In addition to celebrating Rocio's 50th with some 36 hours of what seemed like continuous eating and drinking I managed to do a little tourism.  Spanish railways do an equivalent of our Senior Railcard, only at one fifth of the price and giving discounts of up to fifty percent on fares which are to British eyes already very affordable.

Birthday party eating and drinking

A gate to Badajoz

That's the sort of roundabout I admire

Roman theatre at Merida

View from the stage

What was that line?

Ibn Marwan

A panoramic view of the 18th at Gleneagles yesterday.  Not much golf going on, just waiting for some practicers to turn up.

The end of the Festival has not brought theatrical life to the crushing halt that might have been expected.  Apart from the very exciting referendum, whose denouement I was able to follow on Radio Scotland from a bed in Badajoz thanks to the internet, there was the wonderful Blabbermouth, a 12 hour NTS marathon of words and music that passed like a 100 yard dash on the eve of said referendum.

Duart Castle - Mull

Before that and slightly less wonderful in my view was their In Time o' Strife and on the beautiful island of Mull the very entertaining  The Greatest Little Republic (In the World), which when it started I thought was going to be a comedic satire on Scottish independence but as the Herald review explains turned out to be a much darker piece.  There was comedy on Mull in the form of The Weepers  by Rachel Maclean but after I read the very detailed handout describing the film it was clear that my artistic sensibilities had not been finely enough attuned to see beyond the bleeding obvious.

There's a lot of bleeding and other goriness in Titus Andronicus which Grads are presenting in the Spring.  It's a play I knew nothing about until we had a read-through this month.  It has a high bodycount and I spent a lot of the time wondering which of the many deaths I might be privileged to demonstrate but came to no conclusion.  In Festen, now in rehearsal for production later this year, I'm not meant to die but I am old and the vigorous conga dancing might just finish me off.

I was in Spain for a 50th birthday celebration and hoped to go to the theatre in Madrid on my way home but Monday tends to be the day of rest in continental theatres so I missed for example seeing Duet for One that I played in years ago, so would surely have followed the Spanish version easily enough.

With the Spanish birthday girl