Calves, tombs and disposing of a Skoda.

The calves on the village green becoming braver. Some wander over to see us when we pass by. 

Others remain ( justifiably ) nervous of humans. They watch us from a distance. The majority are just happy to lie on the grass and enjoy the sunshine.

The wind is strong enough to whip up the waves in the bay. The local policeman has been out to inspect the tombs in the farmers field and warranted that they're ancient burials. This means the farmer can get on with spraying the crop.

Wild flowers suddenly appearing everywhere.

The young American couple are heading back to the US. They've sold their large and practical Skoda estate and are standing outside their kitchen door handing over the keys to the new owner. This is the sort of car that can swallow push chairs with ease and still leave room for all those other things young parents need to carry. Its styling does not make the heart race. Tomorrow morning one of the farmers will drive them all down to the airport in Edinburgh in his mini bus. They'll take the direct United 757 flight to Chicago to spend a  week with their parents before heading south to Austin to house hunt. Their cottage in the village will be spruced up, the garden tidied and by Wednesday of next week new tenants will have moved in. Village life may be quiet but there's always something going on. We wish them well. Thankfully, their youngsters seem to be focusing on the adventure ahead. The same cannot be said for the mother who has been going through the agonies of saying goodbye to her friends. There is something to be said for the old adage ' If you must go, go like thieves in the night'.

Birds. These are fun :https://www.pacegallery.com/exhibitions/joan-jonas-drawings/

Dianas clothes on auction in LA :https://youtu.be/OtsPn2eI3yE

Skye terriers :https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2025-05-30/dog-breeds-skye-terrier-extinction-bulldog-turnspit-kuri/105322858

One of our favourite restaurants in Glasgow is opening a 2nd venue :https://www.cameronhouse.co.uk/dine-drink/restaurants-bars/loma/

Slow progress and six thirty saunas.

And to think we started off the week thinking TACO was a filled tortilla. How quickly things change.

Progress on the sports bar being developed by Justin Timberlake and Tiger Wood seems to be progressing painfully slowly. A Portacabin has now arrived and been positioned on the road outside. This will enable the workmen to have their cups of tea in the dry. Fencing has been installed to stop passers by from peeking inside at the progress ... or lack of it.. I had thought the bar might open up in time for the 2025 golf season but the way things are looking that's not going to happen. The letter 'O' in Picture House has fallen off but no one seems to have noticed .

This is the time of year when graduating students move out and pass on their apartments to a new generation of party animals. An apartment in the centre of town is worth its weight in gold. Two youngsters are moving a mattress and in the process discovering that mattresses are both heavy and difficult to carry. Rain showers don't help nor do the strong gusts of wind. Their progress along the pavement towards their new home is leisurely.

One of the hotels on the fancy street near the Catholic church is offering graduation lunches for the not unreasonable price of £42.50. 'The Font' notes that the 'Graduates celebrate in style ' advert includes a tassel. The designer has failed to spot the difference between a golden furniture tassel and the black sort you'd find hanging from a mortarboard. There was a time when gold tassels like this were popular 'flushing' features in the loos of regional French boutique hotels. This is a trend that thankfully soon died a hygiene driven death.

A group of American girls are in no rush to head home for the summer holidays. They're enjoying their freedom. This is the ' Hey Mom. I'll be home as soon as I can but I've got a paper that must be in by mid-month' crowd. At first light the girls rushed into the sea, screamed and then returned to the new sauna on the beach. Dogs and their owners ignored them. A plume of smoke is now billowing from the saunas chimney. A group of young men who have sensibly avoided the cold water part of this experience  join them there with six packs of beer and Red Bull. The joys of being nineteen. Are they returning from a late night out or starting their day super early  ?

The trees in town, spurred on by the recent rain, are suddenly in full leaf. The gulls who usually strut around as if they won the place ( which they do )  seem quiet. They must be nesting.

