After today, hopefully things will begin to get a bit lighter.
Scamp began today vacuum packing the fish she bought in Waitrose earlier in the week. She got one done, but after that the machine stopped. The vacuum worked, but it wouldn’t seal the pocket. We both tried it to no avail. It seems like the heater that does the sealing has given up the ghost. We use the machine quite a lot. Maybe not as much as we used to, but it comes in useful, especially for meat and fish. We had a look for a replacement. Amazon, of course, had them, but they were suspiciously cheap. Lakeland had them too but they were a bit more expensive. Currys advertised them, but they had none in stock, as usual. It looked like a trip to Stirling was in order.
We drove there through heavy rain showers, finally got parked in an extension to the car park. It seemed that everyone else had come to the Dobbies/Lakeland/Cotswold mini retail park. Scamp had a wander round Dobbies while I was off taking photos of the Wallace Monument looking grey and intimidating, standing on its hill with a grey sky above. When she returned said the queue for the restaurant was the longest she’d seen in the shop. That was why the car park was so busy. Everyone was here for their Christmas dinner!
Lakeland had two different models of vacuum sealer. We chose the heavier and larger of the two it just looked a bit more solid than it’s smaller sibling. I humphed it into the boot of the blue car and we drove off home. I was going to stop for photo paper in Currys, but it’s such a circuitous route to get to it, I couldn’t be bothered. Instead I thought I’d stop at Tesco in Cumbersheugh to see if they had any, but the queue to get in to park wound round the carpark, out past the petrol station round a roundabout and up to the main road. Maybe another day would be better. I can’t believe folk are queueing up to go to Tesco for their Christmas dinner!
I’d used an old Panasonic TZ90 to take the photos of the Wallace monument and the camera had made expensive sounding grinding noises, but the photos were there, although they weren’t the best shots I’d ever taken. However once they’d been dunked in a bath of Lightroom suds they were a bit cleaner and another bucket of ON1 Photo RAW gave a bit of colour to them. To finish them off, I went outside to catch the beginning of a sunset with the A7iii and pasted it on to cover the grey sky and it began to all come together, as you can see at the top of the page.
Once the new toy had been unpacked and inspected, the instruction book read and digested we each had a go at sealing up some fish. It seemed a bit quieter than the old one, but it is a lot younger. It seems to do the job it was intended for. So we’re happy.
It’s been a wild windy and wet day. We’re hoping for a brighter, day tomorrow with a bit less rain