Category: weather

Snow! – 16 January 2016

Posted on by Zogman

combo bA late start after the late night yesterday.  Couldn’t really decide what to do today and the weather didn’t look as if it was going to be all that good for a scenic drive.  That being so, we settled on a drive in to Glasgow and lunch there. On the way there, the snow started falling and by the time we got to Glasgow it was quite thick.  I’ve got a dream just now about getting an iMac to replace the Macbook Pro.  I asked the Apple rep in John Lewis some questions about it.  Some she couldn’t answer, some she could, but she didn’t inspire confidence in either Scamp or me, but she had a good way of moving ‘weans’ away from the expensive ‘toys’.  We walked out and down through Buchanan Galleries then down Bucky Street to the Apple store which is closing for “remodelling”.  They couldn’t tell me when it would re-open and I found that a bit disconcerting.  What I did find out about iMacs confirmed that not only did the JL rep not know much about the computers, but also she just made up some of the answers.  Why do JL employ supposed ‘reps’ from companies when these people know nothing about the products and sometimes deliberately mislead customers.  It’s not the first time this has happened to me.

I wasn’t feeling all that hungry, so we headed back to the car park, but made a detour to the JL teashop where we had a light lunch.  Luckily, Scamp had found a seat with a good view past the Concert Hall and up Sausageroll Street.  The snow seemed to abate for a while while we were in JL, but by the time we got back to the car park it was back with a vengeance.

Back home I made good on my promise and dug out the old sewing machine.  While it was not exactly the same as the one I’d been using on Thursday, it was close enough to work out the basics.  Tomorrow I’m hoping to get some 3in1 oil and get it lubricated at least and hopefully working.  Bearing in mind that this is a forty odd year old machine, for once I will have to be very gentle.  Let’s hope that tomorrow’s blog is not titled “It’s Broken”.

A bit of culture, sew there – 14 January 2016

Posted on by Zogman

Combo bAnother bright morning, bright but cold.  Since I was going to a sewing machining class, yes, that’s right a sewing machining class in Glasgow tonight and I wanted to see where it was, we decided to drive in to Glasgow.  It was really quite easy to find and it was near Kelvingrove Art Galleries, so it made sense to just stop and smell the roses, or look at the pictures.  It’s ages since we spent any time in the (F)art galleries, many more ages since I took a critical look at the paintings.  I won’t say I learned a lot, but I did see some intersting techniques that I’ll have a go at.  Since we were on quite a tight time schedule we left without listening to all of the organ recital, but it didn’t look as if Bowie was on today’s playlist.

I had an hour or two before I needed to get my threads and needles ready, so I went for a walk through St Mo’s.  Saw a deer in the distance, but that was it as far as the wildlife was concerned.  Even Mr Grey was absent.  Got some pics of frozen and snow covered toadstools.  We don’t often get toadstools in January, so this is another sign of the mild weather of the last few weeks.  Temperature is dipping quite drastically now though.  Frosted cars in the morning and the grit lorry making its rounds tonight.

Speaking about tonight, I drove into Glasgow to go to the Sew Macho class.  Couldn’t find the actual studio at first.  Luckily there were other dressmaking hopefuls there too and one of them knew where we needed to go.  Only four in the class and I, of course, was the oldest by far.  It was a really, really interesting introduction to the mysteries of the sewing machine.  When I was at school I wasn’t allowed to take Home Economics  – boys did Woodwork or Metalwork and girls did Cookery or Sewing and never the twain would meet.  I’d played about with Scamp’s sewing machine forty odd years ago, but apart from making strings of little ducks and little dogs, I didn’t do anything with it.  I was always scared I’d punch a hole in my finger with the needle, or I’d break the needle, maybe even both!
Tonight I learned to:

  • Set up the machine.
  • Spool the bobbin with thread and load it.
  • Do Single Stitches
  • Do Zig-zag Stitches
  • Make a Simple Hem
  • Make a Blind Hem
  • Sew in a patch
  • Sew on a button

All taught with good humour and confidence by teacher Jenny.  I even managed to patch an old pair of jeans.  I think I will dig out the old sewing machine and see if I can remember some of the techniques.  You never know, I might even make myself a tee shirt … someday!

