Little Auk

Just popped by the beach on the way to getting lunch and saw this little guy just offshore at the bottom of Bath Street. Just the compact camera I'm afraid but rather like my otter pic, it's the subject and the excitement of seeing it on my local patch that matters more than the image quality! It seemed to be fairly active, diving quite frequently as I watched, so I assume it isn't faring too badly despite being blown well off course?

Last night went to a ceilidh at Portobello Town Hall. Met my Polish friend A there, and a few of her friends, including one of them who works in the same department at Napier as my friend A who I've known for years since we both worked together at S&N. Edinburgh truly is a big village. Anyway, the ceilidh was good fun - quiet to start with but it filled up quickly and so I was surprised at the break when they said that because the ceilidhs hadn't been doing well enough - the previous three in the lead up to Christmas had all made a loss - it was the last one in the venue and they were looking to move elsewhere. Obviously they had tried to work out why they weren't getting the numbers but the two negatives given - the lack of parking and the lack of a licensed bar - seemed contradictory. Presumably different subsections of the crowd want those things. It did strike me as odd that Porty wasn't able to support a monthly ceilidh, especially not a family friendly one as this seemed to be with a number of quite young children about. All completely anecdotal I know but it did strike me that unlike many other events I have been to in Porty in recent months I didn't see many people I know or even recognised. The one other Porty person I knew was someone I knew before through ceilidhs and who, like me, has recently moved here. And there were several familiar faces from the 'edinburgh ceilidh scene', even if it was my first ceilidh for at least a year. The same faces you see at ceilidhs at St Brides and Summerhall and so on. Which makes me think that maybe it wasn't a very local audience, and perhaps those previous poorly attended ceilidhs had struggled because there were other ceilidhs on the same weekends closer to town. Looking online at the excellent Mikes Community listings, this one did stand out as the first of the New Year which might explain its unusual popularity. Whatever it is, it still leaves the question - why can't Porty support a regular ceilidh?