Layering helps

A gentle sunset last night. It's still (just) warm enough to sit outside until near ten although layering helps. Before we turn in a group of large grey transport aircraft slowly move in formation towards the west. 'Someone' is heading home.

We'd not seen many butterflies this year but the warm weather finally brings them out. Each species seems to have its own micro-territory. The cabbage whites cluster around the top of the track, the red admirals prefer the middle and the peacocks swarm on the thistles where the track makes a sheltered dog leg down to the sea. 

There must be fifty or sixty peacocks which must be some sort of record. They are remarkably difficult to photograph part in due to their 'skittishness' and part due to the breeze which wildly rocks whatever plant they've settled on.

We park in town and observe a teacher with a particularly annoying group of Italian teenagers . She loses it when they wander, oblivious to oncoming cars, onto the street. " This is a pavement, that is the road " she screams in a way that tells us an alternative vocation to teaching may lie in her immediate future. The Italian teenagers ignore her and saunter, slowly, across the road. Italian teenagers take the teenage hormonal thing to whole new levels.

The American hedge fund managers new extension has got to the stage where the old buildings have been cleared away and the equipment for digging out the foundations has been delivered to the site. The view onto the old cathedral ruins from the new house will be 'awesome' although we're told he's unhappy that he didn't get permissions for a basement swimming pool.

Africa's population :https://asteriskmag.com/issues/11/yes-in-my-bamako-yard

Thoughts on India :https://andrewbatson.com/2025/07/27/india-and-the-invidious-comparison-with-china/

Flooding in Oregon :https://thedebrief.org/13000-years-ago-a-catastrophic-flood-scoured-oregons-ancient-landscape-new-satellite-images-reveal-the-lasting-impact/

Medicine :https://www.civitasinstitute.org/research/how-america-became-the-worlds-medicine-chest--and-why-that-status-is-at-risk

A map showing the largest sectorial employer by state. I'm sure the same is true in Europe :https://committeetounleashprosperity.com/hotlines/we-have-to-do-something-about-runaway-health-costs/