You have to assume that at the full price if not the discounted one they fly you to Brazil to do your hair.

It's that time again.   
But now I've turned the sound off.   

When is a biscuit not a biscuit?  When it's a cracker according to Tesco, who thus freed themselves from the obligation to honour my 40p off voucher.

Well there are plenty of dictionaries that will tell you that a cracker is a biscuit and vice-versa and had there not been a pressing queue behind me I might have engaged the cashier in a discussion of the Jaffa Cake case.

You will recall that McVities were anxious to have Jaffa Cakes classed as cakes rather than biscuits because chocolate covered cakes don't attract VAT while chocolate covered biscuits do.  The clinching argument of the eleven grounds on which the matter was judged was that cakes start out soft but go hard when stale whereas the life of a biscuit (as long as it's not eaten) follows the opposite direction.

Crackers go soft.  I rest my case.

According to my diary I'm going to a concert tonight but I can't find a ticket for it amongst those that adorn my fridge.

I think I'll just enjoy an evening at home and perhaps tune in to France Musique's tribute to the now late Dave Brubeck.  He's one of the musicians who led my jazz taste away from New Orleans towards the cool and the modern.  He's renowned for having recorded one of the best selling jazz tracks of all time in the annus mirabilis of 1959.  Take Five was written by his saxophonist Paul Desmond, so now that I'm trying to play sax I feel even more indebted to him.

I might also muse on The Arthur Conan Doyle Appreciation Society which appears to be the Traverse's answer to panto.  It's an odd piece with more than a hint of The Art of Coarse Acting about it.  It's beautifully performed by three actors who flip between presenting an illustrated lecture about Conan Doyle and spiritualism, living the relationships amongst that trio and being various people associated with Doyle and Doyle himself.  It's all at one and the same time deliciously tongue in cheek and heart feelingly serious.

There's a delightful scene in which the two male actors play the little girls whose mocked up photos of fairies had Doyle fooled.  I enjoyed it a lot (unlike Plaything) and am still wondering whether an actor really fell from the roof or was that trickery along similar lines.

It was a beautiful weekend weatherwise, possibly my favourite combination of bright sunshine, frosty ground and crispy air.  Had I played golf on the southern slopes of the Pentlands I'd have basked in that bright sunshine all afternoon but like the skiiers on the new slope I had to be content with frost and crisp.

The winter sharpness served to set off Peploe's warmth and Bellany's intense colours on view respectively at Modern Two and at the National Gallery.  Both exhibitions are must sees.

In an echo of Bellany's student exhibitions on the Playfair Steps railings the gallery has installed panels on their Mound railings.  I spent ages trying to make a grand panorama of them but failed miserably so here's just a taste

     

Sorting through the myriad brochures and flyers that cover my coffee table I discovered that the nationwide French film festival that started on November 8th finished today.  Of the 40 or so screenings in Edinburgh I saw precisely none which for a devout francophile deserves a rap over the knuckles.

Will I do better with the Catalan film festival?  I can surely improve on a score of zero but it's not certain.  I'm not free to see anything before their grand finale screening and subsequent party at La Tasca on the 16th.

That's probably booked solid by now but they have thoughtfully scheduled a post grand finale screening the following day.  Is this a coda or a confusion?  Given that its title is Die Stille vor Bach I suppose it could be either.

But there was a little miracle at the concert - I managed to play one piece without getting lost and I got all the notes right and in pretty much the right place.  Pity about the others but it's progress.

This is the university blowing its own trumpet while renovating a large bit of Chamber's Street.  One of the more curious boasts is that it won more Olympic medals than any other university. 

Richard The Third is over at last and here's a pretty picture of the cast to celebrate the fact.

I enjoyed my first Sunday night off for months by going to a splendid concert given by the Edinburgh University Chamber Orchestra.  This group is made up not of music students but of students who happen to play an instrument and I thought their playing was magnificent.

They had the benefit of professional musicians as conductors and soloists but the 40 odd players rose to the challenge of working with them without putting a foot wrong as far as I could tell.  The Reid Hall was the perfect venue and was filled with wonderful sound from the opening bars of Beethoven's First Piano Concerto to the closing notes of his Seventh Symphony. There were some particularly lovely moments from the wind section and the girl who played first flute was deservedly singled out by the conductor at the end.

Earlier in the day I'd been to another concert given by wind soloists from the SCO.  As an aspiring woodwind player I feel I should have enjoyed that more than I did but, pleasant as it was, the six players, quite naturally, couldn't summon up the enveloping mass of sound that the orchestra did.

I'll be trying to summon up a bit of sound myself shortly in the Dunedin Wind Band's St Andrew's Day concert.  Do come. 

The amdram talent contest I was in last year finally started its run on Sky Arts this week.  Not being a Sky subscriber I didn't see it but I am told we featured briefly and will also appear in further episodes.  Someone is recording it so fingers crossed the cast will get together at a future date, crack open a bottle or two and enjoy the experience again round a tv set.

In the meantime I have to be contented with my photo in the Edinburgh Evening News.

I had some friends from Belgium staying for a week.

They had a great time.  They did the obvious things like the Castle and Holyrood Palace and being keen sailors they also fitted in the royal yacht.  I sent them to a Scottish music and dance show at the St James hotel.  I wasn't able to go myself but I've seen it (or rather a previous version because it's probably 30 or 40 years since I was there).   They loved it, as well they might.

I was in fact at another dance show which was wonderful, despite the demonstrating crowds outside the theatre and the slogan shouters who popped up inside from time to time.  More about that later perhaps.

We also caught some warlocks and witches in a dance, which was the only part of the Beltaine Fire Society's Samhuinn Festival that I could make head or tail of as I strained on tiptoe to see what was going on in Parliament Square on a bitterly cold Wednesday night.  I thought I was going to lose my nose to frostbite but happily managed to get to a Laphroig relief point in the nick of time.

On a superbly sunny day we went off on an excursion.  We stopped first in South Queensferry to admire the bridges and indeed the town.  The main street is lovely.  Then we drove through Fife to St Andrews where, both being keen golfers, a stroll over the Old Course was a great treat. 

We had visited Lower Largo en route to admire Alexander Selkirk.  Patrick was not only familiar with Treasure Island from childhood but had trodden the soil of the Juan Fernandez islands where Selkirk was marooned.  Anstruther was another stop on the way but we didn't have time to fit in a visit to the fisheries museum as I had hoped to do.

One of the things that pleased me most about their visit was how complimentary they were about the various restaurant meals they had.  Continentals can be a bit snooty about British cuisine so it was nice to know that a favourable impression will be going back across the Channel.

I've often wondered whyThe Mousetrap continues to pull in the punters (it's now been going for 60 years) and having finally seen it in a packed King's theatre this week I'm still wondering.  It pulled me in out of curiosity about that longevity but surely the vast majority of the audience were there because they expected to be right royally entertained. 

