can't avoid...

the C word for this blip!

ridiculously early, Lanark held its annual Christmas street market today. Always the most popular, and nothing at all to do with Christmas, is the Iain Spink Arbroath Smokies stall. He sets up two huge smoking barrels, sets the fish - only haddock is used for real smokies - tied in pairs onto the sticks you see in the pic, then the sticks are laid across the barrels and covered in hessian sacks. takes about 30-40 minutes to smoke a batch to perfection. Iain then bones and wraps them in a constant production line, till the next lot are done. There is always a huge queue at his stall and you can see people -me included today - getting twitchy as they near the front of the queue - will I get one of this batch? will I have to wait even longer? phew, got the fifth last one after a wait or 20 minutes. at least I had time to take a few pics. The rest of the market was the usual mix of crafts, foods etc, but my outing was very successful - I went for 2 pheasants for John and Iain's Christmas dinner - check! some lovely bread for lunch - carraway seed rye loaf - check! a smokie for John's lunch - check! and a blip for me - check!

last night I went to a local camera club for a slide show by Guy Edwardes, a professional photographer who specialises in landscapes and wildlife photography. his photos are just jaw-droppingly amazing! I bought his book '100 ways to take better landscape photographs'. he is touring around the country and I would highly recommend anyone interested in these genres to check out his website for dates.