Encounter with a wasp beetle and other animals

Sprang up from my airbed this morning for coffees with Mum and Mas. Then spent some time with Mum playing Carcassonne, the game that Toby and Romy sent mum. This was surprisingly enjoyable, and fairly easy to pick up, though I still don't know what the farmers are for. I've actually been to Carcassonne, and it does have a remarkable castle. Anyway we played it and it was fun.

Mum and Mas then off to the dentist, and I did a spot of cleaning and sorting out my emails. Then a really enjoyable lunch driving off to a pub in Letchmore Heath near Elstree called The Three Horseshoes. Mum got talking to the landlady who was outside with her dog Angel, which was some species of barking boxer or something with one of those evil grotesque faces and bat ears. Apparently Angel was scared of cats and handbags. Or cats in handbags. I forget.

Had a really useful conversation with Mas about business which helped me see the wood for the trees. Mum meanwhile befriending an insect, which I now learn is called a wasp beetle. It was inside the pub, and because Mum was looking sadly at it as we left, so I picked it up and took it outside on my finger. It is fine example of nature's mimicry. It looks like a wasp but is in fact a ungrateful biting weasel that gnawed at me while mum was photographing it on my finger.

Then back to Brighton. Lorraine came by and drove us to the beach where we simply walked about by the unusually calm sea. Shoals of mackerel came within feet of the shoreline, simultaneously breaking the surface with dozens of soft splashes. There were a few anglers casting into the middle of these shoals, oddly to no avail.

Below The Three Horseshoes, a very English scene, a cat face in mum's shell and pebble piece, and the bitey-faced wasp beetle.