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.