Filth is quite fun.  It's a pretty nasty story in many ways but a wonderfully exuberant film and it has a moral centre.

It was a relief to enjoy an outing after disappointment two weeks running at the Traverse.  The Collection was a mildly promising drama about loan sharks that lost its way after the interval.  The Baroness, about a relationship between Karen Blixen of Out of Africa fame and a young poet, went on and on in a seemingly endless repetition of her saying what magnificent promise he had if he would only shape up and him asking what she wanted of him.  It was Denmark's play of the year in 2011 so their boredom threshold is clearly higher than mine.

For the sake of exposing myself to Italian (I'm doing a course to brush mine up) I went to see La Grande Belleza.   This was a yawn inducing excursion into the boringly decadent lives of rich Romans.  Luckily I found a few moments of entertainment and the Italian sounded lovely so it was not a complete waste of time.

I took in a case of wine for a neighbour who was out.  After ten days she turned up to claim it and gave me a bottle for my non trouble.  That's what I call neighbourly.

Neighbourliness cropped up earlier in the month when I was re-elected nem con as secretary of DORA (nobody wants to relieve me of the post) and when I went to Stirling to attend the AGM of Neighbourhood Watch Scotland.

That was quite fun in its way.  I learnt for example that there is such a thing as a Deliberate Fires Reduction Officer and picked up a free loan shark highlighter pen from Trading Standards, having lost out on their giveaway pink piggy banks.

That's one festival free week over and it's back to normality.

In my case that has involved the DORA AGM, my first rehearsal as Cicero in the Grads' production of Julius Caesar due to be presented in late November, a day in Glasgow and a birthday party(not mine).

In Glasgow I paid my first visit to their botanic gardens.  The gardens were neither as extensive nor as attractive as their Edinburgh counterpart but the hothouses were brilliant. Apart from wonderful plants one building shelters a number of statues including this intriguing one of King Robert of Sicily with a monkey on his lap.  There's a story there that I'll leave you to find out about on your own.

 A degree of normality has been restored to Edinburgh's buses too with the re-opening of York Place.  We will have to get used to going to stops we haven't frequented for yonks and whilst it means that progress is being made on the trams there's always a little downside.  My choice of six buses to get me home from Waverley has been reduced to two.   

Berg/Wedekind's Lulu is a seductress and I was seduced into trying American Lulu in the hopes that a novel version would warm me to a piece which I've tried to like a couple of times before.

But like seduction the result isn't guaranteed.  I didn't like it.  I didn't like most things about it; the music, the libretto, the story, the addition of civil rights speeches with no apparent connection to the action.

The staging was lovely though.  I liked the twin curtains of golden threads through which the cast flitted and onto which images were projected but that's not enough for a worthwhile evening in the theatre.

Much more satisfactory was The Diary of Ann Frank.

After its Fringe run Theatre Alba's production was appearing for one night only at the Brunton.  In my opinion a much more suitable venue for a story about people hiding in an attic for two years than in the open air at Duddingston Kirk.

It was a fine production and the scenes of joy at the news of the allied invasion and anticipated freedom followed by discovery, transfer to the camps and death were extremely well played and moving.