Fashionably late.

Tuesday night in town is quiet. We 'attend' ( if that's the right word ) an online memorial service from the University of Glasgow ( very dignified, the choirs singing beautiful, but the speakers words garbled and made unintelligible by the poor audio feed ). Afterwards we decide , on the spur of the moment, to go out for dinner. Farewells are best accompanied by a glass, or two, of wine. We make a booking for eight. We leave at nine thirty. While we're there the restaurant serves a grand total of half a dozen or so customers. As we're waiting for our coats it suddenly fills up with hordes of young things. The waiter informs us that the 'students' like to dine late. The last bookings are for ten. 'That means ten thirty ' he adds with what might have been a grimace.

Blowy this morning. The sea pounding on the shore and shrouding the beach in clouds of spray. We manage twenty minutes along the sand before the biting wind makes us retreat twenty minutes back.

The tiny sanderlings seem quite oblivious to the elements. They scurry , heads down, along the tideline. Like premier league soccer players they skip artfully in and out of the waves. Sanderlings are, without doubt ,  the clowns of the bird world.

In town the sun is up and the morning dew disappearing.

'The Font' has ordered something from Lithuania. The Lithuanian Post Office has sent us an e-mail instructing us how to track it. I click on the 'always translate English' key but nothing happens. Entering the tracking number also does nothing. On my third attempt it takes me to a link called 'ChatGPTLithuaniaPost' which gives me a potted history of postal services in Lithuania. I'm hoping that the package will arrive with our local postman. One of the interesting after effects of Brexit is that German companies unfailingly manage to arrange door to door deliveries in forty eight hours. They seem to understand how to tick all the right boxes for customs clearance. Shipments from anywhere else are a lottery  ( France is bad, Italy indescribably so ) and often require paying 'excise' duty.

There are road works at the 'T' junction by the bus station. Early rising university staff join with early rising shop keepers to cause a traffic jam. You know you live in a quiet place when a traffic jam becomes 'the ' topic of conversation.

Wednesday morning reading :https://www.quantamagazine.org/in-the-guts-second-brain-key-agents-of-health-emerge-20231121/