City, Church and Enlightenment

I had sufficient time, this morning, to take a short detour up the Royal Mile, which was in full preparation for the events of the afternoon. There were already a lot of people in place, but also a lot of police. I added a few extras since some people might want to see some details from central Edinburgh. The theme of City (Mercat Cross), Church (St Giles) and Enlightenment (Adam Smith) is reasonably obvious....all hanging out for the sovereign it would seem.

The second extra is the union flag at half mast on the University flagpole on Old College. I don't think that happens terribly often, because if a flag flies at half mast for a member of the university community, it is the university flag. I guess it did for Prince Philip last year.

I spent most of the day in McEwan Hall attending both of the Welcome Ceremonies for new students. In the afternoon, one of our students from the School won a prize. I took a sneaky picture. See the fourth extra (the student on the right). She was brilliantly articulate in addressing the assembled masses. Very impressive. In between, there was a university lunch and an opportunity to catch up with a few people, which was actually really useful. I ended up amongst a coven of vice principals....

At the end of the day, I had a nice catch up with TJO. It's going to be fun working together.

As I anticipated, I ended up walking all the way in and all the way back. Luckily the weather held up, and indeed it is a lovely evening. I hope it's a lovely night as some people will be spending it outside in the queue.... Quite why the original plan to have a queuing system running right through the middle of the university's central campus on the first two days of welcome week was maintained despite there surely being alternatives (Nicolson Street, for example?) is beyond me. When I went back to OC it was chaos by the underpass, with some people in the queue with their wristbands heading one way, and then a whole lot of other people heading the other way to try and get wristbands down at the bottom of George Square.... I dunno.... I didn't want to go and look. It must have been horrendous.