Party night.

More cloud around this morning. On the Old Course a group of a dozen or so happy golfers are waiting impatiently to tee off. As we pass the starters hut a gentleman in a fucshia coloured shirt and almost matching trousers informs us that they're from 'the Dakotas'. He goes on to add ( somewhat archaically ) that 'We're having a whale of a time '. He offers to swap his 'Fighting Hawks' baseball cap for my somewhat battered 2023 Walker Cup one. ' It's new' he says as if this might clinch the deal. I politely decline.  The gentleman expresses his views about the strength - or lack of it - of Scottish coffee. We wish him well. 'The Font' observes that we have never been to the Dakotas nor have we been to Montana or Nebraska which may ( or may not ) be in that 'fly over' part of the map between Chicago and Seattle. 

The Christmas lights go up in town. There are two of them. One of them is strung between Subway and The Pearl of the Orient at this end of the street and the other ( just visible ) at the other. Excess is not a trait that comes naturally to east coast Scots.

The young gulls are losing their juvenile plumage . By the Martyrs Monument two of them are busy taping the ground with their feet in an attempt to lure worms to the surface. The gulls can do this over and over and over with a focus that is remarkable.

The Tiger Timberlake sports bar now well and truly open. The combination of cheap beer and golf simulators seems to be a recipe for success. Cheap beer alone might have sufficed.

Tonight the club  will be hosting a student Halloween party. £5 entrance strikes me as being reasonable. I'm guessing they make their money at the bar.

Opening hours seem on the early side for a college town. 

Things are different now :https://carnegieendowment.org/europe/strategic-europe/2025/10/corporate-geopolitics-when-billionaires-rival-states?lang=en

The last Warsaw hero :https://notesfrompoland.com/2025/10/24/last-surviving-warsaw-ghetto-uprising-fighter-dies/

Sleep:https://news.mit.edu/2025/your-brain-without-sleep-1029

This was interesting. #8 raises questions:https://www.understandingai.org/p/16-charts-that-explain-the-ai-boom

The real world may be less forgiving :https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/10/30/students-react-grading-report/

Curlews .

Sixty, maybe eighty, curlews take off from the field by the Heron Pond and head towards the safety of the hay bales that the farmer has piled up in the barley field. As we get closer their skittishness kicks in and they do the same route but in reverse. We've never seen so many curlews at one time. Their undersides glow bright white when they wheel and catch the sunrise. To us, and presumably to the folk who lived here over the last two or three thousand years , they look like so many small plump angels.  The cormorants drying their wings on the safety of the sharp rock outcrops are decidedly unskittish. They don't even deign to look at us. The little village we call home is quiet by human standards but is the equivalent of the I-95 for avian travelers. 

It's one of those 'wannabe student' days and Starbucks is already busy with mothers and offspring. Fathers are notable for their total absence. Presumably after a long drive up from the airport they are in bed 'recovering '.  Conversations about modules and tutorial sizes spill across the tables. An intense family from Rickmansworth discuss class size with an equally intense family from Melbourne. One lad with the 'supremely' bored ennui of a seventeen year old perks up when he hears that this coming year females are likely to comprise 60% of the undergraduate intake. You can see him doing the math. We are impressed by a woman in a blue gilet and a Hermes headscarf who has planned out the days schedule to the minute. She even has a clipboard with an itinerary of all the things that 'simply must be done'  on it. GLWT!

Yesterdays orange Halloween cake has been replaced by a creation with spiders cobwebs piped in icing across it.

Less successful is something green and ghoulish. I'm not sure I'd feel entirely comfortable seeing that on the lunch table.

Some of the houses in town don't have back gardens. Instead they have their gardens on the other side of the road in front of them . It seems odd to cross the road to get to your lawn and flower beds. In one of the front gardens a large holly tree is bearing a heavy crop of berries. Yet another sign a hard winter lies in store ?

Opening words of every European anthem :https://x.com/TerribleMaps/status/1982056540963217518

Self defeating behaviour :https://www.aei.org/foreign-and-defense-policy/trump-ill-work-with-china-not-canada/

Differences between the UK and US :https://www.commonreader.co.uk/p/the-american-art-of-being-busy

Thoughts on living in NYC :https://x.com/david_perell/status/1982957338173509727

Swedes study spaghetti :https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/new-study-reveals-innermost-secrets-spaghetti

Halloween preparations.

