shewhomust | Five happy summer things

Puffin numbers are in decline - but not on Skomer. A BBC report includes a video, which would be better with fewer pictures of ornithologists and more of puffins, and insists on moving on automatically to a report about pig-walking in the Brecon Beacons, but any puffin pictures are better than none.

Shopping triumph! My swimming costume disintegrated - I thought there was something odd last time I wore it, but it's so clingy when wet that it wasn't until I was folding it up to go swimming on Monday that I found the very large hole that was causing the problem. So on Tuesday I went into Newcastle early ahead of my reading group, and found not one but two swimming costumes in the first place I tried (Bon Marché - I miss their Durham store, which is being redeveloped as student accommodation, but that's another story). Neither is ideal, but both are my size, neither is absolutely hideous, and I have already tested one in the pool, without disaster. I also bought a copy of The Other Side of the World in a charity shop, so that's my next two books lined up. I call that a successful afternoon's shopping.

I hadn't taken my camera to Newcastle, so these are not my photographs of Grey's Monument, which has been transformed into the Workers' Maypole for the Great Exhibition of the North by artists Zoe Walker and Neil Bromwich:

Thanks to KaysGeog for the pictures!

Someone gave us a jar of Hari's Lime and Green Chilli pickle. Thank you, somebody, whoever you were! It was excellent, and we have scraped out the jar - but thanks to the internet, I know where to find more...

Below the Surface allows you to curate your own collection of finds from the excavation of Amsterdam's new metro line: hours of fun for all the family! If I (and the Guardian) understand this correctly, the line follows the route of two canals which had already been filled in, so many of the finds are things which had been dropped into the canals, but have been excavated from canals which are no longer there. The archaeology of ghost canals...