Magical and majestic.

North Korea has a GDP in the region of $25 billion. This morning the BBC news tells us they've stolen $6 billion from an American crypto firm. As a % of the economy that's quite some windfall. That would be the equivalent of somebody slipping an illicit $ 8 trillion into the US economy. 

Welcome to November. Boy! Isn't the year racing along ?  As if we needed reminding of this the geese are heading south. They fly over in their hundreds. Every so often a large solitary bird will land in the field outside the courtyard. Is it tired or is it lost ?  We're left to wonder if these drop outs will ever catch up with their flocks.

Two swans pass us as we're heading down to the shore. They're following us, flying low and level and until the last minute are hidden behind the stone field wall. They suddenly pop up and appear alongside us - a few feet away.  The look in their eyes tell us that they're as surprised as we are. The whoop whoop whoop of their wings as they pick up their pace is a mix of the magical and majestic. We stop and watch them head into the distance. The birds don't climb and keep flying a yard or so off the ground. Perhaps they're looking for somewhere safe to graze ?

In the window of an art gallery in town a 1940's era cartoon. A cheerful housewife is prepping for war. Sandbags in the garden, tape crisscrossed across the windows and a stirrup pump ready by the Anderson shelter. We by contrast are prepped for whatever the future holds with 48 two litre bottles of Evian. Plus ca change .

Halloween and the youngsters have been busy. There's foam in the fountain and bollards on the belisha beacons.

The wind has blow the foam into a large quivering pile that squats on the parking spaces outside the chocolate shop.

With the youngsters recovering from last nights Halloween revelries the dog walkers have the beach to themselves. 

Dog art :https://substack.com/@emilyfishman/note/c-366642359

The latest edition of the Atlantic magazine arrives. A letter inside says this was the best ever rendition of the Battle Hymn of the Republic :https://youtu.be/yhDVtntxRUk?t=190

This lands in the inbox and makes what seems to a simple foreigner sensible reading :https://politimix.net/p/if-democrats-take-both-chambers-here

Pete Hegseths concern :https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/men-please-stop-worrying-about-your-testosterone/

A youthful approach to oenology.

Friday night. There's a wine tasting in the bookstore to mark the launch of the new Atlas of Wine.  Half a dozen couples of a certain age are joined by twenty or so students. Full price tickets are £60 but students get a 2 for 1 deal and a discount. Numbers are lower than expected possibly because it's the final episode of Celebrity Traitors on BBC 1 and there's been a rush of last minute cancellations. The retired couples who've shown up taste the new world wines on offer with reserve and studied caution. 20 year old males impress their dates with lines like " I'd never have guessed this was a Bolivian Shiraz ". The older generation tend towards furrowed brows and excessive politeness while the students, by contrast, take an enthusiastic ' Just knock it back ' approach to oenology. It can safely be said that everyone has a good time but some have a better and more copious time than others.

This morning we see that the beach cafe has taken down its outside marquee. Last year the owners left it up but by mid-November the winter storms had shredded it.

A group of 'them' are sitting in a circle on the beach.

Closer examination shows that they're wearing conical party hats. We are left to wonder if they've just arrived or have been here all night.  When you're eighteen  a cold beach  is the perfect place to sit with friends and put the world to rights. At a more advanced age cold wet sand, no matter how vivacious the company,  is altogether less appealing.

Gutted by a fire this week :https://james1940.substack.com/p/the-mad-story-of-the-eagles-nest

A (good) Indian think tanks views on America :https://takshashila.org.in/content/publications/20261028-the-four-is-of-the-2026-us-midterm-elections.html#overlaps-and-outliers

Pompeii unveils its secrets :https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/how-scientists-could-soon-unravel-pompeiis-lost-secrets

The best Hamlet :https://www.andrewdoyle.org/p/which-hamlet-is-best

Unharvested

The cabbage field remains unharvested. A start on bringing them in was made three or four weeks ago but the parsnips and Brussel sprouts seem to have become more of a priority. We think it unlikely that the farmer will leave the cabbages to rot. Perhaps he's waiting for the two boys to return home ? Oddly, there's been no sign of the local deer feasting on the cabbages. 

There's been a shower and the pavements on the shopping street are slippery with wet leaves. A local granny has tripped and fallen over. She is helped to her feet but seems shocked. Within three minutes an ambulance and paramedics arrive. The crew  have opted for the blue lights but not the siren which seems to disappoint some of the eight year old boys on their way to school. The protesting granny is put on a gurney and checked out.  " I don't want to be any trouble " said, repeatedly, to anyone within earshot. After ten minutes or so the old lady is deemed ' fit to go' and is driven off, still protesting, towards her home. While they wait for the ECG the young staff at the cafe bring her, and the ambulance crew, calming cups of tea. ' How many sugars do you want ? ' asked of each of them. How Scottish a question is that ?  The ambulance driver eschews tea and asks for a milky coffee with three sugars. The whole interaction a small reminder that the world is, at heart, a kind and caring - and efficient when it matters - place.

