As readers have probably gathered, I have been in London for the last couple of days. The main purpose of the trip was to visit the Spectator, for the Ridley Prize for Environmental Heresy of which I'm one of the judges. The Spectator offices overlook St James' Park, so there was a certain aura of grandeur about the whole place and editor Fraser Nelson is an excellent host. Some really good essays have been submitted, and there were some very interesting discussions over an eventual winner. We didn't actually manage to reach a final conclusion but have narrowed it down to four.
The other purpose of the trip was to meet Steve McIntyre. By a stroke of good fortune he was arriving on Tuesday morning so I was able to extend my trip so we could meet. It was strange to finally meet the guy I had written a book about so long ago - we missed each other when Steve was over in 2010 because I was on holiday at the time. There was a lot to talk about though - we covered pretty much all of the IPCC reports, both Climategates, work, blogging and family. Intense, but great fun. I had suggested to Steve that a couple of hours would be enough as he was just getting off a trans-Atlantic flight. In the event we talked for well over four hours and it was only my own flight back to Edinburgh that forced us to go our separate ways.