EH and I felt obliged to attend the University research conference, even though much of the content was of little interest to us.

On our arrival we could tell that many of our colleagues had ignored the event. This was a shame for them because they missed out on the amazing three dimensional ‘posters’  displayed in the basement.

‘I wish that they would put as much effort into writing up as they do creating these impressive models’ muttered EH, drawing attention to the work of a PhD student known to be running out of registration time.

I then handed over my conference contribution: a tray of Crombies sausages. Everyone was delighted with them.

Afterwards EH and I escaped to a nearby café with one of my PhD students in tow. There we met some of EH’s friends. Unfortunately for my mono-lingual student, we all spoke in French at the table. She therefore turned her attention to the people ordering citation index searches at the counter.

‘They’ll never get those done here’, I said. ‘Tell them that they’d be much better off asking at the National Library of Scotland’.