Category: weather

The day after the day before – 30 July 2023

Posted on by Zogman

As predicted, today was a day for recovery.

The furthest I went today was St Mo’s for a wander round the pond.  I did find a PoD when I was out.  It’s a soldier beetle showing off its agility on a grass leaf.  Just like a pole dancer, I’m led to believe. I thought I should add that just in case of any repercussions. It was one of those days that promised rain, but didn’t seem to know where it had put it.  Big black clouds threatened downpours, then hurried off elsewhere without a single drop being dispensed.  It was windy, though and that made insect and flower photography difficult.

Before I went out, Scamp had gone for a walk to the shops while I wrote up yesterday’s blog.  We’d decided to have Cod and Paprika Chowder.  It’s a simple recipe as long as you prep things before you start and that’s what I did today.  For once I was organised.  I must have made a mistake somewhere, because it turned out much thicker than normal.  That was easily repaired with a dollop of milk stirred in.  Tasted fine.

Spoke to Jamie and talked yesterday’s Blackpool visit. We forgot to mention that  someone asked for a Gavotte! Even better, at least four couples were dancing it.   So strange after being taught the rudiments of this ancient dance while we were on this year’s cruise.

That was about it for this rest day.  Tomorrow, everything will get back to normal again, hopefully.

Blackpool Tower Ballroom – 29 July 2023

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We drove to Hamilton. Went on a bus. We danced. We went for a walk. We came home. It rained.

That’s the synopsis, here’s the detail:

The alarm woke us at 6.45am. After a quick breakfast and a cup of tea we drove to Strathclyde Park in Hamilton and parked as we’d been told, on the park road near the Holiday Inn. The bus arrived and we were driven down to Blackpool, listening to music played from a phone into a microphone. I hadn’t realised this was the ‘system’ that was being used until we were coming back. We are in the 21st century, aren’t we? The bus was a bit cold, but after a while the sun warmed it up. We shouldn’t complain, it was a comfortable enough journey.

We were dropped off at the Tower Ballroom and were shown to our seats in the ballroom itself. Lots of small round tables with seating arranged to let everyone have a view of the ballroom floor. Our Afternoon Tea was served on them. Posh little finger sandwiches on the bottom layer, macarons and brownies on the middle layer and scones with pots of clotted cream and jam on the top, and of course, tea or coffee.

It must have been a magnificent building in its heyday. Now it’s a bit tired and in need of some TLC. The ballroom floor, however is lovely to dance on. No slippy patches and no uneven floorboards. You can feel the 12,000 square feet suspended floor move gently when there are a lot of dancers on it. It’s almost nine times the size of the ‘Strictly’ studio dance floor and is made from 30,602 separate blocks of mahogany, oak and walnut. We danced quite a few of the sequence dances and also attempted a waltz and a foxtrot, the latter being much more successful than the waltz. Practise is required for sure!
Great fun watching the two organists on the stage and seeing the big white Wurlitzer organ and its pianist rising and falling while being played.

After our almost four hours of dancing and eating, we changed shoes back to normal walking ones and went down to a windy beach for a wander. The tide was miles out, so no chance of a paddle today. We walked along the sand to the Central Pier and took a few photos, then walked back to have fish ’n’ chips at Harry Ramsden’s along with half the bus party!

Fed and watered Scamp suggested a walk along to the North Pier and we fought our way through the crowds to get there. Just like Glasgow on a Thursday night. Drunk youngsters everywhere. We were both sober, I was driving later. We walked along the pier then Scamp noticed that our bus was just stopping in front of the Tower Ballroom, so we headed back at a much less leisurely pace. We needn’t have worried, we had plenty of time to catch our breath before everyone was on board.

Stewart organised a singsong on the way home, still using his home made LoFi. Just as we were almost passing Larkhall he played Donald Where’s Yer Troosers! I was not amused and told them that I absolutely hated that song and always have.

It had been raining on and off all of the journey home although it had stayed dry for most of the day. By the time we got back to Hamilton the rain was lashing down. Drove home and we had a wee drink to celebrate the day. Would we do it again? Probably, but maybe not next year.

