Scran

At six thirty the sun is just beginning to come up. The old farm house on top of the hill standing out proud against the horizon.

Ten minutes later we're greeted by a northern skyscape full of egg yolk yellows and salmon pinks. The days may be getting rapidly shorter but they're also getting more theatrical.

Down on the Old Course a Canadian gentleman is filming a travelogue. He chats away, unselfconsciously, to his camera. We can guess the dialogue without hearing it. " Here I am by the eighteenth tee of the iconic St Andrews Old Course. Home of golf ". The Canadian picks up his camera and tripod and moves off to film another scene by the Swilcan Bridge. There must be thousands of these amateur ' I came to St Andrews ' golf videos on YouTube. Being locals we don't notice it but the place really is a secular Lourdes. 

A couple of day trippers walk their dog diagonally across the fairway between the first and second tees. Slightly irritated  foursomes have to stop to let them dawdle by. The dog and its owners seem to be unaware that this is sacrilege on so many levels.

At the cafe on the beach two American third year girls are discovering the word 'Scran'. Bacon rolls count as 'Scran'.  This is a word that is very Scottish.  From the snippets of conversation we catch it seems the American girls spent their 'revision' week travelling. They went to Paris on Ryanair. " The flights were so cheap ". They then flew onto Athens where they 'partied'. Their original plan was to be away for a week but this - in no small part thanks to a chance meeting with two  Norwegian boys - somehow became eleven days. They chose not to share their extended travel plans with their parents. This was probably wise.

Now we and a group of dog owners are off to this :https://events.st-andrews.ac.uk/events/bird-walk-3/

Things I didn't know. Lighting up North Dakota :https://youtu.be/pj4iTInk6A8

The drone photography at the start of this Kirst Wark video is wonderful :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwYvjUxuF98