The beach procession.

Another beautiful, but chill, start to the day here in Scotland. It might get to 18C this afternoon. By contrast London is expecting their fifth heat wave of the year with a high of 35C. 

Last night a huge cruise liner drifted by the end of the garden. It's the closest inshore we've ever seen one. A little later another ship, almost as big, joins it going in the same direction. We stand at the garden wall with a glass of Margaux and watch them drift towards the wind farms and the horizon. If you'd told me ten years ago that cruising round Scotland would go mainstream I would have laughed aloud and thought you quite mad. Until three or four years ago the only folks cruising these waters were hardy bird watchers looking for puffins on the offshore rock stacks. Nowadays the tell tale signs of climate change and cool weather tourism are slowly but surely mounting up.

Sometimes the sheep warily watch us walk by. This morning they completely ignore us. I'd like to think this is because they recognize that we don't mean them any harm but it's more probably down to the fact that by sheep standards life in a grassy field by the sea is as good as it gets so why bother moving ?

We watch as a group of cheerful middle aged men dressed in white hotel dressing gowns process slowly across the fairways towards the beach. The caddies think they might be some fringe religious group but it turns out they're American golfers who thought it would be 'fun' to start their day with a dip in the sea. What seemed a brilliant idea after last nights dinner proves to be less so when they have to stick their toes in the water. It's called the North Sea for a reason. 

The braver of them get their knees wet. The less brave ( the majority ) don't even get that far. Soon they're heading bare foot back across the sand. The flimsy hotel slippers they set off in aren't up to the journey and are reluctantly discarded in the rubbish bins by the beach cafe. Bizarrely, this is the sort of scene ( hotel flip flops excepted )  you might have seen here half a millennium ago when pilgrims would wash off the dirt from their journey in the sea before going off to visit the shrine of St Andrew in the cathedral. Plus ca change. We and the local dog owners watch them in amazement.

The fun fair trucks have parked perilously close to the restored fountain. The staff will start dismantling the rides tomorrow in readiness for their journey back to Glasgow. Let's hope the fountain remains unscathed.

I'd expect to see houses with designs like this in London, not Kenya :https://unityhomes.co.ke/silver-hill/

Vegetables :https://www.sciencealert.com/the-worlds-vegetables-are-vanishing-and-its-quietly-wrecking-our-diets

A challenge for psychologists :https://www.sciencealert.com/what-if-the-brain-doesnt-create-consciousness-scientist-proposes-it-might-be-the-fabric-of-reality-itself

Coming to a surgery near you:https://reason.com/2026/08/09/ai-beats-doctors/