Saturday, July 20, 2024

Great reading and a plastic bird scarer.

Friends heading off to San Francisco. Heathrow we are told is working well after yesterdays IT outage. Every quarter of an hour one or other of us gets a text saying the airport is crowded. Yesterday was supposed to be the busiest day of the year with families celebrating the start of the school holidays by flying off to sunnier climes. With so many cancellations it looks like today is going to be a travel nightmare on steroids.

The farmers wife has given up on cleaning the farmhouse windows. There's a swallows nest in the corner of every one. Their presence is unmistakable.


The outdoor coffee 'venue' that has opened up on the site of the old Greyfriars monastery is doing a roaring trade. They have a plastic sparrow hawk to scare the gulls away from their clients bacon rolls. This seems to work although we see a particularly ferocious gull settling on the far wall in readiness for a smash and grab raid on an unsuspecting tourist.


The bakers doing a brisk trade in what the French would call 'religeuse' but are here referred to , more prosaically, as coffee buns.


Frog cakes continue to be best sellers.


A student bike upended on the pavement. Looking at the rust that's eaten its way through the frame I'm assuming its been left out for the dustmen.


This was probably one of the best books I've read in years. Although we spent much time in Germany in the late 70's I'd never heard of women artists like  Gunta Stolzl who ran the Bauhaus weaving mill (  https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/frauhaus-gunta-stolzl-walter-gropius-and-the-women-of-the-bauhaus ) or Marianne Brandt ( who posthumously got the highest price ever for a small Bauhaus object - a 1927 metal teapot - that went for $361,000 at Sothebys ). The last chapters brilliantly - and poignantly - describe how a hyper polarized society blundered with eyes wide open on its fateful path . 

4 comments:

Lisa in France said...

In Japan, it is considered to be very good luck if a swallow chooses to nest at your home, even if it is a bit messy. I am enjoying our local swallows, who do a mass evening swoop around the village around the time we walk Charlie. I can't figure out where they are nesting, however. I am not sure what our local patisserie would make of those coffee buns.

jabblog said...

The plastic sparrowhawk is a thing of beauty.
Thank you for the most interesting links to whale-fall and micro-naps.

Travel said...

A crazy time of the year for travel, and then "opps!"

Therasia Fraire said...

I was diagnose of herpes virus year 2010 then my life got devastated i have no idea what I could do with my life anymore until I came across a old friend of mine tiffany whom we study together back then in college, she was an African America I explain to her my current health condition she laughed and say that is not a problem because she know a traditional herbal doctor from African whom will cure me completely with a herbal medicines I wow about the conversation then she gave me the herbal doctor email address drjekawo@gmail.com Dr Jekawo replied my mail and I was so happy and he explained how the treatment will go through 25 days, I agreed I paid the preparation fee of the herbal medicines and I received the herbal product within few weeks after preparation of the herbal medicines, I drink the herbal medicine as instructed I must confess that Dr Jekawo is a great traditional herbal doctor I go for a rapid test I was cured completely then I recommend him to my mom whom suffering from dementia and my husband whom was suffering from prostate cancer also get cured by Dr Jekawo. I want to use this your platform to thank him so much and to also recommend him to anyone suffering from herpes,cancer,fibroid,prostate infection,parkinson,gonorrhea,hiv,chlamydia,diabets,hpv,hepatitis and so many diseases Dr Jekawo can cure with his ancestral herbal knowledge is beyond my imagination.