Cluster in the cloister.

The weather has been awful. Simply awful.

Storm Bert brings 60 mph winds, thick cloud and heavy rain. Sleet is soon thrown into the mix. Our morning round of supermarket, dry cleaners and Post Office are all visited in double quick time. In town a couple have chosen a rather wet day to get married. The wedding guests cluster valiantly in the cloister to avoid the rain. There are some kilts but in these icy winds most of the male attendees have opted for trousers. Umbrellas are the fashion item du jour but, sensibly, no one tries to use them.

At the farm shop we meet the polite young American family who are renting a cottage in the village. She has got a good job teaching at the local private school ( she is a dab hand at using the IT system and has already been put in charge of the timetable )  and he is doing something 'techy' in quantum analysis at the university. Their children have taken to the Scottish school system like ducks to water. Do four or five year olds even notice what country they're in ? They would like to buy a house but have discovered that good village properties near St Andrews are as rare as hens teeth.

The couple are out ordering a turkey for their Thanksgiving dinner. The husband tells us that his role, when not doing cryptoanalytic things, is to debone the turkey legs before rolling them in a chestnut and raisin stuffing. They roast the breast separately. They have bought parsnips and pumpkins in the farm shop but are finding fresh cranberries hard to track down. Frozen ones, it seems, aren't the same thing. We wish them luck.

By late afternoon the sun is setting and the chill factor rising. We dress up in as many layers as possible and head off down the track to the cabbage field where we peer into the gloom before quickly heading home. Angus heads into the wine cellar to set aside a case of Fiano d'Avelino for the village Christmas gathering. 

It has been a day for reading by the fire. This book by Alan Taylor has been the best - and most surprising -  of the year to date. I thought the whole US Civil War, Mexico, Canada, Caribbean history thing would be as stodgy as the local bakers croissants but the book is well written with a slight hint of amusing cynicism. Possibly the best, or at least, most informative book of the year. The author writes well so I'm not surprised he's a Pulitzer Prize winner.

Who knew that Algeria used to be the worlds #1 wine exporting country ? Post independence wine was seen as being French colonialist and unIslamic. A huge proportion of the vines were grubbed up. The author contends that without Algerian wine the French troops in WW1 would have mutinied on a grander scale than they ever did and the war would have been lost.

Wolfgang Munchau is a must read for developments in Europe. Here is his website which is well worth visiting once a week :https://www.eurointelligence.com/

He has a new book on what's going wrong in Germany.  It's a slim volume so can be digested in an hour or so. The bottom line is that  Tesla and the Chinese are making cars that are better and cheaper than their German rivals. The automotive sector is huge in the German economy and old precision mechanical strengths don't pass muster in a sector where the action has moved to integrating software and battery technology. This is where Germany ( and Europe ) lags. It may also explain why the Euro is in free fall against the dollar.

French music :https://ulkaraghayeva.substack.com/p/on-french-music

This is not what Scottish wild salmon companies want to heaar :https://reason.com/2024/11/22/i-tried-lab-grown-salmon-heres-what-it-tasted-like/