Spume on the sand

The ship that has been at anchor in the bay since Tuesdays storm is making ready to head out to sea. The sound of the anchor chain being hoisted drifts on the air towards us. This stirs something in 'The Font' who thinks it would be good  to go to Sweden to see the Northern Lights. ' We could catch the boat from Tromso '. A Norwegian ferry company with a tongue twisting name is mentioned. Can communal dining with Vikings be any worse than it was with the Palo Altoans ? Angus fears he knows the answer to this question.

This mornings reporting on the Alaska summit was of the ' We went to bed hoping  for the best but woke to the worst' variety. A Congressman , interviewed on the radio, comes up with a pithy ' outclassed, outplayed, outsmarted' sound clip which may not be memorable but is at least concise. This seems a reasonable take :https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/putin-makes-no-concessions-but-trump

The attempt to keep Puppy confined to the farmers garden has been abandoned. It was a non-starter from day one. A working relationship has emerged whereby she doesn't attempt to remove her tracker and in return is allowed free reign of the village . This morning she has already been for a Puffin chasing dip in the sea. She wanders into the kitchen to dry off and be given a Jacobs Cream Cracker.

Having harvested the barley earlier in the week the farmer is now collecting and baling the stubble. It's long, slow work but by the time we return from town thirty or so freshly compacted bales pepper the far side of the field. The farmer tells us the secret to a good weather proof bale is to build it with long straw. Fill the bale with too much short straw and it becomes 'explosive' and quickly loses its shape ... and value. The things you learn.

The fair has gone, most summer schools have ended and the students don't arrive for two weeks. Town ( or at least the non-golfing end of the place )  has a silence and access to parking that is a delight. There are a few English holidaymakers but they too are set to migrate south in readiness for the schools going back.

Spume on the sand. It must have been churned up by yesterdays algae thumping thunderstorm and deposited here overnight. Dogs find it irresistible.

Fancy drop head cars showing up outside the R&A. Their drivers Edinburgh lawyers avoiding the high season crush in the nations capital.  A Belgian family in a Renault Scenic try to park in the spot belonging to the Club Secretary. They aren't given the chance of getting out of their car before being politely but firmly 'moved' along. Tales continue to reach us of the lunacy of scheduling a series of Oasis concerts at the same time as the Festival. Thankfully, Oasis have now moved onto Dublin.

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A fortuitous find. A blog written by a Scot worth slowly reading over a cup of coffee :https://www.gleech.org/deen *

The end of the Mayans :https://thedebrief.org/new-clues-to-the-mysterious-fall-of-the-mayan-civilization-have-been-unearthed-deep-within-a-yucatan-cave/

Help with reading :https://hollisrobbinsanecdotal.substack.com/p/how-to-tell-if-something-is-ai-written

Old masters and space :https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/08/14/oxygen-from-earths-orbit-could-save-old-masters-form-the-effects-of-climate-change-say-researchers

*This post on Aberdeen contains a description of the place  coming to life during the rare moments when the rainbows play with the sun and the granite  -   : "On a handful of days a year in Aberdeen when the sun comes out after the rain and ten billion crystals of wet quartz and mica in the clean fraction of the granite are allowed to shine you sit there in an ocean of light way brighter than the sea. You squint (you don’t own sunglasses) - you can’t really drive. A giant mirror, shrouded all year, alight. As if it’s a year’s worth in one day - enough to make you think it makes up for the grey the rest of the time, “you’re even.” You are not ".