Category: Uncategorized

It’s got to be done. You simply have to travel east to Embra just before Christmas. It’s all about the atmosphere and the crowds. It wasn’t as freezing cold as I’ve seen it sometimes, but it was quite cold. Had decided to go to Bar Roma for lunch, but shock horror, it’s not there any more. There’s a Tex Mex place where this brilliant Italian restaurant used to be. Had to go to Zizzi’s instead. Quite good, but not the same. Oh well, that’s progress I suppose. The dark side of progress is Flickr currently. Tonight the upload engine has been struggling for the last 15 mins to upload 3 images. It’s fine to have a fancy new interface, but if the infrastructure isn’t there, you are seriously wasting not just your time, but also mine. I’ve already dropped Blipfoto because of the same problem and it looks like Flickr is dead in the water too.

Bloke having a cigarette outside his house. Nothing unusual there, except this bloke lives in a first floor flat above a shop. So he climbs out the window and has a seat set up on the roof of the shop. Just wrap up well for the chilly Embra weather. Well done pal, problem solved.

A pretty sunset over Princes Street Gardens.  Lovely colours.

You simply can’t visit Embra without taking a picture of the castle.  Ask any of the oriental visitors who throng there every day of the year.  Having said that, it’s difficult to get a clean shot of the castle without including some of the Christmas tat.  I like this one because the silhouettes enhance the colours in the sky … again.

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When I woke this morning the sky was blue and the few clouds around were tinged pink with the rising sun.  I had a few things on my to-do list, so I got right down to it.  First was a walk to the post office with yet another batch of Christmas cards.  It was cold but bright when I left.  On the way back I was walking into horizontal sleet, and from there the day went downhill.

This was the view on the way home, just as the sleet started, the M80 with the inspiring architecture of Cumbernauld in the background.  Such a lovely morning.  The only thing it had to recommend it was the fact that all those drivers were either going to work or at work and I wasn’t.  Every cloud etc.

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Pity about the tree in the foreground. I’ve asked them to cut it down to give me a better view of the hills, but for some reason they refuse.

Another wonderful day shopping in Glasgow (sarcasm alert).
+  Got parked no problem
+  Bluetooth headphones are great in crowded streets

–  Subway was mobbed
–  It rained all afternoon
–  The shops were mobbed

I was shopping for a Chrissy prezzy for my wife, so I started by putting on my invisibility cloak, also known as headphones.  I’ve found you can wander round any shop with these things on and nobody bothers you.  They don’t have to be connected, they just have to be visible to others.  People see them, not you.  Hence the invisibility cloak.

I wandered around Marks & Spencer looking at ladies “lingerie and sleepware” and was amazed at the number of men walking around holding up different pieces of “ladies lingerie and sleepware”, while trying desperately not to make eye contact with each other.

The other thing that amazed me was that queueing was cancelled for the day.  There I was in a shop, having selected a piece of “ladies lingerie and sleepware”, not for myself I hasten to add, I waited where the sign said queue here ↓.  This bloke walks past me and plants himself in front.  I tapped him on the shoulder and said “Excuse me, there’s a queue”.  “Oh” he said, “I didn’t know there was a queue.”  “Well, there is,” I said “I’m in it and I’m in front of you.”  Then I realised my mistake.  I still had my invisibility cloak on.  Must have nearly given the bloke a heart attack, hearing this voice appear from a pair of headphones!

Don’t try this at home, children.  These are highly trained professionals who have, prior to this performance, completed an exhaustive risk assessment.  You can’t just pick anyone off the street and expect them to juggle flaming clubs.

If you want to get a hat ….
… get a head.  If you don’t have a head, this bloke will sell you one.

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Both of them good for you. Curry brightens the tastebuds and confession is good for the soul (so they say). We were in Stirling and it seemed a good idea to go for a curry. The Indian was packed as usual, but shock horror, no Chicken Tikka Chilli Bhuna on the menu. Oh well. Needs must, I had to make do with a normal Karahi Bhuna. It was a bit mild though. No chopped up chillies in it. Then on to Waitrose where I saw this wee bear on a shelf.

