Porty People and Places

9/11 seems to have been all but purged from our collective memories. as promulgated by our media this year. How can we seem to forget, so easily, the horrors of this day in the USA in 2001?

The Battle of Britain. in the skies above our isles was being fought in 1939 the length and breadth of Britain. Our Guernsey Blip friends were in the centre of some of those special commemorations today.

Here in Portobello we were in the company of Richard de Marco - international artistic entrepreneur born in Bath Street, Portobello. The event at Edinburgh College was extremely well attended and we were all enthused by this octogenarian's energy and commitment to get The Edinburgh Festival wake up to bringing mainstream events to the city's seaside here in Portobello. He was flying to Krakow, Poland, at 0600 tomorrow morning to open an art centre there that has put its money into the arts and not its trams.

The leaflet, in Richard's hands celebrates the new book The Birth of the Few and commemorates the first casualties of the Battle of Britain - the opening loss of life in World War II which happened here in the first RAF v Luftwaffe dogfights over The Firth of Forth and the crashed planes fell on Portobello .

That was The Battle of Britain. Tonight a political Battle for Britain rages on - only a week to go now until the big count begins.