I'd suggest that if they wanted to see a show about a number of people trapped by inclement weather in a country house waiting for one of them to be murdered by one of the others they'd be much better off  petitioning the management of the King's to bring to town Tom Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound.     

It's not that The Mousetrap is bad exactly.  It's just that it's bland, unexciting and creakingly old-fashioned.

By contrast The Cone Gatherers, a play drawn from a novel written in the 50s and which deals with landowners, their almost feudal relationship with their servants and the disdain both feel towards the lowest class of society didn't feel in the least old-fashioned. It received an excellent production and first class performances.  It's a long time since I read the novel so I'd forgotten the plot completely.  Thanks to Maurice Lindsay's History of Scottish Literature I can tell you that the play doesn't end in quite the same way as the novel but I don't think it traduces the author's intentions.  

It deserved a much larger house than it got, as did The Artist Man and The Mother Woman. The story of a mother's boy art teacher who decides he must find a wifie (that's not a mis-spelt communications network by the way) is billed as a black comedy and the description is well justified.  It's very well performed and has some very funny lines though they are a bit too ripe to reproduce here.

That was at The Traverse.  The Lyceum's current offering is A Midsummer Night's Dream,  You'd have thought that after 400 years all possible changes must have been rung on this well loved comedy.  But you'd be wrong.  For a start this production sets the action in the winter.

It's a lovely production, brim full of clever touches.  I've seen the play often and I'll probably see it many more times but I'll be surprised if I see a version that's more imaginative.

I enjoyed a super dance show the other night.  It is vividly described here so I won't say more except that one of the things I enjoyed about the first item was that I could almost imagine myself doing it despite my two left feet.

I didn't need to imagine myself doing Dr Faustus, which I saw the following day, because I had done it in the Fringe.  This was a recorded transmission of the Globe's production and it was terrific.  The whole thing was done with great verve and energy and inventiveness.  I've very seldom seen productions of plays that I've been in or directed and it's fun to see what other people have come up with.  Given the constraints within which we operate I think our production achieved a great deal but wouldn't it be nice to be able to produce something this.

Just down the road this week is happening the Edinburgh Independent and Radical Book Fair and I attended the opening event, a talk by Richard Gott about his new book Britain's Empire.  The Commonwealth and Empire Annual was a staple of my Christmases in the 50s and from it I learnt no doubt the history of the daring do Empire builders and the great good that the British had brought to the previously benighted peoples of our colonies at that time morphing into the Commonwealth. 

Gott's book focuses on an entirely different aspect of the story, the resistance and revolts of the colonised peoples against the coloniser.  It promises to be an absorbing read (I bought it of course).

What might be an absorbing parallel read would be those annuals of my childhood and some are available on Ebay so I'm tempted to get one and wrap it up for Christmas.   

For unknown reasons, no doubt deeply significant psychologically,  I have long longed for a thermometer on my balcony.  I even went to the extent of adding one to my Amazon wishlist but several Christmases passed without anyone taking the bait so I bought one.

I chose one with a nice big display that I would be able to see through the French window and that was described as being for interior or exterior use.  The accompanying leaflet however gave a more nuanced description.  When used outside it must be in a dry situation because it's only splash proof.

Thus the little shed made from a Quality Street jar carefully cut open to ensure that the gadget doesn't sit in a micro climate but which will I hope offer the necessary degree of protection from driving rain.

Now although I have getting on for a dozen different packets of scews lying around in my DIY oddments box none of them have a head small enough to fit the hanging holes on the back of the theremometer.  Thus the ingenious engineering solution of picture hook and cork worthy of inclusion in a Heath Robinson drawing.

       

I've been trying to catch up on the various exhibitions that have been running all summer before they close and the one that really grabbed me was devoted to a painter I'd never heard of, Giovanni Battista Lusieri.  He did the most meticulously detailed landscapes in watercolour.  They are absolutely lovely.  The exhibition (which runs till 28th October) also features a large number of drawings for paintings that he never got around to completing.  There's a quote from him somewhere saying that he enjoys colouring in so much that he gets lost in it and hasn't time to get on with new work.  So he was storing up colouring work for later but got involved in various enterprises such as helping Lord Elgin get his marbles and died before he could get around to it.

The thought of death wasn't far from my mind in the Cameo the other day.  After sitting through 15 minutes or so of ads and trailers, just as the feature was about to start, the man at the end of my row left the room.  An annoying time to be caught short I thought but as time went on and he didn't return my eyes wandered to the shadow beneath his seat wondering whether it was in fact a shadow or something more sinister.  If it was it failed to explode so no harm done.

The film was Ruby Sparks.  It's a silly story about a writer who dreams about a girl and then writing about her she materialises in real life and by writing he can make her behave however he likes.  The transition from thought to reality works surprisingly well and you can almost believe it's not such a silly story after all.  But it is.  However it's entertaining and amusing and touching and all that stuff so if for example you've been made redundant and need cheering up then it would fit the bill.

Last night's SCO concert had a bit of silliness in it too.  I seldom if ever buy a programme and often have forgotten what music is going to be played so I arrive without preconceptions and just take it as it comes.  The first piece had various oddities in it.  I was sitting by the percussion so had a good view of the striking of a gong that was semi-submerged in a bath of water (well it looked like water but I suppose could have been gin).  That made the saw-playing by another percussionist unexceptional and the short shouting match in French between a trumpeter and a horn player run of the mill.  I was irritated in quiet passages by a low background noise that I took to be the hall's central heating but since it didn't occur during the other pieces must have been part of Mr Zender's soundscape.  He being the man responsible for turning some pretty little piano pieces by Debussy into this slightly daft fifteen minute experience.  

There's a lot to admire in Sex and God; elegant writing, excellent and moving performances, a spare but eye-catching set, atmospheric lighting and subtle sound, but I'm seldom entirely happy with a format in which the characters on stage don't interact but deliver their separate (albeit connected) narratives directly to us.

I suppose that here you could say that the lack of interaction underscores the plight being described and heightens the message being delivered that woman's lot has not been a happy one (surely not a universal truth).

The lot of the eponymous heroine of Haunting Julia, who never appears on stage except perhaps to the seventh sons of seventh sons, was certainly not a happy one.  Burdened by a creative gift, suffocated by loving parents and abandoned by the man she loved she took her own life.

That may not sound a very cheery tale but the play entertains in a solid old-fashioned way as father, ex-boyfriend and psychic argue amongst themselves about the truth of her death while her ghostly presence makes itself felt.  It was a very good production and the stage management in particular rose admirably to the challenge of having a ghostly presence sweep across the set.

I slightly reluctantly agreed, being at a looseish end at the time, to answer a few questions on the phone for a study into lifestyles and alcohol being carried out by the University of Stirling.

