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.

Edinburgh's latest festival is magic and Connor and I are off to see a show tonight but some other magic is not working for me at the moment.

That's the magic of the paint mixing machine. In the bad old days you had a choice of a couple of shades of whatever basic colour you wanted but now there is an infinite range. I pity the poor soul who has to dream up names for the infinitesimally different shades of yellow or whatever. You can't just say light yellow, dark yellow, very dark yellow. Names like sunburst or morning glow or forest daffodil have to be invented.

Anyway I got some colour shade cards from shop A, decided on a couple of colours and went back to get little sample pots to see how they would look in situ. The mixing machine was out of order. A day later it is in order but not quite, since my particular colours cannot be guaranteed to come out of the machine in their proper glory.

So I went to shop B. Since they stock an entirely different range I knew I would have to start with the colour cards again. I found the paint aisles taped off and a little notice expressing regret and advancing health and safety concerns as the reason. Their cards and the mixing machine were tantalizingly in sight but an assistant insisted that access was impossible.

Enquiring as to what particular health hazard I was being saved from I learnt that were I to venture into one of the aisles I might be peppered with paint pots and end up with a shirt of many colours since the racks on which they stand have been deemed to be unstable.

Months will apparently go by till it is sorted out since the decision has been taken to refit the whole store for fear this instability is infectious.

So I shall have to trudge off to shop C and hope that their magic mixer has not been hexed.