Carol Ann Duffy sashays into the RBS Main Theatre, draped in black velvet and sparkly things. After a genuine though rather weak introduction from Robyn Marsack of the Scottish Poetry Library, Duffy takes the podium next to a man with a saxophone whom she introduces as John, and announces that she's tired of being a poet and will just be doing a few jazz numbers in the bar.

Sunshine and howling wind on the first day of the book festival. Could it be an omen?

After getting my bright-red lanyard from the ladies in the press pod and a suspicious-tasting coffee with editor Richard in the Spiegelbar, I squelch across the still-wet grass to the Peppers Theatre.

Walking back up the Royal Mile last night I noticed a man with a large blow-up spider on his head.  I don’t think anyone else did. It took me back to one night in the late 70s when I was a passenger in a slow-driving car riding around the city centre with my then BBC Radio London colleagues Mike Sparrow and Arena producer Nigel Finch (RIP both) and one other, quite possibly the comedy writer David McGillivray (mercifully still with us).

Relieved by tramworks of its normal job of snarling up Princes Street on the first Sunday of the festival, this year’s Festival Cavalcade was held in Holyrood Park - allegedly combined with an unsponsored Fringe Sunday which, if there, was so minimalistic that my friends and I failed to find it.

Question - where is it perfectly normal to see one woman with three exposed breasts and two heads, and another with a spare waving arm on a brass stick? Answer - at the press launch of the Edinburgh Fringe.

Whatever you say about the Gilded Balloon, there's one fact you can't deny: they know how to throw a party.  The full-on ninety-minute reception prior to the launch show featured wickedly strong mojitos, but you didn't need to be half-cut to enjoy what's on offer this year.