Having readied myself to undergo their forensic probing into my drinking habits I was not a little miffed to be eliminated when I answered "none" to their second question, viz.  "how many people aged between 16 and 65 are there in your household?"

Don't they care about the senior citizen?

I've got all three phones cheeping now which is quite a noise but not as noisy as Shostakovich's 11th Symphony with which the RSNO's new man, Peter Oundjian, opened the season.  It's a long piece full of tension and excitement, and although it's not all loud it works up to a crash bang finale where one wee percussionist who's been sitting quietly for an hour at last gets out a hammer and bashes his three anvils for a minute or two until the last notes ring out.

At the Usher Hall on Friday the changing moods of the symphony were underscored by changes in stage lighting culminating in a blackout as the music crashed to an end.  It was somewhat more restrained and subtle than the full pop concert extravaganza of swirling coloured beams and smoke effects but who knows where this will lead over the next few months.  

It's long been annoying that when I'm busy in the kitchen, the cooker hood sooking noisily and the radio playing, I can't hear the phone.  Every time I've missed a call, and it's surprising how many calls seem to come then, I've declared that I must install an extra handset in the kitchen.

So missing a call the other day I decided enough was enough, went straight to ebay, found what I needed and bought a handset.

Not much later the same day I saw that the answerphone had a message.  But I'd been sitting reading for a couple of hours and couldn't possibly have missed a call unless....yes the damned phone's ringing mechanism was broken.

So back to ebay for a new base station.  Now I've got a phone that rings amd an extension in the kitchen that also rings but from the previously noisy one beside my bed not a cheep.  

I got onto the golf course today for the first time since I got back from France, having been prevented by rain and wind last week and by indolence the week before.  Had my partner not lost a ball at one point we'd have got into the clubhouse before the rain but as it was we got a bit drookit on the 18th. That apart the weather was quite pleasant.

The new piste at the ski centre is coming on apace but something else has sprung up which I couldn't work out.  It looked like a set of runs for sledges or toboggans.  Checking on-line afterwards I find the runs are for something called Zorbing that it will take a braver man than me to have a go at.

However I must do some straightforward skiing there over the next few months because after many winters saying to myself that I must go skiing again I've booked a week in the Italian Dolomites in March.  Given that it's ten years since I had a ski on my feet I feel I shall be in need of a little preparatory work to recover the ability to fall over without hurting myself too badly.

Having flown in that day from two weeks in Poland and Germany a young American told me she assumed her linguistic problems were over but that proved to be only half true when the first thing she did was to go to the Lyceum to see The Guid Sisters.

I've neither read nor seen the play in its original French (Canadian) but its Scots version is a delight to the ears, though a definite challenge to visitors. My memories of the production I saw on the Fringe in the early nineties are dim to say the least but if it sparkled as this one did it's a shame that it has taken 20 years for the play to appear again.

Two and a half hours of argument, bickering, bitching and downright vituperation; all of it entertaining and served up with both humour and poignancy.

It culminates in the protagonist being stripped of her every possession by the so-called guid sisters so it is surely ironic that the play ends with the cast singing A Man's a Man for A'That.  But then perhaps it illustrates in a different way from the poet's intention that we are all equal in that, as my young American playgoer remarked, there's a beast in all of us.

This little chap is Rob Roy MacGregor standing guard near the Albert Halls in Stirling where I attended a meeting the other day. Doesn't look much like Liam Neeson does he?

It often surprises me how unwilling people can be to accept that they have got a wrong number when they make a phone call.  It seems that applies to text messages too.  I got one signed Charlotte that clearly was not for me and out of the kindness of my heart I replied "wrong number".

Instead of "sorry" or "thanks for letting me know that I made a booboo" I got "It's me Charlotte, I have got you (sic) chair darling x" to which I felt obliged to make a more forceful response clarifying the situation.

"I do not know any Charlotte.  I am not expecting a chair. I am not your darling. You have got the wrong number."

Silence has reigned since.

I ordered something from Amazon France yesterday, chose the cheapest delivery option and the parcel popped through my letterbox this morning.

This is where I've been for the last few weeks, far from the madding crowd and making only sporadic use of my host's computer to check email (not wanting to abuse my status as guest).  So no posting.

It's not exactly where I've been because Jean's house is hidden behind the church and castle.  Exactly where I've been is here.

 My main reason for going was to fulfil my obligation as winner of the 2011 Robert Demay Trophy to organise the 2012 edition.  I'm happy to report that it went jolly well.  We managed to get 30 players organised into groups of three consisting of a good, a medium and a not so good player, at least one of them being a woman.  Michel lent me his place which I absolutely love - just look at it -

for the reception and we laid in lots of grub and drink.

The Bingo, Bango, Bongo format needed a bit of explanation but eventually everyone got the idea.  One or two didn't like it much though by the time they had had a few drinks afterwards they decided they'd enjoyed it after all.  Except that is for one guy who when I bumped into him in the locker room after playing told me he would not after all make it to the reception.  I expressed my sorrow that we would not have his company and hoped that he had had a pleasant afternoon.  At that point, to use a French expression, he farted leadshot.

There had he said never been a worse or more stupid way invented in which to get around a golf course.  The game indeed was anti-golf.  What's more the people he'd played with were hopeless players (true but hey it was for fun) and what's even more he'd laid out 40 euros for someone to look after his kids.  Now if only he'd come to the reception he'd have won a St Andrews Old Course golf cap with built in magnetic ball marker for having the highest Bingo score but no show no go.

The three who got the caps were delighted and Luc appeared on the course wearing his proudly the following Sunday.  The other prizes went down well. Bernard enjoyed his tin of sweeties, telling me later that his only problem was to stop digging in to them once he started and Jean adored his big box of shortbread.  I'm not sure that the whisky first prize went to the right person but she can always regift it.

In a stroke of great good luck these antlers which I've been keen to get rid of ever since I got them in a sort of a lucky dip the first time this competition took place and which I awarded as the booby prize went to someone who loved them.  She knows exactly where she's going to hang them.

It's only the man charged with fixing them to the wall who was less enthusiastic.

Lots of people around me at Fresh Cuts were snapping away with big fancy cameras but all I had was my phone and it produces pics of this doubtful quality so I contented myself with watching the show.

It was great fun and there were even some clothes that looked wearable.

The models were of course ultra skinny and it wouldn't surprise me to hear that one or other had something in common with the protagonist in Mess.  Cleverly, entertainingly and amusingly presented, Mess dealt nonethless with the serious matter of anorexia.  Its moving last moments left us to ponder on the possibility or not of a happy ending.

There was no happy ending to The Intervention although the actor sobbing on the floor clutching a waste binful of alcohol as the lights dimmed bounced up pretty quickly with a big grin on his face to take his call.  A moment of sobriety to allow the audience to reflect on the game of who's to blame for Zac's downfall that we had all just seen would not have gone amiss.

