Category: weather

A wet Friday – 3 February 2023

Posted on by Zogman

Fridays used to be good days. Fridays used to be the gateway to the weekend. Now there is no weekend, just endless freedom and sometimes it’s no fun.

Scamp was out in the morning to go to her FitSteps class. That meant I had an hour and a half to do as I pleased. What pleased me today was clearing up the sofa in the back bedroom. There were six boxes of outdated flour and yeast from six months of baking kits I’d ordered by mistake. Only one of the recipes interested me, so I kept that set of instructions and chucked all the rest out. It was a heavy bag the went into the bin this morning, but I felt better with it gone and a clear space revealed on the sofa.

The next task was to find a suitable subject for today’s prompt, Strictly Ballroom. Scamp assures me I’ve seen this film, perhaps twice. She’s probably right (she usually is) but I don’t remember it. I may have been in the room when it was on, but my face was probably facing a computer screen and not the TV screen. Eventually I found a likely subject in a film poster, and I drew that. It wasn’t the best portrait I’ve ever done, but it bore a passing resemblance to the bloke in the picture. It was done.

When Scamp returned, we had lunch which was toast and beans for two. Simple and easy to make. Not posh food, just lunch. We needed some things to bolster the chilli I’d made yesterday, so we drove to Tesco to find them and of course a bottle of wine, just because. By the time we got back it was raining and the sky that had been lightening, was closing for the day. Another day for inside photos.

Two teaspoons of Old El Paso Taco Seasoning added to the chilli certainly helped it taste a bit better. I experimented with the slow cooker setting of the Instant Pot. It’s really neat and gently warmed the chilli through. Chilli for dinner then. It still wasn’t a patch on Scamp’s veggie chilli, but it was much easier to make.

I still hadn’t anything that would do for a PoD, so it was the poor cut flowers that bore the brunt of that. Actually it was quite a technical shot. Four frames taken at different focus settings, blended in Affinity Photo which is a cheap Photoshop look-alike. For this sort of thing (called Focus Stacking) it’s a lot better than Photoshop. I was quite pleased with the effect and it became PoD.

Tomorrow we’re booked for the dance class and the weather we’ve been promised by the weather fairies is blue skies for tomorrow and Sunday. High pressure is in charge, apparently. We’ll believe it when we see it.

Dull Day – 2 February 2023

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Phone call this morning to say that Andrew wasn’t well. Could we reschedule?

I think we were both looking forward to our discussion with Andrew today. We were also looking forward to seeing what shirt he was sporting and what jokes he’d slip into conversation. However he wasn’t well and there was no point in preventing him going home to his bed with a couple of paracetamol. We did reschedule.

That left a completely different day for us to deal with. In the end, the weather was the deciding factor. It was decidedly ‘not nice’. It was raining and the wind was blowing a hoolie, so we ended up staying at home. We did complete Wordle and today’s Spelling Bee. I checked yesterday’s Spelling Bee and it was ITEMIZING. Another win for american English.

After lunch I went for a walk in St Mo’s and got the PoD which is a collection of at least two different lichens and mosses. It was the only photo I took today that really deserved the name ‘photo’. I walked back via the shops and brought back a nice bottle of wine that we had with our dinner.

Dinner tonight was an experiment. It was to be veggie chilli, but it would be the first one to be made in the magic pot. I won’t say it was a great success, but it wasn’t a complete failure and it did prove that you can cook brown lentils in under 5 minutes, instead of 20. Impressive. We were missing a couple of ingredients, so that probably contributed to the lack of flavour and I’m hoping to put that right tomorrow.

Prompt for today was ‘You’ve Got Mail’. I’ve definitely not seen that film, but I produced a pencil and pen sketch that covered the idea of mail, which was good enough for me.

Tomorrow we’re hoping for a bit less wind and rain and a chance to go out for a walk.

A new month, a new challenge, an old friend – 1 February 2023

Posted on by Zogman

Today is the first day of February. White Rabbits (x3), but the first of February also brings the EDIF (Every Day in February) challenge. Let the torture begin.

