Clubbing together

Today’s guest picture is another from Tony’s seaside views.  This one was taken on his phone.

Today’s post may be a little more incoherent than usual because I had a restless night.  The forecast had been for cloudy skies so I went to bed without making any preparations to view the much talked about supermoon.  In the event, guided by fate, I woke up and decided that it might be worth pulling back the curtains and was amazed and delighted to find a clear sky and the shadow of the earth just beginning to fall on the left side of the moon.

I scuttled about trying to shoot handheld shots while collecting my tripod and working out apertures, focusing and shutter speeds. I woke up Mrs Tootlepedal too with some trepidation but she was grateful to see the unfolding lunar drama.

I took many, many shots but ended up with just a few usable efforts showing the eclipse starting, the red moon at the full eclipse and the gradual brightening as time went by.  The first of these shots was taken at 3.28 am and the last at 5.53 am and I have to admit that I may have dropped off from time to time between taking them.

It was well worth the interruption to my sleep to see such a sight.

I got up late and found that a crisp frost had the garden in its grip.  Under the circumstances, I was happy to have a quiet morning in doing nothing more energetic than walking to the shop 200 yards away and putting some bread ingredients in the bread maker.

I looked at the birds and found that chaffinches were having a hard time landing. One was just hanging on…

…and this one missed the perches altogether.

Occasionally they got it right.

I was encouraged in idleness by small outbreaks of snow.

However, the snow came to nothing and the robin popped up to pose for me.

In the end, since the snow had stopped I went for a walk to keep my foot mobile.  It was gloomy but dry so I set off with hope in my heart if not with a spring in my step.

However, I had just passed some attractive catkins….

…when it started to drizzle.

I cut short any thoughts of interesting places and took the shortest route home.

By now, it was raining quite steadily so after a look down to see the Mission Hall where the camera club would be meeting in the evening…

…I limped home as fast as I could. The colourful backs of the ambulances outside the Hall, which has an ambulance service base in it, were by far the brightest thing to be seen anywhere.

Mike Tinker dropped in for tea and offered some sound rocking horse advice and then Mrs Tootlepedal prepared a magnificent dish of cauliflower cheese while I entertained young Luke for some fluting duets.  It was one of those evenings when we both realised that more practice would have been a good thing before the lesson.

After tea, I went off to set up the projector and screen for the camera club meeting.  Luckily the members are very helpful so we were soon ready and ten members enjoyed a really excellent selection of pictures.  Seven of us had brought in selections to show and  as there was no theme this month, we had a fine mish-mash of pictures from Africa, continental Europe, the southern borders of Scotland and the heart of Langholm.

As usual ideas and experiences were swapped over tea and biscuits at half time so the meeting went well and we all look forward to meeting again next month.

Mrs Tootlepedal had some fun during the day applying her first ever coats of gesso to the rocking horse.  It was a voyage into the unknown and it didn’t go quite as well as she might have hoped but it turned out that that was probably down to the fact that the temperature in the garage where she was working was too low for proper drying of the layers.  The horse is back indoors now and looking a lot better for a bit of warmth.  I hope to have a picture of progress tomorrow.

There are two eager flying birds of the day today, a sparrow for a bit of a change…

… and a chaffinch for some continuity.

Surrounded

Today’s guest picture comes from Sharon, mother of Luke my flute playing friend.  She took this beautiful view of the Nith estuary from Glencaple near Dumfries.

It was a two choir day as usual on a Sunday and I had a thoroughly enjoyable time.  In church we sang several hymns with satisfying bass lines and then we had a short practice afterwards with promises of more enjoyable singing to come.

I found a coal tit in the plum tree when we got back.

It was a pleasantly sunny, pretty still morning so with the temperature at 4°C, I set out after coffee and a ginger biscuit  to see whether a short walk would make my foot feel better or worse.  On the whole, it made it feel better.

I looked at moss while I was pootling along pondering on medical matters.  There is rarely any shortage of moss to look at round here.

There was moss steadily colonising a wall, reaching up from below to meet another patch reaching down from above….

…there were various mosses massed in a mound on top of the wall further along…

…and still further along, more moss stretching out fingers to grab new territory…

…and among the trees, a mini forest of  moss…

…as well as moss mixing with peltgera lichen on a wall…

…and pincushion moss sharing space with more lichen.

My route took me along Gaskell’s Walk and it was as nice a walk as you could hope for though I thought that one walker whom I passed going in the opposite direction and who remarked that it was like spring, was getting a bit ahead of herself.

I looked around and saw colourful fungus on the end of a fallen branch…

…and any amount of rosebay willowherb lined the track.