But enough moralising.  That's my festival going finished.  I don't have time to follow up the recommendations specially prepared for imminent channel crossers so till the next time, ciao.       

I've never read Angela Carter's novel so I don't know how true Nights at the Circus is to either its narrative or its spirit but I do know that the dramatization of the book by Fourth Monkey is worth an hour or so of the fringegoers time.

It's a lively rumbustious piece in which the young actors bring convincingly to life the characters and animals of the circus.  The clowns are suitably tortured behind their jolly masks, the tigers pad around their wary watchers and arouse amazement and fear in equal measure when they dance on their hind legs, the chimps chatter as they swing their bodies along arms trailing close to the ground and the ringmaster struts and bellows pet pig under his arm.  There are lovely production moments; from the opening in which the clowns pop up out of the portmanteaux strewn around the stage to the rail crash in Siberia.  What's it telling us?  I don't know.  I'll try reading the novel to find out.

Thanks to my fellow theatregoer I know that Morning  is a portrayal of disaffected modern youth in all its self-obsessed, antisocial and unempathetic glory.  Well I guess if you go off to the woods with your chum and your boyfriend, the two of you toy with him, you batter him to death and then pop round round to his house to see his mum you are all of those nasty things and more.  Great production though.

You couldn't describe Karl Lagerfield as disaffected although he certainly comes across as a weirdo, albeit a loveable one, in a film running in the Fashion Festival that shows the last few days of the build up to a catwalk show in Milan. It's joyous and controlled mayhem around Karl the queen bee sitting stock still and occasionally flourishing a black leather demi gloved hand to condemn an outfit to oblivion or to produce a sketchy sketch that must be turned into a heavenly garment overnight.

He's unperturbed by the turmoil since, as he declares, he has the temperament of a professional killer.  What a hoot and what great fun.

I fought on the French side at the Battle of Agincourt tonight thanks to a brilliant show called Midnight at the Boar's Head that combines Shakespeare, music, drink and party poppers.  One couple of party poopers crept away during the battle but the rest of us stayed and enjoyed the fun.

That followed hard on the heels of a red-hot production of The Erpingham Camp in which a lively company of excellent young actors handled both the physical and verbal demands of Joe Orton's little satirical gem to devastating effect. 

If you've ever seen Alan Bisset's The Moira Monologues in which amongst other characters he plays two dogs you will not be surprised that in The Red Hourglass he counts four different types of spider amongst his roles.  It's clever, witty, funny and a performance to wonder at. 

Another excellent multi-character portrayal is Miriam Margoyles Dickens' Women.  She moves from one character to the next with seemingly effortless ease and gives us some insights into Dickens the man on the way.  His favourite number we learn was 17, sweet 17.  

The Rise and Fall of Little Voice and Proof were good, solid, well acted productions from Arkle that did Edinburgh amdram proud with in the former a delightful piece of work from Bev Wright.

Not everything I've seen this week has been delightful though.  Despite its having won the Sir Michael Caine award for new writing I thought Visiting Time was a pretty feeble play whose script did not display anything in the way of literary merit. 

That Old Noir Magic is a pleasant enough late night entertainment in which a dozen jazz numbers are played and sung against a background of short clips (sometimes only a couple of words) from black and white film noir movies, the whole being linked by the singer who is at times a protagonist in the story he weaves and at times a narrator.  I'm sure it was a lot of hard work putting the show together but it all seemed a bit incoherent and led nowhere.  I'd rather have watched the movies.

I dipped my toe into the latest addition to our gallery of festivals by going to a talk at The Fashion Festival.  Dressing The Self: Art, Fashion and Neuroscience was delivered by Ludovica Lumer who is a philosopher turned neurologist/physiologist/biologist as those really bright people cross boundaries in a way that we mere mortals can only wonder at.  She's busy putting people through MRI scanners to try to work out the relationship between the brain and beauty.  At least that's my nutshell view.  If you want a more extended discussion try here  (Italian required) or read her book (Italian also required).

The joint after-show party was going well as I dragged myself away at 2am, an early departure occasioned by my commitment to a day's walking with visiting Spanish friends.  I arrived at their cottage near Kippen at a relatively early hour and after a coffee and a catch-up on several years' news we set off for Callander and Balquidder.

We did a couple of lovely walks beside and above Loch Voil.  Coming back into the village we spotted a magnificent stag in woods by the lochside.  We were a couple of hundred yards away from him but I was nonetheless surprised at how unfazed he was by our presence.  He watched us for a fair while and then got back to the important business of grazing.  We continued on our way to some grazing of our own on scrumptious baking in the local tearoom.

Leaving Edinburgh for the day did not isolate me from all cultural activity since there was a concert in Balquidder church in the evening.  A duo from the Passacaglia Chamber Music Group  had brought a handful of flutes and recorders and a harpsichord 500 miles in the back of a van to set the Highlands on fire with some sparkling baroque pieces.  My image of the recorder as a squeaky tube was quite overturned by some lovely playing but I still can't warm completely to the harpsichard.

Before pitching up to the last performance of Dr Faustus I took in Edinburgh Theatre Arts production of Macbeth in Scots.  It wasn't an easy listen all the time and that venue gets tiringly hot but it was a very well presented production and although I dropped off now and then in the first half I saw enough to say that congratulations are in order.

That's not how I feel about everything I saw last week. I walked out of one dire production but they had had the good sense not to charge for admission so I'll return the compliment by refraining from naming and shaming.

A show that did have a name and star reviews to go with it, but which gave rise to a reaction no more exciting than boredom in me was And No More Shall We Part.  Someone a few seats away put my cold heart to shame by weeping as the play slowly ground through the business of  grappling with suicide in the face of the prospect of a certain and agonising death.

Blink and you'll miss it, which would be a shame because it's a great little play beautifully set and dressed and acted to perfection by a couple of young and talented performers.  It's a strange tale of how a relationship comes into being in a virtual sort of way and how it pans out in the physical world.

How things might pan out after Britain is destroyed by a nuclear attack is the subject of The Letter of Last Resort.  The four identical copies of the eponymous letter are held by the commanders of Britain's nuclear subs and contain the prime minister's instruction as to what whichever submarine is lurking in the depths at the time should do; retaliate or slink off to Australia and pretend it never happened.  The script has a lot of fun in a Yes Minister type of dialogue between the PM and a Sir Humphrey figure over the composition of the letter, for which alas a template does not exist.

That's paired with Good With People which I had seen in it's earlier appearnce in the A Play, A Pie and A Pint season and which I was delighted to see again.  There's a bit of a nuclear connection between the two plays because of GWP's Helensburgh setting and references to Faslane but the more important connection is that these are two excellent pieces of writing by contempory Scottish plawrights. 
 