In a break from tradition, this is not the PoD. I just thought you’d like to see inside the Tower Ballroom.

Tomorrow we’ll have a rest day, hopefully.

 

 

Lunch at the Bothy – 24 July 2023

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After Wordle and Spelling Bee were done, the day was our own.

But first, even before Wordle, there was a big cardboard box to open, and inside as … another big cardboard box. Inside that was the usual amount of bumf you get when you buy something fairly expensive. “READ ME FIRST” was on the first page, so that was put to the side to read later. Next the inevitable expanded polystyrene to unpack and crumble into the carpet, then more bumf to read at a later date and finally the food processor was revealed in all its shiny plastic glory. Oh yes, and we got a recipe book, not an app to download and install on our phone, but an honest to goodness recipe book and a hard back one to boot! We might read that later, mainly because it didn’t scream at us “READ ME FIRST”!

While Scamp went into the kitchen to wash all the bowls and the lethal looking cutters and slicers, I read through some of the paperwork and some of the recipes. It’s amazing the variety of breads, cakes and soups you can make in one of these clever devices. I may even attempt some of them sometime.

Satisfied that all the washable bits had been washed and dried and after reading the recipe book and completing Wordle and Spelling Bee, Scamp suggested we go out to lunch as we’d planned at The Bothy just outside Stirling. As usual these days we were handed a buzzer and told to browse round the shop. Not long afterwards our buzzer buzzed. I did quite fancy the Mushroom and Bacon Carbonara on the ‘specials’ board, but inevitably I ordered the Sri Lankan Lamb Curry and Scamp had Mac ’n’ Cheese as I suspected. Two coffees to wash it down and two ginormous Cream Donuts to take home in a box.

Scamp was looking for another rose, but not for us this time and she wanted a pot to replant “Harley” the Harlequin Berberis we thought we’d lost in the June heatwave. It’s not quite recovered its variegation yet, but maybe once it’s repotted it will regain its colour. We drove round the outskirts of Stirling to Dobbies, but they had none of the rose variety she was looking for. We did get a heather plant to replace one that had died in June, a pop-up bin for the garden and a packet of basil seeds for me to plant.

I thought there was just a chance that we’d find the rose in Calders in Cumbersheugh, so we went there on our way home. Scamp knows one of the gardeners and she asked him if he had any and thankfully he had. A bit of local knowledge goes a long way, and it’s a true saying “It’s now what you know, but who you know. A quick visit to Tesco on the way home and we were done, or nearly.

I hadn’t a photo of the day so far, so back home I got my boots out and took the A6500 out with the big clumsy 105mm macro lens and in about an hour I took 130 photos. Most were rubbish, but I did capture a male Common Darter dragonfly. I’ve been keeping a careful eye on the battery performance of the new camera and it’s actually almost within the parameters that are advertised for it, so not such a big problem as I initially thought.

That was a good day. Weather wasn’t all that good, but it stayed dry all day. Scamp’s off to get her nails done again. I’m hoping to do an Auld Guys coffee morning tomorrow with Val and Fred.

Shifting Sheep – 23 July 2023

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Well, not exactly shifting sheep, but they played their part later in the day.

After a fair bit of soul searching I eventually decided to take the new camera out to take photos. Not to do some testing this time, just go out somewhere and take photos. Fannyside was my destination. It’s quiet, has the potential for wonderful landscapes and I can walk and talk to myself without bothering anyone.  It did very well, even if it wasn’t a test!

Scamp was making a cherry pie today with the remainder of the cherries we’d been eating for past few days. Yesterday she removed the stones and today she was going to make the pie. The only thing in the recipe she didn’t have was cherry jam and as I would be passing Tesco on my way to Fannyside, I volunteered to buy a jar. Who knew there were so many flavours of jam but, it appeared, only one kind of cherry jam. With the purchase in the boot of the car, I set off to Fannyside.

