Lunch out, then a surprise...

It took a while to warm up, but by the afternoon it was fair hot!

The hedge has grown another three inches, but we ignored that and set off for lunch in town. I had an offer of a bottle of Prosecco at a well known hostelry in town. This was not to be wasted, but it wasn’t dog friendly, but we knew we could sit outside. But when we got there, the outdoor seating was in the shade, with a breeze - not conducive to al fresco dining. Boohoo. But there's a dog friendly pub next door...

But I popped in to ask, just in case, and YES! They're dog friendly, so in we went. We had a nice sharing platter and a bottle of fizz (free to us, but £25 on the menu). Most pleasant. And the muzak was quiet!

We had just arrived when a woman came rushing up to us, asking if this was Archie. She was Elizabeth's colleague, and she knows all about him.

Archie and JR walked both ways, but I took the bus. On the way home, I happened to pop in to the cafe for a flat white. The owner served me, and as it was quiet, I mentioned to him that another local cafe didn’t charge for soya milk... he just smiled... Though I did get this (Extra).

My brother came round with the book he has been working on for the last five years. It's all about the whaling industry in Shetland. His wife is from Shetland, and her father had been a whaler (in fact, most families in Shetland have whaling connections). My brother got interested in the history and has spent whole summers there, researching.

I am SO impressed - at 550 pages, with another 100 pages of indexes and references, it’s an academic tome. He left school and had a series of, well, dead end jobs all his life, so well done, Big Brother! Archie is very impressed too.