This month’s prompts are all films. Not such a good topic for me, but that’s what a challenge is all about. Today’s prompt is The Red Shoes. Now I have actually watched this film, or so I’m told by Scamp, so no excuses, I just drew a pair of ballet shoes. But before we get to that, here’s how the day started:

For once, both Scamp and I were bamboozled by today’s Spelling Bee. Wordle was fine and we got the hidden word, but Spelling Bee with its “american” dictionary was a nightmare. Eventually we gave up. If you want to try, here are the letters for today:

N I E Z M T G

The challenge is to rearrange them into a word with at least 7 letters. I put them into an anagram solver and it couldn’t do it. Can you?

I was picking Val up to take him for coffee and a blether today. He’s not been too steady on his feet recently, so we tried out the new Costa which has a drive through. We got parked right next to the front door but although there is a disabled parking and a paved path to the shop entrance, the only lowered pavement for wheelchairs and such can only be accessed from the road! The heavy door couldn’t be opened by someone in a wheelchair. This is a new build. Only about six months old. Don’t they think about disabled access?

Anyway, we had our coffee and a cake each and then it was the old Val I was talking to. We started talking tech! Me talking about running my iMac from a collection of external SSDs and Val talking about having a Raspberry Pi that works better and faster than his Mac Book Air. Two hours flew by. The only down side was the half gallon of full fat milk they put into each of our Flat Whites. Slight exaggeration there, but not much. I drove him home and we agreed to do it again in a month’s time.

The sun was still shining when I dropped him off at his door and I thought I could grab a few shots from up on Fannyside. Of all the photos I took, my favourite was an old fence post with a green mound of moss and its fruiting bodies standing proud against the sky. That was easily the PoD!

Dinner tonight was Fish ’n’ Chips, home made. Lovely bit of fish, although Scamp thought it was slightly overdone. I disagreed.

Back home and just after dinner I got a sketch done of a pair of ballet shoes. Splashed on some red paint, added some ink and that’s the first one done. The challenge has begun.

Tomorrow’s prompt is “You’ve Got Mail” I’ll have to bend the rules a bit to get that one done. Also tomorrow we’ve an appointment with Andrew in Falkirk. We’ll be interested to hear what he has to say.

What a difference a week makes – 27 January 2023

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A week ago Alex and I stood on the pier at Culross in ‘the golden hour’ and shot off over 100 frames between us. Today I took about 20.

Last week the sun during that hour was glorious, as were the colours it produced. Today there were light patches in the clouds, but no actual sunlight and no shadows either. What a difference a week makes.

Scamp suggested a drive to Torwood Garden Centre to buy some seeds this morning. I added that after we visited Torwood, we should continue on to Culross, sorry Hazy. (Hazy absolutely hates Culross which we now call “The ‘C’ Place”) Alex and I had lunch in a wee cafe there last week and it’s not far from Torwood. After a lot of discussion we settled on lunch at Culross and leaving Torwood for another day. Scamp was adamant that would give us both some time to do what we wanted. Me to take photos and her to read in the car with a view to look at occasionally. That worked for both of us.

I walked to the end of the pier, just like last week, but the view, without the blue sky and the sun wasn’t quite what I’d hoped for. I took a few photos and then we went for lunch. Scamp had Mac ’n’ Cheese and I had Stovies. Much more like my mum’s stovies than anything I’ve tasted. Chopped up potatoes, onions and sausages with a heavy gravy, that’s typical stovies. I thoroughly enjoyed them while Scamp said the Mac ’n’ Cheese was quite good. Damned by faint praise I think. Fed, watered and photos taken, we made our way home. Into the deeper gloom of Cumbersheugh.

Scamp’s cough is definitely becoming less noticeable and that’s a good thing, but she didn’t want to go to dance class tomorrow just to be sure she wasn’t going to pass it on to anyone else. She had also cancelled today’s FitSteps class for the same reason. We’re still not sure if we’ll go to tomorrow evening’s Ballroom Social. I leave it up to her to decide.

So, the visit to “The ‘C’ Place” was the highlight of the day. The photos weren’t brilliant, but I didn’t find a PoD which is the view from the end of the old pier looking over the Forth estuary to Edinburgh.

Tomorrow we may go out again in the afternoon. It depend on the weather.