It was a lovely bright breezy Fannyside today. Lots of blue sky and fluffy clouds. I walked up the road almost to the farm and got a collection of photos. Some with the ultra-wide angle lens, some with the standard lens and a few with the telephoto. Of the three, the ultra-wide is the best one and it has the widest range. I’ve hardly used the telephoto zoom and when I have, I’ve been disappointed with the results. Not so today. A panorama made with the tele was far and away the best shot, but it felt a bit empty.

Back home Scamp had made the short crust pastry for the pie, but was wondering how long her old Magimix food processor would last. The lid has been cracked for a while, and every time she clips it on to the body of the machine, that crack get bigger. She had started looking for replacement lids, then began thinking about maybe replacing it entirely. We searched the internet to get an idea of the variety of food processors available these days. We reckon the old one must be around 30 years old, and things have changed. I eventually convinced her to go to JL to see and touch the machines. That’s quite an important thing to us ‘oldies’. We like to actually see what we’re buying. Ok, sometime we look in a shop, see what the thing looks like then end up buying it off Amazon because it’s cheaper there. John Lewis had a fair amount of food processors on display and among them was one Scamp had her eye on. It wasn’t the one she’d initially set out to get, but it ticked all her boxes and was a fair bit smaller than the one we had. Having carried it up the two flights of stairs to the car, I can verify that it’s a heavy piece of kit too!

Back home she ignored it because the pie needed to go in to the oven. While she was engaged in this task, I processed today’s photos, all 92 of them! The landscape panorama was a potential PoD, but it looked so bare. I’d taken some photos of the wild looking sheep in a different field at Fannyside and back home I pasted the sheep into the panorama and that breathed a bit of life into what was an otherwise dull landscape! PoD sorted.

Dinner was Salmon with broccoli and potatoes, followed by that lovely cherry pie. Half of it was consumed tonight and that leaves another half for tomorrow.

Spoke to Jamie tonight and heard about his part in a marathon race. His leg was a five mile run while others were running a variety of distances. I liked the idea of a marathon relay!

Tomorrow we may go for a drive somewhere nice for lunch.

Slippin’ and a Slidin’ – 22 July 2023

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We were dancing in a restricted floor today. About a third of the floor was cordoned off because of the risk of sliding on a very slippery floor. Something to do with a kids party last week.

Only four couples and the teachers so the reduced dancing space wasn’t really much of a problem. Nobody seemed to know what had been applied to the floor, presumably to clean up after last week’s kids party, but it did make the floor quite slippy. Thankfully resourceful Jane had a solution. She poured some water in the corner of the area we were dancing in and encouraged everyone to dip their shoes in it and then wipe it off. It was supposed to make the suede soles more grippy, and it worked!

Two sequence dances to begin with then we launched into the nitty gritty of the Rumba routine we’ve been learning. We knew the figures in the rumba, but these were the little nuances, what Tom Paxton called “the John Wayne dance steps”, the details. If you don’t know who Tom Paxton is, Google him! We learned a lot, especially from Jayne’s instructions, but also from watching Stuart’s footwork. It brought the Rumba to life and made us feel we were ‘dancing’ it, not just going through the motions.

Another sequence dance to allow us to clear our heads, then a little Cha-Cha routine that was composed almost entirely from figures we already knew. I think this was a hastily ‘invented’ cha-cha to have something that could be danced within the reduced area we had available. We picked up most of it and Scamp filmed the demo and shared it on the class WhatsApp page, so we all have something to work on. Again there was an emphasis on the quality of the steps. This may be because we’re booked for a trip to the Tower Ballroom in Blackpool soon!

We drove home along a busy M8, but one without roadworks or 40mph restrictions. Oh Joy! We went to Tesco when we got home because I quite fancied a roll ’n’ sausage, but either the bakers were on strike or the ovens had packed in, but there were no rolls to be had, not real rolls, anyway. They had soft baps, but they’re not real rolls, not Scottish Roll! So it had to be a plain sliced loaf instead.

Dinner had been discussed on the drive home and we settled on Chicken & Pea Traybake. Simplicity itself unless you are scaling it up to feed six as we were a year or two ago in Cumbria. Thankfully it was only the two of us today and all the requirements were available in Tesco.