The news round-up this morning informs us that Elon Musk is negotiating a $1 trillion pay package. He has told institutional shareholders ( or 'corporate terrorists' as he calls them ) that if they vote against it at the annual meeting he'll resign. The inference is that their Tesla shares will become worthless without him. We seem to have gone from measuring wealth in millions to billions to trillions remarkably quickly. In the UK there's  some blessed relief from recent reporting overkill. This is the first time in a week that the man who used to be known as the Duke of York hasn't had a segment devoted to him and his living arrangements on the morning radio programme. Elsewhere Jamaica, Gaza and America's bizarre preference for trading with China rather than Canada are all discussed on the breakfast show.

A bright orange Halloween cake takes pride of place in the centre of the bakers window. You can be sure the students will make Friday night a night to remember.

The weather continues to be well behaved. Rain at night , sunny and bright during the day. On our way back from the beach twenty swans fly overhead. There are few sights as majestic as a flight of swans. When they start heading south you know that winter is knocking at the door.

This is our third sunny morning in a row. In Scotland you notice and remember such things. The  fishermen are making the most of the calm weather. This morning all the boats are out at sea and the quayside is empty. It seems there are some large 'Surf and Turf' devouring golf groups heading this way for Thanksgiving - a holiday that is exotically strange and unknown here.

Workmen are erecting scaffolding around the town fountain. It's been neglected for years but it now looks as if the water supply is to be reconnected and the whole thing spruced up.

Dog owners and their pooches will be having a 'dog cuddling'  night  in the bookstore near the pharmacy. This will either be a great success or mayhem. I'd bet on mayhem.

Where have all the birds gone ? :https://birdhistory.substack.com/p/dying-birds-and-the-march-of-civilization

Alien visitors :https://www.everymansuniverse.com/p/did-science-just-confirm-1950s-ufo-visits

Bill Gates on climate change :https://www.gatesnotes.com/home/home-page-topic/reader/three-tough-truths-about-climate

Poison :https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/living-world/2025/animals-deal-with-toxins

Facing your fears - or not :https://psyche.co/ideas/the-neural-reward-that-makes-avoiding-your-fears-feel-so-good

A social innovation.

 A glorious morning after a stormy night .

The beach crowded with dog walkers and their excited companions. A few student runners appear as we head back towards the car. We wave at the lady with the Pomeranian and give Archie, the arthritic labrador, a pat. A large black Briard tries to engage us in a bout of ball throwing but soon gets bored and races off after some seagulls.

This is a time of year when the tourists have gone and the place reverts to its old routines. The university end of town is now where it's all at. At five to nine the streets suddenly fill with thousands of youngsters rushing off to their first tutorial of the day. Old gateways open up ... and then close. After a hectic five minutes the streets are once again deserted apart from the late sleeping or hungover straggler rushing to their destination. 

On a magical morning like this  you could almost believe that little has changed here over six centuries. The sandstone glows in the sunshine. This wee towns gift to the world ( along with golf ) was a Presbyterian belief that everyone should be able to read. Scotland with its five universities ( at a time when England only had two ) became the first nation where the vast majority of its citizens were literate and numerate. After 1745 many of them were shipped off to the American colonies which wasn't perhaps the wisest thing to do with a literate and rebellious minority. On a morning like this it's hard to believe that such a radical social innovation was spawned here.

Haddock and chips £18 at the takeaway sea food stall facing the lecture halls. I'm constantly surprised how much things cost. I'd have expected a takeaway to cost a tenner. Korean Coley appeals to a more 'international' student palate.

An Advent Calendar in a shop window promises twelve days of mens socks. As well as having a foreshortened time frame it also seems to lack in the 'surprise' factor.

The northern hemisphere is getting darker :https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/weird-symmetry-between-earths-northern-and-southern-hemispheres-appears-to-be-breaking

Preparing for a replay of the Carrington Event of 1859 :https://www.space.com/astronomy/no-spacecraft-would-survive-europe-simulates-catastrophic-solar-storm-to-warn-of-real-risks

New era jobs :https://x.com/shakeelhashim/status/1981036255929389127?s=46

Tariffs :https://www.grumpy-economist.com/p/a-note-on-tariffs-from-the-real-world

Why a Brooklyn bar closed :https://www.insidehook.com/cocktails/dirty-precious-brooklyn-bar-closing

The first snow arrives in the North.

Starbucks is busy. 'Revision' week is over and the students are back in town. A stream of library bound young women in sensible clothing stop to pick up their orders. Interestingly, male students are conspicuous by their total absence - perhaps their circadian rhythms are still adjusting to the weekends time change ?  The local dog owners start showing up around seven.