 

The Fort and The Luggie – 26 January 2023

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We were off to The Fort today, again in brilliant sunshine.

Scamp wanted to return some things and I wanted to spend some book tokens. We did think we’d manage lunch too. That didn’t happen, but two out of three ain’t bad. I did get my book and it’s a physical book, not a Kindle or an audio book. I blame Hazy for that after she gave me an over 470 page book for Christmas. That’s given me back the incentive to start reading ‘paper’ books. Not so good for reading in bed, in the dark, but easier to pass on to someone else.

Scamp got her money back from pre-Christmas purchases then charged round the big new Boots trying to find nail varnish remover. To be honest, it’s the worst laid out shop I’ve ever been to. Almost no signage to help the unwary and ultra safety conscious. Any shop where you have to produce proof of age to buy a foil for an electric razor is taking things too far.

We bought some food, some flowers and NO DRINK in M&S, not that we often buy drink there. No, we get most of it from Tesco where it’s cheaper. As it happened, neither of us were bothered with going for lunch and we just drove home … after we found the car in the enormous Fort car park.

After lunch I went for a walk, not in St Mo’s today, but along the Luggie Water. It’s ages since I’ve walked the Luggie and I really quite enjoyed the walk. PoD is a shot, taken with the A6000 of the falls at the east end of the path. Taken with an ultra-wide angle lens, from almost at the water level with the camera on the Gorilla Pod and with a slow shutter speed to ensure I got some movement in the water. I was concentrating on the technicals of the shot and hadn’t noticed, until I looked at the shot on the computer that it looks like there’s a giant Platypus Duck coming out of the waterfall!

Mushroom Risotto for dinner. Hand made in a pot on the stove this time using a cherrywood paddle. Sometime it’s best to take the technology out of food preparation. It was lovely, by the way.

Scamp seems to have lost most of the squeaks and whistles that the cough was helping to produce. Also, although she’s still coughing, she feels that the phlegm is moving out of her system.

Tonight looks cold again (-2ºc) but tomorrow the clouds and rain are rolling in, so maybe not a good day for a walk. Glad we got out today.

A late start and a lovely day – 25 January 2023

Posted on by Zogman

I must have been tired, because it was well past 9am when I woke today.

Scamp was already awake and reading her Kindle. She too must have had a good night’s sleep. It’s good to see her beginning to improve.

I though we might go for a walk today because it was a bright winter’s day. Scamp said we needed some shopping, so I suggested we drive to Lidl in Kilsyth to get the shopping then go for a walk along the canal. Just a short walk along the canal cross over the Plantation and back along the old mineral line. That would cover both options. So that’s what we did, kind of!

We drove to Lidl and got the messages as usual and also as usual we bought more than was absolutely necessary. We even found they had Neapolitan ice cream wafers! Sharp eyed Scamp spotted them in a freezer. When we came out Scamp asked if we could go to Colzium instead of the canal. The suited me too, so we drove in to the parking area that has more craters than the moon (I’ve never been to the moon, but I’ve seen pictures and Colzium wins on crater count). Parking was easy, it was just the driving that was dangerous!

We walked a slightly shortened version of our usual exhausting climb along the banks of the Colzium Burn and Scamp managed it easily. I got lots of photos, from little pockets of snowdrops to rushing waterfalls the burn was tumbling through. PoD was a 15 frame panorama that was eventually cropped down to a 12 frame. I felt the sky was a bit bland, although it was a beautiful blue, so I slipped in another one, one of my own from a few months ago. It seemed to suit the picture. It’s a view across the farmland of the Colzium Estate.

Back home it was Haggis, Neeps and Tatties, because it was Burns Night tonight and Haggis, mashed Turnip (Neeps) and mashed Potatoes (Tatties) is traditional. It was absolutely lovely and as Scamp herself remarked perfectly portioned. Not too much of any of the constituent parts.

I forgot to mention that my new driving license dropped through the letterbox this morning. Once you reach 70 you have to update your driving license every three years. My update is now almost complete. I still have to post off my previous license which I have cut in half as required by the DVLA. Scamp got her first one a week ago.

Tomorrow we may be driving to the Fort to visit M&S and Waterstones. I’ll let you guess who goes where!

