Tales of Home [8]

Send Figgy there, pronto. She needs some freezing water.

{{Lovely picture Norc, nice spot for a buckie or two while doing a spot of drunk fishing. And grateful for the link too- some great work there as always Norc, but in especial love the last two.


Azriel- my mum was looking through the pictures I had taken on my camera one day and complained that, "its just a lot of pictures of clouds."

I love clouds, and I take tons of photos of them, not just for the aesthetics, but that too, but also for study to recreate the effects if possible in my art stuff. }}}

so, I'm not the only loon looking up at the sky

I too had a look at your art Norc. Its really good stuff. There's one in particular I'm fond of, 'she' looks so...deep, there's more going on to her than she'll let on. Its near the bottom, sideways on.

{{No your not alone Azriel- there's at least one scottish nutter too staring at the skies! }}}

Lots of pretty pictures on the previous page.

It's been surprisingly cool for August in Delaware, which was nice while we were camping, though it's also rained a bit, which is less fun. But I think I'd still take this over multiple 100+ days.

multiple 100 days suck.

So much for it being Summer it's absolutely pouring down here.

i thought i could be a cool modern and independent woman who can cut her own hair. i cant. i suck. and i ruined it.

i am an idiot
it looked ok. i should've stopped. but i got confident. and fucked me up

Ive done seriously stupid things to my hair. I just wish my hair would grow as quickly as a mans hair does, especially when Ive shorn it down too far. And the God awful colours its come out, nothing anything like the colour I did want

Yeah, hubris exists. Like thinking you can cut the back of your head by feel. Sometimes you just gotta swallow your pride and plunk down 10 quid.

I like to hang out with grad students.

Hi everybodyyyyy!!!!!

(It was the kind off picture you want to wave and hollar cheerfully back to.)

Yep.

Norc wrote:i thought i could be a cool modern and independent woman who can cut her own hair. i cant. i suck. and i ruined it.

You must realize how much this calls for a picture.  I mean, can't you just feel it?  Come on, be a pal.

em no.. 


cute picture, but where is you? there is no hairy floof there..

I'll have to work on that, though the results may be unsettling.

Norc wrote:cute picture, but where is you? there is no hairy floof there..

{{{Hint: look for hang-gliders....}}}}

{{{ Its that time of year again- the Cowal Highland Gathering is this weekend, and my better half's sister is visiting from Italy. Yesterday in fact.
So it was off to the airport to meet her and a day out in Glasgow.
But that would be to get ahead of the crabbit.  
You see my better half assured me that we had to get the 10.50am ferry, imperative in fact that we do so- but there was a snag. She also, for some reason    felt I required a haircut and swarfega scrub before meeting her sister. And its not even the right time of year for my bath   This gave me from between 9 am when the hairdresers opened to feasibly 10.45 to make it to the ferry.
First hairdresser was shut till 9.30 so a non-starter setting the crabbit in.   Second hairdresser was open but already had four youths waiting with ridiculously complicated hair, by the time it came to me it would be too late, so extra crabbit increase topped by bonus crabbit because you know, young folk.   Third hairdresser? Bingo- two people already waiting, one in chair, but two waiting old men with less hair on their heads than I have in one nostril! So in I go and wait my turn, crabbit abating.
But no, the two old buggers are talkers, real talkers, they ain't here for a haircut, they've come for a day out!   Poor hairdressers can hardly get the job done for them turning to talk to them all the time!    So naturally back up comes the crabbit as the clock ticks.  
Eventually I get  in the chair and its 10.25. Its going to be tight! Turns out squeaky bum crabbit rising tight!    I get out the hairdressers shorn and crabbit with 2 minutes to cover a 5 minute walk- which means I need to run, along the main street full of folk.    But, must get the 10.50!! So run I do, reaching the ferry amid gasps and wheezes just as its about to pull out     - but the ferry man spots me and waves me down, holding up the ferry for a few extra moments to allow me to clamber aboard.   He pulls the plank up right behind me and immediately we are off.  
Now all I need to do is find my better half on-board, regale her with my heroics in getting there and garner the deserved crabbit soothing.    
She wasn't there!!! She'd missed the bloody ferry!    
Half an hour on my own getting there and an hour waiting on the ferry go to back and come back over again!!!  
So an hour in Gourock- which feels like about 10 hours anywhere else, only even more boring.  

Stuck on a ferry on my own taking pictures!



I've always got a Shire vibe from this hill-



Weather was mixed, wasn't cold thought the wind could get up occasionally on the water and fortunately rain never really came to much, but was alternatively grey and cloudy and blue and bright- sometimes in the space of a few minutes.





Approaching Gourock



Not too much to photograph in Gourock.

They have shut off access to the older parts of the pier- I used to sit out here waiting on the ferry, now this is as close as I can get.



The Gourock train station behind the ferry terminal-



Though like everywhere in Scotland if you look closely, and look behind things like the main town skyline, you might spot small curiosities-



So my better half arrived on the next ferry and then I got some more crabbit, not from her, my crabbit doesn't last a minute in the face of her smile, but bloody train tickets! First the damage to my sporran and secondly how many I needed.
Return for the ferry, then a return to paisley to change for the Ayr train to get out to the airport, thats a single, then another single from there to get to Glasgow Central, then a single from Glasgow back to Paisley, where I could then use the return portion of my initial ticket to get the rest of the way to Gourock and the ferry with its ticket. By the end of the day my sporran was not just lighter it was also stuffed with damned tickets!!

The journey to the airport takes you into the Lowlands of Scotland, and the heart of her grazing lands. Ayr has a famous cattle market and some of the highest quality beef in the world comes from there.
The famous mountain pass I have mentioned before you take by road from Dunoon to Glasgow, the Rest and Be Thankful, is the old drovers road by which cattle was driven from Highlands to Lowlands and the markets of Ayr.










Anyhow better half's sister was as lovely as she is and we had a great day- well they did shopping, I did bag holding and waiting outside, which is still better than shopping and I got fed and occasionally patted on the head like a good dog.  
But it did let me take some more pictures whilst they were in shops.
If you ever visit Glasgow always remember to look up.





















And so finally back home in the evening light!







Probably post some Highland Games stuff over the weekend }}}

I don't know if it applies to Scotshobbits, but I've got to admit Glasgow does look better for a bath.
When I was there in the 80's most of that beautiful stonework was still covered in a century-thick coat of greasy black coal soot. I bet that was a long and expensive bath!

Beautiful architecture & I so love the ironworks (?) above the "Charles Tit" shop ( red banner on lamp post obscured sign )

{{The dancing competition is being live streamed this year from Cowal Games. }}

09:00 (now) Scottish Championship
13:00 World Championship

https://livestream.com/accounts/3661274/events/7671379

One should never underestimate an opportunity to ramble on one's own to just take photographs Some nice pics, Petty

{{Todays the main day for the Games- the dancing livestream is still up}}

https://livestream.com/accounts/3661274/events/7671379

http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/beachy-head-chemical-haze-mystery-deepens-as-police-say-gas-not-from-france/ar-AAqPLzV?ocid=spartandhp