The 'Poppies' ( or some of them ) are coming back to the Tower of London :https://www.halcyongallery.com/news/166-paul-cummins-poppies-return-to-the-tower-of-tower-of-london-unveils-new-commemorative-installation/

Sparrows :https://birdhistory.substack.com/p/trash-birds

An insiders account of working at DOGE :https://sahillavingia.com/doge

Sleep :https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-chronicles-of-infertility/202505/how-much-sleep-do-you-really-need-and-how-to-get-it

Changeable

Heavy rain is forecast but we wake to a largely cloudless sky. The six am radio leads with news that Elon Musk is leaving the government or at least his DOGE department and going back to his day job. There's also something about the courts rejecting President Trumps tariff plans but that's too much to digest this early in the day. As we head out for our morning walk the rising sun catches the poppies that have seeded by the courtyard gate. You can see where the term 'flaming red ' comes from. The garden at 'The last wee house before Denmark' is full of young sparrows. We reckon there must be something like forty of them. They're at that stage of life where they don't so much fly as flutter. The pigeons and the starlings seem to ignore them as do the rooks. Half a dozen youngsters are perched sunbathing on the lid of the wood shed as we pass.

Post grads - who are usually invisible - start to appear in the local cafes.  For them exam marking is done and teaching tutorials is something they won't need to think about for another four months. Post grads tend to dress for comfort rather than style.

Further down the coast  we stop to admire a new Porsche parked outside an old cottage. This is not the sort of car you often see in a small Scottish village. Perhaps it belongs to the people who will be moving into the rental house that's occupied by the young American couple and their family ? It must be a sign of age but both of us think the Porsche would be 'difficult' to get in and out of. 

Will the neighbours alliums withstand this afternoons rain and the changeable weather  ?

A Shaker exhibition in Germany :https://www.design-museum.de/en/exhibitions/detailpages/shaker.html

Beef and methane :https://sentientmedia.org/beef-industry-is-rewriting-climate-science-for-kids/

Dogs and babies :https://www.sciencealert.com/are-dogs-replacing-babies-in-countries-with-declining-birth-rates

An outside table  at this Paris restaurant would be heaven in high summer :https://parissecret.com/en/le-grand-cafe-paris-en/

Heat avoiding tourists.

The calves on the village green enjoying the morning sunshine.

Charity shop window are always a source on interest. Once prized possessions set to start on a new journey with new owners. The town has a least half a dozen charity shops which says something about the evolution of retailing. There was a time not so long ago when vacant shops would be snapped up and relet within a week. Those days have gone.

One of the old houses on the way to the cathedral is guarded by two owls.

No one seems to know the story behind them although everyone knows the 'owl' house.

More Spanish tourists can be seen. They're fresh off the seven am bus from Edinburgh and are wrapped up as if they're visiting the North Pole. Spain is about to face a heat wave so we can expect to have a lot more tourists from the south looking for cooler temperatures. Cold weather tourism really kicked off about four years ago and hasn't looked back since.  We saw two large French tour groups yesterday. They all had individual ear pieces so the guides didn't have to shout. It can't be long before the Italian school groups arrive. I always feel sorry for the Italian teachers. Herding C-A-T-S must be an  easier job.

An enterprising student is ready to greet the Spanish tourists by playing the guitar in the chapel cloisters. I hope he is well rewarded.

Inca writing :https://thedebrief.org/scientists-are-decoding-a-mysterious-form-of-writing-from-the-ancient-inca-empire-heres-what-it-reveals/

Toothache :https://biologicalsciences.uchicago.edu/news/sensory-teeth-evolve-fossil-exoskeletons

Wrily amusing - the accompanying picture is great :https://www.edwest.co.uk/p/everythings-computer

Surprised tourists in Edinburgh. Few visitors go  to see this memorial but it is very beautiful in its simplicity :https://youtu.be/J0w7QTlnwuo?t=301

A million nights.

The King is in Ottawa today. Constitutional mundanities wouldn't usually make the morning news but these days 'small' things gain added import.

