Hay-fest

Phew! Cultured out…
 
You will forgive this short blip if I explain that I am still reeling from having listened to not one, but two Nobel Prize winners and one of the world’s leading historians, Neil McGregor, all talking abut their work today.
 
Svetlana Alexievich, the first Russian woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize for literature for giving voice to the lives of ordinary Russians, mainly women, whose stories she has told for the first time.
 
And they are very different from the official ones.
 
She quickly disillusioned any fond hopes we might have in the West that Russia has changed.
 
Venki Vamakrishnan the chemist who received a Nobel Prize for his work on antibiotics said that when he got the initial call from Stockholm telling him he had won he thought it was a hoax.
 
Asked his views on the Referendum Neil McGregor , former director of the British Museum and an authority on Germany, said he was all for us remaining in.
He pointed out that in Germany a Referendum would not be allowed under their constitution because it could so easily be manipulated.
 
.
 
Oh yes Joan Bakewell spoke on the dilemma facing us all today in medical ethics and our ageing population.
 
And this is the first day….
 
   
PS The carpark attendant refused to accept our Scottish money until his boss came over and told him it was genuine.