The track was largely in shadow but as I came to the last hill before the Stubholm, the sun was catching the electricity poles that carry the power down into the New Town.

They may not be the most beautiful of structures but they do bring a lot of brightness into our lives, literally and metaphorically so I am always happy to see them even if they do spoil a view every now and again.

It was a grand day and I was sorry not to have the time or legs to walk further…

…but after a couple more stops to note eye catching sights….

…and a final nod to the world of moss….

…I made my way home.

In the garden, the hellebores are beginning to show a bit of colour..

Inside the house, a pot of soup was bubbling on the cooker, showing that Mrs Tootlepedal had been busy while I was out.

I had time to eat some soup, watch a pair of restful goldfinches nibble on the sunflower seed…

…while some chaffinches get a lot more excited about the situation…..

…and then it was time to head for Carlisle and the community choir practice.

The sunshine had gone by this time and it was grey and chilly by the time we got to the church where we meet.

The practice itself was very satisfactory as a reorganisation of the tenors meant that rather than sitting on the end of a pew not being able to hear the rest of the section, this week I had a strong singer beside me and more behind.  Together with the work that I have done at home over the past two weeks, this meant that I was able to sing with much more confidence and relaxation than previously.  I hope that we keep this new set up.

We got home safely, had the last portions of Mrs Tootlepedal’s vegetarian casserole and settled down to enjoy Les Miserables (as far as the subject matter permits of any enjoyment).

A chaffinch as flying bird of the day rounded off a day definitely entered on the credit side of the great ledger of life.

 

 

 

Getting the picture

Today’s guest picture is another from the eternally sunlit shore at East Wemyss.  Tony is making really good use of his dog walking time.

We had a chilly (3°C) but kindly day with a very gentle wind and no rain.  The sun didn’t appear so it was dull but all the same we could have no complaints about this weather for a January day.

I am trying to get my foot back into working order and oddly enough, doing some hip exercises seems to be improving things a lot.  This proves the truth of the old song…The hipbone’s connected to the thighbone…etc, etc.

Sandy came round to combine a cup of coffee with some archive group business.  He has been suffering from sore feet and knees which is why we haven’t been on any walks lately but he tells me that he has got medical appointments in the pipeline so he is hoping for useful help.

When he left, I went for a walk round the garden with Mrs Tootlepedal.  She pointed out this…

…which may look like a jungle but is in fact moss, lichen and some blades of grass in what passes for the middle lawn at the moment.

More lichen is available in every corner of the garden.

Much to my surprise, the perennial wallflower has cocked a snook at the recent frosts and produced another flower…

…and even more amazingly, one of the the ordinary wallflowers is in the process of producing a bunch of flowers.

The winter jasmine continues to flourish.

The birds were rather few and far between again today, with just the occasional chaffinch…

…and some of which at least had the sense to head for separate perches today…

…and the even more occasional sparrow.

I had some sardines on toast for lunch and then tested out my foot on a very short, flat walk.

The gulls were taking things easily too…

…while the mallards couldn’t agree on a common destination.

Fed up with standing on fence posts, one gull took to a rock in the river.

It was, as one passer by remarked to me, a very plain sort of day and I didn’t see anything worth recording until I came to a football match on the Scholars’ Field.

Thanks to the dull light, it was easier to take picture while the players were standing around waiting for the ball to arrive…

…than it was when they were running around chasing after it.

Before lunch, Mrs Tootlepedal and I had spent some time tidying out the garage and when I got home, I found that the rocking horse had taken up residence there.  This is so that Mrs Tootlepedal can cover it with gesso before painting it.   The gesso process which involves size (rabbit skin glue), is a smelly and potentially messy business so the garage seems the best place for it.

For those interested, a description of the gesso process can be found here.

After a cup of tea and some music practice, we went off to Carlisle to go to the pictures.  We haven’t been to the films for some time so this was a treat for Mrs Tootlepedal who really likes going to the cinema.  We found that in Carlisle at least, ticket prices had gone down a lot since our last visit and at £5 each, the cinema chain must be making most of its money by selling its customers vast buckets of very unappetising looking food.  We went hungry.

The film we saw is called The Favourite and is about the court of Queen Anne in 1708.  It is described in Wikipedia as a “historical period comedy-drama”.  It was very well acted and the settings and costumes were impressive but since its message seemed to me to be that all women are either old and ugly and helpless or young, beautiful and horrible and that politicians are generally rather nasty selfish people, it seemed to chime with a rather Trumpian view of the world and I didn’t much like it.  It was extremely coarse which was amusing at first as an antidote to refined period dramas on TV but which got a bit wearing as time went on.  Finally, either ideas or money ran out and the film just stopped without any resolution.

