After lunching together yesterday Siobhan and I came across a crowd in Hanover Street. The street was closed to traffic and there were several cops on motorcycles hanging about. It was not at first obvious what was going on but almost immediately a car flying a royal standard pulled up so there was clearly a benefit claimant in the offing (what else can one call the beneficiaries of the civil list?).

A royal protection chappie came out of a building and stationed himself by the car and was followed by Princess Anne who waved cheerily at her mum's subjects, got in the car and was whisked off. Interestingly the building she came out of is occupied in part by Kelly Office Services so maybe she was looking for a real job.

Siobhan declared herself neither shaken nor stirred by this incident but Anne's continuing loyalty to Scottish rugby despite its indifferent results rather endears her to me in spite of my anti-monarchist tendencies; mind you given some of the presidents one has seen around I'm inclined to be anti-republican as well. So I was disappointed that I had once again broken my rule of never leaving the house without a camera and thus didn't get a snap. I'll have to change my phone for one that's got a camera built in.

A further and more bitter disappointment awaited me. I'd popped my saxophone into a repair shop when I got to Edinburgh to get the crook screw fixed and collected it shortly after not taking a picture of the princess. The guy told me that he had replaced a couple of leaking pads as well as fixing the screw. That's not quite double dutch to me. It means a couple of holes are not being fully closed when they should be so some sounds are not quite right.

Anyway whether as a consequence of this or because it had been two weeks to the day since I'd last blown the thing I was horrified at what came out (or didn't) when I tried to play it yesterday.

A fearsome regression I fear. When will I get away from square one?