The 1900 to Kings X

Chugging along back from Edinburgh on the east coast mainline train service - facing the opposite direction from the way the train is going which always makes me feel queasy. National Express's very slow wi-fi means it is taking ages for each page to load (and National Express must use a Swedish server - I was invited to 'Logga in med ditt Google-konto' just now). Might not be a bad thing; I can do useful things like read or write my novel rather than facebooking, watching the Tudors on the BBC iPlayer or, well, blogging.

Haven't yet crossed the border; this part of the trip first hugs the coast, the train skipping along on the top of cliffs and through tiny fishing villages. Then inland a bit, through farmland, with lots of sheep, cattle and the odd bit of wildlife. A flock of crows mobbing a bird of prey catches my interest.

Caught up with friends in Auld Reekie and 'did the festival' as much as I could. Since I have been away for so long I loved every minute of it and was not so fucked off at the air kissing theatre luvvies or embarrassed by the Americans who bark inanities to the locals like 'I'm Scottish, too. One sixteenth, on my mother's side, my great-great grandmother was from Carlisle."

I did see Gordon Brown chatting with Ian Rankin at the book festival. El Gordo is brainy, well read, an intellectual and absolutely screwed. He talks to people as if they are reasonable and as smart as he is. This is noble but misguided. He fielded questions from the crowd and one lady had a very tart comment about the Labour goverment meddling with everything in people's lives. He answered her by talking - for a long while - about the Calvinists in John Knox's Edinburgh. Now there was a group of people who meddled in people's lives! And I was thinking, you just don't get it, do you Gordon? This is not, even in the more cerebral setting of a book festival, what people want to hear their PM talking about.