Category: weather

Old Friends – 29 August 2022

Posted on by Zogman

We didn’t do much in the morning, but the afternoon was full.

In the morning I saw the “Washing machine is ready to go” message when I went down to make the breakfast, so I switched it on. After breakfast Scamp wanted to go out for messages and I wanted to give my bike the once over, because I’m intending taking it out on Friday with a little bit of luck. The tyres are flat, but what state the inner tubes will be in, I don’t know. I might get round to that tomorrow, but today Scamp returned and saved me from getting my hands dirty.

After lunch I suggested we go for a walk. My offerings were Drumpellier, Auchinstarry for the Forth and Clyde canal or a more gentle Colzium. Drumpellier was our choice, so off we went.

As usual we walked anti-clockwise round the loch, then into the woods, taking it in turns to decide which road to take at each split in the path. It was a really warm day with a bit of cloud cover. We were just coming out of the woods when I saw a woman pushing an older woman in a wheelchair and recognised her voice. It was Morag from school and the older woman was her mum. We met up with her husband just a bit further along the road. We must have stood there for easily three quarters of an hour, just catching up and talking about folk we’d worked with. Funnily enough John and I had done exactly the same thing on Friday night. Morag has gone back to teaching again for half a week after having retired! I don’t know why people do that. Surely they are just taking jobs away from up and coming teachers who really need a job. I’m perfectly happy being retired and being able to live my own life. I’m sure Scamp would say the same thing, even if I do get in the way a lot of the time. We eventually said our “goodbyes” and we strode off, because the ice cream van was beckoning!

Just after getting the cones, I saw the opportunities of a photo with the swans. I handed my cone to Scamp and took a couple of photos of the birds. They weren’t too happy to see me and started hissing, as swans do, probably because I’d woken them up from their afternoon snooze. Two shots was all I risked, then caught up with Scamp again and we scoffed the ice cream, then drove home.

Two photos isn’t really enough for me. I kept my walking boots on and took the A7 out for a walk in St Mo’s where I got another sleepy dragonfly and back in the garden, a bi-coloured dahlia. Strange thing. Most of the flowers on the plant are pale pink, spotted with dark red. Some are plain red, but this one was half and half. Some sort of throwback perhaps. All are available on Flickr, but the swans got PoD.

While I was out, Scamp had been cutting the back garden grass. Hopefully that will be her finished for the year. Depending on the weather, the grass might need one more cut, but equally it might be good enough as it is,

Rather a good Pasta Carbonara tonight using Val’s Italian recipe with two full eggs and one extra yolk, but no cream. Apparently that’s how carbonara should be made.

Tomorrow we’re booked for coffee with Isobel in the morning. The rest of the day is our own.

A dull day – 23 August 2022

Posted on by Zogman

As we stroll into autumn, the temperature appears to drop significantly.

Having said that, it was warmer outside than it was in the house today. But oh what a dull day. From when we woke it seemed to grow darker and darker. Eventually Scamp said we should get up before it got too dark.

By lunchtime the day had lightened a bit, but it didn’t brighten up much more after that. There were occasional spells of sunshine, but they were few and far between. I wasn’t at my brightest either today, finding something wrong with almost everything. Even after I found that I’d achieved an ‘Explore’ in Flickr for my loaf picture, I just grumbled that there was nothing special with the photo and why was it chosen for the ultimate Flickr accolade?

I did manage to get a PoD. It was a Echinacea from the front garden. It’s a bit faked, because some of its petals had been chewed and I replaced them with other ones, but you’d have to be very picky to find which ones were replaced. We really thought these cone flowers were annuals and were surprised when they produced new flower heads in the early summer. They’re still flowering well now that it’s almost autumn.

Dinner for me was tea and toast tonight, because my stomach was a bit upset. I think it might have been a slightly sour and very dry Victoria plum I had in the afternoon, but it prevented me from cooking pasta tonight. Scamp chose to have a baked potato instead.

Tomorrow looks like the best day of the week if the weather fairies have it right. We may go out for a run somewhere. It will give us a chance to buy some of the cut-price petrol that’s appeared in the pumps, perhaps.

