Life is an open book: Venice

Puzzle illustration by artist Aimee Stewart. It's taken me ages, this one.

Stayed at home today because I wasn't sure that I could manage my energy levels at work, and was still having temperature spikes. No cough, though...

I've spent the day listening to podcasts and author interviews from the Wigtown Book festival, which is online this year. Anyone can register to access a talk: payment is by voluntary donation. I've learned plenty, and also caught up with the latest hook by Denise Mina, the tartan noir crime writer. She was in the class below me at school. (I don't even remember much about her, though her elder sister was the one who told me that John Lennon had been shot, in one life changing sentence).

Do check out the Wigtown hook festival. It's well worth it. Scotland, race and Empire was another streamed conversation I attended. The David Hume Tower in Edinburgh, a concrete tower block in which I studied for all of three years, will never seem the same again, now that I've been informed of Hume's distinctly unenlightened views on 'race' and 'species'.