It’s getting to the stage where this wee corner of our world needs a clash diary. As ever the Helensburgh winter festival and the Cove and Kilcreggan Book Festival were held over the same weekend – no way round it really, since our partners, Book Week Scotland, only have one weekend attached.

Still, a lot of intrepid locals managed to hurl themselves round both sets of festivities – helped by some truly stunning weather. This time last year bookfest visitors could hardly see the loch from ten feet through the horizontal sleet.

This time round everyone raved about the scenery as they arrived on the Peninsula. And some of them fetched themselves up after making Herculean efforts to get here. The organisers of the Ullapool Book Festival, on which our Cove Burgh Hall event is based, drove all the way down from Wester Ross to see how their wee sister was coming along.

The authors were no slouches either – Alistair Moffat did a 300 mile round trip on Sunday to enthral the audience with his tales of Scotland’s past. And then had to rush home to comfort the Moffat family’s new baby – an 8 week old Westie puppy called Maidie.

Turns out she wasn’t called after the late, great Chic Murray’s Maidie, but after Sir Walter’ Scott’s dog of the same name. Though, as a friend of Alistair’s dryly noted, Scott’s canine companion was a very large Irish deerhound rather than a daft wee terrier.

George Wyllie’s daughter Louise, and fellow biographer Jan Patience, both arrived with some fine examples of

the Gourock scul?tor’s metallic birds and were delighted to find that Liz Lochhead had stayed over from her own event the night before, and opened theirs with a recitation of the ode she’d written in George’s honour.

Chris Brookmyre was in sparkling form, and finished his gig with a hilarious performance piece complete with an extraordinary range of accents. Muriel Gray, who gave us a typically feisty finale, also

tried her hand at sarf London speak with great success, reading her own short story.

As you’ll gather we were treated to a marvellously diverse range of talents and genres and, despite working non stop for two days (not to mention the weeks of preparation), our volunteer crew emerged from a sea of home baking to ask what we were doing about next year! Which either makes them the most brilliant small army around or contenders for masochists of the year.