A day by the loch – 13 January 2016

Posted on by Zogman

combo bToday we woke to sunshine, just as the weather fairies had predicted, so it was up and out early.  We took ‘pieces‘, that’s sandwiches to you unenlightened ones, and we took a flask and all the makings for a cup of coffee and tea and pointed the car at Loch Lomond.  In particular, we headed for Milarrochy Bay on Loch Lomond to see and photograph the famous Milarrochy Tree.  It’s a tree that once stood on the banks of the loch, but is more usually part submerged a few metres from the shore.  Google “Milarrochy Tree” and you’ll see the tree photographed in every time of the day and on every day of the year.  It’s quite a Scottish icon.  In its way it’s as famous as the waterfall at Buachaille Etive Mor.  Google that too if you like.  We can’t remember the last time we went to this spot, but it must have been at least four cars ago, and maybe longer.  It’s a strange way to count time, I know, but it works for us.

Thankfully when we got to the carpark it was deserted so I could spend as much time as I wanted shooting it with all different lenses and all different settings with both cameras, but not at the same time.  That would be taking things too far.  All in all, I think I took about 90 shots of the tree.  If you think that’s overkill, you’re not a photographer.  After eating our pieces and having our cups of coffee we headed up to Rowardennan and the end of the road, well almost, because the predicted clouds were rolling in from the west and looked as if they had been loading up with snow which they were set on dropping any time soon.  Took some shots of the loch which is quite a boring stretch of water with some foreground interest from some rocks and tried to frame the youth hostel with an overhanging pine tree.

After that it was back home in time for tea, well more coffee actually.  It was great just being out in the daylight watching the play of light on the hills.  The sun had shone all morning but then it got tired and had to rest behind some clouds.

A day to remember.

Starman – 11 January 2016

Posted on by Zogman

combo bIt’s not often I do this, but today I feel I need to mention the passing of David Bowie. I didn’t like everything he did, some of it was just too avant-garde. Like the French composer Pierre Boulez who died last week, Bowie could be just a little left field. However, I will forever remember being a nineteen year old three chord wonder, well maybe four chord, playing and singing Space Oddity with Crawfy, Joanne and Jeff at Ayr youth hostel. I couldn’t do the chord changes as quickly as Bowie and I couldn’t do half of his chords anyway. When it got to the part where the rocket takes off, you were supposed to play some weird feedback stuff, but we all just shouted “Space Craft Liftoff Music”, because that’s what it said in the sheet music. I still have that sheet music somewhere. Pity we don’t have Bowie too. Somebody on the radio said that he was the rock star you didn’t think would ever die. I kind of understand that.

The big white ball that we sometimes see in the sky in summer was almost visible today. The sky was definitely lighter the clouds were a little higher and there was just the hint of shadows on the ground. With this in mind, I thought instead of going for a swim today, I’d walk in the sun. I should have known. When I got to Auchinstarry the first spits of rain were hitting the windscreen. I sat out the first two showers and then decided that as some old farmer lady on the telly last night said “We have waterproof skin”. I would add, “… and Goretex jackets”. So I walked along the railway and took some photos in the rain. The sky was still lighter than it’s been and the rain was light on the way out, so there was some colour around. Hoping for better days soon. Oh, by the way, the top photo is not pine tree on a hillside, it’s moss on an old fencepost.

A little bit of colour – 10 January 2015

Posted on by Zogman

combo bThere wasn’t much light today and it was raining. It was one of those days when you just wanted to roll over and pull up the duvet. I rolled over and pulled up the duvet.

After lunch, I was determined to find some colour in this drab landscape. The rain had turned to snow, well, sleet really, but that didn’t put me off. I’d found a long lost pair of snow gaiters and intended trying them out. To be honest, there wasn’t much snow lying, but the gaiters would keep some of the mud off my jeans. Or so I hoped. Actually, they worked quite well and I’m glad I found them.

Mr Grey was available for a couple of shots before he got fed up posing and flew off. Other than that and the ubiquitous swans, there wasn’t much moving at St Mo’s today. Can’t say I blame them. I got a few shots of some water dripping from dried up weeds (how do the weeds stay dry in this weather?) before I stuck the Oly back in the camera bag and headed for home. If you look closely, there is some colour in the shots, just not a lot.

