Untidy fans and a recycled van.

The lady who looks after the village hall is happy it's being used for World Cup screenings. " Good to see the place busy again " . She's less happy at the state she's found it in. The football fans idea of tidying up after a match is rather different to hers. This morning she's particularly unhappy to find a large black bin bag full of lager cans cluttering up the porch after the Egypt-Argentina game.

London continues to swelter in 30C+ temperatures. Up here there's little or no sign of heat let alone a heatwave and we're layered up for warmth. By this stage of the year the old stone field walls are covered in a thick entanglement of wild roses and blaeberries. These provide excellent safety and cover from passing sparrow hawks for the stream of young wrens and goldfinches who dart in and out. The cows down by the beach are making a good job of keeping the wild flowers under control. They ignore us as we pass by.

Thistles, that most Scottish of all plants, now coming into bloom. The bees ( for some reason ) love thistles.

The poppies that sprout in the grass verges are looking somewhat bedraggled in the wind that's been blowing in from the sea for the last three days.

The farmer is disposing of an old van. He's picked it up on a fork lift truck and is carrying it into the potato barn. This seems unusual. Later today I'll stop and ask him what's going on.

The Tesco's in town is closed for six weeks. They're replacing all the freezer units. I ask the store manager if it's going to get a lighting upgrade but he says the building is listed so there's only so much they can do. This Tesco is famous for having the highest sales of champagne per square foot of any Tesco in the UK. This can be put own to the presence of 10,000 students in town that has a permanent population of 15,000.

Life, as you might be able to tell, is quiet.

Playing a harp on a canal in Amsterdam to an audience in boats :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtGCcu3rvhU

On at the cinema here . Sure it's dumbed down but the final scenes are awesome and I wonder if the films fiercest critics ( How could they do this to the Odyssey ? )  have ever read the book. Everyone talks about how good Matt Damon is but Robert Pattison at the villainous Antinous is spine shudderingly good ( bad ?)  in a performance for the ages :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mzw2ttJD2qQ

Short sightedness increasing :https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/myopia-epidemic-eye-shape

Perception :https://iai.tv/articles/your-brain-does-not-percieve-reality-it-predicts-it-auid-3614

What does this tell us ? : :https://x.com/arindube/status/2074230444871082276?s=20

Meanwhile Edinburgh continues to signal that it's a town with traffic hold ups unlike any other :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4l6D54jWkc

The world of economics :https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/jd-vances-crusade-against-gdp-is