 

It was a dull day again – 24 January 2023

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Worse than that, it was a dull day with rain. Never a good combination.

Scamp’s cough wasn’t abating and by the time I’d showered and shaved, she was just ending a call to the doc’s and had been given an appointment with the nurse for mid afternoon.

It hadn’t looked as if we would be going anywhere anyway, and as the cough had been there since Friday, it was time to let a professional have a look at it. I was planning on making a pot of soup in the new magic pot. This was to be Minestrone, but a different recipe from our usual one. Some unusual ingredients like courgette in the recipe would be interesting.

We drove up to the surgery. I dropped Scamp there and then went to Tesco to get the extra ingredients for the soup. I also managed to get a bottle of Benylin, Red Benylin no less. This is the most sought after medicine of the moment and here was a bottle sitting on a shelf, the last one again. Yesterday’s bottle of Benylin had been the wrong one, but it too had been the last one on the shelf. Drove back to the surgery and was just parking when Scamp appeared from the chemist and we drove home. She was told to take 8 steroid pills a day for five days and was also give a five day course of antibiotics. Shake her and she’ll rattle! but they seem to work because she’s not coughing quite as much.

I chopped the veg and made the soup and it tasted really too thick and quite bitter. A generous pinch of sugar helped with the bitter taste and after decanting a bowl full of concentrated tomato soup and replacing it with a bowl full of hot water, then giving it another 3min pressure cook, we had a decent minestrone. Still not as good as the original, but the courgette worked well in the mixture of veg. My only mistake was channeling my Simon & Garfunkel when I bought my herbs. I bought Sage and it should have been Thyme. Parsley would have been good too, but Rosemary would have been overpowering. You can have too much of a good thing!!

We watched an episode of Silent Witness, but the shock factor is being overplayed now and it’s becoming difficult to see where the past ends and the present begins. We both agreed after the first episode that it’s time to put it to bed, so the entire series was deleted. Thankfully you can do that with just one button now on Virgin.

I’d decided when we came back from the doc’s that I wasn’t going out in the drizzly rain to take photos I wasn’t really interested in. That’s why today’s PoD is cut flowers. Usually a photo of flowers is a last resort for me, but today’s were planned and I knew Scamp was just waiting for an opportunity to throw some of the wilting flowers out and the wilting ones are my favourites. I could have used more interesting lighting, but I was happy with my Yellow Lilies. They became PoD.

Tomorrow is to be a better day than today. We might just manage a short walk if Scamp is up to it. We’ll wait and see.

 

An improving picture – 22 January 2023

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Still being cautious about saying we’re on the mend, but I think we are.

It was a dull kind of day, even for a Sunday. Not really a day for going out if you didn’t need to, so we both stayed in to watch Laura Kuenssberg attack MP James Cleverly but the irresistible force met an immovable object in Nicola Sturgeon later in the program. Interesting wordplay between them.

After lunch Scamp decided on Paella for dinner and we had very little paprika in the tin. Something we’re hoping to remedy next month. For today, though, a walk down to the shops would suffice. I walked the long way, going round St Mo’s first. There was nobody about, so it was safe to crouch down behind the litter bin to take some close up shots of some fungi that’s growing out of the side of it. Two sides, actually, one south and one west. Nothing at all on the north or east sides. Something to do with the way the wind blows possibly. I don’t know. Mr Google was stumped by the fungi and thought they were sponges which I must admit they do resemble. Carried on round but saw nothing to compete with the fungi, so one of them, the crunchy looking one became PoD. I imagine the hairs you can see are dog hairs, they certainly are not mine!

Paella was passable but nothing spectacular. We ate about half of it and the rest went in the bin. I didn’t fancy making arancini with it tomorrow, besides I’m wary about reheating rice and chicken.

Spoke to Jamie later and he encouraged us to do a Covid test just to be sure. I’d suggested that to Scamp on Friday when I was feeling worn out, but she was reluctant to do it. I think it was the memory of our own bout of Covid back in the summer and having almost exactly that same feeling. Thankfully we both tested negative tonight. Heard that Simonne will have to go to hospital to have her tonsils removed after they found a possible lump on one. Nothing malignant, and it’s not an emergency, some time in the spring.

