Category: weather

A non-dancing day – 27 January 2019

Posted on by Zogman

I think after Friday and Saturday, we were well danced out.

Today we had a light breakfast at the hotel said our goodbyes to new and old friends, excluding Diane who was not in either of these sets and anyway, hadn’t surfaced by our 9.30am scraping of the car and driving home. Beautiful light and scenery as we took the Hamilton road home. Much quicker route, especially on a quiet, cold Sunday morning.

Just relaxed when we got home with a decent cup of coffee and solved today’s Sudoku while Scamp complained that there were pieces missing in her digital jigsaw. To clear this problem from her mind she went off to buy Tesco. After she got back, I grabbed my boots and went over to St Mo’s to get some photos. My favourite became PoD and is what you see above. It’s another Cladonia Pixie Cup with a bokeh background. Just out of focus shapes really, given a fancy Japanese name.

We had partly intended to go a Sunday Social at Mango tonight, but neither of us could be bothered and a little glass of Rhubarb & Ginger Gin followed by a glass of white from Michael’s hamper signed the fate of the evening. I’d be well over Nicola’s Abstemious Law, so couldn’t drive in to Glasgow, even if I wanted to.  Scamp made dinner and it was a belated Burns Supper i.e. Haggis, Neeps (mashed turnip) and Tatties (mashed potatoes).  Lovely wholesome food.

Spoke to Jamie later and heard about all the things happening down in his neck of the woods. Other than that, watched a bit of fluff on the TV and now I’m writing this record of a relaxing, non-dancing day.

Tomorrow I get my annual diabetic retinopathy test. Hope I don’t get drops in my eyes, but I’m getting the bus anyway!

Powered by Duracell – 26 January 2019

Posted on by Zogman

Today we were up early, bags packed and out by 11.30 for our trip to Strathaven, posh centre of South Lanarkshire.

We were off to the Strathaven Hotel for a day of dance workshops (boiler suits not compulsory). Decided that through Hamilton was the quickest way on a normal day, but given it was a Saturday and around midday, it would be chaos. So we headed for the scenic route up to Canderside and then through Stonehouse and Strathaven itself to the hotel which used to be in farmland through an avenue of trees, but that was fifty odd years ago. It took a bit longer than I’d anticipated, but we found the hotel without any problem. There were a few trees left standing, but hardly an avenue. The farmland was gone, of course, covered with private housing and a primary school. The hotel looked fine with a modern restaurant extension to the existing old building.

Booked in and found our way to our room through the tortuous labyrinth that you’d expect in an 18th century country house hotel, and then found our way back to the ballroom. Wishing all the time that we’d had the forethought to lay down a path of breadcrumbs! Nice large and intimidating ballroom with the equally large and intimidating Diane! One of those people who stands right in front of you invading your space. An alpha female if such a thing exists.

The workshop started with waltz with only four couples. Scamp and I both agree that we learned a lot. Then a short bit of quickstep, concentrating on the technical part of the ‘fishtails’. In jive we did a Boston Cross or Kick ( the jury’s still out on the exact name) and the Four Chassis. Both of which have now slipped my teflon memory (nothing sticks!). Then lunch. We waited over 40 minutes for a small plate of sandwiches. That seemed to be par for the course, because other people sitting near us complained about the wait too. Overwhelmed or understaffed it was difficult to tell.

Back in the workshop Diane’s contingent had arrived and the room was filling up. We were told to simply dance a waltz to warm up. This was our first time attempting a waltz in real ballroom and we both made a hash of it. It was obvious that the Diane’s class were much more practised practitioners of dance. Everyone was dancing sedately around us and giving us a wide berth, obviously realising we were just learning. We should have worn “L” plates, or at least “P” plates. However, one idiot in particular decided that he and his partner didn’t need to follow the anticlockwise rule and started zig zagging across the dance floor. One time in particular, just as Scamp and I were getting our feet sorted out, he landed right in front of us and we had to do an emergency stop. Then they were off again in a different direction and at top speed. Powered by Duracell. He was a bit like a dragonfly in that he seemed to move only in straight lines at really high speed. However his irresistible force met an immovable object. Me. I just got so pissed off with this unnecessary show off that the next time he shot past us and tried to move off in another direction, I moved over into his path and crashed into him. I apologised and then we staggered our way further around the floor. It was an accident, honest 😉

When the next workshop started it was obvious that we were far out of our depth. This was Diane time. She had already stamped her authority on this group, her group. She shouted and postured and shouted some more. We watched for a while then went up to the room to read for an hour or so, since it was dull and wet outside and worst of all, I’d forgotten my camera.

