Fun times.

July. We're into the second half of the year. I won't ask where the times gone but you have to wonder how it can move by so quickly.

There are two graduation ceremonies every day this week. The first is at ten thirty in the morning the second at two thirty in the afternoon. From breakfast time onwards excited mothers can be found posing outside chapel with their offspring. That unmistakable ' this is for the family album ' smile is much in evidence. Younger siblings dragged off from city and friends for this family event stand around looking extremely bored.  The Turkish barbers open early and are super busy. Those who forgot to book a short back and sides for the great day beg plaintively for a haircut. Prices are adjusted accordingly. All of the world suddenly and briefly appears in this small Presbyterian town. Dourness gives way to broad smiles. This morning a group of fifty or so unsuspecting Hungarian teenagers on a school tour get out of their bus and are surprised to find themselves in this maelstrom of activity. They look bemused. What must they make of it ?

By eight in the morning, photos taken, parents and offspring are left wondering what to do for the next two hours before the first ceremony starts. Starbucks becomes a zoo. The cafe by the old Post Office a throng of mothers in hats bought for the great event. The 'trendy' place by the cinema besieged. Fathers worry about the two hour parking limit. Traffic wardens circle looking for easy pickings.

Flower stalls have sprung up to cater for the big day. A large one has appeared on the street outside the supermarket . It's soon stripped almost bare. Bouquet giving has become a serious business.

The florist we go to for our Christmas wreath has a table of blooms waiting for collection. At this time of the year they can easily sell 200 a day. Local peonies are a big thing . In previous years bouquets were a female only gift. This year the boys are also getting them.

After each ceremony the  bells peel and the new graduates are piped down the street to the chapel. Here they are greeted by family and friends. Family tend to be decorous in their greeting. Friends less so - some much less so. Large lunged members of the rugby club greet each other with raucous delight. Yesterday we saw more fathers weeping with joy than mothers. Scots men are thought to be unemotional but there are occasions when this isn't true. A number of American fathers also seem to have been overwhelmed by the happiness in the air. In large cities this would go unnoticed. In a small town like this it doesn't. The organizers ensure that each ceremony is small and formal enough to make it feel 'special'. I'd like to be critical but it would seem that they get the tone just right. At five champagne corks 'pop' and the Principal in her John Knox outfit circulates and shakes everyones hand.

This weeks reading started with Regime Change. Once picked up I ( almost ) couldn't put it down. 'The Font' also finds it spell binding. I'd thought the most stupid bizarre political move this century was the Brits with Brexit. Having read this I'm coming to the view that I might be wrong on that score. On balance the authors manage to write with a disciplined and dispassionate neutrality. At no time are they disobliging towards any of the figures who appear in their book.

This book on China was excellent and managed to find the balance between historic complexity and easy reading. This is no small literary task.

Earlier today I picked up a copy of J D Vance's Communion from the bookstore. They had ordered one copy which had been put on the 'Religion' sections shelves. The bookstore employee shares a dry joke about being unsure whether to look for it under politics, self help or religion. ' Lucky I tried religion first' he says. I laugh politely.

Tipping culture in Canada is very surprising to Europeans :https://canadianreturnee.substack.com/p/what-canada-could-learn-from-abroad

No more land lines in Finland :https://yle.fi/a/74-20233910

Flying in Bangladesh :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzF5DmnXhC0

Oh dear :https://www.edwest.co.uk/p/the-triumph-of-brand-scotland

Oh dear #2. Definitely not a link for the farmers wife  :https://nypost.com/2026/06/19/us-news/boston-gals-predict-baby-boom-in-9-months-after-partying-with-charming-scots-during-world-cup/

New neighbours.

Goldfinches everywhere. There seem to be almost as many of them as there are sparrows. This would indicate it's 1) a bad year for sparrows or 2) a bumper year for goldfinches. I'd opt for the latter.

Taking the Greyhound bus from Orlando to Boston wasn't the village boys brightest idea. It took the better part of 48 hours and, in conjunction with a busy Jet Blue flight, has left them exhausted and somewhat sullen and uncommunicative . They are both exceedingly well sun tanned. We will doubtless hear more of their experiences when body and soul come together again. After more than 72 hours without sleep even an 18 year old will tire.

We head into town on our morning walk . It's dry but there's a bank of cloud rolling in from the North Sea that's being driven along by a brisk chill wind.

Where the path drops down towards the small sandy bay everything looks as it usually does. A month ago the verges were carpeted in primroses and bluebells. Now the poppies are taking over. 

It's only when the path turns to the left that we see we have new neighbours.

The farmer has brought the cows down to the wild flower meadows to summer on the shore. They drink from the fresh water stream and can wander freely along the beach. There's a fence by the fancy golf course in one direction and in the other they're stopped by the line of the wee river. Few people are around to interrupt their idyll. The farmer stops by every so often not so much to check on them as to have a wee chat .