Spiders in the rain – 22 August 2022

Posted on by Zogman

It was a wet day today. No real incentive to go out.

Scamp drove up to the chemist to get her meds, but I stayed at home. She walked over to St Mo’s later to post a couple of parcels and got thoroughly soaked for her trouble. So badly soaked was she that her raincoat is still drying in the kitchen.

Earlier I almost managed to choose a dry spell for a walk in St Mo’s. Lots of spiderwebs with their attendant spiders easily visible after the rain. One of those shots got PoD. I was quite pleased with the out of focus raindrops hanging from the web. It almost looked like the Milky Way to me. Although I did get wet, I wasn’t nearly as wet as Scamp was later in the afternoon.

Spoke to Fred for a while later and discussed paintings he’d done and sketches I’d done. I must get that back bedroom cleared out and create some space to get some painting done.

Dinner tonight was a very tasteless Spice Tailor daal. With leftover chicken from Saturday’s dinner. It’s not often we have a failure with Spice Tailor kits.

Scamp and I played Rummikub later because there really is nothing worth watching on terrestrial TV. Maybe we should have a rummage through the offerings on Amazon Prime and Netflix.

Maybe it was just a bad day and tomorrow will be better. It doesn’t really look like it though. Wednesday looks the best day of the week. We might go somewhere then.

 

An improving picture – 18 August 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Scamp tested negative this morning. Me, I’m at the coo’s tail as usual, still positive.

Scamp was careful not to look at the pink column as it rose in the recording window of the test kit. Then after about twelve of the required fifteen minutes she gave a yelp. It was a negative result. Not even the slightest ghost of a ’T’ trace. At last, one of us had broken free. Mine was slower than usual to confirm a positive, but it was there for all to see by the fifteenth minute. I didn’t expect it to be any better, but it would have been a nice surprise …

I took a walk down to the shops to get some bread and a bunch of flowers to brighten the house. Also got some cherries and the stuff to make a stir fry for dinner. Later in the afternoon we both went for a walk in St Mo’s. Just once round the pond, but that was enough for me to snag a few shots of dragonflies resting on the boardwalk. I reckon it’s the daily rain showers,  another of which we had in the late afternoon, that are increasing the water level in the ponds and that’s encouraging the hatch of dragons. Mostly Common Darters, both male and female, but a few Black Darters occasionally added to the mix. One of the low down views of a dragonfly made PoD.

Stir fry was ok, but I inadvertently picked up a carton of Vegan broth mix instead of Chicken. I’ll be more careful in future. I much prefer the milder chicken flavour.

It was a bit dull today. Couldn’t really get myself interested in anything. I’m just finishing my first Stuart McBride book in years and am not all that impressed with it. Too predictable, I think. However, I bought the Audible version with the Kindle book and it helped the flight home pass much more quickly than reading.

We may go out somewhere tomorrow, just to get out of the house.

Cabin Fever – 15 August 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Cabin Fever was setting in. I can’t stay cooped up for long.

It had been a wild night, with more thunder and lightning during the night. Also a lot more rain. Torrential rain that came along with the thunderstorm, but also just sheets of straight-down rain that soaked the gardens and grass. That was the kind of rain we needed. The torrential rain just runs off the hard baked ground, but it’s the gentler rain that soaks down into the roots of the plants and trees and that’s what the roots will soak up.

In the afternoon I decided it was calm enough to risk a short walk round St Mo’s. A chance to see what difference the change in the weather had made. There were slugs and snails everywhere. It looked like they were having a party. I suppose slugs especially dehydrate in the heat and so need to get out into the wet to absorb the water into their bodies. Snails can survive for longer by retreating into their shells. I’d taken a camera of course and my PoD was a little Scabious flower with pink among the blue petals. Also, as it was still raining, there were some water drops to add some fine detail. Everything seemed to shine in the sunshine through the rain. I felt better for that short walk.

Still feeling tired and the cough is still there, but Scamp is a looking and feeling a lot better. We’ve agreed to do another test tomorrow.

A day in the sunshine – 14 August 2022

Posted on by Zogman

This looked like it would be the last day of fine weather before the rains would come.