A Westie looks remarkably unhappy about its role in a local banks advertising campaign. ' The sheer indignity of it all ! '

Having seen a documentary on the BBC about what prawn farming is doing to the estuarine eco systems of Bangladesh and Ecuador we opt to drive to the fishmongers for some of the ( much more expensive ) local variety.

Bright sunshine, scudding clouds and a chill wind as we wander down to the shore. The gulls are sensibly sheltering in the rock pool next to where the archaeologists have been digging. A dozen surprised pheasants scurry along the track ahead of us. In France or Italy they  would have to contend with local hunters but here the farmers are too busy to bother them. The radio informs us that there's been the first snowfall of the season on the Cairngorms.  

So far the hills to the North of the bay remain snow free. It can only be a matter of time before the winter frosts blanket them. This morning the car lets out an annoying bleep to let us know that it's 4 degrees and 'roads could be slippery '. It's coming up to a year since we bought the little BMW and we've run up 15,000 miles. This is exactly the same mileage we did on each of the cars in France so I guess you could say we've managed a 50% reduction in our road use. We now recognize that the little car is ideal for parking but we could have happily gone for the next size up. The rear seats in this are very small which, on anything but the briefest of journeys, effectively makes it a two seater.

Monday morning Rachmaninov on the car radio :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhBXx-2PadM

A new vision for California :https://x.com/jansramek/status/1978161081928572975?s=46

The worlds last nomads :https://www.thedial.world/articles/news/issue-28/georgia-adjara-highlands-nomads

China's leading artist writes on Germany and then ( perhaps not surprisingly ) has the article refused :https://hyperallergic.com/1050197/what-i-wish-i-had-known-about-germany-earlier

Few countries have changed as much as Ireland in the last 25 years :https://www.irishtimes.com/life-style/people/2025/10/25/john-collison-of-stripe-ireland-is-going-backwards-heres-how-to-get-it-moving/

THE exhibition of the year in Paris :https://www.louvre.fr/en/exhibitions-and-events/exhibitions/jacques-louis-david

What a week

What a week that was. The phrase ' I can have Usha take a look at it ' enters the popular lexicon. We overhear two exceedingly pretty valley girls in the supermarket use it which is a sign of how quickly linguistic trends develop in the age of social media. Elsewhere the King prayed with the Pope for the first time since the Reformation, a start was made on building a 90,000 square foot extension on the 55,000 square foot White House ( which is like adding a conservatory that's twice the size of your house ), an aircraft carrier popped up in the Caribbean to the surprise of cruise ships en route to Miami and an advert caused US-Canada ties to fray . On top of that Belgium vetoed EU plans to use frozen Russian funds to help Ukraine. Let's hope Xi's meeting goes well and that the coming week is calmer. Here are some observations of a Brit visiting some old folk in Texas  :https://www.edwest.co.uk/p/the-baby-boomers-last-sigh

Overnight the clocks have changed. It's sunrise just after seven and sunset just before five. The early sunrise is great but darkness falling so early will take a bit of getting used to. 

By the time we're heading back from our morning  walk there are half a dozen cars parked in the potato field. The early Christian tombs that have been excavated will be covered over today to protect them against the winter gales. Soon all that will be left to remind us of the archaeologists  presence will be the recently 'serviced' Portaloo. 'The Font' observes that getting a Portaloo removed always seems to be more difficult than having one delivered.

 

The sea this morning is thrashing angrily against the rocks in a way that tells you a storm is building up in the North Sea.

The shops in town are empty. The students have had a 'study' week which means they've either gone travelling or have headed home to get their laundry done.

We find some fresh pomegranates in the farm shop. In France the villagers used to drink champagne with fresh pomegranate juice. This evening we shall do the same.

Ignoring our internal lunar clock :https://theconversation.com/humans-have-an-internal-lunar-clock-but-light-pollution-is-disrupting-it-266717

I hadn't thought about the implications of this :https://olgalautman.substack.com/p/the-billionaires-behind-the-throne

Passing through :https://www.quantamagazine.org/first-shape-found-that-cant-pass-through-itself-20251024/

Are we alone ? :https://www.universetoday.com/articles/are-we-in-the-solitude-zone-of-the-universe

St.Louis of old :https://thedebrief.org/the-rise-and-mysterious-fall-of-cahokia-researchers-unearth-new-secrets-of-americas-greatest-lost-ancient-megacity/

One of the more unusual arrivals in the inbox this week :https://jamestown.org/program/moscow-alarmed-by-revival-and-spread-of-promethean-ideas/

Successful shopping.