Eight deer, four adults, four young, standing breakfasting in the barley field. They wait until we get within fifty yards before bounding off to the safety of the foreshore. The farm track alive with young starlings washing their wings in the puddles formed by the overnight rain. The delight of a young bird as it has its first bath is a wonder to behold. From the sheer numbers it seems that the local starlings and sparrows are having a bumper year.

The farmer has found more Iron Age tombs in the field by the shore. They've been forced to the surface by the long dry spell. He's called the local Policeman who is supposed to drive out every time bones are discovered. It was a national holiday yesterday so the Policeman, who finds ancient burials to be a hindrance to real Police work, says he'll be out later in the week. "They've slept here for a million or so nights so a few more won't make any difference " says the farmer with a mundanity that is unintentionally beautiful .

The potatoes are fairly shooting up after the rain. 'Rain at night heat during the day' is a recipe for a great crop.

The grass verges glowing bright yellow. It's as if the local wild flowers have forgotten that they're supposed to be small and inconsequential.

With 40% of the population suddenly gone the streets in town remain quiet.

This morning there is an early rising lady with a dog in  a pram at the cafe on the main road. The dog sits in the pram and stares at her with an unblinking  intensity that hints she may be tempted into sharing her bacon roll. 

China :https://www.persuasion.community/p/chinas-economy-is-weaker-than-you

Things I didn't know :https://sentientmedia.org/adm-repeatedly-failed-to-prevent-grain-explosions/

Miss Cocaine :https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/griselda-blanco-miami-cocaine-70s

Ohio :https://www.apmreports.org/story/2025/02/20/steubenville-ohio-reading-success-for-all

A flying coffee day.

World Bee Day biscuits in the bakers. They seem to be identical to their usual biscuits but with a bee replacing the maraschino cherry.

Angus goes into the hardware store for some wire to tie up the roses in the garden at the wee house in town. The roses have flowered in the recent heat, become top heavy and blown down in the overnight wind. The roses cover the sheltered walls that enclose three sides of the garden and some of them must have been there for the better part of a hundred years . Our old neighbour who is now well into her eighties says she remembers them from her childhood. The garden walls have been built with stone 'borrowed' from the cathedral and are aligned to catch most of the summer light . By now they have four centuries of sun trapped warmth in them. On a sunny, calm day in high summer the scent is as thick as silk and you'd think you were in Turkey. 

The hardware store is one of those places built over slightly different levels and replete with small dark corridors that lead nowhere. When I ask for wire I'm told to ' Go tae the back and you'll find it near the ladders '. 'Ladders' when spoken by a Fifer is a word that is a surprise even to a fellow Scot. . After five minutes I've found neither ladders nor wire. The man behind the counter does not seem disposed to providing any more information or coming to help me so I settle for some twine , pay and leave.

I do however come across a Baseball Bat Pepper Mill. This is the sort of kitchen device that will have been extremely popular with male students. A three foot long pepper grinder may be a conversation piece but it is not the most practical of kitchen appliances.

We go to the cafe on the beach. It is very windy. In fact it's so windy our coffees are  caught by the wind and blown out of the paper cups. This seems to be a good measure of just how windy it is. All the seats in the lee of the cafe building that offer some protection are packed solid with golfers and visitors. Our table has no such protection and is exposed to the full strength of the wind. The lights around the cafe awning soon become dislodged and a loose strand lands on a couple sitting on orange deck chairs. The man runs inside to tell the woman behind the counter who emerges and starts to take them down. We head back to the car and abandon what's left of our Americanos. Scottish weather is a remarkable thing.

The strawberry farm by the bridge is doing  a brisk business. They are trialing a new variety. We buy one of the old and one of the new. They're also growing asparagus.

Food :https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/looking-cut-calories-try-adding-chilies-study-suggests

The benefits of absent mindedness:https://psyche.co/ideas/why-our-flawed-flexible-memories-come-with-social-benefits

Equality :https://lawliberty.org/a-touch-of-aristocracy/

Grateful.

