A quiet evening.

Town is swamped with parents dropping off their offspring. Home Counties mothers  park on double yellow lines, tailgates up and warning lights flashing, as improbable amounts of luggage are slowly unloaded. In medieval streets this becomes parking mayhem. 

This is the week when the trickle of returning students turns into a flood. The aisles in the only hardware store by the cathedral are solid with fathers buying microwaves for fourth year daughters. Why is it that white goods that worked when packed in May don't work when unpacked in September ? Freshers, who arrived a week earlier than the others, continue to wander the streets in the safety of groups. For many - perhaps most - this is the first experience of being away from parents and siblings. They have intense, furrowed brow, conversations with each other using words like matriculation and module. Little in life can match the intensity of an eighteen year old discussing course requirements. 

The students have now been joined by television engineers beginning to set up scaffolding for next months Dunhill Golf Tournament. American golfers en route to the Irish Open add to the chaos. Three gentlemen from Ohio are seen wearing identical ' Pray for President Trump 2026 ' hats. I'm not sure these will make getting last minute table reservations around here any easier. Faced with all this feverish activity we decide to head to Glasgow for a quiet Monday evening.

There's time for a pre-dinner drink in one of our favourite watering holes. The place is usually empty but has been written up in a Spanish places you must visit before you die magazine and is full of brightly dressed Madrileno couples drinking martinis. The local Glaswegians seem inured to this cultural invasion.

It's literally a minutes walk from the bar to the restaurant during which time the drizzle turns into a downpour. We usually order from the a la Carte menu but opt for the tasting menu. This turns out to  feature the best cooked Monkfish tail we've ever tasted. The Kanzuri sauce it comes with could be seriously addictive. There are 22 diners this evening which is just enough to make the place feel 'buzzy'. The service manages to be friendly and perfectly timed which is an unusually agreeable ( and rare ) combination.

We stay in the uber chic and very dark modern hotel . Angus finds the shower tray slippery and the lighting too dark for shaving. On top of this the television doesn't work and the bedside lamp emits a strange high pitched hum. I unscrew the bulb  and the problem disappears but the black walled darkness becomes deeper. We shall go back to staying in 1 Devonshire Gardens when next in Glasgow. First thing in the morning there's a quick detour to an art gallery that we used to buy from forty years ago. We mistakenly thought Covid had killed it along with the other galleries that used to cluster here.  The quiet subtlety of this etching catches our eye.

This horse sculpture was done by the artist who did the Kelpies in Falkirk and has a price to match. 'The Font' isn't convinced about the proportions. Now we've downsized from a house of  800 square metres to one a quarter of that size acquisitions have to be made more 'judiciously'.

A fun copper hare from an Edinburgh artist.

Dog paintings usually, but not always, attract our attention.

There's just enough time for an espresso and croissant ( it gets a score of 8/10 which as good as you'll get in Scoptland ) at the cafe next to the station. The Intercity to Dundee gets us there on time and the connector to St Andrews arrives early. We have to wait on the platform for less than two minutes. From the front door of the gallery to the station car park takes an hour and a half. The rail journey from Dundee to Glasgow has to be one of the most scenic and unexplored in the country. It is also pleasantly empty.

Bizarre story of the week :https://spacedaily.com/k-humpback-whales-are-interrupting-orca-hunts-to-rescue-completely-different-species-swimming-underneath-a-doomed-seal-and-lifting-it-out-of-the-water-on-their-chest-or-forming-a-wall-between-the-kill/

Squid:https://www.sciencealert.com/squid-are-taking-over-the-ocean-and-not-for-the-reason-you-might-think

Judgements :https://psyche.co/ideas/why-you-should-try-living-without-free-will-for-two-weeks

Pre-commemoration :https://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-untold-pre-history-of-9-11

Yesterdays KyivPost :https://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/83925