You know you are someplace swanky when the lemon to squeeze on your pork comes in a little yellow muslin bag tied up with a ribbon.

For the people who know these things today's eclipse had been in their diaries for centuries but I only heard about it last night.  So as the day dawned bright and cloudless I was unequipped to take advantage of the fine eclipse viewing conditions.

I risked my sight to cast a few brief screwed up glances heavenward with little success.  I found my ski goggles provided no protection.  I looked at the sun through a bottle of red wine seeing only a Rorschach ink blot that revealed nothing.  I tried the sun's reflection in my dirty window panes but that was too bright.  I poked my camera towards the sky thinking that I could at least get a photo but all I got was an ill defined but very bright blob.

I got very excited when the circle of light cast through the pinhole device that I created had a dark bite taken out of it till I realised this was not the moon but one of those undescended chards made famous in an American vote count some years ago.

So I gave up and watched it on the telly.

However, after it was past its peak and the moon's retreat was underway the sky clouded over and every so often for ten minutes or so as the cloud cover varied there was just the right degree of veiling for me to see the crescent shadow on the sun without going blind.  A result.

The A Play, A Pie and A Pint season started this week and Siobhan and I went to the first offering at lunchtime.  After the half dozen concerts I've been to this month it was nice to be led back into drama by the mellifluous Welsh voices of the three woman cast of Leviathan.  Especially given the lovely text that Matthew Trevannion, the author, had given them.

Set in a council house garden on a fine sunny day we met Mavis, who described herself at one point as having been a functioning alcoholic, her daughter Karen who slumps in an armchair eyes closed most of the time, stirring every so often to deliver coherent but disturbing monologues and Hannah, Karen's daughter, who has narrowed down the potential father of her unborn child to a list of three.

There is a fourth character whom we never see.  This is a murderous moggie who is busy wiping out the birds that visit the garden.  I'm sure that's very important and that Mavis taking an injured but still breathing bird into the house towards the end of the play with the stated intention of nursing it back to health is crucial to our understanding of the work.

But I didn't understand anything by it.  On the other hand there's a great deal of humour and I loved the cut and thrust of the dialogue between Mavis and Hannah.  They argue over Hannah's way of life.  They argue over semantics - gypos versus travellers.  "Travellers!" says Hannah "I went to school with most of them."  They argue over Karen.  Hannah screaming that the woman needs her mental health sorted out while Mavis maintains she only needs to rest.

What's it all in aid of?  Who knows but it's very well done and mightily entertaining.  

GB's victory huddle after Andy Murray saw off John Isner in straight sets to seal the tie.  Mind you he made it difficult for himself.  He was a bit shaky early in the match and at points throughout but managed to pull rabbits out of hats when he had to.  I guess he was feeling the pressure of both the expectation and the necessity of a win.  Isner in turn clearly was desperate to redeem himself from his failure on Friday and tried too hard at times.

Fortunately Murray's less than flawless first serves were matched by Isner's surprising difficulty in coping with Murray's second serves. 

GB now play France in July and given the wealth of French tennis talent that will be a tough one.

James Ward came on court at The Emirates Arena in Glasgow yesterday after Andy Murray had comfortably beaten Douglas Young in a couple of hours in the Davis Cup tie between GB and USA.

James ranks a full 90 places below John Isner, who is a one-time top ten player so I for one didn't expect to be late home but how wrong I was.  It was a gargantuan battle from the start.  The players were never more than a point or two apart in the entire five hours of play.

Ward stayed with Isner through the first set to force a tie-break that he narrowly lost and again lost the second set by a slender margin.  He got a second wind in the third set and came out a winner at 6-3.  The fourth set ended in a second tie-break but this time Ward won it with points to spare.

Then came the marathon fifth.  Thankfully it didn't quite reach the extremes of Isner's match against Nicolas Mahut at Wimbledon a couple of years ago otherwise I'd still be there but it ran on until Isner finally fell to Ward 13-15.

The crowd was delighted and not a little astonished.  The pleasure of the victory mitigated to some degree my trudge through the rain all the way to Queen St station where I caught the ten o'clock home.

I got home a few hours earlier today having witnessed another excellent five set match in which the world's best doubles players, the Bryan brothers were mightily discomfited and very nearly dislodged from their perch by Jamie Murray and Dominic Inglot who took them to 9-7 in the final set. 

GB need to win only one match out of two tomorrow to progress to the quarter finals and I'll be there rooting for them.

Waiting for play to start

The Toss

Serried Snappers

Cheese figures too in The Caucasian Chalk Circle when Azdak, sheltering the fleeing Grand Duke (though he doesn't know it) gives him a lump of cheese and advises him to "look at it mournfully - because it's already disappearing - like all good things".  But at least he gets to eat it.

Azdak is one of the parts I've most enjoyed playing and seeing the Lyceum's fine production in the company of other veterans of The Grads 2006 production brought back pleasant memories.  My memory wasn't perfect because I only remembered that I'd also played another role when I saw the character on stage and I signally failed to remember another one even when he appeared and had to be reminded of it afterwards.

There was lots of lively music in CCC and for an entirely different but equally spirited genre I was back in the same theatre the following evening for a wonderful concert organised by Jazz Scotland  featuring Ravi Coltrane, son of the great John, and his quartet. They were preceded by New Focus, a Scottish quartet led by Konrad Wiszniewski and Euan Stevenson. 

Jazz is a very broad church with many styles.  Ragtime, dixieland, swing, hard bop, acid jazz, fusion and free are amongst the plethora of sub-genre names that rear their heads in writing on the subject.  I don't rightly know what to call what I heard from those players but it was very much today's jazz from both groups.  Perhaps with a sweeter more contemplative accent from the Scots compared to a grungier more urgent tone from the Americans but that's a broad characterisation denied by examples from either side. The best thing is to listen to it and not bother about the taxonomy.

Joe Temperley and Brian Kellock will undoubtedly provide equally wonderful music tomorrow but it will be more firmly linked to the former's long and distinguished career with the great bands of the 60s and his sojourn in the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.   

"Later we'll go next door where we can sample some cheeses and see how a number of different wines combine with them."

Those were approximately the words of the chap leading the wine tasting at the French Institute which we had been led to believe would last from 6 to 8.  So as the slides slid past and his mellifluous tones led us through the geology, the climate and the agronomy of the Loire valley in heart stoppingly beautiful French our estimate of when that cheese and wine nirvana would arrive which at 6 had been comfortably positioned around 7 moved uncomfortably closer to 8.

Having genteelly sipped our way through one glass of a Muscadet and one of a Menetou-Salon over nearly two hours were we destined to a rapid swallow of the promised five remaining wines and a pig-like gorging of bread and cheese in the last quarter?

Well no quarter was given for the release to hit the next door feast came at ten past eight.  No good for those with an 8.30 dinner reservation in a restaurant on the other side of the city.  Caveat vinoamator next time.