Revision week

 

The four landscape gardeners are  amazingly hard workers. They stay until nightfall and do in a day the work that I thought would take at least a week. Three more days of step building and shrub planting are scheduled with the work due to finish on Wednesday evening - that's a full week less than estimated. They have carefully  sourced local sandstone to match the old stone walls that run round the garden. The plants will come from a Scottish nursery so they'll ( hopefully ) withstand the wind. Imported plants from the Netherlands are cheaper but  tend to give up the ghost when they come face to face with their first root wrenching Scottish gales.

Puppy and her sister show up to see what's going on . They are delighted to have found new friends. They leap in and out of wheelbarrows and look beguilingly at the gardeners in the hope of biscuits. Both are eventually picked up and carried, one under each arm, back to the farmhouse. This is repeated  three times until I go round and tell the farmers wife to come and collect them. 'Are they being a nuisance ?' she asks. " The builders are finding they're getting under their feet " comes my diplomatic reply.

Down on the beach nervous parents stand watching their pre-teens having a sand yacht race. At this early hour mothers are much in evidence; fathers less so.

By the harbour a group of students debate whether they should go for a start of day dip in the North Sea. One 'wild thing' strips down to her underwear and rushes into the water. She re-emerges to find none of her friends have followed her in. How we'd love to be able to hear the ensuing conversation. Revision fortnight starts on Monday. Two weeks of cramming before the exams start on the 22nd. Frightening to think that by this time next month the youngsters will be heading home for the summer.

This morning two  gentlemen from a German television station are out and about asking passers by for their views on 'Duchess Kate'. Scottish diffidence and the early hour  combine to make theirs a thankless task. One German gentleman has a wee 'bob' of hair sticking out at 90 degrees from the top of his head. His colleague has a very Teutonic camera mount with all sorts of highly technical looking gimbles.

At the Italian coffee shop  we stand outside and observe the ankle inundating  puddles caused by the overnight rain. There is a Thomas Tallis concert in the church at five o'clock this afternoon which we plan to attend.

The eclipse:https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-the-ancient-art-of-eclipse-prediction-became-an-exact-science-20240405/

Only in Italy :https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2024/04/04/italy-Alicudi-island-free-goats/1721712250711/

Washington bell ringing. Is this an American thing ? The bishop seems very happy :https://youtu.be/mS9RQxFle1g?t=4670