Unusual working practices - for Scotland.

We head off for dinner in the modern sea food restaurant built right on the sea. The hotel that's being renovated on the street behind it is ablaze with light. Builders and fitters are hard at work 24/7 to get the place ready for its opening next month. This is unusual. Workmen in  Scotland tend not to beaver away day and night. The overtime rates must be good. A pile of mattresses on the pavement tell us that the builders focus has shifted to getting the bedrooms ready. Everything looks very welcoming although the brass coaching lamps on the bar steps may prove to be impractical in the salt laden sea air.

'The Font' now goes to the daily concert in the music centre. Yesterday, there was a performance for harpsichord and a rare, small, type of Italian organ. Today, it will be Peruvian revolutionary songs and their American evangelical influence. Many of the concerts are a delight. Others are rather more 'specialist'. 

The Valentines Day cake production line is now in overdrive. At the bakers trays of the pale lemon heart shaped sponges with the word 'Love '  piped on top are waiting to be bought. It would seem there's nothing like an iced  heart shaped sponge to smooth the path of young love.

The Strawberry Danish output is also roaring along although the end product has the look of something from a Freddy Kruger movie.

Despite the Arctic conditions the ice cream shop is also getting ready for the big day. The small cart has been brought out of storage and stands ready to woo passing lovers into buying something suitably amorous.

Back out on the coast we return to the courtyard to see three deer again sheltering from the East wind in the field that leads down to the sea.

So starts a brisk Thursday morning in a small, sleepy town on the North Sea.

This mornings BBC car radio music :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1GuPhZRR-E

The guru of parking meters :https://www.worksinprogress.news/p/the-prophet-of-parking

One of the 'Manhattanites' points me to this as an optimistic take :https://x.com/dilanesper/status/1889448333854515430

So Trump is to meet Putin in Saudi Arabia and the European allies didn't even know they'd been talking. 'The Font', who usually loathes anything geo-political, reads this over breakfast and says it's the best thing on the subject . This is high praise indeed :https://www.aei.org/op-eds/historys-revenge-america-faces-the-new-eurasian-threat/