To say they are happy fails to grasp the joy of cows in a field of lush wild flowers as high as they are. This is life as it should be. Who would disagree ? They are too busy grazing to even notice us. We say hello then squeeze past  and head on into town.

This is a sight that hasn't changed in a 1,000 years. Maybe longer. It somehow seems very natural.

Now that's what I'd call an office :https://x.com/tylersyck/status/2071297909727871167

Rediscovered wonder :https://thedebrief.org/lost-for-centuries-one-of-the-seven-wonders-of-the-ancient-world-has-been-rediscovered-and-is-now-rising-from-the-mediterranean-sea/

Another Revolutionary thread :https://substack.com/home/post/p-203590992

How to care for your hedgehog(s). We had lots of them in the garden in France and fewer here. Foxes may be the reason :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6jqqpLPklc

Another view on aircon :https://archive.is/lP1i5

The most wonderful time of the year.

The summer school for teenagers has started in the dorm that looks like Hogwarts. Since sunrise the town has been busy with a flow of minibuses bringing up excited youngsters from the airport in Edinburgh. As each group arrives at the front door a piper springs into action.  Some groups get greeted with a burst of Scotland the Brave, others the Rowan Tree. A few get Amazing Grace. The piper is good. I'd assume he's paid well to be up and about at such an unearthly hour. We like the summer school. It's full of wide eyed teens and enthusiastic ( and not much older ) counsellors who understand that the secret to keeping three hundred 16 year olds happy is to make sure they're busy every moment of the day. Soon the new arrivals will be down on the shore by the castle for a character forming dip in the 'witches pool' aka 'The North Sea'. The girls will spend the first week  ignoring the ' immature ' boys and the boys will spend their first week trying to be noticed by the ' suave and sophisticated ' girls. By week two they'll be talking happily to each other about the barbaric idiocy of having a curfew time of 10 pm.

On the Old course an American couple are out for a pre-breakfast stroll with their twins. The children are at that just starting to walk stage. The parents stop, lift their two youngsters out of the stroller and unconcernedly let them crawl across the first green. Golfers play on around them. The father and mother seem completely  oblivious to the risks posed by fast moving golf balls. Two large gulls look on.

A group off the Delta flight from Atlanta have arrived to find their rooms in the hotel aren't ready. They wander over to look at the Martyrs Monument and then shuffle off towards Starbucks. The ferocious jet stream that got us back from Montreal in five hours is getting flights from the US into Edinburgh an hour or two ahead of schedule.  

The farmer has headed off in the Range Rover to pick up his two sons from the Jet Blue flight from Boston. They will have to get used to watching the World Cup matches being projected onto the bed sheet in the village hall.

Today sees the first of the graduation ceremonies. The town is full of polite parents accompanied by young people dressed rather more smartly than they would have been when they were here as undergraduates. The presence of mothers will have this effect. The next five nights will be party central. Marquees are sprouting everywhere as restaurants try to cope with the surge in bookings :https://youtu.be/NiqPTX63K40?t=50

Apes and humans :https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1133034

Moving fast when you have to :https://www.clinicaltrialsabundance.blog/p/why-were-covid-vaccine-trials-so-fast

Would ( could ) you live here ? :https://x.com/zoeloveshouses/status/2070625904317927565

The world is changing and this is an interesting insight :https://kulturaliberalna.pl/2026/06/23/polska-nie-jest-gotowa-na-podmiotowa-ukraine/

Europeans and air conditioning :https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/europes-resistance-to-ac-is-driving

An Australian view of the world :https://strategicanalysis.org/hedging-against-america-ordering-in-a-time-of-disorder/

Demonic bar stools.

The tide has scoured the sand and left it with a woven harlequin pattern look. We've never seen this before. It stretches all the way down the beach for a good 2 miles. After four years we've discovered that each and every day the beach has a new story to tell. Interpreting what all this ebbing and eddying means can be difficult.

Our daily routine has now recovered from the quick trip to Canada. The hotel in Montreal had great bar staff but the design of the bar itself was a strange mix of the impersonal and the bland. It could have been a 1980's era TWA airport business lounge. In one dark corner of the bar a small forest of rubber plants struggled to find light. The bar stools were lower than you'd think bar stools might possibly be. A picture or two might have cheered the place up. 'The Font' points out that the bar might look better in the wee hours when it's full of party animals. 

By contrast the globally iconic hotel in Quebec could not be mistaken for an airport departure lounge. The bedroom had an electric fire with a faux log feature that couldn't be turned off. When was the last time you saw one of those ? Despite repeated attempts at modernisation the room had an inexpungable air of the 1950's about it. And no, that isn't a can of lager on the floor, it's a can of shaving foam.

