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.