Christmas music #17

How different the town feels. There's a few unfortunates waiting for their exams to  finish but the students have almost all gone and many of the faculty have followed them. The small , nondescript square in front of the library, usually crowded, is now completely empty. In summer the students are replaced by waves of golfers and tourists but in winter their absence gives the place the feel of a ghost town. There can be few other places where overnight the population rises and falls by 50% or so twice a year.

The youngsters may have gone but the local workmen are busy enjoying a bout of pre-Christmas overtime. The seal pens at the Aquarium are nearly finished and  the hotel that had all the lead stolen from its roof seems to be coming along quickly. On the ground floor a new awning has been put up . This will be the entrance to a  large 'Oyster pie and ale' restaurant designed to serve expensive and cholesterol heavy cuisine to the hotels high rolling golfer guests. Progress seems less smooth on the Old  Course where the new sewage pipe is still far from being ready. The mechanical excavators have had strings of fairy lights draped around their cabins which hints that they'll be here for a while.

We stop and watch as a large blue crane hoists an air conditioning unit high into the sky. This would ordinarily not be worthy of our attention but on a quiet December morning in a deserted seaside town this can be classed as high drama. We wander back to the car discussing how many weeks a year - if at all - the new air conditioner will be used.

A creative writing workshop in Ekphrastic Poetry being advertised in the coffee shop window. The coffee shop gets 95% of its business from students so has sensibly closed down until the start of the new semester. I wonder how popular an Ekphrastic poetry workshop will be.

To Leipzing for Christmas music #17 sung in perfect English :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MyPMMvqr14

Another video of Scotland in the winter snow :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC9W2ydXIY8

2024 :https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/12/17/1108883/the-8-worst-technology-failures-of-2024/