Saturday morning excitement.

The plumbers are due to fit a new loo in the downstairs cloakroom. Brenda, the elder plumbers hopelessly inefficient but extremely cheerful  girlfriend / secretary / accounts clerk, phones late on Friday night from the bowling alley in Kirkcaldy to let us know she's having a cheeseburger. She also informs us the team will ' be along bright and early in the morning. Hope that's no a problem  '.

Murdo ( the plumber ) and Gary ( the younger brother who carries the bags and is clinically taciturn ) show up as promised. In fact they're here so early that a cruise ship and oil supply vessel at anchor in the bay are still lit up like Coney Island . Both plumbers have those trendy new There's a cat asleep on my head haircuts that are very short at the side but long every where else. Gary, the taciturn one unloads the new loo from the back of the van and happily informs us that he's brought our ' Bog in a box '.  'The Font' thinks taciturnity is perhaps an underrated virtue.

Soon Gary and Murdo have installed themselves in the cloakroom. Fitting the new loo and basin is not an easy job. Or, to put it another way, the two brothers find it more complicated than they'd originally thought. The new loo has an integral water reservoir. The old one didn't. The old loo had the water pipes on the left hand side, the replacement has them on the right. Murdo has solutions for every eventuality -  some of which are practical. 

We leave Murdo and Gary to get on with it. By the time we go the elder brother is holding forth on the handling of his newly acquired ( but not new ) Audi A4. He has great plans to 'personalize' and 'improve' it. A respray is top of the to do list followed by lowering the suspension.

Most of the wild flowers have had their time but the sun rise picks out one tiny variety that is only now coming into bloom.

Back at the house there are long periods of banging interspersed with equally long periods of alarming silence. Gary sings while he works. The sound he emits is remarkable but not in a talent just waiting to be discovered way. Every so often Murdo emerges to tell me of a new problem. He does this with a bubbly cheerfulness that suggests he and  Brenda are well suited for each other.

The job will take a wee bit longer than planned but they hope to be finished by lunchtime. He asks how many replacement floor tiles we have which is the cue for us to out of the house and into town. Sometimes it's best for the nerves to leave the workmen alone.

Top 10 fastest growing cities in the world ( I've not even heard of most of them ) :https://techpoint.africa/guide/10-fastest-growing-cities-in-the-world/

This made me chuckle :https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/08/gavin-newsom-social-media-trump/683968/

How animals think :https://theconversation.com/can-ai-teach-us-how-animals-think-263545

The sun is busy :https://www.livescience.com/space/the-sun/jaw-dropping-photo-captures-solar-tornado-and-gigantic-plasma-eruption-raging-on-the-sun-at-the-same-time