Scotland!

Ah, Scotland! Land of beauty and grace and friendly people, of chips with salt'n'sauce, of highland and lowland, of hairy cow and tracksuited ned, of porridge and butter tablet!

The main reason for my visit to Scotland this week was to give a seminar in Glasgow on Monday. I arranged to give the same talk in Edinburgh on thursday, and so I had a solid three spare days for having fun and mathstalk with friends and colleagues. The talks, I think, were okay, and there was a definite improvement from the first talk to the second.

Dinner in Glasgow took place at a nice indian restaurant. Bizarrely enough, on the wall by our table was a portrait of Kramer from Seinfeld. (Now a controversial man, of course.) The rest of the paintings were just swirly things and landscapes! Still, the beans on toast was brilliant.


Here is our band. As you can see, I am the frontman (such charisma, see) and Colin Murray is a big fan.

It was really great to catch up with people and find out how things are going. Of course, much is the same, but the differences really stand out. Most amusing, I think, is how Lord Bailey has taken on the role of coffee machine's curmudgeonly enforcer with such relish. It's a fine machine, of course, and it obviously benefits from the Tobester's tender caresses, but I feel that a little bit of the world's joy has died.

This post was brought to you courtesy of someone else's wireless connection. If you are the provider then thank you and sorry. But it's your own stupid fault.