Poor old BTW always seems to suffer in the summer, seems we must be making good use of that extra day light after all.  The birds all seem to disappear for several weeks round about now, but they’re back with a vengeance;  from the upstairs office window I have just watched a flock of blue tits attack the bird feeders.  I would have taken a picture but that would have meant opening the downstairs curtains and probably scaring them off, so a pretty pointless exercise there.  I am a newly signed up member of the British Trust for Ornithology’s garden watch scheme, so I shall log my sightings with them and the rest of you are just going to have to trust me on this one.

Last weekend we met up with Rieko, our friend from Tokyo, for lunch.  The food was lovely but the usual Edinburgh laissez-faire attitude to dining was prevalent – it does not take four people twenty minutes, without a drink, to choose from the menu.   Why, that’s one hour and twenty minutes if you add it all up.  I am loth to accept the rationale that a restaurant gets very busy at lunchtimes, because that is what is supposed to happen.  I do know that Paul & I don a cloak of invisibility in certain establishments,  and we can usually suss this out within twenty seconds.  Best time ever was a pub in Culross, where we were the only diners, and there was only one server, and after the usual twenty minute wait, I approached her and asked if she would take our order, to which she replied “Ah thought someone else was looking after yis”.  I have worked as a waitress, and I do know that it is an extremely arduous and often frustrating task, taking flak from the customers and the kitchen, but you keep a tally of your tables in your head or on your notepad and you jolly well pay attention to them.  While I’m on this ranting side street, it’s also appreciated if the people you are serving actually make eye contact with you.

So, Test Town is on in Dunfy this weekend, from what I gather, it’s a competition for retail business ideas, and all the finalists have been given an empty shop for three days, to use as a, emm, shop.  Anything which fills empty units, albeit temporarily, with a bespoke offering, as opposed to the dross served up by some of the chains seems like a good idea to me.

Massive congratulations to nephew Nick on his 2:1 from Edinburgh University, hard work has paid off.