The Canadians make maple syrup flavoured crisps. Based on this alone Angus could quite easily live in Canada. There is a book to be written about the contents of hotel mini-bars. This one was unmistakably Quebecois.

In a downtown shop window an expensive Louis Vuitton window display. I rarely look at window displays but this one is where commerce meets art with a bit of whimsy thrown into the mix. It must have cost a small fortune.

There is a non-French element to Quebec culture...

... and it ain't English.

Fun football :https://x.com/all_nations2/status/2070396020509561328

Why would anyone want to be a politician ?:https://petebuttigieg.substack.com/p/a-terrible-thing-happened-to-my-family

The mechanical watch :https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/

Gen Z jobs :https://www.robingreenfield.org/findaforager/

Is this a surprise ? :https://gothamist.com/news/chinese-immigrants-overtake-dominicans-as-nycs-largest-foreign-born-group

It came from England :https://www.worksinprogress.news/p/how-smashing-the-nimbys-created-modern

A kilt will have this effect.

While we've been away the potatoes have shot up and the poppies are flowering everywhere. Europe is facing a record breaking heatwave but here the temperatures struggle to reach the high teens in the afternoon and fall down to the low teens at night. 

The farmers sons are finishing off their journey with a trip to Disney World. Space Mountain is a teenage favourite and has been visited several times . The diner at the Howard Johnsons they've booked into makes ' great burgers ' which is high praise indeed. They are now about to head back to Boston by Greyhound bus to catch the flight home. Their mother  plans to pick them up on Monday morning. The lads have had a great time and avoided ( or at least not mentioned ) all the dangers that had so worried their mother. Even the immigration officials seem to have been welcoming or at least less hostile than imagined.  Visiting 'Mia' in Daytona has appeared in one of the younger lads infrequent texts but this, like many teenage comments, is as unexpected as it is imprecise. For a kilt wearing Scottish farm boy football, beer and Space Mountain might not have been the only highlights of his trip. 

Scottish fans are now supporting Norway. The lads would willingly stay on for the rest of the World Cup but there's a harvest to bring in and credit card bills to be paid. For the youngest son the small matter of choosing a university must be addressed. 

Down on the beach a man is getting ready to launch himself, and his paraglider, into the air. He politely waits until the lady with the Pomeranian has passed before turning on his engine.

He waves at us as he skims low overhead.

A large flock of Spanish tourists are already lined up outside the castle. I'd reckon that we're having more visitors than ever although this is based on nothing more than random observation. Perhaps cool weather tourism really is a thing ?

We stop to watch the eider ducks in the water below the cliffs. You know you've reached a 'certain' age when you do things like this. There must be a couple of hundred of the wee things bobbing up and down on the swell.

The mothers form a protective circle and carefully corral the ducklings away from the sharp rocks. This is no easy thing when there's a strong onshore wind driving them on. The life of an eider duck mother has parallels with that of the farmers wife. You can only do your best.

In town large shiny rental cars are arriving. Graduation week is almost upon us and proud parents are assembling from every corner of the globe. There's  a tangible sense of joy in the air and the town is never happier or more beautiful . Pride is supposedly a sin but parents - and their offspring -  can surely be allowed a little of it at this time of the year ? The municipal workmen have repainted the double yellow lines and refreshed the white paint on the roundabout by the cathedral. Traffic management suddenly becomes a municipal priority with so many visitors heading our way.

In Arkansas of all places :https://crystalbridges.org/

For the 'in' crowd. The trendiest of candies :https://crystalicioussnacks.com/

Post Covid some fresh thinking :https://blog.interceptfund.com/p/ending-respiratory-infections

Boston :https://unherd.com/newsroom/america-is-falling-in-love-with-scotlands-football-fans/

Can't you read ?

I'm up early this morning. There is the mother of all thunderstorms banging away just off the coast. The sound is remarkable but the sight of the lightning dancing around the offshore wind farms even more so. London may be suffering from a heatwave but up here 18C is the forecast high for the day. It will seem like 14C adds the forecaster on the pre-dawn bulletin. From my window I can see that there's a group of young rabbits sitting in a flower bed. Are they too young to be afraid or are they just not worried about the lightning ? Perhaps the foxgloves are such  tempting breakfast fare they don't notice the banshee wailing.

We liked Quebec City. It was easy to get around and had a lively ( but not too lively ) nightlife. 

The tee shirts for sale in the souvenir shops tell you events south of the border have not gone unrecognized.

At times you could almost believe you were in some small French town in Brittany. The weather was changeable in that sunny one minute rainy the next sort of way that you also find in that part of France. The old stone houses were well restored and very attractive.

Our hotel was large and iconic. In places it was also like a zoo. Noisy ( and exceptionally colourful ) Indian weddings battled with visiting coach tours in the lobby. We spent three nights there but after facing the crowds we could have happily left after one.