Dinner was a protracted affair. It took over two hours from Starter to Coffee. Food was quite good and well presented, it was just the time lag in between courses that made the whole thing tiresome. Even more tiresome was the dancing afterwards. No salsa, very little jive. This was the Diane’s Dance Show aimed fairly and squarely at her own group. We waited until the end and did manage to dance salsa to one of the tracks and also performed our version of the Seven Spins, but didn’t really attempt any ballroom. More practise needed there. However one of our dinner companions provided PoD. He did look very like somebody from the ’60s, and his name was, in fact, John!

Dragged ourselves off to bed. As I climbed the stairs, I thought “That’s twelve hours of my life I’ll never get back.”

Tomorrow we’ll have breakfast and leave this sorry place.

Different Dances – 23 January 2019

Posted on by Zogman

It was cold this morning when we woke and that cold stayed all day.

Phoned the surgery to get the result of my blood test and it was fine. It was back to normal, but the doc had given me a course of penicillin to take to completely clear up the lingering UTI. Good result. Good start to the day.

Drove into town to go dancing and found out that we were doing a host of dances today. First we rattled through the seven spins of our jive routine. Then Michael started us on the Rumba which we hadn’t done since the Hamilton class years and years ago. After that we had an introduction to the Cha-Cha, which, again we had done before, mainly on sea days on a variety of cruises, but never in so much detail. Who knew your feet had to stay on the floor at all times? Finally we did a fairly representative waltz and a quickstep. Five dances in an hour. That’s not bad going. I think that’s us prepared for the workshops on Saturday in Strathaven, provided we can lay our hands on a pair of boilersuits.

Walking back from Blackfriars I looked along Hutcheson Street and saw the old Hutcheson’s Hospital lit up by the afternoon sun. It looked like a good subject and that’s why it became PoD. A fair bit of post processing in LR and ON1 2019 which meant the digital noise was a bit overpowering, but I managed to tone it down a bit in LR. Bought a couple of half pans of watercolour paint to beef up the Joan of Art painting box.

It tried to snow a bit as we were leaving Glasgow, but didn’t come to much. We weren’t sure if we were going to salsa tonight, but finally agreed that it would be fine. That was before the sleet and the snow on the M80 going in. Luckily again, it didn’t last and we arrived in fairly good time for Scamp to help out with the last half of the 6.30 class.

Moves in the 7.30 class were Astrella Complicada, Prado and Bayamo. Enjoyed the class although it was smaller than previous weeks.

Tomorrow I’m a Joiner for Shona fitting a lock to her bedroom door and then a Roadie for Scamp who’s got a gig for the Probus club. Not her favourite audience.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas – 22 January 2019

Posted on by Zogman

We woke to snow today. Not lots and not long lasting, but still snow.

It was one of those mornings when we rejoice at being retired. Not for us the scraping of the windscreen and then the slow drive to work, single file in the tyre tracks of the car in front. No, back to bed with a cup of tea and a good book. Rivers of London (book 1, Hazy). The snow came and went for most of the morning before eventually tailing off and then the slow drip, drip of the thaw started, but not before I grabbed a camera and got some macro shots of the snowmelt on the plants in the garden and also on the metal allium feature in the back garden. That’s what achieved PoD.

The furthest we went today was Tesco and only after we were sure the road was clear of the white stuff. Tonight the snow is all but gone, but the temperature is down to -2ºc as I write this.

January is a time for hanging up calendars, but I found we had misplaced one of ours. It was in a polythene bag at the side of the wardrobe in the bedroom and it came from Sardinia. It started us checking back through our photos to see what Alghero, Sardinia looked like. Scamp usually does a screen grab of the temperature every day we are on holiday and in Alghero in June it was 27ºc. That’s a nice thought to end with!

Tomorrow will probably another dancing day. I may go and get three half pans of watercolour paint to replace the ones in the Joan of Art paintbox Hazy bought me a year or so ago. I liked the tin, loved the idea and the tiny little brush, but hated the colour selection – too acidic for me. I’d been painting tonight and decided it was time to warm up the colour selection.

Art Class – 21 January 2019

Posted on by Zogman

Followed by Music Class

Today I was encouraging Margie to draw a cube in two point perspective. Instead of me doing the drawing, Margie would be doing it while I watched her and gently pushed her back onto the right path when she strayed. I think it was a success because after three or four tries she was definitely getting the hang of it. After the class, she stayed for Scamp’s Music Class, but I didn’t.