At the apex of the Episcopal church door something has built a rather grand nest.

The church notice board has details of a recent lecture. Who knew there was such a thing as 'Reformation Day ?'.  Five hundred years ago I'm sure the printing press was seen as disruptive as social media is today.

Vans are a constant source of interest. This one is from a company that does all sorts of rigging. It also does splicing . Angus has no idea what these skill sets might be used for.

Life - as you might be able to tell - in this small windswept corner of the world is quiet.

They've made a film about the sheep. The meadow pipits also get a mention :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0wpXVljZ3c

The brain is a marvellous thing :https://www.thetransmitter.org/systems-neuroscience/how-brains-prevent-catastrophic-forgetting/

Water levels :https://insideclimatenews.org/news/28102026/antarctic-sea-ice-decline-triggers-ocean-changes/

Marijuana and heart disease :https://www.acsh.org/news/2026/10/29/marijuana-and-heart-disease-troubling-study-or-maybe-not-50422

Calm

Another train crash in Spain kills 68. It's happened on a stretch of track near to where an earlier crash killed 46. The country now has three days of mourning and electioneering has been put on hold. It seems this was a case of human error that over rode the automatic  safety systems. In the UK we've had a budget which everyone says was unexciting but Angus discovers is quite painful. With the Israeli elections out of the way the BBC's attention now turns to the US midterms and an analysis of whether the Republicans will lose the Senate.

The weather has calmed and most of the the ships that have been at anchor in the Bay for the last four days and nights have sailed away. This morning we have the place to ourselves bar three young village mothers who are out and about with their three month olds and dogs for a walk and a 'blether'. They all seem to be in fine fettle.

In town the slow replacement of the gas pipes means that the street that leads to the cathedral is closed. Traffic has to detour up the hill and along the road that passes the bus station.  With the day trippers and shoppers diverted parking becomes a doddle.

One of the local golf shops has unveiled a tartan for 'The Home of Golf'. In the window there's a framed certificate from The Scottish Register of Tartans to show that the design is 'kosher'. Call me old fashioned but this doesn't seem to be a tartan as much as a plaid.

I'll wager that this picture of the 18th tee - a 'snip' at £4950 - will soon be on some Miami golfers wall.

.

A la cart brought to you by the local Indian restaurant.  For those who know St Andrews pre-theatre meals sound very grand.

An All Saints sermon. I wonder how many will be in chapel to hear it after the Saturday night Halloween parties ? 

An unusual combination :https://www.sciencenordic.com/amanita-muscaria-denmark-fly-agaric/why-did-some-ancient-cultures-drink-urine/2700562

Change in France ? :https://robinjbrooks.substack.com/p/how-to-think-about-marine-le-pen

I'm guessing this hasn't been read by the four medical students at the 'noisy' flat : https://www.worksinprogress.news/p/young-prudes

Altai Argali

Lots to keep us entertained on the Radio Scotland news bulletin this morning. Flavio Bolsonaro has fled Brazil for the US - or possibly Ecuador -  with his family to avoid money laundering charges. Meanwhile the Israeli elections were as close run and confusing as the pollsters expected. The correspondents in the region really don't seem to know what is going on. We end with a review of the new movie La Bola Negra which is seemingly the front runner to win Best Movie category at the Oscars although how the story of Federico Lorca will play with moviegoers is a matter of conjecture.

A couple of large wind farm vessels out in the bay avoiding the 70 mph winds. One of them, the farmers wife informs us with surprising specificity, is 210 metres long. I have the feeling that with the nest empty she is at a slight loss for things to do.

The winds have done a pretty good job at stripping the leaves off the trees in town. Most are completely bare but one tree on the far side of the street seems to be completely untouched and retains all its foliage. Presumably the buildings around it  create some sort of vortex free micro-climate.

A poster advertising a talk on Friday. I make it to the end of the third sentence and the phrase ' shaking the kaleidoscope' before deciding it's not for me.

In this most 'waste not, want not' Scottish of towns home owners leave their surplus wind fall apples out for passers by to collect.

I've never seen anyone take them but by the end of the day the buckets of apples both in town and in the village are empty.

An interesting disturbing article in the FT about Russian billionaires and certain 'well known' American hunters holding shooting parties in Mongolia.  An Altai Argali is a prized trophy for a certain sort of man. In the accompanying photograph I'm struck by the grinning indignity with which this endangered animal is treated. I'd never heard of an Altai Argali before. How noble it is .