The weather has been well behaved. It rained again last night but it's dry by sunrise and the forecast is for a warm cloudless day. With the youngsters gone life slows down. The town , never really busy at the best of times, is border line comatose. A few hard partying stragglers can be seen wandering the streets after last nights farewell festivities but apart from that we have the place to ourselves. 

In the village the young American family are heading down the track to the beach. The children love the beach ( in that marveling way only four year olds can ) although the father seems less than enthusiastic at being up and about at six in the morning. With the end of the semester he's now finished at the university while she left her job teaching at the primary school on Friday.  In the afternoon there was an impromptu 'thank you' party organized by the teachers. All the parents without exception were there. The party was an old fashioned cake and bunting affair. The local farmers don't usually take time off at this busy time of year but she sorted out the schools IT system and for that alone they were grateful. There was a mini traffic jam when a line of a dozen or so large green tractors parked on the double yellow lines outside the school gates caused a traffic 'tail back'. She, really, really doesn't want to leave. They fly to Austin next week.

The local paper waxes lyrical about a restaurant in Dunfermline. There comes a point where enthusiasm and hyperbole become conflated.

A poster reminds us that in 5 weeks this years exam takers will return - or not.

One of last years glass fibre Scottie dogs seen hiding in a town garden.

The new trugs arrive.

This :https://apoemaday.tumblr.com/post/681712853114404864/storage

And as a counterpoint this :https://tovedanovich.substack.com/p/mary-oliver-has-a-store-now

Not to everyones taste :https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/history/unusual-diet-18th-century-geologist-william-buckland

Hebridean music heard on the car radio on Sunday morning. A reminder ( in case we needed one ) we live a long way south in Scotland :https://youtu.be/UVaOMGgVi6I

A very Danish menu :https://hotelnordlandet.com/en/

Words of the week.

We're invited to an evening lecture by a gentleman from Harvard. He tells us that " I'm sorry I don't have a plane to give you " were the words of the week . He also  thanks the South African President for saying what everyone else is quietly thinking.

Some cloud first thing but it soon burns off. There was much appreciated rain overnight. The television crew have finished filming their sand castle building series. A bored security guard is napping on the porch of one of the exotically decorated beach huts that have been used as a back drop.  

I can't even begin to explain to non-Scots what Sair Heids are. 

Saturday is the final day of exams. There are a few more on Monday morning but this is effectively it. Todays exams encompass Carbohydrate and Nucleic Acid Chemistry and Caucasian Wars of the 20th Century.

The first sighting of a large Spanish tour group. A woman with an umbrella is leading, or trying to lead, a group of Catalan tourists towards the cathedral. She is having no luck in keeping them together. They end up strung out over two or three  hundred yards. The cafe where Prince William is supposed to have meet Kate proves to be a major diversionary distraction. 

Out here on the coast we don't get many visitors. This morning however there's a group of serious bird watchers armed with telephoto lenses. They're looking for that shyest ( and rarest ) of all birds the Corn Bunting. After they've gone one comes and sits on the fence by the sheep field. Their numbers have fallen in recent years and it's now on the 'red' list of birds in danger. 

It looks quizically at us, does a bit of preening and then heads off towards the lark field. The bird watchers aren't so lucky. They return along the track without so much as glimpsing one.

Tsunami power :https://gizmodo.com/how-did-this-1300-ton-boulder-travel-up-a-cliff-scientists-just-figured-it-out-2000606069

Glowing:https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/all-living-things-faintly-glow-ultraweak-photon-emission-upe

An unusual London scene. What must the tourists make of it ? This has Monty Python elements to it  :https://youtu.be/jIp-XhKVDsw?t=1042

Equally unusual - a very Scottish tune in Washington. The choir look suitable bemused :https://youtu.be/eCtYJ0CA8sQ?t=4715

Rain and revision and liquorice.

Rain is forecast for tomorrow. The farmers will be pleased. This is seemingly the longest recorded dry spell in more than  60 years. The farmers wife , who knows about such things, says that apart from sea mist the crops haven't had any moisture since early April. Sunshine is expected to return on Sunday.