Lots of Festival activity got underway this weekend and I sampled some on Saturday.  It was a lovely day and my attention was caught by huts, marquees and crowds in St Andrew's Square so I wandered in to investigate.

It turned out to be a marketing event for East Lothian tourism not a festival event.  There were various stalls advertising the delights of The Museum of Flight, Port Seton Holiday Park etc.  There was a family friendly farm showing off their pigs and goats and providing donkey rides.

A sandpit for toddlers had been set up.   It seemed to me a pity they'd fenced off the pool so no paddling was possible.  In imitation of Paris Plage I'd have made it a proper toddler's beach. 

One young man assured me that the large plastic fish he was carrying around was his day's catch and had it not been for his mum's well timed intervention he'd have returned it to the water from whence he claimed it had come.

Adults had not been forgotten.  Glenkinchie distillery was there extolling the virtues of their product and may have been giving away samples as they do when you visit though I didn't check.

However that visit was incidental to my festival going.  I saw a clarinet recital in St Giles which was pleasant if unexciting and a filmshow I'd rate similarly.  But these at least were free and I saw another free show in a cellar bar in Broughton Street that was excellent.  Billed as Andy and the Prostitutes - The Musical it was disarmingly introduced as not being a musical but some music and a bit of a story.  The story purported to be the eponymous Andy's life from his disappointment at realising that his father was not a Gedi knight through the travails of love and drugs and crime.  We were assured from time to time that it was just a story and the whole was punctuated by amusingly scurrilous songs and lively music played energetically on banjo, violin, guitars and a combination seating unit/ethnic drum.  Add to that a wildly dressed musician's friend in the audience banging rhythm sticks together.

I don't remember how Walt Disney came into the story but they sang a song whose refrain was Uncle Walt was a paedophile.  At the end of the show a guy came up to congratulate them saying "I live in California and I always thought uncle Walt was a paedophile".

Then a fairly feeble comedy, Lingua Frank, for which I paid good money but with a friend in the cast it was worth supporting.

Finally a super show advertised as a 60 minute history of the Blues starting with the quietly sad strains of a plantation harmonica building up through developments of the 30s and 40s on to rock and roll and beyond.  The later music wasn't entirely to my taste but I couldn't fault the band.  They were first class and their presentation was faultless.  Go see the show.

And why not the Grads shows which opened last night. After playing in tonight's performance of  Dr Faustus I'll be seeing Nobody Will Ever Forgive Us.  I loved when I saw it at the Traverse a few years ago and I'm sure Claire's production will be excellent.

Transport For London have thanked me a few times this week for "continuing to avoid the busy parts of the transport network at the busiest times and helping us keep London moving"

I'm not sure whether or not to tell them that from 400 miles away it was no bother at all.

In the aftermath of my disaffection for the Olympics opening ceremony I found myself asking what the Jazz Festival was for.  I'd bought tickets for ten gigs and of course I can't blame anyone else for what I'd picked but it did seem pretty much the same old.

Now I like a sentimental tune and a foot-stomping melody and a Latin rhythm and a bit of modern as well as the next man.  But doesn't a festival have some responsibility to look forward as well as back?

Only at my tenth and final gig did the festival really come alive for me.  This was a band of high energy, high octane brilliance that took us off into a thrillingly different soundscape.  There was a clear debt to mimimalism in some of the work, a great sense of humour and a parallel to the interactive audience daftness at St Andrews.  The audience were instructed to start talking after the bass and drums had got a few minutes through a slow peaceful number.

You can get a bit of an idea of their music from this youtube video but it's no substitute for a live performance.   I hope to come across Marcin Masecki Profesjonalizm again.

As an addendum note that although you see them with sheet music in front of them in the video they played yesterday almost without stopping for an hour and a half with no such aid.

I couldn't watch the Olympics opening ceremony.

I had to switch off the pre-opening studio interviews and looks back at previous triumphs.  Thank goodness the gushy presenters and uncomfortable superstars bedecked with multiculturally tinted malteser on stick microphones had less than a hundred years full of shaky images to enthuse over.  Think of the fun they could have inflicted on us with flickering pics of that poor old Greek doomed forever to compete in the pushing a rock up the hill race.

The opening ceremony, or what I saw of it, I thought was ludicrous.  The press has almost universally enthused, throwing in eccentric, surreal,bizarre and idiocyncratically British as approving epithets rather than coded disapproval.  One daring commentator went so far off message as to suggest that it became a bit too much like Saturday night television but I seem to be alone in laughing at it out loud.  Noble doctors and nurses throwing one another around the dance floor while their cute little patients bounce up and down on their beds.  I ask you, and that from the man who directed Trainspotting!

I was in bed before the athletes appeared (I had been up since 5a.m.) and so missed what I hear was a thrilling and moving parade and an amazing cauldron lighting moment as did the large number of British athletes who didn't think it worthwhile leaving their Portugese training camp to participate.  But it led me to ask what on earth this opening ceremony is in aid of.

Would it not have made a lot more sense if the Queen had just cracked a bottle of the sponsor's tipple over the Olympic logo and wished good fortune to all who would run, swim, kick a ball........over the next two weeks.  That would have proved we couldn't outdo Beijing without spending 27 million in the attempt.  

The explanation offered shortly before the event by Radio 4 was that Martin Creed had chosen that time for bells to ring out all over the UK because 8.12 was 12 hours before 20.12.  Is that an explanation that explains anything?  Maybe to a Turner prize winner it makes sense.

But I had no wish to be curmudgeonly so at the 12th minute of the 8th hour of the 27th day of the 7th month I rang the nearest thing I had to a bell, my phone.

I'm a bit puzzled by an Olympic news item I've just heard.  Radio Scotland announced that there is to be a bell ringing throughout the country at twelve minutes past eight and that we are playing our part with an event at the Scotsman steps.  It seemed an odd time but after a moment's thought 2012 popped into my head.  Ah that's it I thought, but then the radio said it's this morning not this evening.

So what's it all about?

I got myself a black belt yesterday.

Don't be fooled by Olympic fervour into thinking it had anything to do with judo.  It was a straightforward cash transaction at the 2012 Merchant City Festival.  This shindig has quite a full programme of entertainment over the weekend but on opening day the only entertainment on offer was a wander through three or four closed off streets lined with stalls at one of which I bought my belt.

Most of the stalls were selling food and a vast variety of national delicacies was available.  I fell victim to a stall full of Italian cakes and biscuits excusing my greed on the grounds that the Italian lunch I had just finished had not included a pudding.

Further exposure to Italian goodies later in the afternoon resulted in the consumption of two Peronis so when I got back to Edinburgh I judged it wise to take the bus to rehearsal.  Afterwards at a jam session in the Jazz Bar the day's international flavour continued and I used up my entire Bemba vocabulary in a brief conversation with the Kitwe girl sitting next to me.