The ethics of war dogs :https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2026/10/26/colossal-co-at-it-again-helping-to-create-a-war-dogs/

Maya history :https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/archaeologists-ancient-maya-metropolist-forest-belize-debunking-long-held-myth-about-mesoamerican-civilization-180989648/

The Nobel Prize :https://distressedscientists.substack.com/p/why-do-we-care-about-the-nobel-prize

Dervish like pillars.

This mornings BBC radio of the view that none of the parties in the Israeli elections has enough votes to form a government. We're told flights from London to Tel Aviv have been booked solid with folks returning for the election. Seems there's no such thing as absentee voting in Israel. Will the pollsters be wrong again ?

The worst of the storm has passed us by but it's still windy and two of the large offshore support vessels remain moored in the bay. The local gull population has also opted for prudence and can be seen bobbing up and down close to the shore in front of the old lifeboat station.

The farmer says he's seen a school of eight whales where the offshore rock shoals plunge down into deep sea. We stop and peer out towards the horizon but there's no sign of them. On a day of strong winds like this the sea breaking over the rocks is whipped up into dervish like pillars of spray. In the sun these refract the light like so many small jiggling rainbows. The people who settled here three thousand years ago and had a small cemetery on the bluff knew how to choose a good spot.

The students are strangely absent. The university 'ap' shows that there are nearly 1800 of them in the library. That must be some sort of record.

The recognition that they're not here simply to make new friends and party seems to have hit home. The sudden understanding that exams are now less than six weeks away does wonders in concentrating the mind.

In the centre of town the roads are being dug up and new gas pipes laid. We wander by the wee house to make sure none of the slates on the roof have blown off in the gales. They haven't. A man on the radio informs us that 80 mph storms are likely to be much more commonplace as global warming accelerates. He also says Scotland will get wetter. I'd have thought that was physically impossible. 

Another of those things I'd never thought about :https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/living-world/2026/why-animal-blood-comes-in-different-colors

The story behind Eisenhowers broken globe :https://danieldrezner.substack.com/p/american-foreign-policy-horror-story

The good thing about a university town is being able to pass on your recent reading matter to the library. Every two months or so I send them a photo of the thirty or so books we've read and don't have room for on our book shelves. The librarians e-mail me back to say what they want and I then drop the books off , half a dozen at a time, with the cheerful folk at the front desk of the library. Todays drop offs are all worth reading but 'From Sovereigns to Servants ' is a truly outstanding insight into modern Russia by a talented woman who used to work at the Central Bank in Moscow. Focused, adult and brilliant. The other books being dropped off today are merely 'excellent' in comparison although the two 'plus ca change 'books on changes in Europe and Germany are stand outs in their own sphere. Tomorrow I'll drop off another six volumes which will help clear out the study.

Surprise elections and stormy seas.

We wake up to find that Lula has won the Brazilian Presidential election. It was another of those Brexit style 52-48% votes. Come to think of it these days all elections seem to be won or lost on a 52-48 split.  Bolsonaro has, of course, refused to accept the results. In Washington a certain someone, tweeting overnight , seems both surprised and unhappy. Elsewhere, the Serbian President has lost his re-election bid. Israel votes tomorrow and it doesn't look like any party or coalition will get to the 61 seats needed for a majority. It's going to be a busy week.

For much of Sunday the wind blew at 60 mph with gusts of up to 80. We venture out to the supermarket and for a walk down to the beach but apart from that we stay close to the house. Ships continue to shelter in the Bay.

The students - or at least some of them - are energized by the gales. The sand yacht franchise is doing a roaring trade with enthusiastic youngsters. Dog owners wisely buckle up their pooches and retreat from the mayhem that is unfolding on the beach. In 60 mph winds sand yachts and fun seeking teens become unguided missiles. A good, if chaotic, time is being had by all. A course has been set out on the sand with bollards. These are being ignored in favour of a general free for all.

A rather stylish little Renault town car seen outside the supermarket. It's surprisingly chic. In this colour you certainly wouldn't miss it in even the busiest of car parks.

Down by the harbour a group of local dog walkers are sporting 'sensible' clothing. This morning the topic of conversation is the strength of the weekend winds. The dogs are keen to get on with their walks and do a rather poor job of hiding their impatience.

After last weeks foam fights the little town is settling down into its quiet winter routines. These will briefly be interrupted by a weekend of 'push the boat out ' Halloween parties.

The Swedish 'Be ready' booklet is a little more detailed than the British version :https://rib.msb.se/filer/pdf/31523.pdf

Drunk all the time :https://www.lefineder.com/p/when-did-people-stop-being-drunk

Good things happen :https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx62y9j1zyjvo

Some unusual thoughts on Norway :https://www.mediaite.com/politics/norway-sucks-trump-adds-tiny-euro-nation-to-his-list-of-shthouse-countries-over-nobel-prize-beef/