Still, as they say, it was a day out and a change.

I just manage to collect a flying chaffinch of the day.

 

Seeing the light

Alert readers may remember a guest picture or two  showing the recent invasion of Derby by some rather scruffy members of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s army.  My brother went to see the prince in the Derby Museum and Art Gallery and asked him not to invade Derby again.  Answer came there none.

After the excitements of yesterday, we had a very quiet day today, Mrs Tootlepedal because she was a bit tired after a hard days work and me because I wanted to rest my foot after walking more than I should have done in Edinburgh.

I wasn’t missing any cycling as the temperature only just rose above freezing all day though we were very ice free and I did risk cycling as far as the Buccleuch Centre to buy a ticket for an evening show.

I also had to do a bit of walking from and to our local garage as we had noticed last night that one of our headlight bulbs had expired.  They kindly replaced the bulb very promptly and the car is back in action again.

Apart from a visit from Drospcone for coffee and the subsequent consumption of high quality treacle scones, I had a very peaceful time, occasionally looking out of the window.

It was frosty first thing…

…but the sun came out and things brightened up.

A chaffinch with a misplaced sense of humour mocked my ambition to catch a good flying bird of the day…

…and a pigeon arrived which looked not to be any great need of more bird food.

Mike Tinker came round for afternoon tea with ginger biscuits so we had good company both in the morning and afternoon.

The highlight of the day was the show for which I had bought a ticket earlier on (Mrs Tootlepedal was doing front of house duties and did not require a ticket).

The event was an illustrated lecture by Laurie Campbell, a wild life photographer who lives not too far from us in the Scottish borders.

He is a photographer of great skill and artistry and on top of that, he is an expert in putting together a show of 400 hundred varied images of which every one is interesting and delivering it at a speed which maintains the interest of the audience from first to last.  Add to that a very pleasant and graceful manner of delivery packed full of interesting technical details and a dry sense of humour and you have the recipe for a perfect evening.

Those interested can visit his website here.

As I had time on my hands today, I managed to find several flying birds of the day.

A final question: can you have to many cute robin pictures?

 

A helping hand

Today’s guest picture comes from son Tony who has been shooting at the moon with his new camera.  Unfortunately the copy that he sent me is undersized but it still looks good.

Mrs Tootlepedal is taking the colour pattern for her crochet blanket from a website which posts the design for the next fifteen rows each week so she was pleased to have finished this week’s ration before the next lot came on line.

She will need to grow bigger arms for next week’s shot.

There is not much in the way of a post today as we got up well before dawn to got to Edinburgh to try to be of assistance to Matilda’s father and mother as they took the final steps in moving house today.  Their new house is not yet ready so they had a complicated scheme of putting some things in store and taking some things to a flat where they are camping until the new house is ready.

This meant a lot of filling of boxes and trips in the car to the store and the flat and part of our duties was to keep Matilda entertained while this was going on.

We went to a cafe for beans on toast and then armed warfare broke out.

Matilda ready for battle….

…and grandpa ready to resist.

It was all go out there.

Mrs Tootlepedal was the official, war correspondent who took the pictures.

Then Matilda went to nursery and we helped her parents pack, tidy and clean before we had the privilege of collecting Matilda from nursery and bringing her home.

Mrs Tootlepedal did great work on fridge defrosting and cleaning while I played Pelmanism and snap with Matilda as the work went on.  We were using a pack of cats and kittens cards for our game and I made the acquaintance of the Maine Coon, a cat that I had never heard of but which I find really does exist.

We all had fun and in the end there was only one carload left to go by the time that we had to leave to catch our train home.

We arrived home nearly 15 hours after we had left, tired but satisfied.

No chance of a flying bird at all.

 

 

Taking the biscuit

Today’s guest picture comes from my sister Mary who took this charming view of St Paul’s  Cathedral across the river from the cafe outside the Tate Modern art gallery which she was visiting.

We had plenty of sunshine here…

…and quite a few birds…

…on what would have been a grand day for a walk or even a pedal if I had wrapped up well enough but I was overcome by a most unusual outbreak of good sense and stayed at home instead.

I have been suffering from a rather sore right foot lately and have been trying to walk it off but by last night I had been reduced to limping.  This is not a satisfactory state of affairs because limping only makes things worse so I went for a day of complete rest today in an effort to get things on a better footing before going to Edinburgh tomorrow.  Time will tell if I have improved things but at least I can be confident that I haven’t made them worse.

