Tour of views

I had a bit of a tour of different views around the university earlier on, and felt compelled to tweet about how tough my life is. Perhaps oddly, given I've been here for years, I had never been in the room in ECA where this photograph was taken. I went with black and white partly because it was taken through a window, and I was fairly sure that the colour versions had a cast on them which I wasn't quite sure how to get rid of.

Zooming around the university, I took in a E&D committee meeting, a workshop where I gave comments on a paper, a work-in-progress session and a School meeting. I came home straight after that, stopping to pick up a Book Festival programme in Lighthouse Books where my eyes lighted on a book which I had first heard mentioned at the workshop I was at in the morning. I picked it up and leafed through it, but didn't buy it - resisting the temptation for now, because I have so many unread books and I really should concentrate first on those.

My mind has been rather preoccupied for most of the day with the aftermath of the awful fire at Grenfell Towers. Someone shared a post on Facebook, with an associated link back to a blog on the Grenfell Action website, all of which really brings home to me how the whole shocking story is a microcosm of what is wrong with the UK today. It also brings the whole business "closer to home", in the sense of pulling in Gosford House outside Longniddry. What brought about this disastrous fire was systemic penny pinching, combined with a housing "market" that encourages people to "bank" (and leave empty) houses for decades on end, because that is more profitable, while others live in overcrowded and unsafe conditions where a simple fire is not confined to one flat, but creates a literal towering inferno.

Meanwhile, Brexit talks start on Monday.

Make me laugh. Truly, make me laugh.