A snowplough arrived in Dicksonfield this morning, about four days too late. The driver sat for a while, mobile phone pressed to his ear, no doubt reporting the absence of snow to his management. Had he bothered to drive around the back of some of the blocks or even just to the bottom of the entry road he'd have found something to plough but he put his phone back in his pocket and drove off.

No thanks to the ploughboy but normal traffic on top of snow clearing and grit spreading by some residents has brought our main drag into a passable without too much care condition.

This is a fine pair of boots that I have owned for many years and here they are sporting the latest in city winter walking technology.

We're all familiar with strapping on crampons when we take to mountain snowfields and I strapped on the urban equivalent on Sunday to get home from London Street.

Called Yaktrax and available from all good outdoor shops they must be the bestest birthday present I've been given this year so far.

Need cheering up in the bleak and snowy wasteland that is Edinburgh this morning?

Try Ronnie Corbett, one of the city's most cheerful characters, in a sketch for the electronic age.

There was a treat for snooker fans last night when John Higgins topped his come back from match fixing allegations with a come back on the table.

Trailing by 9 frames to 5 he took 5 frames in a row to win the UK championship by one frame.

For anyone who struggles to move the cue ball in a straight line from one end of the table to the other his skills are supernatural.

See the closing stages.

I've been watching the struggles of my fellow citizens against the winter weather with what might best be called amused indifference.

It's a long time since I did a 360 in my Fiat X19 in a late night snowstorm on the A68 driving back to Edinburgh from Norwich. One of the many benefits of being retired and living in a comfortably warm flat with a supermarket within spitting distance is that I don't have to go anywhere and if I do it's not far.

Who'd be young?

Today's Woman's Hour included an item on burlesque in which pro and con arguments were put. I liked the definition given at the top of the programme. It's posh girls stripping off when they ought to know better.

That's private education for you.

With help I got my car dug out on Friday and got down to the borders on Saturday for a Tempest reunion party. We drove down on clear roads through beautiful snow-covered countryside. The journey back on Sunday was just the same but today we're snowed in again.

What perfect timing, but that production must be blessed for didn't the rain stop just in time during the last performance to give us an entire run whose outdoor scenes were unaffected by weather.

I got an email in response to ordering something on-line that told me "Your order has been shipped and will be delivered to you within the next few days. You can check on the status of your order 9999 at any time by clicking on http:link."

So, eager to find out where it had got to in this fiendish weather, I clicked on the link and up came a Royal Mail page saying "Recorded signed for items are only tracked after the item has been delivered........Please try again later."

Are they serious?

There is growing discontent being voiced on the radio this morning about automatic school closures because of the snow. I saw a man and child arrive at the local primary at five past nine. They both left two minutes later. I expect he got straight onto the phone to join the complaining band.

Child safety is said to be the issue. That can't be the explanation for the cancellation of the daytime adult education class that I should be attending at this very minute. The school in which it takes place has someone there answering the phone so it can't be buried in snow. (Neither the school nor the phone.)

The man who is organizing a petition to parliament to prevent schools and other organizations from banning parents from taking pictures of their little darlings in nativity plays on the grounds of child safety might think about extending it to cover school closures as well.

There's always a certain amount of disruption when wintry weather strikes but in Edinburgh today the buses were doing their best to get around the city and most businesses seemed to be up and running.

I was disappointed to hear that tomorrow's celebrations in St Andrew's Square had been cancelled because of the wintry weather. That seemed a bit chicken-hearted to me but apparently "The snow has damaged two of the marquees, creating a potential public safety issue, " Well I don't want to be smothered by a collapsing marquee so I suppose I'll have to let them off for acting on the better safe than sorry principle.

The airport was closed at times and given the way my bus was sliding about at 15 miles an hour on a gritted road that was probably a sensible application of the better safe than sorry principle as well.

Why were the schools closed though? In rural areas where roads may well be impassable and people live quite far from their school you can see a reason for it. Who wants to be trapped overnight in a badly heated building with hundreds of kids and an inadequate handful of teachers. If ever there was a case for better safe than sorry then that's it.

But here in the city centre? I've had a look at the catchment area map for my local primary and the furthest point from the school can't be more than half an hour's walk even in snowy conditions. So the pupils could surely have got there. Travel problems for the teachers then, who may well live much further away. That hasn't stopped hundreds of other people getting to work. So what's at issue? Snowball fights in the playground endangering pupil safety? Greater potential for accidents? Something might go wrong so better safe than sorry and too bad for the parents who had to take a day off as a result?

But if we give the schools the benefit of the doubt we surely can't do the same for my local library, also closed because of adverse weather conditions according to a notice on its door. I am truly struggling to see how the weather impacts on a library. This one doesn't even open till 1pm on a Monday, so it's not as though overnight snow hadn't been totally cleared by the time the staff needed to set out from home.

It's the sort of mystery that give public services and public servants a bad name.

Looks like I've been well and truly had.

The consensus of those commenting on the royal wedding article that I posted about is that it's a spoof. They pick out a number of points that are giveaways for someone better acquainted with Marlborough College and/or popular culture than I am.

So hats off to i and The Independent. I may buy you again.

"Make no mistake, there is nothing grand about young Kate Middleton! Her parents may be multi-millionaires with a sprawling mansion in Berkshire, she may have been public school-educated, own her own London flat and take her holidays in Mustique but, beneath the surface, she is simply "our Kate", a modern girl like thousands of others."

I fear the paragraph above is not ironic. It is part of a wholly cringe inducing article that appears in the soi-disant new kind of newspaper i. You can read the whole nauseating piece in i's progenitor, The Independent.

I read it en route to a talk at the NLS by the author of Scott-land, a fascinating sounding book about Walter Scott. Much of the book I gather (in spite of the warm feelings aroused by the vino accompanying it's promotion I did not buy but shall wait till it's in the library before reading) is concerned with the remarkable influence that Scott has had culturally throughout the world over the last 180 years or so.

Part of his non-literary fame rests on his stage management of George IV's visit to Edinburgh in 1822 when he bigged up the king to the Scots and vice versa. I suspect the i's royal correspondent to be an acolyte of Scott in this respect if not in his prose style nor (hopefully) his cultural influence.

As you know I loved Disgo but there was another show at the Traverse this week that fear of the laws of libel prevented me from reviewing.

Joyce generously gives it two stars, thanks in all probability to the brownies which I agree were tasty.

She should come and see the Improbables who do improvisation a whole lot better.

As I sat at breakfast looking at the clear blue sky the radio declared that there would be rain in Scotland and that it would fall mostly in the east.

At lunchtime the weather forecast spoke again of rain in eastern Scotland. The sky was no longer predominantly blue but I had not yet seen rain.

At 5pm I was assured that the rain in eastern Scotland would ease in the course of the evening.

It is now after midnight and Edinburgh is as dry as a bone as it has been all day, though to be wholly truthful I cannot vouch for the period between 17.45 and 20.15 when I was at the cinema.

I draw no conclusions from this set of circumstances.

In these terror times we don't raise an eyebrow at an airport when asked to take off our shoes, but it is a little more unusual to be told - not even asked - to take off your shoes when about to take your seat in a theatre.

