Well, my education in all things Scottish continued yesterday as I picked up David from the train station and drove him to Nicholsons Highland Supplies in Ingatestone. I suppose the fact that people (well, David) are willing to travel all the way from London to shop there explains how it manages to survive in a small village where even the petrol station (and the next closest one down the road) have been boarded up through lack of custom.

A quick inspection of the display cabinets revealed that they had the dreaded musquash sporran which close up, in real life, seems to have whiskers as well as real eyes.

Anyhow, I left him there merrily being measured and fit and sold things and walked to the far end of the high street to buy tea bags. It’s years since I’ve shopped in Ingatestone. Last time was for funeral flowers. Time before that was probably when we still lived there, and I was still at school then. Nothing much has changed. It’s still a village full of community noticeboards selling second-hand prams among the adverts for dances and flower shows.

It took about an hour and a half, all told, to get the full Scot-kit so there was plenty of time for watching the seeming never-ending Billy Connolly travelogues and bagpipe documentaries showing on the little telly in the shop. By then I was starving, so we headed back to mine for a very late lunch, finally getting to eat some time around five, after which I dropped David back at the station to head home for a party. I headed out for videos and yet more mince pies.

Woke up this morning to brilliant sunshine streaming through the window, and the sound of car windscreens being scraped. Perfect conditions for picture taking. So, made a flask of tea and a knocked together breakfasty lunch to take out in the car.

Needn’t have done really, as I ended up staying pretty close to home. I expored some of the back roads around Danbury and spent an hour and a half walking through the frozen woods. The lakes were trapped beneath thick sheets of ice and although I almost lost my shoes a couple of times when I came across some unexpectedly thawed mud the ground was otherwise firm and spiky.

Froze my fingers taking pictures, but some of the icy fungus was too pretty to pass by.

After an hour and a half I couldn’t feel my fingers or feet any more. I’d also been lost for quite a while, so when I found the car I decided it would be best to sit in it for a while drinking tea rather than walking off and getting lost again.

The relative heat of the car turned me all wimpish and I decided to head home with the shots I’d taken and spend the afternoon working on my panoramas rather than setting out again, so came back the long way and then made some more tea.

There then followed a fairly successful afternoon all in all. I have taken the panoramas pretty much as far as I can for the time being, so started work on the information panels that go with them. Completed Munich, which took a couple of hours to design from scratch. (click here to see a low-res PDF). Not so sure about the colours, but they can easily be changed.

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