The replacement spirtle.

The centre of town thronged with middle aged couples accompanied by slightly embarrassed looking teens. It's the first of the fact finding weekends for youngsters ( and accompanying parents ) thinking of coming to study here in September. The hotel restaurants are full of mothers showing a dutiful interest in course requirements while fathers sip G&T's and quietly calculate just how many weekends a year they could spend here playing golf dutifully visiting the apple of their eye. Some will love the place. Others will wonder how anyone could live somewhere so small and remote. There's an air of new beginnings and new adventures. You don't think of laughter filling the streets of a small Presbyterian town like this but sometimes it does.

Out here at The Last Wee House Before Denmark there's a glorious sunrise. Another warm day is in forecast before the skies turn grey on Tuesday. Our walk along the path to the shore disturbs hundreds of crows who take to the air in one huge flock. They craw in irritation. Crows are what the Scots would call ' gan canny' creatures.

The dogs on the beach are in that beyond happy place that dogs manage to inhabit when they're off the lead and they have a two mile stretch of sand to run on. We are now well enough established here to be greeted with brisk 'Good mornings' by their owners. The owners will walk two miles down the beach and then two miles back. The dogs will run many times this distance.

Village gardens providing evidence that the berry yield this year is unusually high.

What colour remains in the farmers garden looks muted but is in its own way as memorable as it was in high summer.

Halloween chocolate cup cakes from the bakers will be tasted later this morning. The porridge spirtle has disappeared. We pop into the kitchen store and are surprised to find a new one can be ours for just £3.95.

With all the bright eyed youngsters in town this seemed an apt view on life :https://substack.com/home/post/p-175837497

Some Lou Reed I'd never heard before :https://www.getthemelt.com/p/lou-reeds-beautiful-halloween-dirge

Nietszche and the boredom of English Sabbaths :https://www.edwest.co.uk/p/bleak-sabbath

Tacit knowledge :https://www.econlib.org/library/columns/y2025/klingbreakneck.html

The video for new students ( you have to click on the explore tab and then the video link ) has a very 'drone on acid ' feel to it :https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/study/explore/#section-thetown