The weather yesterday was dire. Heavy, constant, big dropped rain of the sort that pummels your face and manages to find the gap between your neck and your collar. A few brief pauses in the downpour enable us to don Wellington Boots and walk to the heron pond. Even the archaeologists ,who are usually oblivious to the weather, decide that enough is enough. They head off home after half and hour. In mid afternoon a gentleman with a 'specialist' vehicle appears outside the courtyard to service the Portaloo. This is a job that would be unappealing at the best of times and is arguably worse , much worse, in solid, unrelenting rain.

2 weeks today and we head off here : https://vipp.com/en/world-of-vipp/our-guesthouses/the-bolder . Looking at the constant rain sweeping by the windows we are wondering why we opted to head North in winter. If the weather is clear the views will be to die for. If it's bad then we may be staring at a wall of grey fog. On the way we shall visit this bakers for breakfast :https://samson.no/

'The Font' read this Gunnar Gunnarsson ( dourly Scandinavian ) book about a man, a dog and a ram on the journey back from London. It's an old classic but has been newly ( and 'The Font' tells me well ) translated. I started and finished Serhii Plokhy's new book ' The Nuclear Age'. This was very worthy and written in what might pass for a jaunty Harvard style. He thinks the new US administration is pushing countries like Australia, South Korea, Switzerland, Brazil and Argentina towards developing their own nuclear weapons. This is what happens when trust disappears and the law of unintended consequences kicks in.

 

The David Mellor coffee maker has finally lost its handle. We buy a new one. I guess more than a quarter of a century of constant use isn't too bad.

A quick detour to Lulu Lemon for some arctic layers.

The train from London to York was packed solid with tourists wondering where to stow their wheelie bags. At York the tourists got off and were replaced by office workers in grey suits heading back to Edinburgh for the weekend. At Edinburgh the office workers decamped and we had the carriage pretty much to ourselves for the remainder of the journey North. There is something ever so slightly Freddie Kruger eerie about an empty railway carriage bathed in light from the green 'seat vacant' lights.

Greying :https://www.newsweek.com/hair-going-gray-hidden-health-benefit-senescence-cancer-tumor-10912239

AI freedom :https://futurefreespeech.org/that-violates-my-policies-ai-laws-chatbots-and-the-future-of-expression/

The accuracy of prediction markets :https://dune.com/alexmccullough/polymarket-brier-score

China v Silicon Valley :https://asteriskmag.com/issues/12-books/the-china-tech-canon

Opus Dei - not a subject we know much about :https://thecatholicherald.com/article/report-claims-opus-dei-faces-sweeping-reform

London and back

There's a storm blowing in from France and the afternoon London weather forecast is for heavy rain and powerful winds. By the time we get off the train ( which arrives in London 2 minutes early ) the bad weather has already blown through and it's dry and calm as a millpond. It's also mild which makes us wonder why we've brought coats.

It's the English schools half term holidays which means :1) Hotels are quiet and offering prices 25% below usual 2) Exhibitions are empty 3) Getting a cab is easy. We shall remember to aim for the half term break the next time we come south.

Two Starbucks outlets near the hotel have closed in the three months since we were last here. Have we passed peak coffee drinking ? The concierge at the hotel says that after Covid office workers are still working from home on Mondays and Fridays. The reduction in footfall has made it impossible for many hospitality outlets to afford the central London rents.

The first of the Christmas decorations are going up but haven't been turned on. I guess they'll wait until early November.

'That man' isn't the lead story on the news this morning ( although the Canada trade dispute comes second ). Instead we have the King and the Pope in the Sistine Chapel doing things that haven't been done since Henry VIII'S day. That's what I call a backdrop to die for :https://x.com/oss_romano/status/1981306339566768467

The first Gail's we've been in. They are unlikely to make it to Scotland anytime soon.https://gails.com/ They have opened branches as far north as the Manchester suburbs and seem to be taking over the more affluent Home Counties but have a business model that is unlikely to find favour - or customers - north of the border although Stockbridge and the Great Western Road are crying out for them.

Halloween pumpkins selling out - quickly.

Despite the pre-Christmas quiet the trendy restaurants are still attracting long queues of twenty somethings who think it fun to stand outside for half an hour prior to dining.

On a Thursday night there's also a smattering of folks standing outside pubs for a restorative libation on their way home.

We are now off to catch what I still refer to as the the Flying Scotsman but which is now more prosaically known as the ten o'clock LNER from Kings X.