But that's how we were treated at the Traverse last night. Full of bonhomie engendered by the drink that had been liberally served at what the Trav luvvies called their wassail before the show, we the audience cheerfully complied. As the lights dimmed we were cajoled out of our seats onto the black performance space, ducking under the blue fluorescent light bearing bars that surrounded it as we went. For the ensuing hour or so a performance took place around, amongst and with us. We were cleverly marshalled here and there at times and at others were free to roam and frequently had to move smartly out of the way as a body slithered along the floor or gyrated across the space. We were incorporated into the performance when for example a dancer curled herself around a spectator's leg, leant on a shoulder or took two people by their waists and whisked them adroitly from one side to another through the crowd crying touch me, touch me to the rest of us. Some of the dancers were clearly identifiable as such by their clothes and where they appeared from at the start but others had been seated in the auditorium dressed normally so it wasn't always obvious who was performer and who was spectator. The show culminated with the audience grouped together in the centre of the acting area waving their arms in the air while the performers looked on.

It was great fun. Clearly about removing barriers between audience and performer Disgo didn't just breach the fourth wall but consigned it to oblivion along with the other three. I can't imagine how the job could be better done.

I know almost nothing about video games and I care even less. But that may be about to change for I am lending my voice to a video game modding project.

The little I do know about these games is that they seem to consist of trying to get from A to B while running about shooting, wielding swords, slicing the heads off people, fighting weird creatures, indulging in various sorts of derring do, and all to a deafening soundtrack.

This game, Dragon Age, looks to be from that mould since players are said to "engage in bone-crushing, visceral combat against massive and terrifying creatures". But there is perhaps something more subtle involved since they also "experience complex moral decisions".

I'm not sure if they make them or suffer the consequences of them. Both probably. Judging by the brief I have been given about my character he'll be in the thick of the moral decision making side of the game, but not above slicing off the odd head.

Here tis:

1. Ruggieri (Roo-jerry)

2. Character Acting Style:

Ruggieri is always concentrating and pondering. He has a warriors posture and resolve coupled with the wisdom and experience of his age. As such, he always stands with his chest out but is never too forceful in his posture. His face is always calm and dictating. He uses soft and short physical movements when walking or making gestures.

3. Number of lines: To be determined

4. Character Role:

Ruggieri is sort of the father Farinata never had. He loved her mother very much and acts as a guardian for Farinata and Neona due to the death of both their parents. Ruggieri often helps calm Farinata’s rage and embues (sic) her with a sense of morality and understanding throughout troubled times.

5. Male, 44, Dalish. Calmly spoken, always encouraging.

6. Character Personality:

Ruggieri has a warm dismeanor (sic) that makes him very approachable. He’s dealt with a lot of pain in his life but somehow still came out an optimist.

7. Character Voice:

Ruggieri has a warm and calming voice. He can generally talk someone out of any rage induced fit. He thinks before speaking so his comments are always calm and concise.

8. Character Background:

Ruggieri was desperately in love with Farinata’s mother before the sisters were born. Farinata’s mother chose a human male instead and it ate away at Ruggieri over the years. Since then, he has had to care for the sisters from nearly toddlers and is constantly reminded of his loss in love for their mother. While he doesn’t tell them about these things, he knows Farinata is at least somewhat aware of the past.

9. Character Story Arc:

Ruggieri is taking care of Neona throughout the entirety of the game until the end when they are attacked by the Darkspawn and Neona is killed. He then relates the news to Farinata which triggers the last event, rage-filled Farinata slaughters the Darkspawn at Hunter Fell.

10. Dialogue Samples:

“Farinata, this war is going to be more costly than you can imagine. Are you sure you want to seek out the Grey Wardens?”

Delivery: Concerned comment, worrisome/concerned

Situation: Ruggieri asking Farinata to reconsider searching out the Grey Wardens to fight the Darkspawn.

“The Grey Wardens need your skills Farinata, no one can conquer the Darkspawn alone.”

Delivery: Debate on the issue of humans handling their own problems. Encouraging/steadfast

Situation: Ruggieri relates the importance of everyone working together despite racial differences in order to survive.

“We were attacked again at Kal-Sharok....their (sic) were too many Fari...I’m....I’m sorry.”

Delivery: Emotional breakdown, nearly crying/ashamed

Situation: Ruggieri reveals to Farinata that her only living family is dead.

I can't wait to get that armour on and stick my chest out.

I saw an interesting programme on the box this evening tracing the history of Donald Trump's campaign to build "the greatest golf course in the world", not to mention a hotel, apartment blocks and hundreds of houses on the coastal dunes just north of Aberdeen.

It's taken four years but he's overcome almost all obstacles and work has started. I say almost because there are still two pieces of land that he wants but which the owners refuse to sell. The threat of compulsory purchase hangs over them and I have little doubt that Trump will ultimately prevail.

The glimpses inside his Manhattan apartment and private jet afforded by the programme indicate something of a Louis 14th lifestyle and three wives suggests a nod towards Henry the 8th but he seemed a nice enough chap and by all accounts he loved his teuchter mum from Stornoway. So it's a combination of big businessman ambition and sentiment that's the driving force behind the project. Your guess as to the proportions of each.

A small golf course could maybe have nestled in there without doing much damage but I think the scale of the development will completely spoil the area. The saving grace may be that, as an Aberdeenshire friend of mine said, no-one will be mad enough, given the climate, to live in the place.

The solemnity of a day like remembrance Sunday can cause one’s thoughts to get a bit mixed up and words to come slightly out of order.

I’m sure that must have happened to the lady whose email arrived just after the two minutes silence. Going by the name of 2HotRebecca she invited me to visit her on a website. She assured me that access was free of charge but cautioned that “They make you join to verify your age.”

Verification of my age is I think assured by the fact that I didn’t take up the little poppet's invitation.

In my earliest days at primary school an essential tool for writing and drawing was a slate. These were much in evidence when on Friday I visited Scotland Street school, one of Rennie Mackintosh's fine buildings that is now a museum showing the school life of yesteryear.

I went round the museum with an object in my hands that was extraordinarily like a slate and which had writing and drawings on it. But this was an Ipad and I was participating in a site specific theatrical presentation called Alma Mater developed by Fish and Game and presented as part of a get together of the International network for contemporary performing arts.

The drawings were technically speaking a video, and I was led around the building by a series of children who appeared on the screen. It was a bit weird to walk along a corridor following a child who was in the video image of the corridor but wasn't in the real corridor and to encounter other members of the virtual school community in various situations.

It was entertaining and enjoyable, but keeping an eye on the screen and on the real world at the same time (to avoid tripping on the stairs for example) meant that I didn't think much about what it was all in aid of, i.e. its artistic purpose!

Fortunately I had a handout that I read afterwards that spelt it all out. It's quite long so I'll just quote wee bits of it:

"....Alma Mater follows children learning how to behave, resisting their own playful, carnal desires and submitting to the world of adults. ......Mackintosh employed images of growth up through the vertical levels of the school......the film echoes this growth both in the size of the children's bodies and in the accumulation of knowledge gained on the journey through the school...."

At the Traverse earlier in the week Wedekind's Spring Awakening also put slates to good use but here the children were not resisting their playful, carnal desires and the poor dears paid the price.