Grey – 9 January 2016

Posted on by Zogman

IMG_3005-Edit- flickr--9I am thoroughly fed up with this grey weather. It’s a bit like watching films of pre-war life. Everything is in black and white with shades of grey. It must have been hellish living in those times when there was no colour. The earliest I can remember is growing up in the mid to late ’50s and most things then were in shades of grey too. I think it was around the mid ’60s that the world started to have colour injected into it. Even today in the 21st century we don’t have all that much colour here in Scotland. I didn’t realise this until a couple of years ago when we went to Trinidad and then Tobago. They’ve got colour, real colour. Seas that are blue, not grey. Skies that are blue, not grey. Sand that’s white and yellow, not grey. Are you getting the picture here? We do a good grey in Scotland and today we were overdosing in it. Dull.

We had hoped to go to the Cotton Club for lunch, but the earliest table they could give us was 4pm which was a bit late for lunch, but it gives you an idea just how popular this place is. Our second choice was Vecchia Bologna and that was where we ate this afternoon. Pea and pancetta soup to start and then Scamp had her usual spaghetti dello chef and I had polpette with vegetables (no pasta!). The lunch was as good as it ever is in this restaurant. Strangely it was not at all busy, but we were told that it was very busy in the evening which I could believe.

That was the brightener of the day. By the time we left Bridge of Allan, the grey that had lifted slightly as we had our lunch had returned. When we got nearer home, the Cumbernauld Cloud had descended in an attempt to blur out the ugliness that is Cumbersheugh.

I’d seen an article about 3D printing a lego ‘selfie’ in the Telegraph on-line and wondered if I could replicate it at least in 2D. It didn’t take long with Potatoshop to create a little Mini MeMan. In Colour!

Arty Farty – 8 January 2016

Posted on by Zogman

combo b5No procrastination today. Up, showered, grabbed my camera bag and drove to the station. Got my ticket and then realised I’d left the camera bag in the car, 200m away in the carpark. I didn’t have time to go back to get it, so carried on regardless. I did have my camera with me, in an emergency it would do the job. I was heading for the Arthur Melville exhibition in Edinburgh (AKA Embra). The exhibition was very impressive, such enormous watercolours. Some of the paintings had really subtle colours and others, full of luscious, deep, rich colours. I think what impressed me most was the lack of pencil outlines in the paintings. As well as the watercolours, the almost abstract oils were impressive, but it was the watercolours that won the day. While I was there, I visited the Turner Watercolour exhibition. It’s a show that goes on every January in Embra. Well worth going to both these shows.

The Princes Street gardens were full of workers taking down the Christmas attractions. With the amount of water that has poured from the skies recently being churned up by lorries, cranes and low-loaders it’s hard to believe that the grass will grow again, but I’m sure it will.

Spotted an interesting sign in Waverley Station. What’s so special about Coatbridge that means it gets its own weather forecast?

Icy start to the day and some bright sunshine, but then later the Tupperware box returned. Snow forecast for tomorrow.

Living in a Tupperware box – 7 January 2016

Posted on by Zogman

IMG_2993-Edit-Edit- flickr--7-1This will be a short entry.  It rained from early morning today and it’s still raining.  Almost all day it’s been a milky white sky.  Yesterday I was listening to Guy Garvey and in “ Harder Edges” one line is “… Burgeoning sky all day grey, Like living in a Tupperware box …”.  I know what he means.

I’d half intended to go in to Edinburgh today to see an exhibition in the National Gallery.  It’s been on since mid October and now, at the start of January, I’m finally getting round to going to see it.  I decided last night that I was unlikely to get parked at the train station on a Thursday, but had more of a chance on a Friday.  I am also the grand master of procrastination, so tomorrow it is … until tomorrow.

I made a pizza for lunch, a really good pizza made from the excess dough from yesterday’s flatbread.  Rarely has the frying pan pizza failed me, but this time again it worked.  We waited for that meal to slide down then both agreed the only thing to do today was to go to the gym and pool.  I did the gym first then had a quick swim.  Scamp went for the swim without the gym.  Both of us agreed that it was one of the best things to do on such a dull day.  A quick trip up “The Toonie” afterwards.  I took the opportunity of trying out a new camera app for the iPhone.  You can see the result above.  It’s absolutely awful.  It needs a lot more practise I think.

