What a year that's been... It's been a privilege and a pleasure to be editing E2 and Scotgeist over the last twelve months or so. With E2, I've had the chance of commissioning from, and conversing with, some of the finest intellects on the planet - Anthony Giddens, Richard Rorty, Vaclav Havel, Eric Hobsbaum, Steven Pinker, E.O.Wilson, Zygmunt Bauman, Paul Romer, Howard Gardner, Tom Nairn, Ziauddin Sardar, Barbara Eirenreich, Jeremy Rifkin...to name but a few. And with Scotgeist, I was able to showcase a whole range of Scottish creators - Suspect Culture, The Butler Brothers, Soma Records, Eddie Campbell and Mark Miller, as well as writers like James Buchan, Alasdair Gray, Don Paterson, Edwin Morgan, Stuart Cosgrove, A.L.Kennedy, Luke Sutherland, Alan Spence, Denise Mina, Robert Crawford...Again, the list could go on.

The spirit of these pages, let me assure regular readers, will become manifest in other environs - not too far away, and not too long away either... But I'd like to take the chance to thank my editor, Harry Reid, for allowing me a freedom that no other newspaper in Britain would have granted its "contributing editor"; to thank all my writers, and correspondants, for their encouraging and "enlightening" comments; and finally, my profound

gratitude to Roy Petrie - whose capacity for graphic innovation never failed

(or fails) to amaze and delight me.

The archive for both pages will still be

on the web for a month or two

(www.e2-herald.com,www.scotgeist.com): I invite you to sample and enjoy.

Over and out