I drove down to Cumbersheugh railway station and walk along the Luggie, upstream for a change. It’s a bit more interesting in that direction and not nearly as mucky. It was along that way I found today’s PoD. I think it’s a variety of Cladonea lichen, but I’m not sure what particular family it belongs to. I’m sure someone on Flickr will know, or at least have a good guess. It was cold and miserable, and I curtailed my walk and headed home.

Scamp and I have been dancing Salsa for about ten years and in that time have helped with a great number of beginners, some of whom have continued through the ranks and joined our advanced class, but I’ve never met anyone I knew outside the salsa circuit … until tonight.

The class were practising a couple of moves, old moves, but ones we’d partly forgotten when into the class came one of the teachers I used to work beside. She was in a different department, but our paths had crossed many times. Not such a strange thing to happen really. It was inevitable that, even in a place the size of Glasgow, I’d bump into someone I knew eventually. It still took me by surprise, and her too I imagine. If it had to happen, it couldn’t have been with a nicer person. If she enjoys the classes, we could even be dancing in the same group some day.

No plans for tomorrow, but I must start looking for a shirt for the Salsa Ceilidh on Friday.

A sew sew day – 20 January 2019

Posted on by Zogman

Woke this morning and we couldn’t decide whether to go out or not. Not won.

It was a late start and we thought we might go to Glasgow Green for a walk, but then Scamp reminded me that the people’s palace would probably be closed and the winter garden would definitely be closed, so there would be no chance of a Sunday roll ’n’ sausage and a cup of coffee. No point then. What I eventually did do was get the sewing machine out and repair the pocket in a pair of jeans. I’d repaired the twin of this pair back in December using Scamp’s method. I’d actually repaired this pair earlier last year, but made a real pigs ear of it, so last night I carefully ripped out all the stitches and today I was going to repair it using the Scamp method. It’s the most elegant and simple way to repair a pocket in a pair of jeans. I’m not going to describe it here, but maybe I’ll put it online some time (that means ‘never’). After a lot of huffing and puffing, a fair bit of talking to myself and just a smidgin of swearing, the job was done. One pair of jeans saved from the tip.

By the time I was finished, the sun was poking through the clouds as the weather fairies had predicted it would, so I grabbed my camera bag, put on my good boots and went for a walk in St Mo’s. I’d hoped to get some shots of the St Mo’s deer, but they weren’t to be seen today. Instead, PoD was the twisted hawthorn bush by the wee pond. I just love the shapes of the branches, but today I had extra help from the sun shining on the mossy trunk and the golden colours of the larches in the background. Didn’t see anything else worth photographing until I was nearly home. I turned round for some reason and saw the moon rising, the super ‘blood moon’. It did look quite big rising behind the pines. PoD was still the twisted hawthorn, but you can see the orange/peach supermoon here. I’ve just looked out the window and at 10.30pm it looks like a normal, if bright, ordinary moon. It will become a totally eclipsed moon some time around 3am, but I don’t think I’ll bother to get up for that.

Spoke to JIC tonight and found out what’s happening down south and was delighted to hear that they were suffering sub-zero temperatures while we were basking in 5ºc today. It’s now -0.1ºc here, so maybe they will be basking tonight.

Off to bed soon because I’m expecting to teach 2 point perspective to Margie tomorrow, or more correctly, get Margie to draw a 2 point perspective cube while I watch and correct her.

A day of calm – 19 January 2019

Posted on by Zogman

It’s been a busy week with every day being accounted for. Today we’d have a rest.

A lazy start to the day, re-reading the first of the Rivers of London series and beginning to put together the Peter Grant story from its early beginnings. After that we considered whether to have coffee at home or to go to Stirling as we’d intended and have lunch there. The ‘have lunch there’ option won. We drove to Stirling and walked in to town. Had coffee there and, as there was nothing else we wanted to do there, came back to Waitrose where Scamp started shopping and I went to bring the car round to the Waitrose car park where it would be easier to trolley the many bags into the boot.

In Tesco you have to choose your parking space carefully to be sure you can get back out again and hopefully not collect a few (more) scrapes from the ‘grannies’ who will cheerfully bang into you and then deny any knowledge of it. And by ‘Grannies’ I mean dummies of both sex. In Waitrose it’s totally different. Firstly there are much fewer spaces and people are so much nicer about it. “After you”, “No, after you”. I don’t abide by these rules. “After you.”, “Ok, thanks very much and I’m into the space you were eying up. No use giving me that glare, you were being polite, I was being proactive. If you’re not fast, you’re last. Parked and found Scamp in the shop then after paying we headed back to the car and stuffed the boot with ‘bags for life’.