The Guardian review gave it four stars and I will admit to having admired the staging (apart from the tedious back and fro of the big blackboard) and the capabilities of the actors but I just didn't engage with the piece at all, probably because whatever adolescent angst I experienced has vanished into the mists of time and the shock value of the play along with it.

Maybe the rock musical version would have got me scribbling on my slate with more enthusiasm.

The other day I moaned about the distribution of The Edge of Dreaming. The film-maker has contacted me to let me know that it is showing at the Eden Court in Inverness this weekend.

Unfortunately I am not free to attend but others may be, especially since after seeing the film on Saturday you can take part in a dream workshop on Sunday. Here is the description from the Eden Court website:

"The director is offering a special space for people to engage with film in a new and personal way. The Edge of Dreaming is a documentary that takes us into the dreams of an ordinary woman, a rational, busy mother of three who doesn't have time to remember her dreams. But when they come, shockingly, true, she begins to explore the interface between dreams and neuroscience. The results are startling and profound.

The film has a lot of space for the audience to bring in their own perspective and this workshop is an opportunity to bring your own experiences to understanding gained through the film. There are a maximum of twelve places for people to take part in this 2 hour workshop the day after the screening as a group, we will work with your own dreams, fears and life experience, engaging with it further through story. "

This would be just the ticket for a blogging friend of mine who has been going on about her dreams a lot recently.

One of my dreams when I'm awake is that one day I will be a good golfer. The nightmare is that the summer has shown, as did the previous summer, that I am just getting worse. I have decided to take matters in hand this winter. Normally I eschew the practice range but there is a deal in town where senior lads and lassies get a basket of balls, a cup of coffee, a plate of biscuits and some tuition on a Thursday morning for only 50p more than the cost of the balls themselves.

I tried it out this morning. The other oldies were a cheerful group and the coffee and biscuits were excellent. What's more, and after watching me for only a couple of minutes, the pro made a small change to my swing that gave a much better result. So I'll be back. Had it not been raining I'd have played nine holes on the adjacent course but you have to draw the athletic line somewhere.

On the way home I passed an LRT bus vaunting an improved exhaust system with the cheerful and imaginative slogan that I might make my own - "auld but not reekie".

Homework for my Spanish class was to prepare something about national stereotypes so being a thoroughly modern schoolboy I turned to the internet for inspiration and information.

I found this amusing set of maps showing how the world looks from different points of view.

I was very dismissive of Inception, mostly because it was little more than lots of people running about in various places shooting at one another, but partly because of its absurd premise about infiltrating people's dreams.

Nonetheless I find dreams and dreaming intriguing so I was very interested to hear the other day about a film documenting the film-maker's experience of dreaming that she was going to die and subsequently falling ill and coming within an inch or two of fulfilling the dream. It's a Scottish film by a local film-maker and it premiered at the Edinburgh Film Festival in June, although I wasn't aware of it then, so it is not a little annoying to find that a DVD is available in the USA but not here. To find further that one can watch the film on-line but not with a Scottish IP address adds to that annoyance.

No doubt it is all to do with money. I would feel more charitable towards Amy Hardie's escape from death if the film had been made available here before it went on to rake in the dollars. But it is about to be released in cinemas in the UK and I very much hope that it will return to the city of its birth so that I can see The Edge of Dreaming.

I must have been on the edge of dreaming this evening when at Fort Kinnaird I found myself going frenchwise round a roundabout. I blame the complicated layout of those commercial centres.

Two weeks ago tonight I was enjoying a delicious roast dinner with friends in Northumberland en route home from France. My time there was lovely but apart from the square bottomed pepper and salt mills that I forgot to pack I'm not missing anything so far, thanks to having been much diverted here by theatre, cinema, live music and suchlike cultural outings, none of which figured in my six pleasant and peaceful weeks in the French countryside.

Have no fear I'm not going to list them all but will report that I enjoyed the very entertaining and up to date Tamara Drewe coupled with the ten years older equally entertaining but quite different Amélie at the Cameo today. The contrast in styles was an entertainment in itself.

When the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in Scotland comes along I'm sure there will be much celebration, very douce in nature of course and even a little dour, but if like me you can't wait another 50 years pop along to the National Library and marvel at the small display of contemporaneous books and documents commemorating the 450th anniversary. These include an Act of the Scottish Parliament abolishing the Pope's authority in Scotland. I hope they kept that discreetly out of sight when Benedict was in Edinburgh last month.

The big man of our restoration was of course John Knox and much of the work here is his including the order of service he put together for the new church. The copy on display is open at Psalm 23 with a very different first verse from the one I learnt at my mother's knee.

The Lord is onely my fupporte
and he that doeth me fede.
How can I then lack any thing
whereof I ftand in need?

There's a tune as well which is undoubtedly not Crimond but I didn't manage to copy it down.

If recreation rather than restoration is your bag then daunder further to their brilliant exhibition on the history of golf.

Scotland claims pantomime as well as golf but like the sport the entertainment may have roots elsewhere, Taiwan maybe? If you'd been in the George Square theatre with the Lord Provost and me watching 明華園 (the Ming Hwa Yuan Arts and Cultural Group) perform 鴛鴦槍 (Lovebird Spears) and 護國將軍 (General of the Empire) you'd have had no doubts that there was a link. They've even got a principal boy and there was audience participation - three volunteers and a pressed man.

It's quite a coincidence that having just mentioned Glenrothes in a post I should find myself within days setting foot in the town for what is probably the first time since a school trip to the shortlived Rothes pit. I think I remember that it was wet down there but that may be an example of something akin to inception.

Not that anyone has been talking to me about pits in my dreams but knowing that the pit was closed because they couldn't prevent the levels from flooding could easily over half a century have created a false memory.

I went to Glenrothes to see Beautiful Burnout, the National Theatre of Scotland's smash hit Fringe success. It's a magnificent piece of physical theatre whose athletic cast produce wonderful stage pictures. Such hard work. The skipping sequence alone left me dripping with sweat. God knows what it did to them.

I wouldn't say there was much of a plot though, but I guess the intention was to explore the paradox of boxing. The drive, discipline, self control, skill and athleticism that combine to produce a spectacle as delightful as any ballet but which can end in blood, tears and the obliteration of a human personality.

Mind you just as it's fairly obvious that filling your lungs with smoke day after day can't do you much good, the idea that having your head thumped repeatedly isn't sensible is surely a no brainer.

My own boxing career was fortunately too short to have had any deleterious consequences. I retired undefeated after my twelve year old opponent hit the canvas in the 1954 Dollar Academy inter-house championships. Some ill-intentioned spectators aver that he slipped but I know that I floored him.

As a native born Fifer proud of his roots I should probably have told you about this celebration long before now but to be honest although I was aware of it, it has largely passed without my participation.

Earlier in the year I went to St Andrews during the Stanza poetry festival and to Dunfermline for a Fife Jazz Festival concert, both operating under the year of culture banner. One day this summer I happened to be in Anstruther when something was going on but of the multitude of other events I can say nothing.

Until now that is. A film festival was launched in Glenrothes as part of the cultural year. It's intended to be an annual event but for it's very first edition it awarded third prize to A Lifetime, the short film in which I took part this summer.