It’s no fun being confined to the house with the coughs and sneezes that seem to go along with the general fatigue that comes with Covid. Heaven knows what it would have felt like to those poor folk who caught it two years ago, before the vaccine became available. Although we’re feeling miserable now, it must have been a hundred times worse for them. We should be thankful for small mercies.

Well, we may not be able to go out into the wider world, but at least we could enjoy the sunshine in our garden. Scamp was busy deadheading the roses and most of the other garden flowers. Just keeping herself busy. I was happy to read in the sun with a bottle of beer to keep me company.

PoD went to a little industrious spider who was building its web in the apple tree. It was a tiny little thing working methodically round and round the web before it settled in the centre and waited for visitors. I guess these tiny arachnids must have the instructions for web building hard wired into their brains, because there are no teachers to show them how to do it.

Later in the day the clouds rolled in and the predicted thunderstorms arrived bringing the heavy rain in their wake. I felt sorry for the spider. All its work building that web had been washed away in the deluge. We had buckets out all over the garden collecting as much rainwater as we could. We’d also left the tomato plant and the chillies out too to benefit from rainwater.

The heat will be gone tomorrow, but there will be a fresher feel to the place. I might, just might go for a short walk tomorrow if I feel up to it.

 

Back to life – 12 August 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Back to reality. Back to the here and now.

This was the day for unpacking and for bundling clothes into the washing machine and then hanging them out to dry. Admittedly, I wasn’t doing much of that. Scamp did most of it.

After lunch I went for a walk in St Mo’s to get some ‘ordinary’ photos. PoD was a close-up of a Yellow Rattle plant. It’s a parasite, feeding on the nutrients in the roots of any nearby grasses. And yes, it really does rattle when you brush past it! It’s the dried seeds in the desiccated pods that make the noise. I also got a shot of a grasshopper hiding deep in the grass, but no Hummingbird Hawk Moths I’m afraid. Too cold for them up here in the frozen north.

It wasn’t really that cold, in fact it was pleasantly warm sitting in the garden. Thunder and lightning predicted for the next few days. We really should make the most of this warm weather before it all comes to a crashing end.

We’re not going anywhere any time soon.

No Games of Thrones – 6 August 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Today was Dubrovnik whose ‘Old Town’ is famous as being the setting for Game of Thrones. I know it’s still really popular, but we watched the first episode and thought “Nah! Not for us”, and never returned.

After another late breakfast we walked off the ship and out into the more modern part of Dubrovnik. I had one task to complete and that was to buy a Dubrovnik tee shirt. Dubrovnik town is quite a pretty place in its own right. On our walk we found a Catholic(?) church with an old courtyard. Neither of us went in to the church. Across the busy road was a park that had been turned into an art display. All the seats had been painted in bright patterns and it looked like local children had painted posters and pinned them on trees. Next, at the end of the park was an interactive Science Park. All children centred and all interesting. Further along the road, Scamp found a fruit market and a smelly fish market she remembered from one of our first visits to Dubrovnik.

By then we’d reached the end of the road and turned right to keep the water on our right side. We found a park and in it was a naval gunboat the St Blaise. Allegedly “The first battleship of the Croatian Navy task force Dubrovnik. The symbol of resistance during the aggression of Serbia and Montengro on our town.” So say the Croatian Navy Veterans of Dubrovnik. Next an armoured vehicle, the Majsan used for the heroic defence of the City of Dubrovnik and its surrounding area during the homeland war. It’s an impressive lump of camouflaged steel and has what might or might not be the impressions made by enemy artillery on its side. Quite a strange collection of relics from a war that only happened about twenty years ago. It would seem that feelings are still a bit raw here. On a softer note, it seems the rear carrier of the vehicle is now home to a couple of stray cats!

We walked round the marina beside the park, then headed back to a cafe we’d passed earlier and had a beer there. From there it was an easy walk beside the harbour to the ship with the usual collections of catamarans, for-hire cabin cruisers and the now obligatory ‘pirate ship’, but nobody was hiring today. Scamp wanted to photograph some Agapanthus she’d seen earlier. She knew exactly where they were and the photos were taken along with some of Bougainvillea.

