Well it was raining in Cork this morning, site of this week's ASPO conference, but by this afternoon it turned out to be somewhat nicer, and so I meandered over to the The Lifetime Lab where the evening welcome reception was to take place. (Irish descriptions tend to be “at the top of the road”, “meet in the City Center”, “within walking distance”, and so I wanted to be sure I got there). What those who showed up at the reception missed was that this is a recent addition to the Cork Landscape (open just over a year) and is a teaching tool for the community with several thousand school kids a year coming to learn about energy, the alternatives and the issues that will dominate their lives. The staff at the Lab were very kind, as well as informative about what they were doing with geothermal, as well as solar energy (20 sq m of panels on the roof) and, more to the point, took pity on a relatively geriatric case who took nearly an hour to make the “easy 20-minute” stroll out, and drove me back to the hotel.

I will leave each of you to write your own caption to the photo I thought most memorable from the reception. You should know, however, that the "victim" is Dr Campbell who was welcoming us to the reception, and yes the hawk was alive.