The amplification was well under control in an excellent concert celebrating Oscar Peterson.  Some of the quieter numbers allowed us the added pleasure of hearing the rain battering the tent roof.

And talking of battering I sometimes question the wisdom of giving rhythm section drummers the luxury of a lengthy solo even when in this case the drummer in question had played with Oscar.  Just my prejudice.

We were blessed with two dry days at the weekend, neither of them "whew what a sizzler" except in comparison to the dismal days that preceded them.  But at least we were in our thousands able to enjoy the open air music in the Grassmarket, on Princes Street and in the gardens.

 In the Grassmarket I enjoyed the singing of Nikki King's daddie Freddie and a handful of New Orleans style groups.  On Princes Street there were bands of all stripes except white; pipe bands, accordion bands, brass bands, who knows what bands and a Chinese dragon that didn't play any instrument that I could see.

 I had another Chinese encounter later at a farewell meal for Andy and Sue Ellis who will be sorely missed by the Edinburgh amdram community, especially Grads, but before that I went to a Jazz Festival gig.

This was in George square which is covered in artificial turf.  I suppose that protects us from mud.  The area is nicely set out with three spiegel tent type performance spaces, a couple of bars, some food buying options, deckchairs, benches and tables and a sprinkling of patio heaters those indispensable adjuncts to alfresco activities in a Scottish summer.

After the first two numbers I moved to the back of the venue for a glass of plonk and to rest my ears from the twanging of over amplified electric guitars.  At the break I went out for a breath of air and stayed there for the second half where I heard and enjoyed every note without putting my eardrums in danger.  I just wish I hadn't bothered to buy a ticket.  

It's raining tonight so I hope they've got the decibels under better control.

When I read the jazz festival programme I was intrigued by one of the opening concerts.  A trumpet and piano duo playing jazz improvisations on Italian operatic themes seemed worth a punt.

It was in the Queen's Hall this evening but not too many people were as intrigued by the idea as I was.  I don't think there could have been 150 in the house.  I'd like to say that the unintrigued missed a wonderful evening but I didn't enjoy it very much.

The unintrigued had bet on another show and thousands of them were teeming out of the Festival Theatre as I passed on my way home looking as though they had had a great evening with Maggie Bell & Blues N' Trouble.

Earlier in the day I saw Killer Joe having been intrigued by the trailer a few weeks ago.  It was entertaining enough but not quite as rewarding as I had expected.

The best thing I saw today was Tiger Woods' final shot of the day out of a greenside bunker and into the hole.  In his post round interview he said it wasn't as difficult as it looked but believe me don't believe him.

Sunday the congress closed.  There was a meeting in the morning where votes of thanks were offered to the many hard working individuals who had put the show on the road and kept it there so efficiently.

Then those who had been nominated to serve on the international committee said a few words on what they could bring to the organisation and a deal of friendly confusion surrounded the business of voting.  There was a lot of multilingual explanation and counter explanation but eventually voting papers in the form of unsold day visitor passes were scribbled on and collected.

The next item of business, while the votes were being counted, was to be a presentation by the various cities vying to hold the next congress.  Understandably there was not the same razzamatazz as accompanies an Olympics bid presentation and since there was only one bid the razzamatazz level was further reduced.

But it was a lovely presentation.  Although the rules say the new committee has to be in existence before a decision on the location can be made, in the light of continuing delays in sorting out the votes the rules were bypassed and Strasbourg was confirmed by acclamation.  Amongst the many interesting possibilities for Strasbourg was the suggestion of opening out the participation to amateur saxophonists and community groups. I'll be keeping my eye on the website and honing my skills in anticipation of that coming to pass. 

We then repaired to the foyer at the invitation of the Strasbourg team for a glass of champagne in celebration and at some point the voting results were announced over the hubbub of wine slurping and conversation.

Next up was a concert made up of the director's choice of what we might have missed or would like to see again.  He'd invited a couple of dozen acts and given them 5 minutes each.  Every item was a gem from the guy who does a sort of combination of Mongolian throat singing and tenor sax playing to a brilliant electronic spot combining tenor and recorded voice castigating the media for its failings.

But the ne plus ultra had to be the combination of the Strasbourg ensemble and a Costa Rican bongo and sax band playing Philippe Gleiss's Klezmer Salsa that had the congress organisers dancing on stage and the audience dancing in the aisles.   

Philippe is a teacher, composer and brilliant instrumentalist who will be heading the organisation of the Strasbourg congress which I think guarantees it will be a gas.

A more formal closing concert featuring the SCO and three eminent sax players each playing a significant work from the classical repertoire was the final event.  Unfortunately I had a Faustus rehearsal to go to and although I could just have made it after the concert (that's what I had planned) there was the annoying fact that I had forgotten to take my script to St Andrews so done no work on the play and this was to be the first off the book rehearsal.

I needed at least an hour to make minimum preparation so I went home cursing my forgetfulness and savouring the memory of every glorious minute of the week just gone.

The university residence where I'm staying provides an excellent and fortifying breakfast for which I'm thankful since trying to catch as many events as I can I've found time for only two restaurant meals all week and have survived by snacking between shows.

Today looking for something hot in a rainy lunch hour I avoided the establishment offering leak (sic) and potato soup (there could be something quite nasty in that) and got a delicious mugful of lentil and vegetable in another shop where the lady who served me told me that coriander is another word that presents a spelling challenge to the local takeaway food industry.

The Tailend fish and chips shop, whose product quality reaches the same high standard as its confrère in Leith Walk, has provided a tasty nibble or two for me and for  a goodly proportion of the congress delegates just as the grass in the museum grounds that I've walked through every morning provides an enormous number of rabbits with their daily bread.

I've heard a lot of what you might call old music today (Debussy, Ravel, Mussorgsky, Dukas) but a mountain of new pieces as well including the world premiere of Edinburgh composer Helen Grime's Shadowplay for soprano saxophone and piano played by my teacher Rocio Banyuls Bertomeu and Audrey Innes. It's one of those avant garde pieces that the man who enjoyed Sting would not have called music.

As well as Rocio, the tutors who run the saxophone week that's likely to be a regular feature of my winter have played and/or conducted here so I feel I'm in more than capable hands and probably have a chance of becoming a better saxophonist than golfer.  However that's not setting the bar particularly high so don't put money aside to buy the debut album.

Thanks to a bit of silliness by the French I can even claim with absolute truth to have performed at the 16th World Saxophone Congress here in St Andrews in July 2012.  The saxophone ensemble of the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Dance de Paris gave a concert this evening in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Claude Debussy.  Why is no one here from the conservatoire by the Clyde I wonder?

