in the stores yet.” He added that they were hoping to have it in ‘soon’. That seems to be a problem these days everywhere.

Walked down Bucky Street which is where I got today’s PoD. It’s actually a cut and paste of two images, but Lightroom is so good at this stuff, it would take and expert to see the join. If you are an expert and you can see the join, keep it to yourself. Nobody likes a smarty pants.

After a coffee in Nero – I’m getting like Scamp and beginning to despise disposable cups – we headed up to the car, stopping to allow Scamp a retail opportunity in the Pandora shop. I think she deserved it for surviving Lockdown with me moaning at her about everything I could think of.

Back home and the sun was still shining. I did think of going over to St Mo’s to annoy some beasties, but I had a decent PoD and it was a rather warm and sunny afternoon so I planked myself in the garden along side an already ensconced Scamp and listened to some music. I even did a wee painting that’s available for your perusal on Instagram. I think I’ve inflicted enough pain on friends on Facebook! I also had a beer to accompany Scamp’s Pimms.

Tonight we travelled back a year and a few hundred miles to Venice to remember a sail-in we won’t forget in a long, long time.

Our WiFi died about half an hour ago, so this blog is getting posted late. Checked the state of the connection with Virgin and was given the surprising news that our modem is being upgraded!!! After umpteen phone calls and emails with no response, suddenly out of the blue they say we’re getting a new hub! I’ll believe it when I see it. Of course the signal came back, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this.

No plans for tomorrow and it’s too late to book another lunch out. Hoping for more sunshine. That will do instead.

Up early for a change – 9 August 2020

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I woke early, before 7am and couldn’t get back to sleep. I hate it when that happens.

Eventually gave up sat reading for a while. About half way through “Flowers For Algernon”. Really old book I remember from Larky library around the mid ‘60s. It’s quite dated now, but an interesting concept, none the less. Finally gave up completely and got up to make breakfast.

So, we were up fairly early for a change. It was a beautiful day. Not quite as hot as yesterday which was good. We did a bit of gardening. Actually, Scamp did a bit of gardening and I started fixing up the solar cell for Scamp’s new LED light string. Finally, after a few false starts, we go a good place for the solar panel. Just a little one about 75mm by 50mm, but enough to power the lights. Many years ago, probably about 30 years ago, we all visited an Eco centre in Wales and I bought some shards of solar cells, hoping to build a small solar pane. It never got made. The cells were too fragile and most got cracked on the way home. Amazing to think you can buy a solar panel which charges a NiMH battery which in turn powers a line of fifty LEDs all for around £4. Back then, you could only have Red, Yellow and Green LEDs. Bit massive things by today’s standard which drained a battery in about fifteen minutes. Not everything was better in “the olden days”.

With the lights strung up and tested and all Scamp’s potting up done, we adjourned for lunch. After lunch and a rest to let all that fatty goodness be digested, we went out for a walk round Broadwood Stadium avoiding kids on bikes trying to make the most of their last days of freedom before schools restart in the middle of the week. I’m sure there were teacher out there too, making the most of the last days of sunshine before they return to the grind. Oh, how I enjoy looking back at those last days of freedom from the standpoint of one who doesn’t need to do that ever again.

When we got back without having taken any meaningful photos, I grabbed a camera and went for a walk in St Mo’s while Scamp went to laze in the afternoon sunshine. I came home empty handed again. I’d seen yesterday’s big blue dragonflies, but they weren’t posing for me. They had far more important things on their minds, cavorting around the wee pond at St Mo’s.

Dinner was Sea Bream with Long Stem Broccoli and Potatoes. It is one of Scamp’s specialities and it tasted as good as usual. The starter was Bruschetta made with Italian crust bread I’d bought in Perth yesterday. Delicious too.

Watched the second British GP and enjoyed an interesting ending. Thankful really that we didn’t have to sit through the whole boring race. Nothing happened that couldn’t have been predicted by anyone who follows motorsport, with the possible exception of the fall of Vettel. It looks like he really has lost the plot. “Toys out of the pram” is the phrase that springs to mind.

Spoke to JIC and gave him a fleshed out version of yesterday’s announcement that our love affair with the Red Juke is sadly coming to an end and another Nissan has now taken its place, albeit a Nissan with one less cylinder in its engine.

PoD today went to a focus stacked image of one of Scamp’s favourite roses, the beautiful Troika. Focus stacking done in-camera and very neat it was too.

Tomorrow we may have to sign a contract to give some money to Mr Nissan for the chance to use one of his Blue Micras for a few years. Other than that and the chance of thunderstorms, hopefully another sunny day.

Confusion Reigns – 3 August 2020

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Confusion may have reigned, but there wasn’t much actual rain. A bit, but not much.

I’d promised to clean up the inside of the car and that’s what I did first this morning. It’s not sparkling clean, but it’s not nearly as dirty and messy as it was. Not quite in the JIC category, more … lived in!

With the future of the Juke in mind, I phoned Nissan to check if I was actually booked in for a meeting tomorrow (not Thursday as I’d reported in yesterday’s blog). I seemed to confuse the receptionist because I didn’t have a department or a sales person she could transfer the call to. She eventually just passed it on to the first available sales person. I then proceeded to confuse him too. Eventually I cut to the chase and asked him: “Do you have an appointment scheduled for me to visit tomorrow?” He said “No.” Not the answer I wanted, but at least we were getting somewhere. He now wanted to hand this confusing and possibly confused customer over to someone else. He opened my file and found the salesman I dealt with three years ago when I bought the Juke. He said he’d contact him and get him to phone me later. I think he went out to have lunch then and left his phone deliberately in the office. Locked in a drawer, no doubt.