We stopped on the way home to get some cheap beer (and lots of other things) in Lidl in Kilsyth. Then we were on the final homeward leg. Just before the railway arches I spotted the back end of a white car sticking up out of the trees on the left side of the road. It was almost sitting on top of a black car that’s been parked in the ditch two metres down from the road level for at least six months. There must be some enormous electromagnetic field in that ditch that simply drags cars in. Tomorrow there will be a ‘police aware’ warning on the white car and it will gradually be stripped of any and all removable parts over the next few months.

Basically, that was it for the day. Dinner was Buttered Chicken from the Spice Tailor range and now the kitchen is reeking of fenugreek. PoD is a view of the Wallace monument through the mist, taken from the outside of Waitrose.

Tomorrow, we’ve been spared the problem of excusing ourselves from a ballroom dance night, because it’s been re-scheduled, presumably because Michael has the flu. Don’t know what we’ll do instead.

Out even earlier – 18 January 2019

Posted on by Zogman

Why is it when I set the alarm on my phone to make sure I wake up on time, I don’t sleep for more than an hour at a time?

Up and out for 8.20 this morning to go to the docs for a blood test at 8.50. I needed that half hour to scrape the car and get the temperature up to a reasonable level where your breath doesn’t freeze instantly in front of your face. Then I had to drive through the hosts of parents driving their children to school to make sure their little feet and knee joints didn’t wear out prematurely.

Got parked and grabbed today’s PoD of the sun colouring the sky and clouds above Carbrain. A bit of a misnomer, because everyone in Cumbersheugh knows there isn’t a brain in Carbrain. I walked a bit further and watched two women being terrorised by marauding feral seagulls behind Boots the Chemist. Great beasts of things, they were and squawking like banshees and the seagulls were almost as bad. By the time I got to the doc’s, the sun had broken free of the horizon and was lighting up the sky properly. Another shot in the bag which might have beaten the first if it wasn’t for the ugly flat roofed Carbrian flats with windows and no doors. “Blots on the Landscape”, could have been the title. Did my Tony Hancock impersonation (if that makes no sense to you, Google ‘The Blood Donor’, a Hancock classic) and then headed home for breakfast which on this cold, clear morning would be porridge and a cup of Assam. The best central heating known to man.

Scamp was determined to renew our passports online since she heard that you could take your own photo and get it validated immediately. It’s a brilliant system and I’m still not sure if it is a really clever algorithm (the word of the moment, don’t you know?) or an actual human sitting there giving thumbs up or thumbs down. Possibly this will be the ultimate Turing Test some day. Anyway, the upshot of it was we passed the test and ordered our shiny new passports. Then we’d to send our old passports off to be cancelled or redacted or simply have their corners cut off. Again will it be by machine or will it be by a minimum wage human? Who knows. Just so you know, you have to actually post the passport off, you can’t simply stuff it into the USB port in the back or side of your computer. That’s a pity. It kind of goes against the digital ethos of renewing your passport online. That said, the whole thing is much better than take the photo, fill in the form, post the lot away, wait a week, get a refusal because Gort says the corner of your mouth is slightly upturned and you might, just might be starting to smile. DO IT AGAIN PROPERLY THIS TIME. Yes, this is a big step forward, even if we don’t know if Gort is human or android.

Drove to Blantyre to Carrigan’s and had dinner tonight with Margaret and Billy. Food was good and plentiful. My roast gammon had been sitting under the heat lamp for a few minutes more than I’d have liked, but it was more than made up for with the dessert. Total silence while four of us struggled with our Tablet Ice Cream. Astounding dessert. Totally unnecessary, but total gluttony!

Managed to find my way back on to the M74 only to find the M73 turnoff was closed tonight, but then I navigated my way off and over the M74 and back on to the M73 turnoff on the other side. That confused the satnav.

Tomorrow I believe we may be going to Stirling to Waitrose for food. Hopefully we won’t be getting up early and I’m not setting my alarm, so I should sleep less fitfully than last night.

Out early – 17 January 2019

Posted on by Zogman

Not very early, just after 10am, but much earlier than usual

Scamp was off to see Isobel for coffee at 10am and I was up and out a few minutes later. Just a walk over to St Mo’s to see if there was anything worth taking the camera out of the bag for. I’d put some beeswax on to my old Lafuma boots which are about twenty years old now. Not the best boots in the world, but they’ve a Goretex lining and they’ve a decent sole, so they’re better than my Clarks boots, just as long as I remember to wax them.