After lunch, Scamp went for a swim and I went for a walk down to the port under the high bridge where folk had been bungee jumping the last time we were here back in 2019 when the world was a totally different place. The bungee ropes were still in place and so was the jumping platform, but there were no jumpers today. I found a wee cottage with a lovely garden down by the port. I’m sure Scamp would have approved of the careful pruning of the flowers and bushes. I also found some scary looking cacti with big sharp looking spines, growing wild. I didn’t test their sharpness!

On the way back I stopped at the seamen’s bar (you have to be careful how you spell that!), had a beer and got the password for the wifi on the receipt. Managed to send a few messages back home and the beer was good too.

We found we’d a double booking for restaurants for tomorrow and chose to go with Sindhu, the Indian one. Managed to get the Glasshouse changed to Tuesday. Meant to go to a show, but cancelled and went dancing instead to more rapturous applause.

The PoD was a grab shot of Scamp walking past a chapel. The statue looked like a creepy lurker, I thought.

Another late night. Koper tomorrow.

A Sea Day – 5 August 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Sea days are boring, there’s nothing to do on a sea day.

Breakfast in Smash ’n’ Grab as the ship sailed round the heel of Italy and into the Adriatic. It was hot, early and although there were some sun beds, they were never in pairs. Always a free one, two being used, then another free one. Why do people do that? Eventually we found a couple together, but in the shade and right next to The Sports Hub, which was a man in a blue tee shirt sitting at a desk behind a rope. I don’t know if that rope was to protect him from angry sportsmen and women or the other way round. Whichever, the rope was virtually redundant as was the poor bloke in the blue tee shirt. It wasn’t the most interesting of views and I went looking for another sun bed.

I found one higher up and with a view overlooking one of the big pools. Lots of activity in the pool with kids running in and out of the water. Lots of them swimming, but not many adults. This was a kids area, but that was ok. We stayed there for a while before with a tremendous fanfare, the Sony logo burst onto the massive outdoor screen. It was a noisy version of Cinderella, apparently. We stayed to watch it for a while, but eventually gave up because we were at a very acute angle to the screen and the lip-sync was terrible. Maybe the lack of known faces in the film didn’t help. We left to get fed again, this time in The Peninsular Restaurant.

We got fixed up with a table, right at the back of the room and were given menus. We waited, and waited, and waited again, but nobody came near us to take our order or to offer us drinks. Only half the table had been set and there were no waiters at the station for this area. We agreed to give them 15minutes to sort things out and if we weren’t served in that time we’d walk out. That’s what happened. We walked out and handed back the menus saying they were no use to us as nobody had bothered to take our order. The waiter I handed the menu to started telling me I couldn’t do that, then the manager started to take control and said that he’d find us a table (I know condescension when I hear it) and he’d sort things out. After quite a lot of argument and raised voices, the manager realised that here were two angry customers who were going to take this further. He backed down and we left to go to Customer Services. I thought the customer was always right, but apparently it’s the staff who are always right now in P&O and you have to do what they say.

We did go straight to Customer Services which is just along the corridor and in direct sight of the manager. We only went to fix a dodgy key card, but the manager didn’t know that!

Back to Smash ’n’ Grab and really quite a decent lunch. After lunch we went to reclaim our sun beds which we’d marked as per the German method with towels and towel clips, only to find a family sitting on them. I quickly hoiked them out and we reclaimed our thrones. Then I though, this is just projected anger and these poor folk are getting the brunt of my anger at the Peninsular manager. We took our towels, I said sorry, and we went to have a quick splash in the pool at the front of the ship.

It was just a quick splash, because it’s a small pool, with a stated capacity for 12 people. There were 23 in it, including us. We left to have a couple of beers and found another pair of sun beds.

Posh dinner tonight. Formal dress and Black Tie. Food was just ok tonight. It was so remarkable, I can’t remember what I had. Then we booked a table at The Glass House for Sunday. It’s quite expensive, but hopefully it’ll be worth it. After that we had a drink (Strawberry Daiquiri for Scamp and Laphroaig for me). Then we went dancing.

