Curlews .

Sixty, maybe eighty, curlews take off from the field by the Heron Pond and head towards the safety of the hay bales that the farmer has piled up in the barley field. As we get closer their skittishness kicks in and they do the same route but in reverse. We've never seen so many curlews at one time. Their undersides glow bright white when they wheel and catch the sunrise. To us, and presumably to the folk who lived here over the last two or three thousand years , they look like so many small plump angels.  The cormorants drying their wings on the safety of the sharp rock outcrops are decidedly unskittish. They don't even deign to look at us. The little village we call home is quiet by human standards but is the equivalent of the I-95 for avian travelers. 

It's one of those 'wannabe student' days and Starbucks is already busy with mothers and offspring. Fathers are notable for their total absence. Presumably after a long drive up from the airport they are in bed 'recovering '.  Conversations about modules and tutorial sizes spill across the tables. An intense family from Rickmansworth discuss class size with an equally intense family from Melbourne. One lad with the 'supremely' bored ennui of a seventeen year old perks up when he hears that this coming year females are likely to comprise 60% of the undergraduate intake. You can see him doing the math. We are impressed by a woman in a blue gilet and a Hermes headscarf who has planned out the days schedule to the minute. She even has a clipboard with an itinerary of all the things that 'simply must be done'  on it. GLWT!

Yesterdays orange Halloween cake has been replaced by a creation with spiders cobwebs piped in icing across it.

Less successful is something green and ghoulish. I'm not sure I'd feel entirely comfortable seeing that on the lunch table.

Some of the houses in town don't have back gardens. Instead they have their gardens on the other side of the road in front of them . It seems odd to cross the road to get to your lawn and flower beds. In one of the front gardens a large holly tree is bearing a heavy crop of berries. Yet another sign a hard winter lies in store ?

Opening words of every European anthem :https://x.com/TerribleMaps/status/1982056540963217518

Self defeating behaviour :https://www.aei.org/foreign-and-defense-policy/trump-ill-work-with-china-not-canada/

Differences between the UK and US :https://www.commonreader.co.uk/p/the-american-art-of-being-busy

Thoughts on living in NYC :https://x.com/david_perell/status/1982957338173509727

Swedes study spaghetti :https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/new-study-reveals-innermost-secrets-spaghetti