Today as I arrived at work I was stopped by a couple of American tourists.

"Excuse me, do you mind if I ask you a question? Could you tell me what this means?"

"This" was an Evening News bill that read: "ROYAL MILE A DEATH TRAP".

"I don't know, I'm sorry, I haven't read the paper."

"So what's your feeling about it? What do you think it might mean? Is it a death trap for tourists?"

Ah. OK.

"I think it's probably about traffic, I haven't heard about anything that serious."

"But you don't know?"

"No."

They went away off in the direction of the Royal Mile, presumably discussing whether to risk death to see a bunch of old buildings. When I got inside I looked up the story in the paper. Here it is.

I was right, it's about traffic. But the crazy thing is, the street is supposed to be a death trap because part of it is pedestrianised. Sorry? If the story had been this one I could understand.

In other news, my scanner has stopped working as well as the printer now. I think the problem is the USB hub, so I've got a new one arriving in the post tomorrow. If that doesn't fix things I'm looking at a long gastly process of uninstalling and reinstalling and tearing my hair out and talking to support folk. Windows 98 is supposed to be stable!