Click here to see the proud directors being awarded their trophy on Saturday night and click on their picture to see the film if you haven't already or if you feel that now it's won a prize it deserves a second look.

Vichy has been somewhat demonised in many people's minds because of its role as headquarters of the collaborationist government during the war, but that was hardly the town's fault.

It's a pleasant place that nestles cosily in the valley cut through the hills of Auvergne by the river Allier. Standing there watching the trotters go through their paces on the Hippodrome track with at your back the beautiful spa that still attracts the well-heeled, waves of bourgeois comfort are almost palpable.

On the other side of the river stands Bellerive, named thus as though the opposite bank were not belle enough. Vichy Sporting Club, one of France's oldest golf courses stands there. I played it a couple of years ago but this week I visited Vichy's other course a few miles away in the forest of Montpensier.

The forest is a lovely place for a walk especially at this time of year when the trees present so many beautiful shades of green and gold and where mushrooms rise up ready to be harvested for the pot - provided you know your mushroom from your toadstool. The gorgeous weather that has prevailed this week would have been the cherry on the walker's cake.

But someone had the silly idea of cutting a few narrow paths through the forest and tempting us into thinking that we could hit little white balls straight down them. Believe me, my little white balls very seldom ventured onto the paths and couldn't see the forest for the trees they kept colliding with.
Now I'm in Dunkirk, someplace else whose fame owes much to the last war. A not so little boat will arrive tomorrow to take me over the channel in greater comfort than that experienced by the retreating armies - in pretty bourgeois comfort in fact.

I’m not sure that we hit 27 degrees yesterday but we were certainly in the warm 20s with bright blue skies in the morning that became progressively overcast as the day went on. One of the interesting side effects of this sudden, and as it turns out brief flourish of summer weather was its effect on the insect population.

I don’t, but no doubt some enthusiastic and dedicated entomologist does know where flies go at the end of the summer. It can’t be very far away for more than a dozen of them, fooled by this temporary summer, buzzed back to invade my kitchen yesterday. Most I am pleased to report were found dead on arrival. That’s my arrival back from the golf course.

A few were sluggishly hanging on to curtains and lightshades and a couple attempted brief flights. I killed them. Others hid overnight but by lunchtime today I had exterminated the living and disposed of all the bodies except for one that I have left struggling in a spider’s web as a warning to those who may still be skulking about.

In the evening several examples of another species, this time a beetle like creature whose method of locomotion is a cross between a scuttle and a hop decided to play about on the kitchen floor. They are usually about an inch long and not very pretty. They scurry across a foot or so of floor and then remain stationary for ages. Can they be imbibing some sort of nourishment from the tiles, or are they, on the contrary, laying down some microscopic excrement? Maybe they are just thinking about the glory days to come when the insects take over the earth.

Whatever they were doing it was a bit of a distraction to someone who was watching a DVD of a film that he had missed in the cinemas last winter. They were not welcome unlike the film which was in fact Welcome. Whether I had sated my bloodlust with the flies or hated the thought of scraping squashed beetles from the floor or was being softened by the moving movie I don’t know, but I carefully captured them one at a time and returned them to the wild, including several recidivists who squeezed back in under the door.

While I love warm weather there’s a bit of me that’s now thinking that it wouldn’t be too bad if it was just a bit cold and slightly miserable for my last week.

It's been a quiet week starting off on the cold side but summer came back again yesterday and they are forecasting 27 degrees centigrade on the golf course this afternoon. Too late I suppose to invite the Ryder cup teams to finish off their competition here.

One of my beefs about Radio 3 is that they don't give enough airtime to jazz and when they do it tends to be at unsocial hours, not to mention the constant moving about of Jazz Record Requests on Saturday afternoons to accommodate the Metropolitan Opera. Now France Musique certainly play jazz at unsocial hours but they also provide a regular weekday slot at 7pm which fits very well with my dinner hour and listening to it the other day I picked up a tip that I may pass on to David Milliband.

I know that Ed is for the moment only a prime minister in waiting and that a week never mind five years is a long time in politics, but David could perhaps protect Ed's chances even more by copying Dominique Fillon, the French prime minister's brother. He plays jazz piano.

I can see David teaming up with Ken Clarke for late night sessions at Ronnie Scott's with Bill Clinton dropping by to jam with them when Hilary is over telling our foreign secretary who to invade next. So much more fun than running the country.

Next time you are tempted to take a second helping of pudding spare a thought for the distress you may cause posthumously to your nearest and dearest. A French family eager to satisfy their deceased relative's wish to be cremated have been thwarted because the corpse is too big to fit into the incineration chamber. Could there be a better reason to exercise self control around the dinner pail?

Disturbances are taking place throughout France at the moment in an attempt to prevent the government from increasing the pension age from 60 to 62. In one of the reports I heard about this an expression that obviously meant work to rule caught my attention. Its literal translation is zeal strike.

Now don't you think that the crematorium employees could have gone out on a limb as it were and with a bit of zeal got that poor lady to where she wanted to be?

It is heartening to learn that the Indian authorities are putting their shoulders to the wheel, straining every sinew and marshalling all their resources to ensure that the Commonwealth Games go ahead.

But did they have to repatriate their summer this morning?

This may not look like a technological leap forward in the fields of medicine or warfare but in the fight against household dirt it has both improved the quality of my floor cleaning (look at those tiles shine) and reduced the strain on my ageing joints and knees now that I no longer have to get down on all fours with a scrubbing brush.

The big smoke around here is Limoges. Although I’ve been there often; to the golf courses, to the airport, to the station, I’ve only once had a stroll around and that was just to some fine gardens not far from the station. So I decided to have a day out to see more of the place and to let the train take the strain rather than drive down.

I was a little put out at being asked for €25.40 for the privilege but Michelin assured me later that it would have cost me €18.30 for petrol and I am sure I could easily have spent the balance of €7.10 on city centre parking so I suppose it was a competitive price. My belief that rail travel in France was relatively cheap was shaken though and to reassure myself I investigated the costs of a similar journey in UK.

I chose Berwick-upon-Tweed to Edinburgh as a comparable market town to big smoke expedition of roughly the same length (in fact 10 kilometres longer) and started digging. Now France offers various fare deals but nothing of the complexity of the British system. Eventually I managed to get a fair comparison. I chose trains leaving at approximately the same times and on the same day of the week and under an equivalent fare regime. Lo and behold I was not reassured at all because that journey would have cost only €20.88. So no whining from the rail passengers alliance next time fares go up. They don’t know when they’re well off.

Saxophone players however may well have cause for complaint. Reeds are sold in the UK at French prices.

As for the day in Limoges, it passed very well. The weather was lovely for a start. If it had rained I might have gone to the museums that I had pencilled in but instead I admired them and other buildings from the outside (apart from the cathedral, into and out of quick I went quickly), strolled in the gardens, watched the world go by while sipping coffee in a pavement café and browsed in a shop or two.


