The leaves fall.

It's suddenly darker in the mornings. It's also colder and wetter. Overnight the leaves on the trees in town have started to fall. The lines between the parking spaces completely covered in a carpet of orange and red. It's as though someone has flipped a switch.

The Halloween window display in the outfitters window more upmarket than the ones you usually see.

A poster in the window informs us that Greggs will soon unveil their Festive chicken bake. This is somewhat deceptively oddly advertised with two alarmed looking turkeys rather than chickens. At this time in the morning Greggs is busy with local painters and roofers buying sausage rolls. In an hour or so the clientele shifts towards students on their way to nine am lectures. Town and gown run parallel lives.

The local paper informs us that prices at the local cattle auction were 'reasonable'. Logie Lochnagar may or may not agree. How quaint that livestock auction prices are still quoted in guineas.

A busy night in the skies overhead. This morning the postman tells us that the local airbase is crammed with fighter jets. Seems we're sending aircraft and advisors to help the Saudis. It looks as if the Iran thing may suddenly kick off again. As the postman drives away  a couple of those large RAF cargo planes appear and start a long slow lumbering descent over the bay. 

The farmer is bringing in the hay bales from the field by the heron pond. There's nearly 300 of them needing to be shipped to a farm on the Borders where there's a shortage of winter cattle feed. He's getting £100 a bale which makes it a profitable days work. A fleet of large flat beds from a haulier in Hawick are already waiting, engines running, by the potato barns. 

A shrinking Iran :https://x.com/sinatoossi/status/2112198648909939173?s=46&t=fSypFxt84bBHId-do9r5Ag

Self driving cars :https://www.acsh.org/news/2026/10/16/why-are-trial-lawyers-afraid-self-driving-cars-50394

'The Font' tries to engage me in a discussion of this article. The conversation is brief and one sided :https://www.quantamagazine.org/ai-proved-the-quasi-riemann-hypothesis-what-happens-now-20261019/