As a result, I did many puzzles in the paper, put two weeks of the newspaper index into the Archive Group database, mooched around and put a good deal of effort into practising songs for church and choir.

I looked out of the window a lot too.

At this time of year, the feeder is in the shadow of either our or our next door neighbour’s house for most of the day so it may have been the lack of light that was making this goldfinch concentrate so hard on pinpointing the feeder perch.

The wrecking crew of peckers were back digging up the lawn again…

…and goldfinches and chaffinches were in perpetual motion at the feeder…

…sometimes getting in the way of good flying bird of the day shots.

Mrs Tootlepedal suggested that I might find making some ginger biscuits a useful way of spending some time and I took her up on that.  I also took her advice on exactly when to take the biscuits out of the oven and I am happy to say that it was very sound advice as you can see.

I managed to take this picture before all the biscuits had disappeared.

It was hard to lurk about inside when the day outside was so bright…

…but we are in for a run of weather from the north so the day gradually got colder as it went on in spite of the sun and it has got down to 2°C as I write this and it is going to freeze overnight which will be a shock after a spell of relative mildness.

I did find a fairly sunny flying bird of the day and a goldfinch makes a change from all the chaffinches.

Using his loaf

Today’s guest picture is another from Tony.  While walking his dogs, he saw this big flock of sea birds floating just off shore.

For some unknown reason, I was feeling a bit tired this morning so I decided to have a leisurely time and I was just standing in the garden contemplating life when Dropscone arrived in his car.

He was bringing a gift so I invited him in for a cup of coffee.  The gift turned out to be a loaf of brown bread which Dropscone had noticed lying in the last chance trolley at a supermarket in Galashiels late last night when he was coming back from a golf meeting.  There had actually been two loaves, both reduced to 11p and this seemed an irresistible bargain so he had snapped up both of them and kindly brought one round to us.  We ate several slices with apple jelly while we drank our coffee.  The bread was worth every penny.

When he left, I looked in vain for some bird action on the feeder but only spotted a single chaffinch happy to pose for a moment.

Perked up by the bread and apple jelly, and a hint of sunshine, I got my cycling gear on and set out to go round my usual Canonbie circle. The sun promptly went in and didn’t reappear but it was reasonably warm at 8°C and although the wind was strong, it was generally in a helpful direction so cycling was enjoyable.

The Highland cows in Canonbie were hiding behind each other…

…but a youngster was less coy.

I cycled through the village and stopped for a second look at the carvings in the wood at the Hollows.  The artist has placed some birds in trees…

…and arranged a rather unsettling trio of heads on the ground.

I cycled on and added a couple of extra miles to the trip, recording 23 miles for the second day running.  Added to my walking miles, this took my total to the month to over 200 miles which is very satisfactory for the first half of January but as the forecast is for near freezing weather for every day after tomorrow for ten days at least, the final total for the month may not be much higher.

I had a walk round the garden when I got back and noticed a little colour here and there…

…but the stars of the show are the snowdrops which are going well.

I don’t have to go far to find lichens as I noticed this crop on our back doorstep.

Mrs Tootlepedal had been helping out at the Buccleuch Centre coffee shop and when she got home, she started working on her rocking horse restoration, which is progressing well, and I did the crossword and went out for a short walk in the hope of seeing some birds as there were none in the garden.

My hopes were somewhat dashed by finding cheerful dogs running up and down the waterside and as a result, no birds.

I did notice that someone had come along with a saw and cut up the trees which were resting against the Town Bridge.  The trees had been removed and only a splash of sawdust remained.

When I got to the Kilngreen, the bird situation was no better and a  lone gull on a fence post was the only one in sight.

I went on to the Castleholm and took the new path towards the Jubilee Bridge.  Looking over the fence, I could see a female mallard standing on a rock in the Esk.

There wasn’t much more to see and very little light to see it with so I only took one further picture before I got home.

Mike Tinker dropped in for a cup of tea and invited us to go and view the new fence which had been erected earlier in the day on the edge of his garden by the chap who made our new bench.  I will take a picture of it next time that I go past.

Mrs Tootlepedal went out to see a screening of Richard II in the evening after cooking a fine penne and smoked sausage casserole for our tea and I settled in for some singing practice and a little late archive data entry.

As well as the lone chaffinch on the perch, only two other chaffinches appeared while I was looking today.  One was too quick and the other was too slow to appear as flying bird of the day.  Still, I am saving a lot of money on bird food this winter.

Note: I am in the market for fresh guest pictures.