Packed my bag yesterday morning for a beach day in the town of Aberdour, just North of Edinburgh across the Firth of Forth. Out there it was spitting the rain, and there was a sweet gray fog stretching across the water, so we couldn't see the city. A squat little lighthouse, red-turreted, stood on a wee headland nearby, proudly asserting our beach's existence against the gray. Later in the day, someone called, "Look, it's lightening up a bit," and this meant just that we could see the definition of a cloud against the gray sky, and the dim silhouette of the city across the water.

There was much comment on the poor choice of weather for a beach trip, even as we switched into shorts and tossed a disc on the sand. A young lady called out (unironically I thought at first): "I judge the sun to be past a yardarm, so we can drink." But I had underestimated British dryness (even Scottish dryness), as the woman soon proved herself of cunning wit.

The water was not cold, not from the cold air at least, but no one induldged a swim, not even I, who was keen. Instead we huddled in a gazebo and ate lunch, swigging wine from a bottle. Conversation was happy and general. Catch-phrases were made and used within the session.

A few middle-aged picnickers turned up in the gazebo, then, and laughed at finding others "as crazy as us." They were merry, too, and drinking, too—it always surprises me when people over 40 have fun. Is there not a rule against that somewhere?

We retreated to a pub, drinking tea, whiskey, coffee, and ale (not necessarily in that order). An old man at a nearby table tried to tell us some miscellaneous facts; we watched the rugby (rousing rough, that stuff is) and dried and warmed.

Once ready, we trained back into the city and bussed up to someone's flat in the far nether regions of Leith. There I learned of the Wii, a late-model gaming console from Japan. It's games are atheletic, simple, and fun—much unlike the fiddly, cerebral games of yore.

One of the upsides to living in a foreign country is never knowing whether you're looking at something familiar or strange. Were these people geeks? Country people? Snobs? Slobs? I knew not, I couldn't read them; I didn't need to. They were my companions for the day, and fine ones, too.