A new year, a new curry shop – 2 January 2016

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combo bAnother late rise today.  This is becoming a habit.  I’d say we were missing the best part of the day, but that wouldn’t be correct.  The light level this morning when we woke was a definite ISO 10000 and that would have been with f1.8 @ 1/30th (that means really, really dull to non-photogs).  Tonight’s big film was The Dark Knight.  We can beat that.  We have The Dark Day … every day.  Enough of this repartee.

Just to get out of the house, we decided on a trip to Stirling … for a curry.  Rather than go to what had been out favourite curry shop, Mr Singh’s, I thought it would be a good idea to try out a new one, well, new to us.  I didn’t know what it was called, but I knew where it was.  It turned out to be the ‘Spice Garden’ and it was good, very good.  The only let down was that their Irn Bru came from a bar nozzle with not nearly enough gas.  I can forgive that if the food is good, and it was.  We’ll be back.

On the way back, I wanted to get a POD.  I intended it to be Stirling Castle, but from the standard tourist viewpoint, the view was not as commanding as I hoped it would be.  Well, what do you expect from the Council created parking place.  I turned 180º and liked the view up the carse.  A ‘carse’, which my spellchecker thinks is a the plural of ‘car’ is “low-lying land beside a river” and the Carse of Stirling can be beautiful on a good day.  Today wasn’t beautiful, but the carse was doing it’s level best, so I took its photo.  Then I grabbed my tripod and walked across to see if Stirling Castle looked any better from the other side of the road.  It didn’t, but the mound at the old cemetery did look good and there were lots of people happily standing on it to make it look quite dramatic.  I imagine they thought they looked dramatic too.  I took a few shots just to make them think they were dramatic and important.

When I got home, the carse photo was easy to process.  The dramatic rock took a little longer.  Because the shots were taken with the same focal length, aperture and shutter settings, it was easy to sandwich two of them in Potatoshop with the empty rock on top and the dramatic person beneath.  Then all I did was change the opacity of the top shot to allow the ‘ghost’ underneath to show through.  Simple!  I’ll do the Stirling Castle shot another day.  I’ve just remembered where to take it from and it’s’ not the Council approved tourist place either.  Well, it wouldn’t be, would it?

An Uplifting Day – 27 December 2015

Posted on by Zogman

combo bWe woke to sunshine.  Real, unabated sunshine with drying streets too.  Scamp needed to go shopping, so we had to risk driving out to Tesco with no hope of getting a parking space when we got back.  When we got back after an altercation with a total prick in the carpark. – As an aside, I’d like to say that one of the great benefits of having your own little slice of webspace it that you can say what you really feel without fear of having it redacted by some pinhead admin.  I am the admin so I’ll say what I like. –   Anyway, the prick took umbrage at me bumping a car’s wing mirror (not even his car) with my trolley.  After emptying my trolley, I just gave him a smile as I walked as slowly as I could in front of his car.  One of the great benefits of being old is that you can do things like that.  If the aforementioned prick wants to scream and shout at you, all you do is grab your chest and stagger around a bit and watch the colour drain from his face.  Then you smile again, stick your tongue out and walk away.  It’s a brilliant windup.  Yes, I know ‘boy’, ‘crying’, ‘wolf’ etc. Until then it’s still great fun and to be recommended for dealing with angry pricks.

Got back to find that there was a wedding stretch limo reversing tentatively up the hill near our house.  To accommodate it, I had to park miles from the house and carry the bags down the hill.  Is that what they call ‘Karma’?

After a cup of coffee I went for a walk to St Mo’s armed with the Nikon and 70-300 and also the old E-PL1 with 9mm.  Got a few shots, but for once the 9mm failed to perform.  Don’t know the reason why.  It might have been too slow a shutter speed because there was a considerable blur in the images, but this is the first time I’ve used that camera/lens combination.  Maybe I’ve gotten so used to the remarkable E-PL5 that I’d forgotten how limiting the ‘1’ is.  Must do some more tests before I can make a reasoned judgement.

After that we were waiting for JIC and Sim to arrive from ‘darn sarf’.  They made really good time and were great company tonight.  Let’s hope the weather holds out for tomorrow, because it’s been a great day today, weatherwise and a very entertaining one too.