Tonight may well be the first time that I have been inside the Carnegie Hall in Dunfermline. That seems a shocking admission for someone born and bred not much more than 10 miles away from it. But for we Langtonians Dunfermline was another country. Occasionally we had a family trip to Pittencrieff Park and visited the Abbey. I was bussed over for swimming lessons when I was at primary school and for a year I changed buses there when travelling between home and my Dollar Academy lodgings. But that's the extent of my intimacy with Scotland's ancient capital.

The hall doesn't look as though much has been done to it since it was built in the thirties. The interior reminded me strongly of the Adam Smith hall before it was transformed into the swish theatre that it is today though I think the Adam Smith was much more austerely decorated. I was struck by the orange tinted Gents clock above the auditorium right emergency exit. These were ubiquitous in the cinemas and theatres of my youth and one usually passed under one to get to the gents but I don't think the pun was intentional. I have a feeling that the Playhouse still sports one.

Of course I didn't go to the Carnegie Hall to look at the clock or the decor or to raise ancient memories but to a Fife Jazz Festival concert. I wasn't in the event wildly stirred by the Norrbotten Big Band nor by Ulf Wakenius and his quartet but I did very much enjoy the home-grown talents of Brian Kellock and Julian Arguelles to the extent that I succumbed to temptation and bought a CD. Who living in the shadow of the Pentlands could resist an album called The Nine Mile Burn Sessions?

PS You can catch the latter lads at the City Halls in Glasgow on Saturday 6th and at The Lot in Edinburgh on Sunday 7th.