A visit to VTS

My work organised a visit to Aberdeen Harbour‘s Vessel Traffic Services (VTS) tower, which was really interesting. VTS, like air traffic control at an airport, controls all the movements of ships in/out and within the harbour.

The control tower is right at the harbour entrance / exit, and commands a great view. Here we’re looking toward the south-west, with Torry in view across the mouth of the river Dee. The little round tower is the old navigation tower.

And over to the east is the North pier (on our left), and the old South breakwater and new South breakwater to our right.

Round the back there’s a children’s playground with it’s own little boat, which I thought was quite sweet.

We were given an informal talk and had all our questions answered, and we learnt lots of interesting things, like Aberdeen Harbour was established in 1136 and is Britain’s oldest business.

Quite soon after we arrived we saw the UKD Marlin heading out. This is a dredger, which has been clearing out the bottom of the harbour after a lot of build up over the bad winter weather. Apologies for the reflection off the windows.

I don’t know what it is about ships, but they’re just so nice to look at. My office is beside one of the harbour docks, and we never get tired of looking at the ships. Airplanes are big, sleek, and beautiful, but I think they’re sometimes a little sterile and samey. Ships on the other hand have so much detail in open view, and they just seem to have a little more character about them. From this vantage point, seeing them come in slowly from the distance was also really quite therapeutic.

Next up was a standby safety vessel, Grampian Defender.

Then we headed right to the top, to the control room itself.

The view was even better up here.

From here we saw a container vessel, Gerarda, head out with the pilot boat Sea Haven beside her.

Those of you who’ve seen the BBC One Scotland series The Harbour will be familiar with what the pilot does. For those who aren’t, basically the idea is that someone trained locally knows the habour and the waters best, so vessels over a certain size coming in or going out must have an Aberdeen Harbour pilot on board. They go out in the little pilot boats and pull up next to the ship. The pilot then jumps across (sometimes literally) to the other ship, and gives instructions to the helmsman in order to bring in the vessel safely. Same thing on the way out, they lead the ship out, and then jump back into their pilot boat to head back to the harbour.

In this case, the pilot jumped out of the Gerarda, into the pilot boat, and back out again into the next vessel waiting to come in.
Also at this point the weather turned a bit, and the seagulls suddenly thought they were in an Alfred Hitchcock movie.

A little fishing boat, Boy Gordon, comes in while the pilot is sorting out the other vessels.

And now the Far Service, the supply vessel waiting earlier, comes in.

And with that, all too soon, it was time to go.

Hibiscus and Hollyhock

Now that summer seems more likely to happen, we’ve been getting busy in the garden again. I’m looking forward to our hollyhocks flowering this year, as they’ve done well, growing nice and big since we grew them from seed and planted them out last year.

Anticipating hollyhocky loveliness, I went to do some admiring on Google images, and it then struck me that they look rather like hibiscuses. Wikipedia soon told me that they’re called Alcea, belong to the family Malvacea, and share this family with Hibiscus.

Hibiscuses have always been one of my favourites, with the rosa-sinensis variety being the national flower of Malaysia, and growing up with parents and relatives taking pride in the many varieties of hibiscus in their gardens (and reserving a certain wrath for when the dogs dig up the hibiscus plants, of all the things they could’ve dug…). So it’s nice to know I have a ‘cousin’ in my own home.

Hibiscus as big as my face!

Evidently I wasn’t the only who’d spotted, and admired, this resemblance, as typing “hollyhock and hib” got Google suggesting “hollyhock and hibiscus related”. But forget everything else, and look at this this:

Image by Brian Johnston, Microscopy UK

Image by Brian Johnston, Microscopy UK

How amazing. Such gorgeous pictures that go into microspic, beautiful, detail. Almost a little racy…

Can’t wait for my hollyhocks!

A wedding in Dalmeny

A couple of weekends ago we went down to Dalmeny, South Queensferry, for our friends’ wedding. We headed down on the Friday afternoon, and stayed in the main part of the village, which overlooks the Firth of Forth.

Forth Road Bridge

Forth Rail Bridge

The main high street lies between the two bridges.

Cute sculpture on the pedestrian path.

Dalmeny features in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped, as does the Hawes Inn. It’s also said that he wrote part of Kidnapped at the inn itself. So of course we had to stay there.

It was a lovely place, full of character, and served great food. Our room was called Limekilns (another place that gets a mention in Kidnapped), and had a great view of the rail bridge.

It really is stunning at night.

I’d only ever read a ‘pocket classics’ abridged version of Kidnapped when I was little, so when I knew we were staying at the Hawes Inn I was inspired to read the full version. I had it as an e-book on my phone and was halfway through when we were in Dalmeny, so I was pretty thrilled when I opened up the table drawer! That night I continued my story with a well thumbed real book.

The next day we headed off to the wedding in Dalmeny Kirk, a lovely wee kirk dating from the 12th Century.

We left Dalmeny for the reception in Livingston. The tables were named after biscuits (which are very close to the groom’s heart; probably second only to his bride), and we were on Jammie Dodgers – the best one of course.

Tea(cup candles) and biscuits.

It was a lovely spring wedding, and we’re so very pleased for Sam and Joules.

Happy Easter!

The weather’s getting ever so slightly milder (i.e. there’s less snow left on the ground), the clocks have gone forward, and it’s Easter Sunday.

No tulips yet, but we’ve got some lovely variegated shoots peeping out.

We’ve also got some peas started, and almost ready to go outside.

Our perennials are putting out little leaves, and the plants that were sheltered for the winter were allowed out. There were plenty of Monty Don references being made today.

Baking was done: Rosemary focaccia, recipe from here. Not the daintiest loaf, as I think we left it to rise a little bit too long while we went to the garden centre…but still yummy.

And the daffodils are finally making an appearance.

Springtime is here! Happy Easter!

Indian-Italian comfort food

Gareth was away on work for three weeks, and before leaving he very sweetly cooked up some batches of food and froze portions for me. Some days I did cook from scratch, and on one of those days I put together this ‘fusion’ meal. One of the often used phrases in this blog is “so I winged it”, which applies to my cooking as well. Unless actually following a recipe, my style is of the “bit of this and a bit of that” school of cooking. I can do ‘normal’ stuff like pasta sauce, fajitas, fried rice, lasagne, but I also believe in just putting together things I like…which usually works out well.

So, on this fine evening, I had been admiring this recipe for mushroom orzotto, but lacking cream and having a hankering for something a little spicier, an idea grew and began evolving. I got a pan of hot oil on the go, into which went some mustard seeds, cumin, and one clove. This was followed by chopped garlic, roughly chopped mushrooms, halved plum tomatoes, roughly chopped coriander, and seasoning. If I’d had fresh chillies some would have gone in, but good old dried chilli flakes did just as well.

Meanwhile, I had a little pot of orzo pasta bubbling away, and when it was almost ready I threw in frozen peas and let it come to boil again.

Back to the main pan, and I added a generous amount of parmesan (shaved in ‘cheffy’ style with a vegetable peeler), because I thought the dish could do with that creaminess, because I had parmesan in the kitchen, and because I love parmesan, amongst other cheeses…

Stir so the parmesan melts in, drain the pasta and peas and mix it all together, and there you have it: a variety of inter-continental comfort food put together.

And if you thought this combination couldn’t get any better / madder…what did I have in the oven?

Dinosaur nuggets!

Aaaahhh….I really enjoyed this. There’s the earthiness of the mushroom and spices, the freshness of the tomato and coriander, the silky creaminess of the parmesan, and the lovely rice-but-not-rice orzo. And what’s not to love about dinosaur nuggets?