I was going to go for a walk in St Mo’s after lunch, but there was a soaking drizzle by then and I wasn’t interested in getting wet just to take some photos, so instead I took some photos in the garden instead. I still got wet, yes, but at least it wasn’t far to go to get into the dry again. PoD went to a bunch of daisies. I liked the fact that when I’d strimmed this area in the garden yesterday, I’d deliberately missed the daisies. I hate to chop them down, the are such survivors!

Tomorrow looks better than today, but there are no certainties about the weather these days.

Off to Hamilton – 20 July 2023

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… but not to “buy the wean a bell.” That cryptic message will be lost on almost everyone, but I’m not explaining it further!

After a lazy morning on what was a beautiful, almost totally dry day, we eventually went out and walked down to the shops. Scamp wanted something to take to John & Marion tonight, and also wanted a hanging basket for the back garden. We accomplished both in double quick time and walked back home.

A knock on the door heralded the arrival of the parcel Scamp was expecting earlier in the week. It was a surprise present for two of our friends, but we were both underwhelmed by it. It wasn’t quite what she was hoping for and her disappointment was obvious.

Later I took a walk over to St Mo’s to see what was worth photographing while Scamp started the ironing. It was St Mo’s that the PoD came from (not the ironing!). It is one of two real ‘keepers’ from a batch of about 50 I’d taken with the big camera on silent motor drive. A great way of filling up the SD card, but a trick that rarely seems to result in any good photos. Luckily for me today was one of those days when it worked. The ‘Marmalade’ hoverfly was the PoD. It was almost beaten by the result of another ‘blitz’ shot. This one was a lone soldier beetle testing the strength of a single strand of a spider web. Both are on Flickr.

By the time I got back from my St Mo’s Safari I just had time for a wash and brush up before we headed off to Hamilton for dinner with John & Marion. It’s ages since we’ve been there. We’ve both had such a busy year this year. Big birthdays for both Scamp and Marion. Retirement celebration for Marion and a Golden Wedding anniversary for us. Of course, she’s not really retired until the schools go back in August!

Back home late and for some reason there was a parking space just waiting for us back home. That was nice of someone to do that for us.

Tomorrow Scamp has the dentist first thing in the morning. Best time for it, I suppose. I’m waiting in, hopefully not in vain, for yet another parcel.

A surprise parcel – 19 July 2023

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A warm sunny morning, at least it was in the house with the sun streaming in the window.

The postman arrived just before lunchtime with a parcel. Scamp was expecting a parcel today, and was sure it was for her, then she noticed it had my name on it! It was a camera bag from Alex. I’d completely forgotten he said he had a spare bag that wasn’t big enough for his needs and it was too late to send it back. It was an ideal size for my A6000 and space for an extra lens. I phoned him to say thanks and we had a good talk about what we’d been doing. I also sent him a link to a website where you can book a Glasgow walk for free with an option to make a donation to the RNLI. We agreed it was worth looking into.

I’d noticed today how dusty and rough the inside window sill had become, so while Scamp was off up to the town centre I sanded down the sill and gave it a first coat of varnish. Waited for it drying which was almost instantaneously given the heat coming in from the sun and gave it a second coat. In all, the sill had three thin coats of varnish and looks much better now. I wonder who invented the disposable vinyl gloves. Whoever they were, they must have had the idea after they’d been painting window sills. I finished the job with clean hands. A first for me!

Scamp had had her nails done for going away on the cruise and now she wanted to get the remaining coating removed. The lady who did her nails said it was fairly easy to get them done and she has now booked a session to get the coating removed and redone.

When she returned I grabbed my camera and went out for a run to find some scenery worth shooting, but first I dropped in at Colin’s house to find out how his wife was keeping. She’d been in hospital after she’d come home from holiday and had an emergency operation. She looked a bit tired, but that’s to be expected. I remember Scamp looking a bit like that after her op. Good to see her up and about, albeit with a stick, but we’re all getting to an age when we need some extra support sometimes.