Possibly he was waiting for someone, or maybe he was just having a rest from the Christmas shopping. It does take it out of one. The confession? Oh, that stays between the the two people involved.

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Out a bit earlier today and a longer walk along the old railway from Auchinstarry.  Not much to see, although two pheasants were having a loud conversation across the Kelvin burn. No deer, few birds and no flowers of course.  Seems like only a week ago I was spending an afternoon among the blue flowers, but that was way back in the sunny summer weather.  Today was dull and quite chilly.  Hard underfoot with the ground still frozen from the recent low temperatures.

I saw these tiny little seedheads which looked like miniature tulip flowers, but try as I might, I couldn’t get both heads in focus at the same time, so I opted for the front one in and the rear one out (of focus).

I don’t know what these red berries are, but I guess they are poisonous or else the birds would have scoffed them. They did seem to light up a dull day and the grass leaves made a great frame for them. Natural Ikebana.

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It was a wee bit later than we intended going out this afternoon and the result was the light was falling away greatly before I got any photos taken.  We walked from Auchinstarry towards Twechar and then crossed the bridge over the Kelvin and took the path through the plantation to the canal and from there back to the carpark.

I liked that there was a bit of detail in the sky and the bare trees created a good foil for it.

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I liked the colour in the sky here and the textures in the foreground.

It’s beginning to look as if “If you don’t have any flooers to photograph, do you have a painting?”. This is one I finished this morning. It’s been in my painting to-do list for some time. I’ve only ever painted it in watercolour before, but today it was done in acrylic and I quite like the finished article. Acrylic on watercolour paper.
Salsa ball tonight and at 1.00am on Monday morning, my ears are still ringing! It’s a good job I don’t have work to go to tomorrow, oops, today.

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Neither of us could decide what to do or where to go today, so we took ourselves in to Glasgow on the bus. 45minutes on the bus and 15minutes in the car. However, with the new draconian drink-drive limit in Scotland, the bus makes sense, whereas the new limit makes no sense.

The Toon was busy today. Christmas shoppers (and avoiders) every one. Spot the red hat Hazel!

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‘X’ marks the spot in the old Lewis’s building in Argyle Street in Glasgow. Don’t know what you would call it now, but it will always be the old Lewis’s building to me.

It was a wee bit icy this morning (understatement!). So I drove ‘S’ to work and came back to bed afterwards to eat my breakfast and continue reading Terry Pratchett’s autobiography. A rare treat (both B in B and the book). Afterwards, I took the opportunity afforded by the early rise to get out while the sun was shining, even if the ice wasn’t melting. The clouds broke up for a while to give the chance of a couple of skyscapes.

This was the view across the reed beds that NLC have deemed to be a nature reserve. Basically this meant they don’t have to maintain it, saving them money and ticking the Eco box. Chancers! Anyway, as usual it provided a decent cloudscape for a photo.

Behind the pond (NLC call it a ‘Loch’, but what do they know? It’s a pond, right?!) is another wee pond. I think this one is partly manmade, possibly by pupils from the nearby school. It’s a good place for the odd damselfly and dragonfly pic in the summer, but strangely there were none today.
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It was only when I was processing these pics, I realised that there were flare marks in all of them, visible in the trees left of centre here. Checked the uv filter and it was clean, then found a fingerprint aargh on the back element. Managed to dust it off with a lens cleaner thingy. Fixed. First time for a long while I’ve done that.

After a really wintry morning, the afternoon brought a little sunshine. I managed to get a few shots of some of Glasgow’s more religious architecture before my camera produced a message I’d never seen before “Battery Empty”. Luckily I was on the way home by then. Battery is now fully charged and ready for action tomorrow, provided the temperature rises above zero.

I decided to build a triptych of the three shots I’d taken rather than put them up as three individual images, just for a laugh, and because it’s a posh, arty name!

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