Midsummer memories

I've been thinking about plans for a spring trip to Galloway, and about things I wanted to post about our visit there last summer. But this is not that post, because I was distracted, while sorting through some photos, by this glimpse of the house we rented in Pittenweem earlier that summer:

You could call it "Self-portrait with bears," and certainly it was the bears that caught my eye to begih with. You find all sorts of things in holiday cottages, and a soft toy or two isn't really surprising, but this abundance - bears and oels and hedgehogs, oh, my! - was exceptional. Then I noticed that one of the bears (the one waering purple satin) had fangs ...

But the real joy is the books. Not the Merriam-Webster, though you never know when you might need a thesaurus. I can't remember what the Alan Garner was, but the top two books in that pile are Joan Aiken's Night Birds on Nantucket and Diana Wynne Jones' Wilkins' Tooth. That's a well-furnished room.