The city’s iconic building is its railway station (completed in 1929 from a design done in 1914), seen here across a fountain, but there are others of interest. The round one in the picture is an art gallery that started life as a cold store for Argentinean beef in 1919 and another is a trompe d’oeil. The flag bearers are gathering for a demo in protest against the retirement age being raised from 60 to 62 and the boys in the orange suits are not a chemical warfare unit but gardeners spraying some toxic juice on the grass. The suits and breathing apparatus may help them to get to 62 but what about the punters sitting in the little garden doing some passive inhalation?

One of the shops in which I browsed was practically giving away DVDs so I went home clutching a handful, including Das Boot. I’ve never seen it. To do so I need to find five hours to get through its two discs, but I’m bound to be confined indoors by rain sooner or later.

These ducks are escaping a barrage of balls from oncoming golfers at Royan. Although the ducks probably don't appreciate it this is a lovely course that is well worth a visit even just to stroll around. It is set in a beautiful pine forest a couple of miles inland from the Atlantic. When we were there last week the sun shone and a good time was had by all.

In contrast to Dryades where bunker shots are a lottery the bunkers here are full of proper sand and it is a positive pleasure to get out of them with a classic stroke that sweeps sand and ball onto the green.

Two failures to report.

I failed to refuse to take a copy of the Watchtower from two English Jehovah's Witnesses who live in a neighbouring village. I need a strategy for the return visit they will no doubt make.

I failed to resist a bribe from Carrefour to sign up for a loyalty card. At least they don't have either my email address or my phone number so perhaps I'll just get more junk mail than usual and the €10 came in handy.

It's been a relatively busy week for my lifestyle in this part of the world.

On Monday I went up to Chateauroux to collect Claire and Naomi. They had been to a wedding in Normandy at the weekend and were adding on a few days down here. They were very lucky with the weather. We enjoyed a little tourism and a gentle country walk on Tuesday, a chill-out day in the sun-soaked garden on Wednesday and off they went on Thursday.

Luckily they left from La Souterraine which made it easy for me to join some friends for a day's golf at Chammet. This is a nine hole rustic course on the Millesvaches plateau which is a northerly extension of the Massif Central. The countryside is very beautiful and it must be one of the most peaceful spots on earth.

It's always difficult to capture landscapes with the sort of cheapo camera that I have but you may get a flavour of the place from this picture.



The course was in beautiful condition, especially the greens. They were a lot better than when I played there last. We played nine holes in the morning and apart from a splendid par on the third hole that saw me land my drive on the green from 200 yards away and 500 feet above I failed to impress and delivered several balls up to nature.

One of those great value French country lunches followed; four courses, coffee, wine, aperitif, mineral water. The whole for 16 euros apiece.

That bucked up my game and the afternoon's round was much better.

Then it was back to Pierre's in Gueret for dinner. The accompanying refreshments were wisely handled and I drove soberly home to a good night's kip.

The countryside around the Biggar road was looking at its glorious best in Wednesday morning's sunshine and the fine weather persisted to some point between Manchester and Birmingham where it started to rain. The rain pelted down from then on more or less without stopping till somewhere not far north of Charles de Gaulle airport on Thursday.

After that it brightened up and a couple of picnic stops later with the thermometer reading 34 degrees I pulled into the Barbansais hangar thinking sunbathing and cool white wine. Alain across the road welcomed me with a chilled tonic as I admired the progress of his renovation.

However it seems as though I have brought the rain with me. Friday dawned sunny but a thunderstorm quickly erupted and it rained on and off throughout the day. However the rain was warm and although Patrick and I managed to get soaked in nine holes we dried off over another five. Then almost before I had downed my shandy on the terrace the rain came on again and we scuttled for our cars.

All that exercise after weeks of candle end burning and sedentary living ensured a good night's sleep and hopefully firmed up my swinging muscles for tomorrow's competition.

"Do not expect to understand the text or to follow a linear story"

Those are words of warning that could be applied to many Fringe shows and were certainly apt for Maria de Buenos Aires in whose programme they appeared. This show resembled nothing so much as a series of animated three dimensional surrealist paintings. It opened in dim light with a sort of Mother Courage figure pushing a large wire shelved structure across the stage and dragging a laden trolley behind her. Having positioned her burdens she lifted the skirt of a semi-recumbent actress sitting downstage, picked up a steak that was resting on her thigh and popped it into a hot frying pan, then returned to the shelves and continued to cook it.

It got more bizarre as time went on ending with a woman (Maria?) singing the closing number inside a vast transparent plastic bubble. Despite the music of Astor Piazzolla and a beautiful and athletic tango couple Maria de Buenos Aires did nothing for this Argentophile.

The Tailor of Inverness on the other hand had bizarre and surrealist overtones but was a real and moving story of the actor's father. Born in Poland of Polish and Ukrainian parents he was buffeted about by the ebbs and flows of the machinations of the European powers, serving in turn in the Soviet, German and British armies during WW2. His part of Poland suffered inter-ethnic brutality as it slid into the Ukraine, the Poles and the Ukrainians massacring one another including members of his family. Demobbed in Britain he eventually found his way to Inverness and made a life there leaving (unknown to the actor) a wife and daughter in Poland.

Music, poetry and video projection supplemented the story as the actor played himself, his father and other characters. I got a bit lost at times when the story jumped around but this reflected (whether intentionally or not) the various conflicting stories of his father's wartime life that he had heard over the years.

The piece grew from the actor's uncovering of the various events of his father's life and his efforts (eventually successful) to meet his half sister. The sad fact is that this moving individual story is only one of millions of similar stories of people throughout the world afflicted from time immemorial to the present day by man's inability to live without conflict.

Those were my final ventures into the Fringe and I cast it off completely by getting rid of Alonso's beard.

At the art college yesterday I caught Gordon's animation in which I discovered various bits of my head and chin appeared as well as my hands. My hands served well there but weren't up to scratch in the snooker hall last night when I played roughly four good shots in two hours.

Let's hope they do better when I resume my golf career at Les Dryades this weekend.

The Tempest is over and hardly a drop of rain on us or the audience throughout the two week run.

Last night really was a miracle. The rain came belting down at some point in the first half and continued through the interval. We were just finalising plan B to do the first scene of the second act inside the boat when the rain stopped. The audience were hastily summoned from the adjacent bar boat and we did the scene on deck.

As Lene our Czech wardrobe angel said to me, our weather is not actually as bad as we like to think.

We had a very responsive audience for the last performance and a good shindig afterwards. That continued for some to my place where four of the cast didn't find the strength to move on till about 11 this morning and where four bottles of spirits found a new home, replenishing somewhat my depleted stocks. In the afternoon we got the boat shipshape and back to its normal state, even super normal since Bob and Andy managed to repair the tilting mechanism on sections of the board room table that had spent the last fortnight in Home Street.

I abandoned the Fringe in favour of the cinema this evening. The Jacques Tati scripted cartoon The Illusionist which opened the Film Festival this year is now on general release and is a beautiful portrait of Edinburgh, particularly for those who knew the city 50 or 60 years ago. If you want to see the Barony Bar or the East Adam Street of yesteryear then this is the film for you. It's also a touching little story but I shall have to see it again since I had to rest my eyes a little from time to time, no doubt thanks to The Tempest late nights.

It was lovely to be sitting in the Cameo and see the auditorium I was in come up on screen. A similar thing happened to me once before, in Paris when I saw an open air screening of a Woody Allen movie in the Trocadero as the film's actors stood in the celluloid version looking at the same cityscape as I was.