Anyway leaving that aside the concert featured Sent from my iFaune - for ensemble ad lib and interactive audience.  In this, while the ensemble played the audience were invited to switch on their phones at maximum volume and ring other members of the audience who were not to answer the calls but let them ring.  If you happened to get a call from someone not in the audience during this time you could answer it and politely explain that you couldn't take the call because you were playing in a concert.

Daft but I played my part so there I am - a world premiere performer.

What was fascinating about the master class that I went to yesterday was that many of the points made by the "master", who in this case was a distinguished mature lady who gave her first concert at the age of six, to the three ultra able students who braved having their dirty playing scrutinised in public were the same as those made by my teacher to me.  We're not talking about the mechanics of playing the instrument here but the business of shaping and transmitting the music.

That music can be shaped in bizarre ways was evidenced by a French group I heard (it had to be the French I suspect) where two musicians intoned abstruse poetry while one of them disdaining the keyboard played the wires of a grand piano and the other produced weird noise from an electronic keyboard.  Simultaneously a sax player and a flautist interjected odd notes and a girl carrying a long black rod caused shapes and distorted images to come and go on a large screen behind the musicians apparently by manipulating the rod.  It was actually quite pleasant to listen to believe it or not.

Very pleasant to listen to were Brass Jaw the brilliant Scottish quartet that features a trumpet instead of a soprano sax.  Despite having played for four hours with the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra they hoofed it straight over to the Byre Theatre for the last gig of the night and were reluctant to leave the stage two hours later at half past midnight.

Perhaps they have the luxury of lying in their beds this morning but I have an early date with a recital or two so it's breakfast and off.

A Dutch lady at breakfast on learning that there was a saxophone congress in town exclaimed "That must be fun, for sure a lot more fun than ours."

"What's yours?"

"Theology."

No answer to that.

And it was fun yesterday, especially when the sun shone and there was music in the streets.

I heard a great variety of stuff in the events I went to.  As I was leaving a German quartet's tribute to Sting recital I overheard a guy saying "Well that's music, not like all that avant garde stuff."

I have some sympathy with that view but you can be pleasantly surprised.  John Cage and Gyorgy Kurtag are not known for producing music that's a bundle of laughs so when an American composer introduced the piece that her piano, violin and alto trio were about to play by saying that those two were the major influences on her work some gritting of teeth seemed called for.

In fact it was a beautiful, gentle, soulful mix of silence and ethereal tones that left the audience, myself included, delighted.

Totally different from the foot-stomping jazzy compositions of Barbara Thompson that filled the Byre theatre to capacity late in the evening for the final feast of another great day.  

It's a bit like the Fringe here, moving rapidly from venue to venue to catch the next show on your list, a little easier because there are only half a dozen venues all within 5 or 10 minutes of one another.  It's also like the Fringe in variability of audience.  One unfortunate I saw had an audience of five but later I couldn't get into a session because the hall was full.  A guy similarly turned away told me he'd come from Australia specially to hear that particular quartet.  I suspect he exaggerated somewhat.

Also like the Fringe there is rather too much.  I was on the go from 9 in the morning till 11 at night yesterday and took in a dozen performances.  I found time nonetheless for an excellent two course lunch for only £5.95, pity about the cost of the wine.  Today I'm going to take it a little more slowly.

Having just played in a wind band concert it was fascinating, not to say humbling to hear the Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra backing a number of amazingly virtuosic soloists.Again it's been almost all new music.  I did hear a bit of Bartok but apart from that all unknown to me and again like the Fringe there were a couple of plonkers, though strictly speaking it was the material that I didn't care for rather than the quality of the performance.  In the Fringe it's frequently both but that's the glory and the shame of a totally unselective festival.

The weather in St Andrews today is miserable and not likely to change for the better but I'm here for the music and although some street events are planned the overwhelming majority are indoors.

The opening concert was preceded by some words of welcome and wisdom from the university principal throughout which a young French group behind me chattered even after being hushed. I had no more interest in what she had to say than them in fact but the convention is that such remarks should be listened to in respectful silence.  They have clearly not seen God Bless America where such behaviour reaps a just reward.

The concert itself was terrific.  It opened with a stomping extravaganza involving bagpipes, fiddle, accordion and bodrum in addition to nine saxophones of varying sizes.  Then the Scottish Chamber Orchestra came on and we had four different works and four different saxophone soloists.

Of the five works played four were by living composers (all present) and two were world premieres and I loved them all which goes to show that contemporary music doesn't have to be hard to listen to.

Now I'm trying to pick what to go to tomorrow.  There are 71 events to choose from plus the outdoor stuff (rain permitting) plus the three dozen stalls of those hawking instruments, music and assorted paraphernalia.

I'm sure it was more stressful to watch that match than to play in it.  A disappointment but he has done better than any British man for over 70 years and it was a wonderful display from Federer and a major plus point for me was that it finished in good time for my Faustus rehearsal.

What a wonderful afternoon at Wimbledon.  I abjured the traditional strawberries and champagne in favour of olives and chenin blanc and needed all the strength and fortitude they gave me to withstand the disappointment of that abysmal first game in the third set.

But I rallied, as did our man and the battle was won but we may need another bottle before the war is over.

Nail-biting stuff from Murray as usual but he seems to have got a grip on himself and remained calm and collected long enough to make his way into the semi-final.  Yippee.

Happening to tune into a French radio station on Sunday morning I learn that as of 1st July motorists in France are obliged to carry a breathalyser kit in working order.  This is not to help out a financially challenged police force because if you are stopped they will use their own equipment to check you.

It's a preventive measure.  If you've been drinking you're supposed to test your blood alcohol level before you take to the road.  Clearly you're expected not to drive if the gadget glows red or whatever it does.

Now a moment's reflection will reveal that if testing yourself with the throwaway chemical breathalyser shows that you are ok to drive you'll be committing an offence if you do because you will no longer be carrying a kit that's ready for use.  So you'll need to have at least two to hand every time you have a glass of wine at a wayside lunch or a country supper and surprise surprise there's been a run on them and they are out of stock almost everywhere.

The same thing happened with the flourescent jacket law and now as then motorists are promised freedom from prosecution for the first few months.

For the more affluent, or more frequent drinker there is a reusable electronic version that runs out after 300 tests or one year whichever occurs first.

This was all a surprise to me.  The law has apparently been some time in gestation but I never heard a dickie bird about it last summer from my French friends, all of whom generally find themselves downing a beer or a glass or two of wine after a game of golf.  As do I, in France if not here.

But it wasn't a surprise to Amazon UK so I'll be putting in an order (£6.75 for two) before I head for the ferry in August.

An advantage of the Film Festival is that you don't have to sit through 20 minutes of ads before the feature starts.  But sometimes the film is worse than the ads would have been and that was the case with one I was led to believe was an artistic work of sociological importance that turned out to be thinly disguised porn.

