Funnily enough I came across another wild piglet just a couple of days later in Edinburgh at a National Galleries of Scotland exhibition.

This was a surprise visit and the surprise was satisfyingly complete. Fortunately no-one dropped dead at the unexpectedness of my putting in an appearance.

I went primarily to see Fiona’s production of The Island and Claire’s production of Antigone, both of which were very good, but I took in several other shows as well and enjoyed pottering about the town. It also gave me an opportunity to see Ewan's flat. It's rather splendid.

The fact that you can stumble over the most remarkable stuff is what makes the Fringe such fun for me although the cost of writing off the inevitable turkeys has increased a lot since I was there last. Casting around for a nearby show to get me out of the rain for an hour I came across The Penelopiad. This was a dramatisation of Margaret Atwood’s reworking of part of the Odysseus/Ulysses myth that she did for Canongate a few years ago. The central character is Penelope who tells us a little about her birth and early life and then of her miserable time in Ithaca waiting for Odysseus.

The production was superb. There was no programme and no-one at the venue could tell me anything about the young company who performed it but I’ve tracked them down on the web and recommend you keep my eyes open for them next year.

The high induced by the show lasted long enough to cause me to invest €2 in a second-hand copy of The Odyssey as I passed through Paris yesterday. Will it last long enough to cause me to read it though?

I have unfortunately returned with a stuffed up nose and a sore throat. But in the absence of a high temperature I don’t think it has anything to do with the swine, real and imaginary, that I have been exposed to over the past week.