Another surprise from library stock

Recently, I mentioned the local library system having few copies of what I might consider important classics and rather more copies of books that personally I would think less worth borrowing. A new surprise is noticing that the book I just read, and the next I've started, both happen to be Finnish. Hannu Rajaniemi's The Quantum Thief was rather good, so at least I am discovering some worthwhile novels, and the book came with a note saying that it was donated by The Finnish Institute and the Embassy of Finland. I surmise that the Moomins were a spearhead. I like the idea of national organizations making an effort to share culture like this.

An airshow with a pun

Holding the aerial displays out to sea, to be best viewed from Ayr beach, apparently made the appellation International Ayr Show irresistible. American airshows feature more of an abundance of modern military aircraft but, especially with paying only for car parking, there was still enough at this air show to make it well worth our going.

The Red Arrows were probably the main attraction. I hadn't known that Army people would be parachuting (that part over land, of course). My favourite, also popular with the crowd, was the Eurofighter Typhoon, which showed off some manoeuvring, we saw that both on the Friday and the Saturday. I also liked the Chinook, I hadn't realized quite how agile they can be, it made me wonder quite what the controls look like for a twin-rotor helicopter.

We were lucky with the weather. Friday evening's displays had the sunset as a scenic backdrop. Saturday's forecast had seemed mixed, there was rain later on, and on the following morning. At times when we most wanted not to be rained on, the clouds kindly obliged.

Traffic was fairly dreadful. Roads approaching and leaving Ayr were understandably congested. Perhaps more preventably, the car park at Belleisle Park seemed poorly managed, exiting was somewhat anarchic and took a very long time. The traffic was not directed well and some of the queues of vehicles trapped in the car park moved extremely slowly. I wondered if those using the car park at Ayr Racecourse fared any better.

Update: The traffic and car parking issues made the local news, with accounts of drivers being stuck in car parks for hours.