Two unusual visitors

And just enough time before the dinner bell for something entirely different. Sirus and Io are infrequent but welcome visitors.

‘I like the way ye cock yer lug
Wee freenly dug …’
from WD Cocker’s eponymous poem

Thanks be to Lizzie for finding the above.

Photos, as promised…

Here’s a few snaps of yesterday’s festivities, as promised…

Badges, bookmarks, booklets, Bawr stretter!, the name of our exhibition of EM’s work, also opened yesterday.

We didn’t get an exact figure, but we reckon 89 people on an 89th birthday party is a fine guesstimate…

EM cuts his birthday cake, to much cheering, clapping and snapping. We never did see a more Bruce Bogtrottery cake…

Hamish, caught mid-think, on being asked, how do you rate the cake? (9/10, if you care to know).

SPL architect Malcolm Fraser and Mike Wade, who wrote this nice piece in The Times, have an intense discussion. This was unposed. Ok ok, it was completely posed.

Two of EM’s long-term pals, Edinburgh Makar Ron Butlin and Glasgow’s Poet Laureate Liz Lochhead.

Ron made a toast in which he called EM ‘the grandest possible grand old man’. We concur.

YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO.