I’ve been sent a copy of the article in the New York Times which explains the now long-running controversy over ICOM’s definition as to what a museum is, and should be, which might seem a tiny bit arcane to those outside the profession, but which encapsulates the generational divide between those who still feel that they are pre-eminently about a collection of objects or works of art however interpreted – what in the 1970s was described as ‘the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity’ – and those who feel their their social mission should come first and be stated more radically. I have paid less attention to the dispute than I maybe should, but suspect that donors are not quite as enthusiastic about their social mission as is assumed:-

https://nyti.ms/31oA4E1

One of the things about lockdown was spending so much time indoors that one became more attentive to views out. Our windows need cleaning, but this means that they diffuse the evening light:-

Having been turned away from the beach yesterday, we were there this morning as the gate opened at 8am, so were able to enjoy it relatively empty at the beginning of the day, including a swim in the cold Irish sea:-

I sometimes feel that perhaps I am unduly pessimistic about the current political order – the taint of corruption, the fact that nobody apparently wants to be Cabinet Secretary because they know that it is now a job in which they will be blamed for the mistakes of ministers and abused by the press, elements of which are now on the payroll of government, the contracts which are given out without competitive tender to special advisors, the ripping up of planning rules; and then I read something which puts it better than I could:-

https://amp.economist.com/britain/2020/08/08/boris-johnsons-horrible-house-of-lords-list?__twitter_impression=true

Each summer I waste a lot of time and energy photographing the local bird life, which is not really practical with a mobile phone which renders geese as a distant blur. But today by a fluke I was standing in a field and the geese wheeled overhead in beautiful formation:-

It was a peach of a morning – clear blue sky, unusually clear and sun. By ten o’clock, they had closed the road to the beach and the local village was over-run. The phenomenon of the staycation is real in Anglesey, with three times as many people as usual everywhere, the campsite full, the single street full of cars, what is normally a quiet small village chock full of people.

We sloped off to the mud flats of Malltraeth Estuary instead:-

I stopped off at Castell Bryn-Gwyn, a wonderfully nondescript neolithic fort reached down a long muddy track from a lay-by just outside Brynsiencyn: nothing but cows and fields, in the middle of nowhere, thought to have been a religious sanctuary:-

After two days of bad weather, it’s looking better:-

The local tea shop is doing takeaway cream teas – two scones per box and two small punnets of jam and clotted cream, a wooden knife and paper napkin:-