The early bird gets the best parking spaces.

We leave the courtyard and head off on our pre-breakfast walk along the track that leads to the shore. There we are met by elder sister who is returning from a swim. There is no sign of 'Puppy'. Elder sister greets us and then, discovering we're biscuit free, heads off up the hill. 

There's a bank of clouds off to the north but here it's bright and sunny. We meet a lecturer in the modern languages school walking her Dalmatian. She tells us that the average first year student learning Arabic arrives with a vocabulary of around 3,000 words. The average native speaker knows at least 20,000. Her job, in a students four years here, is to narrow that gap.

A couple have parked their motor home by the potato barns. They're out picking brambles which they pop into a Tupperware dish.  The womans right hand is dyed deep scarlet with the bramble juice. " We're from Dorking " they say by way of introduction or possibly to absolve themselves from the responsibility of unsanctioned bramble picking. Perhaps they think we're going to tell them the brambles belong to us ? We wish them a good morning and hurry along.

From the top of  the raised beach we can see stream after stream of gannets flying south in search of food. 

As we reach the shore we startle a cormorant. It takes off with an irritated flapping of its wings.It flies two hundred yards down the coast and settles on a rock where it turns its back on us and sunbathes.

In town groups of workmen are already hard at work. Two of them are sealing windows on a house in the little street by the cathedral. Seems the new tenants are expected at lunchtime and the landlord is getting 'excited'. The joiners have parked their little van on a double yellow line and are betting that no one will be up and about at this time of day. The early bird gets the best parking spaces. The builders and painters sprucing up the wee house in town worked until eight ( again ) last night but this morning there's no sign of them. They hope to be finished tomorrow.

This week is a quiet joy before the youngsters start to pour flood back. The arrival of 10,000 late teens in a town with a population of 15,000 can't be missed.

This old hotel reopens and ( thank heavens ) they've redone the coffee shop :https://www.waldorfastorianewyork.com/

Old life :https://scitechdaily.com/545-million-year-old-footprints-rewrite-the-origin-story-of-complex-life/

Dishwasher people :https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2025/04/how-to-load-dishwasher/682425/?lctg=6050e2b7f98ec7553cab3a85

Shipping to the US has got a whole lot harder :https://x.com/NBCNewYork/status/1959379398290760065

Oddest story of the month ?:https://www.odditycentral.com/news/pet-yeast-craze-getting-traction-in-china.html