Scamp wasn’t feeling so good today. She had been feeling sick during the night and hadn’t slept much. For those reasons, she had a light lunch, and so did I because I was still trying to get my head round what had happened. To clarify things we started looking at options for loans or money transfers, basically working out what was the easiest way to deal with the offloading or keeping of the Juke. With my head spinning in a different way now I suggested we take a run to Bishopbriggs to buy a 2 Terabyte removable drive to let me back up the MacBook Pro and the iMac using Time Machine. It’s an old but reliable way of backing up your entire Apple computer with more options than there are with Carbon Copier. Don’t roll your eyes JIC, I’m not going deep into the technicalities. Carbon Copier is a disaster recovery tool. Time Machine is a file recovery tool. Anyway, we drove to Bishopbriggs and bought the cheapest one I could find with a reputable make.

Back home again, I was just about to go on a ‘beastie hunt’ when my phone rang and it was the salesman who sold me the Juke trying to unravel the mess. The phone call I got last week from Renault finance was actually telling me about a discount event that runs from Wednesday 5th until Saturday. They had got their wires crossed and had also been booking people for the event from today and causing a lot of problems as a result. To simplify things I agreed that we’d to to the VIP event which will also feature an extra discount (probably less than 1%). So, I have until Wednesday to get rid of the remaining seagull crap, dust the inside of the car. Wash it down and tidy up the boot. I might get the seagull crap removed. The rest? No chance!

There were no beasties posing for photos today. The bees were too busy, the beetles were beetling about, the ladybirds were lazing, even the flowers were fading. I came home almost empty handed and with no quality work.

Scamp was feeling better by dinner time and had some light tomato spaghetti. After dinner I was making my coffee when I spotted him. There is a Cyberman in my coffee machine! It took me a few seconds to prise him out and half an hour to get a tripod and camera positioned so that I could record his existence. What you see above is living proof that Cybermen exist!

Later we found that series 1 episode 1 of Line of Duty was on BBC 1 (also on iPlayer). It’s a totally believable storyline about corruption in the police and must be the best cop series on TV. I think we started watching it from about halfway through series 2 or maybe we started at series 3. Worth watching if you haven’t seen it before.

Right, so we aren’t going to Stirling tomorrow. In fact, by the looks of the weather we won’t be going anywhere tomorrow. Certainly not without a good Goretex jacket. It’s going to be wet and windy.

Not as oppressively warm as yesterday – 1 August 2020

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That was my first thought this morning.

Not as warm. A bit fresher perhaps? Yesterday was just a bit too unScottish on the temperature scale. Today was going to be more down to earth.

We had no bread, very little fruit and no fancy little cakes, so I wandered off down to the shops in the morning. Got enough stuff to feed us for today (and a few days more if the truth be told) and a bar of chocolate for going, which I thought was very fair. Lunch was a roll ’n’ cheese for both of us, but not just ordinary rolls, no, these were Ciabatta rolls that had come all the way from Iceland, the frozen food shop, no the northerly island nation. Then we sat and wondered what to do until the live British F1 GP qualifying was due to start. We were then glued to our TV until the end of the qualifying came to a nail biting finish, or at least that’s what we were told. It was the usual faces in the usual grid slots. No nails were bitten in this house.

Later in the afternoon, I took myself and a camera out for a walk in St Mo’s while Scamp waited at home, deciding what to wear for tonight’s Zoom Dance. To be fair to her, she also prepared the “mise en place” (food and dishes preparation) for tonight’s dinner which was Smoked Salmon and Broccoli Quiche. We’d made it before, but it was really good to walk into the kitchen and find everything laid out for me. The actual cookery was easy after all that. It tasted really quite good. Not as good as Jackie’s, but a fair stab at it. Plus, of course she uses the old fashioned shortcrust pastry base while we have a new super fast method which must remain a secret!

After dinner it was a bit of a rush to get the living room rearranged in time for the dance. It’s really a good way of having a socially isolated dance without the need for face masks and all that faff. Just a computer and a space in your own home to dance. It’s amazing the amount of stuff we’d (read “I’d”) forgotten since the last one. It took me one whole track before I got the steps for the basic waltz anywhere like a dance and not just staggering blindly around the living room. The Social Foxtrot is all about dancing in never ending saw-tooth formations, even I can manage that. Salsa was … let’s say it wasn’t as smooth and faultless as it should be. All in all, it was an exercise in not falling over and no, I’d not had anything stronger than a bottle of beer at that point. However, it was great fun and good exercise too. Don’t know what the couple next door in their Jacuzzi thought! I kid you not, they have a jacuzzi in a gazebo in a garden the same size as ours. What is Westfield coming to? I think they have just too many Zs in their heads! When the Zoom dance ended we had to have a wee seat in the quiet just to allow our muscle groups to return to normal. Next one is in a couple of weeks time unless Lockdown finishes before then – we should be so lucky!

Today’s PoD was wee fly on a cow parsley head.

Tomorrow we may be aching so much we won’t be able to go out anywhere, or maybe we should just to ease those dancing muscles.