The summer school gig went off well.  The jazz bar was packed but given that there were 28 students to start with it didn't take many friends and family to fill the place up.  I doubt that there were any unconnected spectators.

We had been split into four bands at the outset and each band played two tunes. Our band included Scottish music royalty in the shape of Jimmy Shand's great grandson. He wasn't playing the squeeze box. The focus of the week had been on contemporary European jazz and the first tune that we played was the other-wordly From Gagarin's Point of View by the Esbjorn Svensson Trio.  It wasn't recorded but here's a clip from the original.  Our version was a bit chunkier thanks to the inclusion of three saxophones and I think we played it at a slightly faster tempo.
  

Our second number was a fast, funky tune made up for the occasion so it has vanished into the mists of time.

I went to a few gigs over the weekend finishing up at a very lively late night session at the Tron Kirk on Sunday by an Edinburgh band called Pocion de Fe who had a good proportion of the audience up and dancing.  Hear them on Soundcloud.

Now I'm enjoying the luxury of a week with almost nothing arranged.  Bored by Friday?

An excellent fringe benefit of attending the Napier University Jazz Summer School is that you get a free ticket every day for one of that evening's Jazz and Blues Festival shows.  You don't get carte blanche but the gigs on offer are first class.

Our own gig, the summer school attendees' that is, is in the Jazz Bar on Friday afternoon.  I'm looking forward to it.

Way back in the day Ghent was a pretty rich and important settlement in Flanders and it's much the same today.  I had a whistlestop tour on Friday morning en route for Dunkirk.  It's got some absolutely wonderful medieval architecture of which it was well nigh impossible to take a decent picture because of the combination of two factors.  Firstly it was hard to get a shot that was not marred by the network of cables supplying power to the trams.  Secondly the town on my visit was infested by beer tents, sound stages and trinket stalls all under hectic construction for the annual Ghent festival.

There's obviously a lot of drink and noise involved and the waiter in the cafe where I had a deliciously cool smoothie insisted that I was mad to be missing it, but like the good news in Browning's poem what it's all about was not revealed.

This is one uncluttered shot I managed to get but the Wikipedia article on the town has some splendid pictures.  A master of Photoshop must have been at work on them.

Bruges, where I stopped for lunch and a zip around was also made of money back in the thirteen hundreds and it still looks pretty well heeled.  Free from tram power lines here's a view of one of its peaceful canals.

They are both lovely cities that I must visit properly some day.

Dunkirk I have never actually visited because my real destination is the weirdly named Loon Plage just by the ferry where a group of cheap hotels awaits the weary traveller.  I was bright and early in the ferry queue the following morning but unused as I am to high season crowds I wasn't bright and early enough to catch the intended boat and arrived in Dover an hour and a half later than planned.  To add to my frustration I was pulled over by the customs and interrogated for some time.  Connor suggested I must have the look of a people smuggler about me.

Fortunately they let me go without ripping my car apart in search of contraband or immigrants and I got up to Keswick without more delay than that caused by real roadworks and those miles of cones that announce roadworks whose existence remains in doubt.

I got home late afternoon the following day and all was in good order except for this poor chap for whom my absence had proved too much.

Amongst the TV channels available at the Campanile hotel in Vilvoorde on the outskirts of Brussels is BBC1.  Nothing so terribly strange about that you may say.  Indeed not.  But this is BBC1 Scotland.

Another oddity is that not a mi!!ion miles from the French border France is represented by France 24 in its English language incarnation.  German guests on the other hand get three of their homeland's domestic channels..

Given the overpowering heat of the last weeks you'd suppose that I'd have welcomed the shower that accompanied my lunch in Dinant yesterday.  I didn't.  Nor was I very happy with the speed of the service.  Fortunately I had a book to hand so wasn't without a means of distraction.  The lunch was excellent by the way

I suppose you can't blame Dinant for making the most of their (only?) famous son but you can blame them for the somewhat underwhelming nature of La Maison de Monsieur Sax.

Just as you can blame or praise the European Parliament for their Parlementarium, a media mad exhibition that covers the development of the European movement from the early steps at Franco-German togetherness in the 50s to the present, excluding the Greek crisis I think.  I'm sure it's very good if you like that sort of thing.  You can even find your MEP and send them an email on the spot via one of the many pokeable screens.

That was one of the two spots where I hopped off the Hop On Hop Off open top tour of Brussels today.  I like to use those tours in an unknown city to get an overall impression and then maybe seek out whatever seemed interesting afterwards.  But as a onetime president of the Edinburgh University European Society I could hardly bypass the parliament.

 The other place I had to get out was the Atomium, and here I also broke my resolution not to bother taking pictures.

I remember how exciting and wonderful I thought it was when it was built for Expo58 and 57 years later seeing it in the flesh as it were it was no less exciting.  What an amazing structure allied as it was to the idea of atomic power as a force for peace and progress.  Ideals die hard.

