Monday, March 17, 2025

Machiavellis advice.

 

This sung (beautifully) by an Irish post grad as part of a Sunday evening concert - https://youtu.be/Y-BmOhjbQ44?t=26  A hat tip to St Patricks Day. Afterwards dinner with old friends. One - a former ambassador (ambassadress ?) says that the new UK ambassador in DC would do well to remember Machiavellis advice that the best way to criticize a prince is to praise him for virtues he doesn't have. We all agree that our new man on Massachusetts Avenue will be kept busy troweling on the praise.

Sunday and the town was full of day trippers. The restaurant we chose for dinner busy with nice American  grandparents sensibly enjoying off season air fares and hotel rates. They talk to each other about the 'big storm' that's sweeping the South. The St Andrews dining experience has never recovered from the dual hit of Covid and Brexit. There was a time when the hotels and restaurants were full of eager and efficient  young Europeans wanting to polish their language skills. Now visas are impossible and  getting and retaining suitable  staff is the bane of the local hospitality industry. You can gather from this that last nights dinner was not stellar. Angus is horrified that scoop of vanilla ice cream and an even smaller scoop of chocolate ganache ( or Chocolate Summer Heaven as the menu would have it ) costs £24.


The tide is high this morning. We pause to watch the Cormorants and Shags fishing in the deep water where the small burn enters the sea. The field which was ploughed yesterday is being sown this morning. The local crows follow happily along behind the tractor. By contrast the curlews are not at all happy that their routine is being disrupted.


In town the hardware store by the roundabout has a rather desultory display of plastic garden ornaments. Perhaps they're waiting for the new 2025 season garden gnomes to be shipped in from Nanjing ?


The picture framer is open early. He has done an excellent job in restoring the 1920's picture of 'The Fonts' grandmother. Rather than put on a new frame they took the old one back to the underlying pine, re-gessoed it and then applied two or three layers of gilt. It now looks very golden. Perhaps too golden ?  Having down sized and already disposed of a mass of portraits we are left to wonder what to do with those that remain. This one may go to Goteborg.


Outside Sainsburys there is some dispute or misunderstanding between two members of the Syrian family who cheerfully sit outside the supermarkets doors in the hope that passers by will give them their change. Two of them have shown up for the Monday morning early shift. Voices are raised. The dispute is soon resolved and one takes up position in the sunshine while the other walks down to the other supermarket. There are some complaints about the refugees but most folk say ' Good morning' and take the view that what they've been through beggars description.

5 comments:

Yamini MacLean said...

Hari OM
I think the frame does Granma 'Font' great credit. YAM xx

Lisa in France said...

The author of the piece on Japan manages to weave quite a bit of interesting history into his sightseeing. It makes me wonder what you will see in the different places you will visit. We lived in Tokyo, but my husband was a professor at Kyoto University, so we spent a lot of time there as well and it was to Kyoto that we escaped after the nuclear accident in 2011. In general I don't miss Japan very much, but the article made me nostalgic for Kyoto (although I do think the "young people wearing traditional garb" whom he saw in Gion in 2016 were almost certainly Chinese tourists wearing rental kimono). I hope you have seen the Shogun series. I was skeptical until one of your readers recommended it, and, indeed, it is very good, maybe not historically accurate but effective in capturing Japanese ways of thinking. I believe now is a very good time to visit Japan. The yen is cheap, of course, but I suspect it is also the calm before the storm that Trump will surely unleash upon them. From what we hear, the government still thinks it will be able to appease him. I really don't know how Japan will respond to betrayal.

Lisa in France said...

Sorry, I'm taking up too much space this morning, but if you are reading in preparation for your trip to Japan, it occurred to me that you and the Font might enjoy "Samurai and Silk," written by Haru Matsukata Reischauer (Ambassador Reishauer's wife). Her family was remarkable - one grandfather was a leader of the Meiji Revolution and, later, Finance Minister, and the other was a silk merchant who was one of the first Japanese businessmen to visit and begin trade with the US. It's not very well-known, but the book is well-written and provides a unique perspective on the period when Japan began to open to the West. (My kids went to an international school founded by Haru Matsukata's sister - the administration building was the former Matsukata home, and the school also owns a retreat built on the site of the other grandfather's silk farm.)

Travel said...

Thanks for the heads up that service may be less than stellar, and price a bit high for my visit in May. Trump wants praise, but I think also believes no publicity is bad publicity. He seems to feed on making people angry.

Diaday said...

Your photo of the tractor sowing the seeds has so much to see - the lines from the seed driller, the gold and brown earth tones ending at the sea blues, the green tractor dropping the seeds, the old stone wall, the sun shining on the land, the blue sky and the fluffy white clouds. It's so full of life yet so peaceful.