We stayed for a while just blethering in the sun. I hadn’t realised what a lovely little sun trap they had in their patio. Colin wouldn’t allow me to go without some veg so I came home with four courgettes and a cucumber from his garden.

I did get a chance to get my landscape photo, but PoD went to a bunch of Hydrangea flowers. Scamp’s Hydrangea Paniculata ‘Switch Ophelia’. A variety of hydrangea that changes colour throughout the summer. We feared the hot weather might have killed it, but here it is flowering happily after a fair bit of hydration.

Busy day tomorrow. Things to do and places to go, hopefully.

Gardening, shopping and organising – 18 July 2023

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Not necessarily in that order, so it’s probably best to get things sorted by date and time.

The shopping came first. I wanted a bag of rolls to enclose the sausages I was intending to cook for my lunch. That meant a trip to Tesco, because The Shops only sell soft bap rolls, not the crispy Scottish rolls we like. So I drove up to Tesco to get the rolls, milk and also some raspberries for Scamp. While I was there I had a look at their selection of hardback books. I’m not entirely sold on my most recent Kindle book, so I might go for something mainstream for a change. Must ask John who the author he told me about is (and write it down this time). So no books for now, but I did get the milk, rolls and rasps. One roll with ordinary sausage and one with red onion sausage. I think the red onion sausage was the better of the two. Scamp had her usual one roll ’n’ egg.

With the afternoon came a shower of rain that looked as if it was going to be heavy and prolonged, so we took the nearly dry washing in. Of course that was what it was waiting for and the rain promptly stopped. Meanwhile I was making tomato soup. Scamp bought two packs of tomatoes that had been reduced in Tesco on Sunday and yesterday I roasted them with an onion and some oil for an hour to concentrate the taste. Today all I had to do was add a litre of water, two stock pots, a tin of tomatoes and a cup water, bring to the boil and simmer for an hour. That left time for mixing up some seaweed fertiliser (disgusting stuff) and giving all the plants front and back a bit of a feed. Meanwhile Scamp was pruning the climbing rose in the back garden. I used the loppers to chop down the higher branches she couldn’t reach, accidentally slicing off two branches with buds still unopened. One of them Scamp managed to retrieve and put in a glass with water on the window ledge. It will open. She has a knack for these things.

We walked down to the shops to get the makings of a stir fry for dinner. Back home the soup had been cooling, and I blitzed it so we could have it as a starter for dinner.

I’ve been meaning to phone Val and take him for coffee. This week I went one further I got Val to set a date and then told Fred who said he was free that day too. So we three are going out for coffee together next week, for the first time in ages – fingers crossed.

I went for a walk around St Mo’s while Scamp interrogated June over the phone about her weekend with Shona. I’m glad to say the bus trip went well. My photography gave me a few insect photos, one of which got PoD. Must get out and do more landscape photos. Insects are ok, but this time of year is great for landscapes too.

The soup was the best I’ve made for a while, but the stir fry didn’t turn out all that well. The pork which was the protein in my share was a bit tough and Scamp’s veggy version was just a bit too spicy hot for comfort and also she thought the veg needed more cooking. I had to agree about the veg, but the sauce was just spicy enough for me. Foodies! Never happy.

So, you see, Gardening, Shopping and Organising, but not necessarily in that order!

Tomorrow if the weather is favourable we may go out somewhere.  Otherwise we’ve got some more shopping to do.

A bit of history – 17 July 2023

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Off to see a castle.

Mondays seem to be becoming our day to go out for a spin. Today we were off to Blackness near the Forth Bridges. We were going to visit Blackness Castle what a fellow teacher once called “The Ship Shaped Castle”. That’s a really accurate description of this building. From the air it looks just like a ship. In fact the tower at the front of the castle is called the Stem tower, like the stem of a ship.

It’s a narrow road that takes you out through the village of Blackness to the castle and we were lucky that when we got through the gate there was one space left in the carpark. It wasn’t really a cold day, but the wind was taking all the sun’s good heat away. Not for us the roasting 40+ degree temperatures Italy and Spain are enduring. We don’t mind a bit of a cool breeze, although it was more than a fresh breeze blowing along the Firth of Forth today.