She was curled up on John Coltrane's Giant Steps but now she's safely back in Ipanema.

Walking along George Street the other day I came across a line of chauffeured limousines, Jags and Mercs amongst them, all in a tasteful shade of maroon. I thought Lothian Buses must have branched out into the executive travel business or Hearts were having a board away day.

But surely this was too James Bondish even for Vladimir Romanov. There were lots of policemen about and some of those burly guys with curly flexes growing out of their ears. Various swarthy gentlemen with and without mobile phones were hanging around on the pavement.

What on earth is it I wondered and strolled on.

Ross came up with the likely explanation. It must have been the Festival; not EIF, not Fringe, not Book, not whatever else, but Politics.

I should be on my way to Glasgow for lunch at the moment but because of a mix up I'm not. Unfortunately I don't have another free day before I go back to France so this particular lunch will have to be kept warm till October.

The Girl From Ipanema has gone missing.

Either the CD has slipped into a nook or cranny, or one of my late night guests has taken it away to listen to in the comfort of their own home. They may even have asked to borrow it. I become forgetful after a few glasses.

On Sunday I was lucky enough to get a ticket for Freefall at the Traverse. You really can't beat them for drama although Theatre Alba, whose Pudda is lodged in my memory as one of the best things I've ever seen, produced a very fine Seagull in the grounds of Duddingston Kirk in which two of my friends played very effectively.

Before going to Duddingston I caught the screening of a number of This Collection films including the one I was in. Obviously my opinion may be coloured by my personal interest but I think our film stood out. It very clearly and cleverly conveyed all the emotional truth of the poem. It was beautifully shot and edited and underpinned by a lovely soundtrack. I think it should do well at short film festivals. The only downside was that the DVD copy Charmaine gave me was unreadable. A replacement should be forthcoming.

I've seen two more shows. Darcy's Dilemma was disappointing since I had expected it to extend the novel in some way rather than what it did, which was to give us an insight into Darcy's thinking with respect to how he might persuade Elizabeth to change her opinion of him. All very well but we know from the book what makes her revise her opinion so it was pretty much a non event for me and it must have been totally mysterious to anyone who didn't know Pride and Prejudice.

The other show was a jolly romp through the sad story of Lulu made familiar to atonal opera-goers by Alban Berg. Lulu goes through life via a series of husbands and lovers and ends up as a murdered prostitute. Sounds bleak and with music by Berg it probably is.

But this was not bleak and was not an operatic version although there was music. The actors bounced through the piece in the manner of a Victorian melodrama crossed with Alice in Wonderland. The costumes were weird and wonderful. Lulu herself raced around in roller skates on occasion and had the most mobile and expressive of faces. She was queen of the pout and died delightfully.

I took several snaps of a lovely rainbow from my balcony recently. I couldn't get the whole thing in so I did it in sections and spent ages trying to create a panoramic image to show the entire arc. But the left hand section has persistently failed to merge seamlessly with the other two. So I've had to settle for two thirds.We are not quite two thirds of the way through our run of The Tempest but are already looking forward to the after-show bash. This will be the official party. Like the play itself there have been rehearsals.

At one such rehearsal CDs were pulled randomly from my shelves; some played, some discarded, some put in the wrong cases, most left lying around caseless. So far, so normal - but catastrophically some were replaced on the shelves at random. I think I've sorted them out but the crunch will come when my catalogue tells me to look in position X and the wrong CD is there.

The Tempest is playing to full houses and is being well received by most spectators. We've had several reviewers in but only one review has been published so far. Since the run is sold out it doesn't matter commercially what they say but there are egos to be massaged and that influential web organ Broadway Baby hasn't played its part by giving us only two stars. This is generally translated as don't bother unless you can't get a ticket for anything else. But it's amazing what a little selective quotation can do, viz.

"...this production does have a very strong grasp of space. While so many other site specific works during the festival have trouble using their locations, this piece creates a new vantage point every few minutes, looking from the barge to the quay and vice versa..."

Sounds encouraging doesn't it. But read the full review. At least I'm not picked out for punishment. Otherwise I wouldn't give you the link.

I have seen several other shows. The only one that stands out for me so far is a production of The Penelopiad at the Church Hill. I won't give you a link because it closed yesterday. I chanced upon this play one rainy afternoon last year and was bowled over by the talented young company from London who presented it. I've tried hunting them down this year but have not been helped by the fact that I can't remember what they were called. However I found that another young company, this time from Calgary, were doing the show.

Their production was significantly different in style, owing a lot I felt to Peter Brooke in its simplicity, its imaginative transformations of actors aided by no more than lengths of cloth to thrones, beds and even Odyseus's bow. Add atmospheric music, subtle lighting, beautifully composed tableaux, a magnificent central performance from the girl playing Penelope and you had a five star show.

Much of the press went bananas over Sub Rosa, or to give it its full title "David Leddy's Sub Rosa" (who he?) awarding four and five stars with the impression that they'd have given six if they could have. I could not see anything more than a three star production. It was Jackanory for grown-ups shuffling round a masonic lodge in the dead of night. No conflict, no drama, no humour (almost none anyway), not a play at all.

Last night I shot up from Leith to town to see a version of Lulu (not the opera but the work on which it is based) only to find that it was their night off. So in the hopes of stumbling upon the show of shows I said give me a ticket for what's on next.

It was billed as a cabaret and consisted of various indifferent comics trailing their own shows and girls who dignified the taking off of some of their clothes to music by calling themselves burlesque artistes. I deduced that what distinguishes a burlesque artiste from a stripper is that the former keeps her nipples covered and her knickers on.

The one act that I enjoyed was a trail for an acrobatic show called Circus Trick Tease. They were death defyingly excellent, or severe injury defying anyway. The show is not at a time that I can make while The Tempest is running but I may manage to fit it in on the couple of days I have afterwards before setting off again for France.

Despite the distractions of the move-in to the boat, a dress/tech rehearsal and a preview performance I managed to make it to a number of jazz festival events at the weekend. I came out of the Hub on Saturday night just as the tattoo bands were marching out of the castle. The jazz audience had to stay inside the gates until the bands were past so we got a military music complement to end the evening.

There were various events in the Botanics on Sunday afternoon with nature as their theme or inspiration, including music by some of the Jazz Festival participants. It was not quite on the scale of the Sunday concerts I used to go to in the Parc Floral at Vincennes but the music was pleasant. I particularly enjoyed sets played by an Indian duo. One of them was announced as a raga made from (or maybe inspired by) the music of James Scott Skinner. Scottish fiddle music played on the sittar sounds a little odd but I could take more of it.

The Tempest opened last night to a capacity audience and went very well. We had a full house again tonight and despite one or two little imperfections, not unusual on a second night in my experience, it was a good performance. Only twelve to go.

The little film I was involved in last month is now viewable. See me as the caring husband here.

I'm not exactly centre stage in that but I'm an even more shadowy figure in Tom's Life In A Day. Check out the on location sequences (parts 3, 4 and 5) and catch me hanging around or reading my book under a golf umbrella.

But that's now on Kevin and Ridley's longlist for the documentary of the century. Will any of it make the final movie? Should I book my trip to Sundance now?

