Old and new

I was going to blip a photo of a cormorant hanging its wings out to dry on the WoL down by the shore, where I had sneaked off to have a farewell cake and deadline review with a colleague who is relocating, but then I spied in the distance that there were clearly several big ships in Leith Docks. Indeed, it's not that often that there are two state of the art Dive Support Vessels in (Iremis da Vinci and Iremis Atlantis), plus a general cargo ship, all pictured behind the Jean de la Lune which is yours, for a snip, at just £375,000.

Off to the book festival again this afternoon to hear about the future of universities. If it doesn't rain again today, I will worry about my law-stating capacity. Has it disappeared? I also wonder if I will have occasion to ask about the composition of the panel again. For the record, the answer was that nobody really checked. One organiser invited one speaker, and the other invited the other two, and no one sat down and thought whether 'rethinking Islam' really might not involve a balance of male and female speakers...