We were allowed an hour and a half’s parking time and we thought that was fair. If everyone took their 90mins then more folk would get to see the castle. It really is an impressive building, but we’d been before, a couple of times, and just wanted to refresh our memory of it, as well as give me a chance for some photos.

I suggested we drive the 12 miles to Cramond once we’d left. Cramond wasn’t as busy as I thought it might be. We’d brought a flask with us so we had a cup of coffee after we got parked in the gigantic carpark. After coffee we walked along the esplanade for about a mile and a half. I was wearing my Famous Blue Raincoat, but Scamp was risking the weather in her hoodie. The clouds seemed to be gathering and the sunshine we’d had at Blackness had all but disappeared. That wind was still there and it was getting cool now, but that didn’t stop us finding an ice cream van and getting a cone each. We sat near the ‘Toblerones’, the WW2 submarine defences, and ate our cones while being given a running commentary from a rather loud spoken woman who was telling all and sundry about a wonderful garden party she’d been to where they had a ‘three piece band’ who played wonderful music from her era.

Drove home along the M8. Always a dreary road just like being in a conveyor belt running at two speeds and with trains of articulated lorries in the nearside lanes exchanging places in the outside lane just for something to do, it seemed. It must be a boring job being a long distance lorry driver. I expect you need something to keep yourself interested.

That was about it for the day. An interesting day. A bit of history and a bracing walk. PoD was the view of the Central Tower from the North Tower.

No plans as yet for tomorrow.

More rain again – 16 July 2023

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It seems we are in a cyclic weather pattern. Wet in the early morning which continues to mid afternoon when the sky brightens a bit and the rain gradually fades out. By evening, around 7pm the sky clears and there is colourful sunset. By late evening and into the night the clouds reappear and the cycle continues.

This pattern has continued for more than a week now with little change and we’re really becoming quite fed up with it. I think it’s time the powers that be had a word with the weather fairies and told them to get the finger out and give us July sunshine in July. That’s what we pay our taxes for and we’re just not getting value for money! Get It Sorted.

Today followed that pattern, albeit with the addition of some wind, surplus from that presently being handed out to those in the south west of the UK. We had two plans for today. One for a damp day and one for a dry one. We implemented the Damp Day Plan and drove up to Tesco to “Get the Messages”. Came home with a boot fairly full of essential foods, beverages plus assorted household stuff.

After lunch I took my recently waxed boots for a walk in St Mo’s along with the A7 and the big, heavy macro lens. I was looking for ‘beasties’. I got one long shot of a Common Darter dragonfly and just over 30 shots of a Wolf Spider. That’s what happens when you forget that you’ve set the High Speed Motorwind. Even worse, I had switched the camera to ‘silent shooting’, so I didn’t even have the machine gun noise to warn me that I was filling up the SD card at a frightening rate with shots I’d just had to ditch in the bin later. No wonder the camera felt heavier when I was going home. I’d dressed for the rain we’d been promised, but the weather fairies got it wrong again and I was sweltering in a, supposedly, breathable rain jacket. Still, I did get the shot of Wolfie, the female wolf spider with her egg sac dragging behind her.

Dinner was Fennel with Cod and Prawns. It’s a long time since I’ve made it and, even if I say so myself, it tasted great. Even better was the fact that there were individual pots of ice cream for dessert! Scamp had Salted Caramel and I had Chocolate.

Spoke to Jamie after dinner and heard that we may indeed be getting a visit from Simonne this coming week as she’s on a whirlwind tour of labs in Central Scotland. Also heard that the plans for the new roof of their house may not be ready in time to get it replaced until spring. The wheels of English Heritage do turn slowly.

Watched Sewing Bee later and commiserated with the contestant who didn’t quite make it to the semi-final. Good to hear in the news that Djokovic was beaten by Alcaraz in the mens final at Wimbledon.

Hopefully we’ll get some good weather tomorrow and we’ll be using the Dry Day plan!