Smoking!

Was on the phone with my daughter, who is giving evidence to one of the Parliamentary select committees tomorrow, when I noticed the castle was spouting plumes of smoke.

Later I learned it was a gun salute to Her Maj's 65 years on the throne. It seemed to go on for some time, as has her reign.

After the guns I went up to Morningside with T to mooch around the charity shops. Got an interesting history of the port of Leith (in very small typeface) and books about the Scottish peaks, some interesting bread (Rosemary and Potato) and two cups - one of which was from Portland, Oregon.

Looking up something to do with UK trade I came across a page that compared the UK and Germany. As a help for US readers land-area size comparisons of both countries were made with US states. It seems that the UK is lightly smaller than Oregon whereas Germany is slightly smaller than Montana. Wow.