French music :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQe9q9pNapA&list=RDKQe9q9pNapA&start_radio=1

Likely to be THE Christmas movie in the UK - Alan Bennett writes it and Ralph Fiennes stars :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYMIhLwiHVs

The most beautiful epitaph ? :https://substack.com/@michaelignatieff518703/note/c-165560780

Something I read on the train :https://www.chinatalk.media/p/notes-from-the-bay

October Thursday

Only now do I discover there was no WiFi on the train and this wasn't published this am.

Time for a quick walk before heading off to the station to get on the 9:28 LNER to London. The i-Phone camera catches not just the sunrise but some of the heavy rain drops that start to fall from an almost clear sky. We'll try to catch the Flying Scotsman north tomorrow morning so the blog may be late....or missing.

In the other direction the outline of a rainbow. The first of the archaeologists arrive for the days excavations.

Pumpkins £2 each in the supermarket.

Fun music. The musicians are enjoying themselves  :https://youtu.be/dMVI7z5GYRU?t=469

Covid changes :https://x.com/patrickc/status/1980285288867066175

Argentina :https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/argentina-could-be-a-superpower

Teaching wisdom :https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/10/20/case-vanderweele-harvard-rankings-flourishing/

This new book on life in ancient Rome sounds interesting :https://www.amazon.com/Surviving-Rome-Economic-Ninety-Percent

Far away.

It has poured overnight and the track that leads down to the heron pond is covered in large freshly formed puddles. The local dogs like to plough straight through these while their owners detour onto the verges as they seek drier ground. Out at sea a thick bank of fog blankets the wind farms. On a morning like this there is a peculiar peace to this place that makes you think you're far from a college town.

Twenty curlews breakfasting amid the winter wheat. They are too far away and the i-Phone camera can't capture them. What peculiar creatures they are with their curved beaks. 

This morning the archaeologists will be excavating fresh finds, possibly a building, that they've discovered two hundred metres away from where they've been working. The opinion is forming that the remains are either extremely early Christian or Pictish . An expert on Pictish burials has been summoned and will arrive here at the weekend. It seems the Picts loved coastal fringes where land, light and water meet. Today the archaeologists will be joined by a group of teenagers from the local technical college. The weather promises to be dry for them although it is also winter cold..

The centre of town still has its old medieval core which with its narrow streets is not designed for modern traffic. The trailer park on the outskirts of town is upgrading its stock and a convoy of large replacement caravans rolls by the cathedral. As they go they block the road and cause a start of day traffic jam.

Spooky Ghost French Cakes a bargain at £2.89 each.

Marzipan pumpkins are, I think, a new product line.

This mornings car radio music :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgPENpu21Ro&list=RDLz1LEYxFQ5Q&index=21

Thoughtful ? :https://johnhorgan.org/cross-check/the-rise-of-the-arrogant-apes

More on animals :https://www.frontiersin.org/news/2025/10/20/frontiers-psychology-ebbinghaus-illusion-fish-birds

The Library of Alexandria :https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/who-burned-library-of-alexandria-egypt

A Norwegian accent straight out of central casting :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcKOMlp5e04

Internet problems.

Blogger is having 'issues' after yesterdays Amazon server outage. Formatting has an irritating randomness to it. In France there's been a tornado in Paris and ex-President Sarkozy starts a prison sentence. For an ex head of state this is a rare  accolade shared only ( or so the radio says ) with Marshal Petain and Louis XVI.

Learning is never done. This mornings breakfast news broadcasters all over the world are educating their listeners on the Insurrection Act and what it does, and does not, allow. 

The weather was good for the bacchanalian revelries of the students. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIxhfkBMt24 . There again they would have enjoyed themselves even if it had been snowing. Such are the joys of being eighteen.  Passing the old lecture theatres we hear a large group of them sing this old Scottish song in a slow and most un-Scottish way. It must be an American thing :https://youtu.be/Lz1LEYxFQ5Q?list=RDLz1LEYxFQ5Q&t=459

While the first years party the experienced and worldly wise nineteen and twenty year olds look on with that innate superiority that only having survived a winter ( or two ) in Scotland can bestow.

The lawn outside chapel has, wisely, been roped off. Festivities have been moved to a quieter patch of grass out of sight.

4 new dogs have arrived in the art gallery :https://www.galleryfranklin.com/work/gemma-rees

Surprise of the day :https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/orange-cats-are-genetically-unique-indeed/

This is unusual :https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/10/something-from-space-may-have-just-struck-a-united-airlines-flight-over-utah/

A new opening in the Luberon :https://domainedelacavalerie.com/