Two Capital Writers, myself (Kate Blackadder) and Anne Stenhouse, along with two other writing friends, ventured out of the capital this past weekend to attend ScotsWrite, a conference put on by the Society of Authors in Scotland. I say ‘ventured’, because although the venue, the Westerwood Hotel near Cumbernauld, is in theory about an hour’s drive away from Edinburgh, it somehow took us three. We passed through villages we’d never heard of before, and we certainly wouldn’t care if we never saw the one-way system round Falkirk Town Centre ever again. Ever again.

We consoled ourselves by accepting that we operate on the creative side of our brains and couldn’t possibly be expected to have a sense of direction as well. Fortunately we arrived in plenty of time for a very nice dinner, followed by the keynote speaker – Joanne Harris, no less – and our lack of wayfinding…