It was a warmer day today as opposed to a less cold day. The temperature got up to about 8ºc which is almost tropical for January. Hoping for a similar sort of temperature tomorrow and maybe a chance to get out for a walk together. Scamp may be having coffee with June, but that’s not confirmed yet. It’s a wait and see thing!

The sun shone – 21 January 2023

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For a very short time, admittedly, but it was there.

Rumour has it the sun was there yesterday too, but I just couldn’t see it. Today, as you’ll have guessed was a better day. I’d even go so far as to say it was a much brighter day. A shower in the morning helped and a light breakfast (tea and two slices of toast, since you’re asking) helped too. However, Scamp didn’t think we were both fit or well enough to go to the dance class and reluctantly I agreed. It turned out that we weren’t the only ones to take a day off. According to Scamp’s investigations, only three couples appeared – there are usually between five and seven. Although we were feeling better, we weren’t really ready for an energetic Quickstep!

We did walk down to the shops to get paracetamol and fish fingers. As it turned out we didn’t need the fish fingers, we had potatoes, ‘rats’ and sea bream instead. It was almost pleasant to be out walking after yesterday the temperature was in the positive zone and in fact it’s actually warmer now than it was then. But, that won’t encourage me to go out for a walk at just after 9pm. I did go for a walk in St Mo’s when we were coming back from the shops and got a PoD that’s not earth shattering, but it’s been processed and posted on the same day it was taken.

Scamp’s sore throat seems to have gone but she has a sniffy nose and a bit of a cough. I just feel sore all over, but thankfully the cotton wool that had filled my head yesterday has disappeared overnight.

I think we may have an early night again tonight. Almost half way through the book Hazy and still enjoying it. He’s good at story telling, Andy Weir.

Tomorrow if it’s dry we may go for a longer walk.

Go East Young Man – 19 January 2023

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Today my brother and I were heading over to Fife for some photo opportunities.

Picked up my brother at Greenfaulds Station and off we went to Kincardine. We wandered through the town down to the path along the Forth Estuary. The blue skies that we’d expected to greet us had gone somewhere else while we were driving and a cold wind was blowing from the east. West winds usually bring rain, but East winds are generally cold. This one was living up to that legend. We started walking towards the bridge and into that east wind. The light wasn’t great and I was beginning to think this was a bad move today, but we took some photos and made the best of things. We turned and walked back the way we’d come. It wasn’t so cold with the wind at our backs and the skies were clearing.

We walked on until we reached the remains of the old power station, now just a concrete wasteland. We had been watching a high hill, white with snow, away to the west. I reckoned if we walked on until we reached the Clacks Bridge we might get a clear shot of it, but that was a long walk on a cold day, so we agreed to turn back and drive to Culross for a cup of coffee and something to eat. As we were walking we found a bottle of lime and lemon cordial sitting on steps, down beside the water. Around it were the remains of a lunch and some chopsticks! Someone had beat a hasty retreat because the bottle was still intact and the liquid inside was frozen, so probably not today. A mystery. We took some photos and walked to the car.

We parked at Culross and took some photos of the old buildings in the centre of the town, then I found the cafe and we had a well deserved Big Bacon Butty each and a cup of real coffee to wash it down. Alex decided it was his turn to pay and I didn’t argue. We were watching some birds that might or might not be Waxwings happily stripping some red berries from a tree in the garden of the cafe. However, before we could get a better look, they all flew off.

When we were back on the footpath the light had improved greatly and we both set to to photograph every house in the street, or so it seemed at the time. With Culross duly recorded we walked down to the pier and while Alex photographed the town lit by beautiful golden light, I worked at 180º to him and photographed the setting sun and its refections in the Forth. The sun went behind a cloud and the golden light was gone for another day.

We drove home and I dropped Alex at the station just in time for his train home. We both agreed it was a great day. Alex summed it up by calling it a “Wee Adventure”.

Scamp had made Lentil soup for dinner and it was just what was needed on such a cold day.

PoD went to the picture of the bottle on the step beside the Forth.

Tomorrow’s weather looks much like today’s. Hopefully Scamp and I will get out for a walk.