For pretty much the first time I didn't feel totally overwhelmed at band practice last night, just inadequate.

I think that's a sign that I'm improving.

Yesterday I could have been back at the Fringe.

I started off with an excellent play at the Traverse; at least the production was excellent though I'm not sure that the text will stand the test of time.  The three actors switched instantly from one character to another with just a change of voice and stance where we lesser lights would have needed an hour's make-up and a new costume.  They were ably supported by a sometimes complex and and always faultlessly executed technical plot.

Then it was off to the Blackadder exhibition.  Judging by the videos shown there and by a radio interview I heard recently she's a lovely lady and the critics say she's a great artist but her vision is not mine although I wouldn't refuse an apron sporting one of her flower paintings.

Despite saying that she's not really interested in acting Tilda Swinton gets the job done well in We Need to Talk about Kevin which I saw next.  But for my money the actors who play the eponymous villain make the movie.  It jumps back and forward a lot in time which is no doubt a device to keep our interest alive since we've pretty well sussed out that it will all end in tears before bedtime by the time the title comes up.

If you go to see it pay particular attention to the final scene in which Tilda says very clearly "I just want you to tell me why". I just want you to tell me what her screen son replies since either my ears, his delivery or a passing jet liner robbed me of the pleasure.

There was no not hearing Prokoviev at the Usher Hall later nor the jazz quartet with which I finished the evening in Bill Kyle's splendid establishment.    

One of my multitude of summer golf prizes was a jar of gésiers de canard confits.  I had friends for dinner this evening and it seemed an ideal occasion to make use of them so I served up as first course a salade tiède made up of various leaves, slices of artichoke and the gizzards, for that is what hides behind the frenchified name of the duck bits.  The whole was doused in a dressing made from the confit in which the gizzards were preserved plus balsamic vinegar, moutarde de Dijon etc.

I did not announce to my guests until they had eaten the salad that they had just enjoyed "the thick-walled part of a bird's stomach, in which hard food is broken up by muscular action and contact with grit and small stones" for fear that it might put them off.   

I had a jolly little party on Saturday to celebrate 50 years of intermittent residence in Edinburgh and clearly overcatered on the scoff front.  I can see myself living on the leftovers for some time.  Not so on the drink front. Not everyone was drinking champagne but those who were got through a bottle each.  Just as well not everyone I invited turned up.

It was great fun to play in a 1500 seat theatre on Saturday; the swooping crane TV camera and the very enthusiastic audience compensating for the fact that most of the seats were empty.

Disappointingly we were eliminated but it's hard to know whether to feel aggrieved or not since we didn't see the other three entries and only heard them imperfectly over a dressing room speaker.  There was very little in the way of adjudication afterwards but according to the cameraman who filmed the judges deliberations it was all very close and opinions were heatedly expressed.  No doubt Sky are happy about that since universal agreement would make a very boring programme.

Niamh Cusack rang us up, presumably from her dressing room in the Old Vic, to commiserate and encourage us, having been told by her woman on the scene that we had done her proud.  She even extended an invitation to give her a ring to talk over any future acting problems we might be faced with.  What a nice woman.

No celebrations were cancelled and we probably rivalled the Trekkie convention that was taking place in our hotel for late night drinking.  I escaped being burnt to death, despite my room-mate giving up on trying to wake me, by the fact that the fire alarm that caused the hotel to be evacuated during the night was a falsie.

So it was back to Hamlet this evening to round off a great weekend.

The little scene from The Cherry Orchard that we are performing in Northampton on Saturday in the quarter final round of the Sky Arts Stagestruck competition ends with the words "senile decay".  Those words are uttered as an explanation of my character's behaviour and it seems that I'm living the part off-stage.

Waiting for a bus after a Hamlet rehearsal this evening I saw from the bustracker screen what bus was due and decided as I often do to jump on it, get off at the bottom of the Bridges and cross to the top of theWalk to wait for a bus going my way.  But before it arrived a 14 turned up and that one goes to my door so naturally I got on.

I'm sure you've guessed what happened.  Fortunately the lights were with me as I sprinted from the last stop on the Bridges, across Princes St. and on to the St. James Centre in time to get back on board the 14.    

Modern dance is always a bit of a challenge and never more so than when it's like jagged and jerky brownian motion performed to a backdrop of randomly flashing lights and a soundtrack that might be music or might not.

What's it all about?  What are they trying to tell us?  Is it meant to be the end of the world or what?  Such were the questions going through my mind at Wayne McGregor's Far at the Festival Theatre the other night.  I eagerly awaited enlightenment from the after show Q&A session led by one of the Grads' stars from 4:48.

But michty me and help ma boab, as my granny would have said, the dancers had no more idea than I had of what it was all about and some of them had been dancing since they were three years old so you'd have expected them to have a bit of interpretative skill would you not.

Well enlightenment turns out to be the name of the game when you read the blurb on the website.  I quote:
"Inspired by the controversial Age of Enlightenment, FAR mines an era that first placed ‘a body in question’. Ten incredible dancers confront the distortions, sensuality and feeling of the 18th Century’s searing contemporary sensibility....." and it was music: "....to a new, haunting score by the critically-acclaimed composer Ben Frost."

I was also hoping for enlightenment when the following day I went to see Last Year in Marienbad at the Cameo, the very cinema in which I saw it as the nouvelle vague swept over us in the early sixties.  The Village Voice, whose review I recommend, says "back in the day.....audiences had great fun pretending to be baffled...".  Let me say it out loud - I wasn't pretending.

Surely now with all the experience of life I've gained since, the then puzzling movie would be as an open book.  Perhaps not quite.  It is still definitely odd.  I now think (though I could be wrong) that there is no meaning.  It's just the filmaker, having somehow got the money together, having fun doing the oddest things he could think of with his actors and his camera.  And it looks absolutely gorgeous.

So the moral is probably that, just because something is seriously weird it doesn't mean it's serious.  I can't wait to revisit Hiroshima Mon Amour.
    

After three years and a reduction of one third in the asking price an offer has been made and accepted for the house in Barbansais.  Failing unforeseen complicatuons it will shortly fall into the hands of the young magpie's family and I will be forced into a change of life though I don't expect to experience any concomitant hot flushes.

I do have the possibility of alternative accommodation in the area but I am looking on this event as an opportunity to do other things.  I don't intend to spend more than a few weeks there next year (so that I can fulfill my golf competition winning obligation apart from anything else) and probably even less time thereafter.

Casting directors may care to note that I expect to be available for the 2012 Fringe.

Only naive and inexperienced Scottish supporters could have thought that even when we were eight points ahead we were going to win.  Glorious defeat is our speciality.