The purpose of the trip was  a birthday dinner in a restaurant down on the river side. Angus had some doubts as to whether flying to Canada for 'The Fonts' birthday celebration could have been justified but it was. We were the only non-local group in the dining room as it seems reservations are hard to come by. Someone in the family scored a lot of brownie points in finding and arranging it :https://www.restaurantlegende.com/

I'd have to say the meal was exceptional and my qualms misplaced. The service was warm and professional. Clavalier d'amerique was an ingredient I'd never heard of either in French or English. The meal was unusual in being both light and exquisitely prepared. We drank Canadian wine with dinner which also ( pleasantly ) surprised us. Angus would willingly return to try some of the Pomerols on the list.

The view from the hotel window , once we were back, was attractive rather than stunning. In the lift down to the lobby we meet an American man who tells us that as recently as 1945 more than 98% of Australians could trace their  lineage back to Britain or Ireland. He also tells us there are more Catholics in Scotland than there are Presbyterians for the first time since 1560. Wherever you go in the world there's a chance you'll meet someone like this in an elevator.

Our only mishap on the trip was finding ourselves in the middle of the changing of the guard at the Citadel. The young soldier who wondered what we were doing and whether we could read the 'No entry'  signs might have more politely restricted himself to describing Angus as a moron. The addition of a somewhat forceful qualification was - I thought - unnecessary. He was surprised to be replied to in French.  'The Font' was of the opinion that communications with a soldier armed with a rifle and bayonet should be conducted in a less 'direct' manner.

A part of London the tourists never see :https://www.fashionablylatetakes.com/p/architectural-studies-02

Talking of tee shirts :https://yashenghuang.substack.com/p/china-as-an-absolute-advantage-economy

Mozart discovered :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Faygkp0ssck

The worlds longest flight. Sydney to London over the North Pole :https://x.com/_ZachGriff/status/2068662944301195662

1776 links :https://www.coolidgereview.com/articles/forgotten-scot-declaration-independence

I am due my booster next week. Had a bad reaction to the first dose but this makes me determined to have the second :https://erictopol.substack.com/p/spotlight-on-the-shingles-vaccineagain

The signature staircase.

We're safely back from a fun trip to Canada.

The jet stream was in playful mood and got us home in super quick time. Our flight back from Montreal took just over five hours. Many years ago I flew from Boston to London in four and three quarters but that was in the days when the L-1011 was still a thing and there were many fewer planes in the sky. Aircraft make a strange creaking noise not unlike a wooden sailing ship in a gale when being hurtled through the fast moving air but the noise wasn't enough to stop us sleeping solidly for the first four hours of the flight.

I thought Edinburgh airport had the title for the worlds most crowded airport. It's now clear that this title belongs to Montreal. A special hats off to whoever it was in the airport administration who thought it was a good idea to board three wide body flights in quick succession to Casablanca, Mexico City and London from Gate 53. The scene can best be described as straight out of Dante. Rather than gates to board the plane Montreal has those people carriers that they have at Dulles. Shepherding three hundred Moroccan football fans in 'party mood' onto a fleet of these is a sight that will long linger in the memory.

We also discover that Canadian weather can easily match Scotland in the rain stakes. On 'The Fonts'  birthday we had 100mm of rain. I would have thought a downpour of this intensity was physically impossible. The water on the train window didn't so much trickle down as sweep over the glass in a solid sheet. This is something we'd never seen before.  

Back in the UK there's a heatwave.  We can vouch for the fact that Heathrow with its glass walls and steel structure is not designed for heatwaves. Here in Scotland it's in the mid-20's and very pleasant. Our connecting flight left on time and arrived thirty minutes early. The flight was full of nice quiet American families heading to the Highlands with well behaved offspring soaking up the new culture. In fact I'd reckon that fully three quarters of those on board had come in this morning from the East Coast. Every single person onboard seemed to be enjoying themselves which is something you can't say about your fellow passengers on most flights.

The Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal had an exhibition of Roman sculptures which we really enjoyed :https://www.mbam.qc.ca/en/exhibitions/13205/

Like all museums it has a 'signature' staircase. To get up a couple of levels you have to walk up a long and gently inclined slope. It's one of those cost beats practicality features that all museum directors love. No museum worth its salt can be called a museum without an architectural flight of stairs.

The exhibition was exceptionally good.

It was also strangely quiet although the young woman at the entrance told us we had to wait ten minutes to avoid the crowds. Guess the word crowd means different things to different people.

The layout was intelligent and almost as outstanding as the Picasso exhibition we saw in Shanghai a couple of months ago. This is high praise. The visitors were of the stand in silence variety.

The lighting was particularly good.

In fact the lighting was very good.

Here the news is that Scotland lost 3-0 to Brazil in last nights World Cup match. This, presumably, means that the village teenagers will be heading back home soon. An update tomorrow after we catch up with the farmers wife and we've unpacked and settled back in.