I meet a friend for late afternoon espresso on George St, due to the lack of table space and affordable muffins in Charlotte Square. As soon as I walk through the box office and into the street, I have the feeling of falling back through the looking glass. It's easy to be sucked into the pleasant escapism of the Book Festival.

Approaching Charlotte Square from George Street, I spot Ian Rankin. Standing across from me on the traffic island, waiting for the lights to change, talking nicely to a couple of starstruck American tourists in pink jumpers. Then a bus passes between us, and he vanishes.

I once spotted Iain Banks on a wintry rush hour train in Glasgow, and immediately texted a friend who I knew was a fan. “Is he Iain Banks or Iain M Banks today?”, was the reply.

Bibliophilia is on the up. Not just coffee table-books or sleb bios, nor even wall-to-wall right-on-ness. Just ordinary books and ordinary readers with, each year, more festivals to celebrate and sell them. So it’s hardly surprising that Edinburgh’s West Port Book Festival should be attracting the attention and accolades of the arty, the literati and the inevitable twitterati.

The press pod in Charlotte Square is like a novelty igloo with recycling bins and literary reviews, and better coffee than the Spiegelbar. This windy afternoon I find out from the pod ladies that last night's visit from the Poet Laureate's deceased mother was, in fact, the tattoo fireworks.

Just a quick one, and more of a general observation: so far, all of the comedy I've seen has been of quite high quality.  No show under 4 stars so far, and this from the Edinburgh Fringe Comedy scene, generally agreed to be a testing ground for new material for the tour...  Is Edinburgh becoming a new place beyond the testing ground?