It's the Scottish half term holidays and the other end of town, where the beaches are, is busy with parents and their bored ten year olds. It isn't really beach weather but it's dry and the cloud has decided to be well behaved and hang in a bank far out at sea. When you're ten years old what more can you want than sand and sea and (tepid ) sunshine ?
On the field behind the house the farmer is doing some late season potato harvesting. There was a time when this would have been done by hand but now the new 'machine' harvests, cleans and sorts the potatoes in one go. A stream of tractors and trailers scurry backwards and forwards to the potato barns with the crop. Puppy and her sister are sitting proudly on the dashboard of a tractor driven by the farmers teenage daughter. Both dogs are clearly enjoying themselves - the farmers daughter less so. She's heading off on a school ski trip to Switzerland in January and is busy earning spending money helping on the farm during the holidays.
In town the students are gathering before their first lecture. Quite why you would want to sit on the cold grass at this time in the morning is something of a mystery. The sunshine seems to bring them out. The lawn is covered with pears that have fallen overnight. Next week is a 'personal revision' week which means a lot of the youngsters will be heading off on £40 Ryan Air flights to the continent in search of sunshine and whatever else late teens are looking for .
Last night we watch two episodes of the new Netflix series 'Boots' . The Secretary of War has called it 'Woke garbage ' which makes us want to see it. The series ( or at least the first two episodes ) is rather better than we thought and merits a 7/10. It's redeemed by Max Parker who is brilliantly ( if improbably ) cast as an American Marine Corps drill instructor. His English take on an American accent is a thing of majesty.
The head of the International Relations Department has already put out his thought for the day :https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/trump-and-putin-are-buddies-again
Interesting reads :
Switzerland :https://simongrimm.substack.com/p/why-is-switzerland-so-rich
Dreams :https://crookedtimber.org/2025/09/09/five-technological-achievements-that-we-wont-see-any-time-soon/
Let's hope this is wrong :https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/the-3-spoilers-who-could-kill-the-gaza-peace-deal/
Pre-history :https://phys.org/news/2025-10-discovery-stone-megastructures-view-prehistoric.html
4 comments:
Hari OM
I recall my father carving our turnips when we were wee tots... pumpkins were a foreign thing! As for the three spoilers, I admit I have been having similar concerns. YAM xx
Young adults are going off in search of the same thing we were in search of at that age. The sunshine looks inviting.
Lovely stroll along the beach and through the town. I helped dig and wash the last of the potatoes at my friends's farm. She has a small field and doesn't need a potato harvesting machine, just good ole manual labor.
It was interesting to read the history of Halloween, particularly the purpose of the bonfires. The Obon holidays in August are the closest equivalent in Japan, but there, people light fires to guide the ancestors on their return.
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