 Anyway it was only supposed to last the length of the exhibition but was so popular with the public that it stayed.  It's been refurbished over the years and now the spheres are covered in stainless steel rather than aluminium so I guess it's even more shiny than the original.

A lift speeds you up to the top in 22 seconds where there's a great view and there are various interesting exhibitions in the different spheres.  On the final escalator descent the lights present a dazzling show and I just had to try a snap or two.

A large carpark near the conservatoire and its adjacent park had been turned into a Guinguette for the day and from dusk onwards an ever increasing crowd gathered there and enjoyed music, drink and dancing in anticipation of the fireworks. And at 10.30 they started.

 My phone camera worked overtime to capture the beautiful display but wasn't altogether up to the job.  This is one of its best.

Today is the last day of the congress and since it's also the 14th of July there is a lot of unconnected celebration going on.  I saw the military practising last night for a parade today and this evening there will be a fireworks display.

I saw the soldiers as I was en route to the last big main evening concert.  The first was a classical do (all modern and including three work premieres) featuring the Strasbourg Philharmonic and a dozen major sax players.  It was a great evening.  I particularly enjoyed hearing a Danish girl but never came across her again.  Maybe she did only one gig or maybe she played in one of the 410 gigs I didn't get to.

 The restaurateurs of Strasbourg had pulled out all the stops to provide wonderful and plentiful drink and nibbles afterwards.  I hope enough of the two thousand or so who were in the audience turned up later at their restaurants to make it worth their while.  I didn't, but there is still tonight.

Last night was a more eclectic affair, with classical improvisation, world music in the shape of a duo composed of tenor sax and an oriental stringed instrument, jazzmen of various sorts and a tremendous Brazilian big band.

This picture was taken just before the show started.  The people on stage are the team who organised the congress making various announcements and little speeches.  The pictures I took later of the big band etc need a bit of imagination to interpret but this one is not too bad.

This morning there was a meeting at which the international committee that looks after things was elected.  Then there was a presentation by a representative of the city that would like to host the next congress and Zagreb was approved with only a few dissenting votes and no FIFA style shenanigans.  I left my Croatian phrasebook with Fiona in Hvar.  Time to reclaim it.

After the business came food and drink picnic style in the lovely park that Napoleon Bonaparte laid out for Josephine.  A delightful day and it's not over yet. One final open air bash by Sax Assault featuring the sax players from Duran Duran and Supertramp.

Tomorrow I head for Brussels via the home town of who else but Adolphe Sax.

These saxophone congresses developed as get togethers of professional musicians, academics, music students and serious amateurs.  When Philippe Geiss put forward Strasbourg's offer to hold the event in 2015 he said that he wanted to extend the reach of the congress by incorporating a festival of saxophone music that would engage the less serious amateur and the general public.  Hence the name Saxopen, the range of events aimed at the man in the street, the social media presence, internet streaming etc.

Here's one example.  A group entertaining lunchers.  According to a guy who engaged me in conversation there M. Geiss's concept hit the spot.

The large crowds who queued up to get into the cathedral gig would seem to reinforce that opinion.  I got in myself last night.  It was a splendid spectacle but I wasn't entirely engaged by the music.  It started off well with the deep tones of the contra bass, grand daddy of the sax family, resounding through the building from far behind me, then the solemn procession of twenty six players along the nave who were disposed in various configurations as the piece progressed culminating as you see with most ranged on the steps leading up to the alter and a group on a high gallery behind.

There would have been no heads in the foreground by the way had it not been for the combination of a steward's shuffle, a missing husband and a woman in a wheelchair throwing a wobbly, but that's for another day.

 The music?  Ah yes. A bit too relentlessly solemn I thought.

Strasbourg is celebrating the 1000th anniversary of its cathedral.  Yes that's three zeros!  I don't know whether that's from the date they laid the foundation stone or when they topped it out but it's a very long time and merits much celebration.  Unlike many cathedrals one comes across in one's travels this one is not covered in scaffolding so you get a good view, and a crick in the neck because you can't get a long view thanks to the buildings crowding round.

As part of the celebrations there is a saxophone gig inside on three evenings.  Tonight was the second and although I queued for forty minutes I didn't get in, and this a building that holds many.  I'll have to get there earlier tomorrow. (I did manage to get to eight other gigs though in the course of the day).

However the evening was not entirely wasted.  I sat around eating ice cream things till another part of the celebration got going at 10.30.  This is a jolly amazing light show in which the sandstone carvings that adorn the building are at one stage coloured in and later appear as silhouettes. I didn't have a  camera with me but this tablet managed to capture the essence.

 I expect JGH will be able to tell me how it's done.  Terribly precise gels?

