Rain.

Today has been mild, grey and mostly wet with a strong swell coming in across the bay.

This morning I had to go to the pharmacy to collect my prescriptions. They sent a text a few days ago but somebody forgot to tell me. It was still dry in the morning so naturally I planned a beach walk too.

Walking along I saw a young couple, students as it turned out who were carrying buckets and digging in the sand. On my way back my curiosity got the better of me and I went and asked what they had been doing. They were digging for sand hoppers, those tiny crustaceans that jump up all over the place when you turn over a pile of seaweed. Except not today. They couldn't find any under the seaweed of which there was plenty strewn along the beach and all their digging and sieving of the sand had resulted in only six hoppers. I expect it is too cold for the hoppers at the moment.

There were lots of birds on the beach foraging in the piles of seaweed. I saw black headed gulls, rooks,  jackdaws, a grey wagtail, a sandpiper .... 

and a little flock of sanderlings running along the edge of the waves.

After a pleasant walk I arrived at the pharmacy only to find a notice on the door which said that the pharmacist had been called out on a medical emergency so anyone wanting prescriptions would need to come back after 2.00. They do sell over the counter medicines and supplies as well and when I returned I saw that at the moment they have a number of gift items including chocolates. Home I went, via the beach of course where I saw that the rain had started to make polka dot like marks on the light grey stones. Luckily it eased off quite quickly before raining heavily once I'd got home. In the afternoon I waited until there was a break in the rain and marched directly to the pharmacy this time not diverting on to the beach.

For the rest of the day I did housework and carried on backing up my photos. Just two weeks worth to do and I'll be up to date.

Usually I make a scaled down version of Kucios, the traditional Lithuanian Christmas Eve meal but this year instead I cooked a simple but very tasty meal of salmon fillets. These I baked in foil with mushrooms and onions in butter seasoned with herbs and a little garlic. Because they were in separate parcels we could each season the salmon to our own taste before cooking. I used only a tiny bit of garlic with pepper, oregano and dill in mine and it tasted wonderful.  Plain boiled baby new potatoes were full of flavour and we had peas as well.

We're still wondering what Speedy found to eat yesterday. He was so full he didn't even ask for any supper, went out for part of the night and only ate a tiny bit of his breakfast. He had a full tum and slept all day after which he ate his supper plus the salmon skins and now he's gone back out again.