We had a great time. Ballroom, Sequence and Latin, we danced them all. We even did a solo Salsa spot and we got a cheer for one of the more difficult moves. I was impressed. If we hadn’t been the only couple on the floor, I’d have been sure the applause was for someone else. Eventually just before 11.30pm when the dancing finishes, we finished.  PoD was a photo of the locked area at the rear of our deck where the Covid patients are kept, away from the rest of us.  It’s rumoured they are chained to their oars in there, like galley slaves, and have to row day and night to keep the ship on its course!

Like I said at the start of this blog:
Sea days are boring, there’s nothing to do on a sea day.

Off to bed, ready for Dubrovnik tomorrow.

It’s surely not that time already – 4 August 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Unfortunately it was. My phone chimed it’s ‘get up’ message at 3am, followed immediately by Scamp’s. The day had begun.

We loaded the car and drove to the airport, arriving with plenty of time to spare. Parked, dumped the cases and were through into security in no time at all. As usual my carry-on bag was searched for explosive substances in my Kindle. I’d walked through the scanner wearing my watch and didn’t get caught, but my Kindle was searched for explosives! Go figure.

Breakfast at Frankie & Bennie’s was a roll ’n’ sausage for me and two slices of toast for Scamp. Paid their usual exorbitant price and waited to find our gate. It came up right on time, and we joined the queue to board. Again no problem, we got seated and waited for the other passengers to board. Two really noisy and badly behaved Aberdonian weans were somewhere behind us. One called Skye and the other called Harris. Harris? What sort of name is that? Has he/she got a cousin called ‘Millport’? Dad and Granddad were deep in conversation, speaking fluent Seagull, “Gauk, Gauk, Gauk”. If you’ve listened to Aberdonians speaking, that’s what it sounds like. Granddad knew everything about everything and had been everywhere and was telling everyone all about it, but as Scamp says, “That’s what Granddads do.”

For the last week I’ve been really tense, going through all the possible things that could go wrong that I hadn’t planned for. Would some eejit block me at home by parking in front of me overnight? There were roadworks on the way to the airport during the night and warnings of lane closures. Would that mean we’d have to follow diversions to avoid them? I’d never used this new parking company, would something go wrong at the last minute and my parking would be cancelled then I’d need to … One of the few things I hadn’t accounted for was a casualty on board. The plane pulled on to the runway and trundled down past the ‘hold short’ line then continued off the slip and back to the stand. A woman passenger had felt ill and needed medical help. First Aid trained Firefighters came on board, assessed the situation and decided to play it safe and call for an ambulance. Then they had to wait until the passenger’s cases were removed from the hold, then, with the casualty in the ambulance they left, presumably to go to Glasgow Royal Infirmary. We needed to wait a while more before we were allowed by Flight Controllers to be cleared for taxiing and take off. All in all it was an hour’s delay, but the poor woman and her companion had just lost a holiday.

Arrived at Malta airport and entered the P&O machine. It must be the most efficiently organised system of passenger transport in the world, run in part by cheerful pensioners. Brilliant work.

We were allocated our cabin a week or so ago and today we got to enter it for the first time. It’s just a normal cruise cabin with a big wide and deep balcony. The folk above us can see into part of our cabin, but we can overlook the folk below us, so that’s fair. 😉

Food first. We went to what we’ve always called “Smash and Grab”. The Self Service restaurant. Feeling better we wandered round the deck, got lost, found ourselves, met our cabin steward and wandered round again. IT WAS HOT! 🥵. Found a splash pool near the sharp end of the ship and managed a few strokes crossing and recrossing the tiny little pool. Had our first ‘Holiday Beer’. Went to dinner in the Oriental Restaurant. Met a couple from Newcastle at our table. Discussed Bakeoff the Professionals and posh watches with them.

We wanted to see the sail away, but it was getting later and later and there were still folk wandering in from transfer buses from the airport. Eventually about an two hours late we watched from our balcony as the ship moved silently from its moorings and headed into the Mediterranean and onward to Dubrovnik.

PoD is a picture taken from our plane crossing the Alps at 37,000 ft with Mont Blanc below us.

Tomorrow is a Sea Day. There’s rarely anything to see on a sea day and nothing to do. That’s what folk will tell you. It’s not true. A sea day is what you make it.