It just shows you can't believe everything you read (even if it's written here) and you certainly can't believe everything you see on the screen where lots of things are heavily disguised.  But Day of the Flowers is undisguised in its intentions to entertain.  Maybe its Scottish/Cuban story made me feel warmer towards it than either The List or The Hollywood Reporter but I was able to suspend my disbelief throughout and to enjoy the action, the characterisations, the photography and the happy ending.

The Hollywood Reporter wasn't overwhelmed by the other Cuban oriented film presented in the festival either.  I have to agree with them that 7 Days in Havana was a bit of a hotch-potch and I enjoyed it more for its locations than its contents though both the Tatiesque section and the altar building sequence appealed to me.

Feel My Pulse has a character named Thirsty McGulp in the credits indicating that it's not perhaps the most serious film to have been made in the 20s.  Indeed it's a madcap slapstick comedy in the Buster Keaton mode that I rather enjoyed.  I found the live piano accompaniment a little too loud but that together with the occasional whizz and blackout as the film slipped on the sprockets added to the jolly feeling of travelling back in cinematic time.

On the other hand you couldn't get much more bang up to date in cinematic time than God Bless America which the director (present with the lead actor at Cineworld on Friday night for the European premiere) described as a very violent film about kindness.  In fact its tomato sauce bloody blowing people's heads off is no more than the technological extension of the biffs with assorted implements and chloroform assault that featured in Feel My Pulse.

But it does have a more sophisticated edge to it.  It's a very clever, amusing and insightful satire on the consumption and celebrity infested society that isn't limited geographically to America.

My final festival excursion is this afternoon to what I understand is another satire, this time Japanese, called Sailor Suit and Machine Gun  in which a teenage girl inherits the leadership of her late father's yakuza organisation. Death by chopsticks in this one perhaps.

A little less than a year before the wall came down I spent a couple of wintry days in east Berlin.  Until last week I had never been back and it was fascinating to see what changes it had undergone and to see the western side of the city for the first time.

The obvious change of course is the disappearance of the wall.  Here's the Brandenburg Gate in 1988 complete with barbed wire, wall and look-out towers standing in a desolate no man's land.

Now despite the plethora of snaps that digital cameras allow us to take in contrast to the old 36 exposure cassettes I don't have a comparable 2012 picture to share with you.  If I did you'd see that both sides of the avenue leading to the gate have been built up and that the area in front of it is awash with cycle rickshaws, human statues, fake GDR guards, junk food stalls and other tourist tat.  The bottom section of the gate itself was obscured by hoardings emblazoned with the initials of a TV company whose vans were parked under the lintel.  Behind them was scaffolding that I think held up the giant screen on which Germany's Euro 2012 games were being shown. Rather like digital photos it was a case of more is less.

Another less than beautiful change has occurred in Alexanderplatz.  There were lots more people in it than in this picture but since pictures of a square jam-packed with chain stores and fast-food restaurants has little appeal I didn't even take a photo.

The cathedral and its grounds seem pretty much the same

and on the positive side many, many buildings have been refurbished (the museums for instance)

and the smelly putt putt Trabants have gone to the great garage in the sky.





Over in the west the great architectural triumph is the Reichstag.  What an amazing building; the combination of its glorious 19th century walls and towers and contemporary interior topped by Norman Foster's beautiful glass dome is extraordinary - and lunch on the roof terrace was just as wonderful.

 Elsewhere in the west I was keen to see the Kurfürstendamm but its heyday is long past.  It was just a long Princes Street without the benefit of gardens and castle.

Back in the east a great pleasure was to see a play at the Berliner Ensemble.  OK much of the dialogue, let's say 99.9%, was incomprehensible but we got the main idea and with Siobhan's help at the interval and afterwards all became clear. The seats were only 5 euros (we could have stood for 2) and the theatre itself (Theater am Schiffbauerdamm) is lovely.  Inside it doesn't look as though it can have changed at all since it was built in 1896.

What may or may not have changed is the final resting place of the ensemble's founder and most famous director, Bertold Brecht.  Together with his wife Helene Weigel he's buried in the  Dorotheenstädtischer and Friedrichswerder Cemetery but according to my photographic record not in the same spot as in 1988.  Could a German Burke and Hare have been at work?

According to Melvyn Bragg, whose opinion was echoed by the numerous academics I have heard pronouncing on the subject these last few days, Ulysses by James Joyce is amongst the most influential but least read books of the 20th century.

My own copy has languished on one shelf or other for over 40 years, being taken on holiday now and then with the firm declaration that this year I would read it and then being replaced with no more than a page or two turned.  There's a postcard of Taunton between pages 138 and 139.  I imagine it got there on the occasion I accompanied my aunt by train between Taunton and Kirkcaldy one snowy festive season in the 90s and I suppose it marks my furthest point of penetration.

But I am in good company.  For instance Niamh Cusack who performed the Molly Bloom monologue in yesterday's brilliant dramatisation on Radio 4 admitted to never having read the book, except obviously for her bit.  I saw the monologue done on-stage once but it didn't grab me whereas the radio one did.  It's reckoned to be the longest sentence in world literature running in my edition from page 659 to page 704.

Several commentators declared this to be the best place to start reading and maybe that's true but I wouldn't bother reading any of it as long as the dramatisation with which the BBC celebrated Bloomsday 2012 is available.  Get it now.

I've read 138 times as much of Ulysses as of Finnegan's Wake but I'm now formally abandoning any ambition to read it.  I'm hanging on for the BBC to dramatise it.  

I've long mourned the passing of Mr Boni's so was delighted this afternoon to discover a more than worthy successor, in the ice-cream stakes at least, in Afterz.

I don't know how many transformations Mr Boni's former premises have gone through but the most recent, a Punjabi restaurant, has ceded part of the site to the enjoyment of ice-cream treats, soft drinks, cakes and confectionery.

I had a Cherry Glaze which the extensive menu describes as made of cherry and coffee ice-cream, amarena cherries, whipped cream, chocolate blossom, shortcake pieces and cherry sauce.  To call it yummy would be to damn it with faint praise.  It was galactic.

There are a few Koranic inscriptions on the walls inherited no doubt from the Punjabis (assuming they are not from the Indian Punjab) or from the Kurds who preceded them but this is not halal ice-cream.  It's good Scottish-Italian from Equis in Cambuslang.

No future visit to the Kings or the Cameo will be complete without a courtesy call to Afterz and what a pick-me-up after loading a van in Home Street.

It was indeed early arrival at the Cameo that caused me to stroll in that direction and I strolled back alongside a much more contented inner man to see an absolutely brilliant and entertaining documentary about Woody Allen.  It's got great clips from his years as a standup, from TV interviews and talk shows, and from his movies.  There are keen observations from actors, critics, producers etc etc. Enjoyable for anyone but  fascinating for Woody Allen fans.