I was just walking towards the woods when I saw the three deer I was hoping to photograph, running away. Oh well, hopefully there will be other things to photograph. Despite the blue skies and the ice on the ponds, there was nothing that fired my interest and I was walking back home when I saw the opportunity to take another low level shot by resting the camera on some thin ice. It’s a view I couldn’t get any other way. The Nikon was out of the question. Too heavy and wrong lens selection. It had to be the Teazer today and it performed quite well. I’d cleaned it last week by using the Dyson to suck some of the dust from the lens. I hadn’t believed this would work, but it did. Best of the shots is above after a fair bit of work in ON1 2019 and Lightroom.

Got home just before Scamp and then we went out to recce tomorrow’s venue for dinner with Margaret and Billy. Their treat, their choice of restaurant. They’d chosen John Carrigan’s in Blantyre. Now I know where Blantyre is and I know how to get there, but just in case, I punched the postcode into the satnav and blindly followed it. It was a strange route that eventually took us within 100m of my Auntie Mary’s house. The last time I was there was easily 45 years ago, but I still remembered the geography of the place. Really strange seeing the changes that had taken place. Even stranger was when the satnav said “turn left then immediately turn right”. That’s when I saw a pub that I used to pass on my way to work 50 years ago!! It looked exactly the same and I don’t think it had been painted since. Despite the strange route, the satnav did bring us exactly to the restaurant. I decided to follow my nose to find our way back home rather than take the twisty turny road we’d come. My route took almost the same time, but was much easier.

Back home, there was just enough time for a cup of tea before I was out again to the doc’s. The doc hadn’t been happy with my last blood test and wanted another one now that a month had elapsed since the previous one. Unfortunately, just before it was my turn, he was called away on an emergency. I hate waiting for the doctor or the dentist but I dare say emergencies happen and must take priority. I was dealt with fairly quickly and then was ‘lucky’ enough to get an appointment tomorrow. So, after a busy day today, I’m off to the health centre tomorrow for a blood test at 8.50am no less!! I don’t usually surface until 10am! What are these medical people thinking, getting a pensioner up at that time of the morning?

Well, if I’m up that early, I might as well take my camera with me and hopefully get some early morning shots of those deer before they have fully woken up.

Adding up the numbers – 15 January 2019

Posted on by Zogman

Highlight of the day was a visit to Falkirk.

First things first. Before we went our exciting trip, I fixed a dodgy wire on the plug that supplied electricity to the light in the loft and that allowed me to clear out some more junk. As a result, we had a place to store the Christmas decorations and that’s what we did. The decorations are now in their storage area and the spare room is a lot tidier.

Time to get ready to meet Andrew, the FA. Nothing to do with Football or Associations. Everything to do with numbers. The numbers were good. Some tweaks had been made and were explained, graphs were demystified and the bottom line was a very acceptable number. Andrew threw in his usual deliberate mispronunciations, today best one was Angela Meerkat, thrown into a serious discussion of global finances in such a deadpan way that you wondered “Did he really say that?”. It’s just one of his eccentricities, that and his shirts. Today’s flamboyant example was covered in large wine coloured roses. His prediction that the pound would rise tonight after the vote for/against Theresa May’s Brexit bill no matter what the result, has just been proven correct. An astute man with a wicked sense of humour. Always worth listening to.

A quick visit to Morrisons for essentials, but no strawberries and churros today. Real essentials, for a change. Then it was home. The headlights came on as we left Morrisons and it was just before 3pm. It was a dull, drizzly day, but the clouds were thinning as the light was disappearing. I decided to drop Scamp off and go for a quick drive down to Broadwood Loch to grab a shot or two. As it turned out it was nine shots, and the best one was what you see above. I liked the ball sitting on the great expanse of dirty concrete under a gloomy sky. The curved railings are due to the shot being taken with the Samyang fish eye lens.

When I got back, there was a message on the phone from Pest Control at NLC to check if we still had a problem and I told him we did have last night.  He then set out the steps the council would take with the council houses one either side of us and said that we would be advised what repairs needed done to our house.  No date was given for the examination, but I think sooner rather than later given the MSP’s email.  We’ll see.

So, Theresa has lost the vote by the biggest majority in history. Will it make any difference to the price of fish? Maybe, but we’ve got enough fish in the freezer to see us through for a week or two. Interesting times ahead.

Tomorrow we may be dancing in the afternoon if Michael is fit. He texted Scamp to say he has the flu. My heart goes out to him.