Can't wait to see less of me? Well thanks to Gordon Craig the hand that moved the stone will shortly appear as one of a pair on a screen in the art college postgraduate degree show moving a box hither and thither.

Wednesday afternoon was set aside for the Castle but the lengthy queues at the ticket office and the thought of squeezing into the various apartments with a legion of perspiring tourists put us off.

So we wandered a bit. First to the National Library where there is an excellent golf exhibition. It has been mounted to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Open Championship. As well as glittering cups and old hickory spoons and photos of chaps in plus fours there is a lot of written material dealing with the social side of the sport. A 1792 bill from The Golfhouse, Leith Links lists 3/- spent on dinner and 12/- on claret. Golf was thirsty work then as it is now.

Greyfriars Kirk and graveyard is always worth a visit and my friends were suitably impressed by the story of the loyal wee dog and by our celebration of the fact that McGonagall, easily our worst poet, is buried there. I was impressed that I was able to correctly explain the National Covenant, first signed there in 1638.

Naturally we popped into Greyfriars Bobby for a refreshment. It has to be one of Edinburgh's most pleasant pubs, especially when the students are away on holiday. Another pub attracted my attention on our way to the Parliament. Rutherfords in Drummond street was a favourite haunt of Robert Louis Stevenson in the late 1860s and was not unknown to myself in the 1960s.

It's now called the Hispaniola in a nod to Treasure Island but has become part of the Italian restaurant round the corner. The outside thank God, looks much as it always has but judging by the photos here the inside has become a veneered hall with all the character of a railway waiting room. But I have not been inside and this transformation took place two years ago so maybe it has matured. Their website doesn't reassure me though.

I fear the happy howff it was has gone forever.

At the Parliament there was an exhibition of press photography. Suitably chastened by pictures of man's inhumanity to man but cheered up by some of his dafter activities we went off to The World's End for scoff. They serve lots of good pub grub. I chose and enjoyed their excellent cullen skink and then their delicious haggis washed down with a good beer. St Andrew's Ale is not a bad swallee. Either the saint or the golf course, whichever it is dedicated to, should be proud of it.

This cultural journey ended with an evening of country dancing in the courtyard of Linlithgow Palace. It's a splendid setting and would look wonderful filled with beautifully dressed and accomplished dancers strutting their stuff. We were a bit of a rag tag and bobtail crowd whose dancing was energetic and enthusiastic but could not be called accomplished.

There's only one more chance this summer so polish up your pas de bas and your skip change of step and go for a Scotch Hop.

It's been a couple of decades since I wandered into the byways of East Lothian. The staleness of my local knowledge plus vegetation partially or completely obscuring roadsigns (a consequence of pressure on council budgets no doubt) meant that it took a little longer than anticipated to find the Glenkinchie distillery. But my passengers enjoyed the bonus tour and ultimately the distillery tour.

We didn't dig into our pockets to buy the bottle of Scotch on offer at £230 despite having been given a £5 discount voucher. We didn't even buy a cheaper one.

Instead we wandered on through the countryside ending up in Gifford where I introduced the Swiss, famous for their chocolate, to millionaire's shortbread. As soon as we got home Sabin grabbed a stick of celery from the fridge, doused it with salt and munched it desperately as an antidote.

The Festival is almost upon us. We had our penultimate rehearsal on the boat last night and tickets are selling well. So buy now here. One of the two and a half thousand competing attractions has set itself up on a waste site across the road and is practising its music as I write. It's a nice jazzy sound which might well draw me into the Tabu Circus tent though most of their performances clash with my own.

I've been a bit lazy about sorting out what to go and see but I rather like the haphazard system of wandering around with a Daily Diary and choosing something that's about to start close to wherever I happen to be. A dangerous system but not a dull one.

I left my late rising visitors to fend for themselves on Saturday while I practised my scales.

They fended so well that they came back with a bag of groceries and cooked a delicious evening meal. Since Falk is a trained chef it was not only delicious but was presented in five star style, let down a little by our not having been able to borrow any of Holyrood's 3000 piece silver dinner service from which to eat it. I manfully opened a bottle or two.

In what might seem to some a cruel return for such kindness, but which they claim to have enjoyed and why should I disbelieve them, I took them to Sunday's Tempest rehearsal. In preparation I had given them a German translation but unsurprisingly they had not ventured far beyond the plot summary. Shakespeare's glorious text then (all the top people say it's glorious, just because you don't understand the jokes doesn't mean it isn't) was somewhat opaque. But the body language which is hardly ever more than a foot away from your eyeballs and the mellifluous tones of the actors which are hardly ever more than a foot from your earhole no doubt transcended that little problem. As a bonus it rained so they got the full promenade experience getting slightly drookit on the quayside while the cast tried to keep their footing on a wet deck before being shepherded into the next performance space by our version of Shakespeare's sprites and fairies, known affectionately as Ariel's bitches.

The next national glory to which they were exposed (at their own request) was the game of golf. I could see on the driving range after 100 balls had been poked at and occasionally whacked into the air in random directions that a proper golf course would be a step too far so we went on to Bruntsfield Links whose 36 little holes were just dandy for their skill level. My skill as a teacher sadly failed to change Falk's natural inclination to hit the ball more or less as hard as he could irrespective of the distance to be covered and as for sweeping rather than whacking on the green - a pearl that fell on deaf ears. But then there are lots of things that I continue to do wrongly even when I'm reciting the correct method to myself as I swing the club. Who'd be a teaching pro?

We retired to the Golf Tavern afterwards. It's cozy wood and leather interior with little nooks and crannies was turned into a wasteland of a steel and plastic regular cube some years ago but seemed even colder and nastier yesterday. There is lots of golfing memorabilia decorating the walls but somehow it creates no atmosphere. Maybe it's the effect of the half a dozen silent (thankfully) TV screens that hit your eyes every time you lift your head from your drink.

Ever been to the Powderhall Arms in Broughton Road? I thoroughly recommend it. Not just because they gave me a free shot of Glenmorangie but because it is a very friendly pub where you can play all sorts of board games, read books, play cards and generally relax.

It was number four in a series of six pubs that I took my visitors to on Wednesday night after introducing them to central Edinburgh.

Thursday, inter alia, we had a very interesting tour of Holyrood Palace. It's probably more than 50 years since my last visit and I'm sure that there were still traces of Rizzio's blood on the floor then. They've been cleaned up since and a 3,000 piece silver dinner service has been added to the crockery store but I imagine the rest is much as it has been since it was built aeons ago. I'm sure there was a conducted tour in the past but now there is an excellent audio gadget available in numerous languages to hang round your neck and listen to as you go round. I was pleased to find that I had not made too many errors in the potted history lesson I delivered before we got there. I think I got a couple of King James mixed up but since there were seven of them I don't think that's too bad.

We gave the Parliament a body swerve and slowly worked our way up the Royal Mile, stopping to visit and admire the Canongate Kirk in front of which as you may know there is a statue of Robert Fergusson. There was a girl there handing out flyers for a walking tour in which she takes you to various places that figure in Fergusson's poem "Auld Reekie" and explains and declaims the poem en route. I'm very keen to take the tour but didn't feel that the Swiss would be as taken with it as they were with the brown sauce that accompanied the very tasty pokes of fish and chips we treated ourselves to. So I've noted it for a future selfish treat.