This is the conservatoire where most of the music iis taking place.  Thanks to the non-appearance of a group from Honduras I nipped across the road for an early lunch and wrote a long, engaging and exciting post about the congress so far.

Unfortunately technical problems lost it in the air.  Possibility joining the Honduran airliner and I have neither time nor energy to reproduce it just yet, if ever.  Suffice to say it's magic.

A few more meals and get togethers, another round of golf, a poke about in George Sand's little weekend hideaway and French trip phase one was over.  I had hoped that at free moments I'd be able to watch bit of Wimbledon but I've been reduced to following matches on The Guardian's text feed.  The French TV rights have been sold to a network that nobody seems to have. The BBC internet streams will not show themselves to a device that's outside the UK and even Radio 5 Live cut me off after half an hour with an endlessly repeated mantra about broadcast rights.

The sax congress starts tomorrow afternoon but since it's rather a long way from Gargilesse to Strasbourg I decided to do all but the last couple of hours today and finish the journey after a leisurely breakfast tomorrow.  So after a large dishwashing session resulting from last night's excellent and convivial farewell dinner I set off for Besancon and a long and uneventful drive later here I am.

Four years ago when we were clearing out Barbansais I gave some stuff away to friends and was also prevailed upon to remove for safe keeping some stuff that I had intended to leave in the barn for the new owners to do with as they saw fit.  These items ended up in one of Jean's outhouses.  One item was an old golf trolley that came in useful when I went back a year later and I used it again on this visit.

But Jean had clearly tired of having my junk cluttering up a shed that held such useful items as a broken pinball machine from the 50s, boxes of potentially useful objects and the like.  So I filled my boot to bursting point and popped into the dump as I passed by Gueret to dispose of two large golf bags, a set of ancient clubs, a trolley and a vast canvas bag one of a pair that carried my worldly goods from Paris to Barbansais in March 2002.

Yesterday was another opportunity to slog round a golf course in sweltering heat.  This time it was Les Dryades where I used to be a member.  They've cultivated the rough considerably since I was last there, much to the annoyance of many members whose pressure forced a cutback to a degree but it still remains a more challenging course than it was.

Fortunately I buy balls at a price level that allows me to dispense with the tedium of searching in long grass for the regulation five minutes.  Unfortunately many of my fellow players are assiduous retrievers of wayward balls however little they may have paid for them.

Anyway the first nine were followed by a relaxing lunch on the terrace before battle commenced again and a good time was had by all.  Despite their much vaunted culinary reputation in my experience there is nothing that the French golfer at least enjoys better than a nice steak and chips for his lunch.  It was only me who had something else.

Second only is fish and chips which were supplied at the Dutch run open air eatery and campsite where we ended up in the evening.  I joined in the fresh from the freezer, battered at at sea feast bemoaning only the lack of brown sauce.

 I had a walk this morning along one of those handily signposted country paths that the French go in for, ranging from a mile or two in length to the Grandes Randonnees that traverse half the country.  There are several around Gargilesse. The photo is of the castle that sits in the middle of the village.

Unsurprisingly I was at the shorter end of the scale. In this heat even in the shade of the woods it was hard going so I was glad when I hit civilisation again in the shape of a cafe with cold drinks galore.

You'll see from the photo below that Gargilesse is in mourning.  For why? Government proposes, as the sheets attached to the sign explain, to reduce the number of administrative units from their current 36,000 to something significantly less but the 36,000 mayors and their legions of councillors see forced amalgamations of communes as anti-democratic.

Decisions they maintain will be taken at levels and by people without local knowledge or respect for local needs and values.  Government sees streamlining leading to cost saving and efficiency.  We might agree with Sir Roger that there is much to be said on both sides but we know that the tide of history seldom flows in favour of the little people.

So they may as well leave the mourning bands in place since the funeral will surely follow.

Arriving at the Dartford crossing en route to Dover I was pleased to see that there were no toll booths but this was not indicative as I first thought of an absence of tolls. As I crossed the bridge I saw a big notice - DART CHARGE FIND US ONLINE and a couple of hundred yards later PAY BY MIDNIGHT TOMORROW.

So I stopped for a coffee and found them plus newspaper articles about how much dosh had been collected in fines from motorists for non payment in the short time this new number plate recognition has been in operation.

I didn't want to join their ranks so rang up and paid for the crossing and my return trip later this month. But how would I have fared without a smartphone and a coffee shop with WiFi?

The somewhat longer crossing to Dunkirk passed pleasantly and there was no sign of the rain that had followed me down from Edinburgh and I haven't seen any since.

On the contrary France is experiencing a heatwave. I've slugged down lots of water and smeared on factor 50 on the golfing outings that I've already had with chums from my summers spent at Barbansais to keep me safe and it seems to be working. It's not doing a lot for my game but I had a nice couple of pars this morning and some beautiful putts so I'm not discontent.