The quail family that have made their home in the patch of long grass between the courtyard and the barley field have had a 'good' year. The two that have been our neighbours since the spring have miraculously turned into a fine family of eight . We stand and watch them saunter - mother in front, father behind , youngsters in between - towards the farm track and the sea. They soon turn into the safety of the barley stalks.

A group of youngsters outside the exam hall. Some stand alone and in silence. They look nervous. Four years condensed into the next three hours. Others adopt the 'lets test each other before we go in ' approach. From the noticeboard it seems that its the turn of the School of Psychology and Neuroscience to hold their exams today.   

There is an eerie almost end of semester calm. Parking is easy. The 9:20 and 11:20 trains to London have been busy all week. This weekend they will be packed solid. Can there be anything as noisily purgatorial as a long distance train full of celebrating college kids heading home for the summer ?

With the students leaving town the tourists will soon be flooding in. The local shops are positioning their offerings to a less 'academic' clientele. Small whisky bottles appear in the farm store. They have the advantage of being easy to pack.

When was the last time you saw liquorice on sale ? 'The Font' informs me that it is very popular in Canada although when quizzed the basis of this claim seems less than solid. ' I heard a programme about it on the radio '. Any Canadian readers may be able to vouch whether this is, or is not, true.

In the evening we pop into the trendy cocktail bar for a quick glass of wine. Four gentlemen golfers are sitting at the bar. They arrived last night, played a round this morning, opted for a quick pre-lunch snifter and have been here ever since. They are now at the stage where their 'sampling' of whisky has transported them into a post jet lag world of quiet contentment. One of them reminisces, at length, about his Oldsmobile. ' Best goddam car I ever had '. I'll wager they'll sleep well tonight.

End of term rituals now the pier has opened up again. The tourists ( and parents ) love it :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJkMJfXdYcQ

I would not wish to run into a pig nosed frog :https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/ugly-animals

Hay fever :https://theconversation.com/hay-fever-why-symptoms-are-so-bad-this-year-and-what-to-do-if-your-usual-remedies-arent-working-256751

Progress ? :https://spectrum.ieee.org/star-autonomous-surgical-robot

Winding down.

 

Last night the seafood restaurant by the beach was packed solid with high rolling golfers. Next to us were three extremely happy guys from Chicago (Canyata is the place to play golf in Illinois one informs 'The Font'  ) who drank a steady stream of martinis with their food. " Line 'em up we're thirsty " says one  gentleman to the drinks waitress before surprisingly giving her a high five. They had ordered three ( expensive ) bottles of red wine which were opened and decanted and left sitting on the table in front of them while they ate. When they finished their meal they picked up the decanters and took them out onto the terrace. This we thought was interesting behaviour of the sort that  would perplex the French.  

Town definitely quieter. I'd reckon 30% of the students have headed off. Only the exam takers and the hardened party animals are staying on to the weekend. We see three more emotional pavement farewells on our walk between the supermarket and the dry cleaners.

Some bright spark has authorized road works on all the main streets and a few of the cross streets too. Getting from one end of town to the other is an obstacle course. Traffic lights have sprung up everywhere. Angus mutters under his breath.

Sausage rolls and fudge donuts continue to be the culinary fall back for the remaining exam taking students.

I read this which failed to address the questions  ......

.... this book answered .

Finding a trug maker is surprisingly difficult. After 30 years both of ours have now given up the ghost :http://www.thetrugstore.co.uk/handmade-sussex-trugs/

Amazing. To begin with I thought this was a drawing :https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2025/05/shirokuro-sketchbook-restaurant/

Deals :https://carnegieendowment.org/emissary/2025/05/ai-chip-trump-gulf-uae-saudi-security-risk-good-deal?lang=en

New York apartments :https://gothamist.com/news/4th-generation-resident-of-rent-stabilized-manhattan-apartment-fights-eviction

Spains demographics are a surprise :https://pablogguz.github.io/blog/pop-projections-esp/