Mackerel.

The schools start today. It goes without saying the weather is warm and sunny . There's a bit of a sea mist down by the harbour but by the time we've climbed up the cliff path it's burnt away.

The golf end of town is humming. The first foursome has teed off and is heading briskly down the fairway. Behind them twenty or so eager and impatient players wait their turn. Some do calisthenics, others sip from hip flasks in order to calm their nerves. There are fewer caddies out and about this morning. It is a time when fathers are on ' drop off the little ones at the school gate ' duty. The words " You'll love it " said to doubting six year olds who'd much prefer to be on the beach.

A memorial bench has appeared outside one of the ladies golf clubs. As an epitaph  'Golf, bridge and a view of the sea' somehow manages to avoid mawkishness.

Back home the tide is out and the view back towards the spires of town unchanged in half a millennium. The gannets are continuing to stream past us like a never ending conveyor belt.  Sometimes they come in groups of a dozen, sometimes twice that but more usually there's six or eight of them flying along line astern. They've been doing this for a week now and their ability to track the mackerel and herring shoals is quite remarkable. Every so often  a group of birds will reverse course, climb to eighty feet and then plunge Busby Berkeley like, one after the other, into the water in search of food. The Australian and Canadian newcomers went fishing off the rocks yesterday. The Canadian caught 16 good sized mackerel and the Australian 11.  " You could almost walk on the water there were so many of them" the Australian tells us in his best fishing story tone of voice.

The wheat fields have been harvested. Yesterday the air was thick with noise and chaff. This morning the chaff has blown away and all is calm. 

The British Prime Minister is heading off to Washington....again. Lots of folk don't like him but give me quiet hard work and diligence after the some of the buffoons we've seen over the last decade and a half. I wouldn't want his job no matter how much you paid me. All the UK papers, without exception, in agreement on how important todays meetings are. 

Fertility rates in China. Scotland by comparison is 1.3  which is what you'd expect in somewhere cold, wet and northerly while the US is 1.6. Replacement rate is 2.1 :https://x.com/arpitrage/status/1956119090168287371

Your next doctor may be a robot :https://x.com/saranormous/status/1956444972141756544

Chirping :https://biologyinsights.com/why-do-birds-chirp-before-a-storm/

The first Christmas reminder . Now, that's a shock :https://www.germangymnasium.com/christmas/