We eventually got to the castle having been diverted by a bed of nails fire eating sword swallower on the way but thankfully were too late for the last entry of the day. That gave me an hour to put my feet up at home before heading for The Boat for a Tempest rehearsal and then back up to town for some more nightlife with my visitors.

Friday saw my traditional tour of Fife. We head out to the road bridge, stop for viewing if I feel like it, which I didn't, then take the coast road through Inverkeithing, Aberdour, (stopping at the viewpoint), Burntisland, Kinghorn, Kirkcaldy, Dysart, the various Wemyss, Buckhaven, Methil, Leven and Lundin Links, arriving in Lower Largo for a bracing walk on the beach followed by scrutiny of Alexander Selkirk's statue and a refreshment in the Railway Tavern.

Then it's on again, taking in Kellie Castle if time allows (it didn't) to Anstruther where fish and chips from the Anstruther fish bar is de rigeur. They claim to sell the best fish and chips in Scotland and I have no reason to quarrel with that claim. We walked to Cellardyke and watched with some amazement a youngster pop a dozen golf balls into the sea with a 7 iron. I hope he found them all under gorse bushes and didn't half inch them from his father's golf bag.

Next and last stop St Andrews where we walked a bit of the Old Course, checked out the castle and the cathedral before rushing back to Edinburgh. It pained me to miss out Falkland Palace but there was no way we could be late for Salsa Celtica. The Queen's Hall was packed to capacity and the band were wonderful. The melange of Gaelic song, fiddle music, uilean pipes and Latin rhythms is extraordinarily entertaining in my opinion. Sabin and I had a lot of fun dancing as we did from time to time when we were unlikely flatmates in El Puerto.

A nightcap at the Steamie to the strains of a band called Lemon something or other brought the evening to a close.

You may have heard of the project by Ridley Scott and Kevin MacDonald to create a feature length film of a day in the life of everyman from YouTube videos that were all made on the same day but you'll be as surprised as me to learn that I may be in it.

It so happens that yesterday was the day and that I happened to be spending that day surrounded by cameras and that some video footage that was taken may be uploaded to YouTube, may be incorporated in the movie and may well have me somewhere in the background.

Admittedly it's a pretty long shot and is unlikely to herald the beginning of a late flowering Hollywood career but such is the siren call of the silver screen that I'm brushing up on Oscar speeches already.

But why was I surrounded by cameras anyway? That was for another project, slightly less global and glamorous but perhaps more creative. This is an Edinburgh collaboration between film-makers and poets. 100 one minute films are being made to illustrate or complement or in some way combine with 100 poems that illustrate life in the city.

I was portraying a character in the film of poem number 92, A Lifetime by Ron Butlin. The filmic interpretation of the poem portrays a former ballet dancer, crippled in an accident, and the husband who has wheeled her about for decades. Like all films I've ever been involved with the actual filming from the actor's point of view consists of hours of hanging about and minutes of actual performance. Not so bad if you're getting paid for it but I wasn't so had to content myself with the fun of frightening my screen wife with my wheelchair handling and throwing stones into St Margaret's Loch while trying not to hit the swans that insisted on swimming into shot. It was a long day with much tedium but it didn't rain a lot and we had a laugh or two.

So I expect the siren call of the silver screen will have me back, particularly to the Cameo's "silver screen" shows on Tuesdays where I get a cheap seat and a free coffee.

I’m a bit late in recording the pleasant day we had at The Open on Sunday. The train and bus access was very efficient and the leisurely progress through Fife meant that by the time we got there the morning rain had stopped. The weather got progressively more pleasant as the day wore on, for the spectators at any rate; no doubt the players would have preferred a little less wind on the course.

For a little while it seemed as though the leader might conceivably be caught but the challenge fizzled out and as the private jets slid graciously to earth at Leuchars ready to take the players on to their next challenge we left the scene for our less gracious and considerably cheaper ride home.

There I was able to see more of the actual golf than I had at St Andrews thanks to having recorded it, since good vantage points on the course are scarce. The next time The Open is on Scottish soil (Muirfeld 2014) I shall be there but may just plonk myself into a grandstand for the day. I’m looking forward to seeing The Ryder Cup at Gleneagles then as well where if memory serves there are sticky up bits of landscape to perch on.

By that time I may have a definitive answer on how to pronounce this year’s Open Champion’s name. The home-bred commentators persisted with something close to how we might pronounce the combination of letters making up “oosthuizen” if it were English. Jean Van De Verde, no stranger to mispronunciations of his own name, had the bright idea of asking the man himself and rendered the result as “west haze en”. This pronunciation found its way onto BBC TV breakfast news but not to other broadcasts. BBC Scotland’s man at the course stuck a whisper of a “w” in front of “oost” but the Championship committee representatives restrained themselves. I listened in to Afrikaans radio a couple of days later but by then the news was stale and since they haven’t caught up with the iplayer revolution yet no backtracking through bulletins was available.

The best I’ve been able to come up with through a combination of Afrikaans and Dutch pronunciation guides is “wist how sin” and although it has rather a Chinese ring to it I’ll stick there till I know any better.

I made a strategic mistake yesterday by going to St. Andrews without a pair of waterproof trousers. The rain swept in horizontally all morning and combined with the water cascading down from my jacket to drown my legs from thigh to ankle.

Now had there been exciting action on the golf course this might not have mattered but on the last day of practice, as this was, not many players were on the course at 10 o'clock when I arrived and their number declined as the morning wore on.

By lunchtime no golf was being played, my jeans were a cold clammy carapace to my legs and my enthusiasm had waned to vanishing point. A brief leaflet collecting expedition in the "Welcome to Fife" pavilion, where they also gave me some sample packets of instant flavoured porridge, and I was off home.

Even the enthusiasm of the twenty odd former Open champions lined up for a special four hole competition that afternoon to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the event didn't hold up. The competition was cancelled and they stayed indoors , so I was in good company.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for better conditions on Sunday.

Here's my world cup souvenir. I wasn't there of course but Ewan was and brought it home for me. Strangely he didn't invite me round on Sunday to participate in the final. Out of respect for his neighbours I dare say.

Should any of my neighbours ever complain about my saxophone I shall offer them the alternative of the vuvuzela.

The paint that I bought is called Natural Stucco. When applying it to the wall it appears to be an undistinguished but not unpleasant shade of cream. When it dries it's a sludgy, undistinguished and unpleasant greyish-brownish hue.

You might think that is due to the influence of the violent orange substrate and a third coat would usher in the cream, but my skill with the brush proves that not to be the case. The paint that has dripped onto surfaces that were not violently orange dries to the same light mud.

I don't much care for it but for the moment I'm stuck, oh!

Rather more accomplished painting was on view on Sunday at the Mansfield Traquair Centre. I haven't been in there since it was cafe Graffiti and then not only was it dark but the murals were covered up anyway. Now they are visible in as close to their original vivacity as the conservators could manage. Absolutely lovely and worth a visit. Apart from their regular monthly openings the place will be open most mornings during the Fringe.