Oh I do like to be beside the seaside...

Tidddly-pom! No moths today. we had a lovely Easter break at Scarborough instead, with piping hot sunny weather and all manner of fauna, human and otherwise, gambolling by the North Sea (or German Ocean as we used to call it; a more interesting and grander name in my view). I was specially pleased to catch this pair of Black-eared Kahlos, the little central American variant on the guinea pig which is becoming a fashionable pet in London. I had no idea they had reached Yorkshire, but here are two being given a careful outing by their owner on a window ledge.

Down at the sands - wonderful sands if you're not familiar with the Queen of the Yorkshire Coast - the activity was mostly human, but it was good to see the dear old Scarborough donkeys plying too and fro. I visited the castle (up there on the horizon) for the first time in my nearly 61 years. What a confession. I've been to Scarborough hundreds of times but always felt too lazy to tramp up the hill. It's well worth it.

My new penchant for aerial photography kept me busy, too, as our fish-and-chip lunch was carefully watched over by seagulls, vast birds at close quarters and producers of that wonderful keening cry. Its brief use in the theme tune to Desert Island Discs is to my mind a masterstroke of production or 'library' music.

There's another gull for you below; and here's one of the fantastically decorated scooters which parade up and down the front at holiday time, ridden by ancient Mods of my generation. Overweight Leeds solicitors now constitute today's equivalent of Rockers on their big black bikes. They're all much to old to fight one another as they did in the 1960s.

No moths, though. And actually, no Black-eared Kahlos either. If you look carefully, those are gulls' bottoms. I drew in the spooky eyes...