After three days on the trot of getting up at 7am to help in the B&B you'd think I'd have been glad to get to bed early when I got home but I couldn't tear myself away from the telly before midnight.

That's when the wonderful rerun of the 1966 election results programme which had occupied the BBC Parliament channel since 8 in the morning ended.  I saw only the last four or five hours; those  that were originally broadcast on the afternoon of the day following the election.

It was a feast for the memory.  All the journalists and presenters who were household names at the time were there.  The studio was under the control of Cliff Michelmore.  Bob McKenzie and David Butler presented the numbers and analysed the swings.  Iain Trethowan gave political commentary.  Robin Day interrogated Grimond and Heath (Wilson kept himself aloof which rather surprised me).  Smooth James Mossman gathered comments from a bar in the square mile. Fyfe Robertson stumbled along the production line at Fords in Dagenham drawing out nuggets of opinion from the workers. Trios from various interest groups were marshalled by Kenneth Allsop to give their take on the result.  He also handled George Woodcock from the TUC who delivered vigorous opinions.  We heard from the likes of Esmond Wright for the Scottish results, Michael Barratt in the Midlands and so on.

They took us out to various live counts, to Downing Street (no security gates and the press milling around onto the very steps of the house) to see Wilson arrive back at number 10 with his majority increased from less than a handful to nearly a hundred, to Heath's losing press conference.  He was in great form, relaxed, cheerful, humorous, positive.  Having got used to his sourpuss image after being supplanted by Thatcher it was a delight to see this earlier incarnation.

Leaving aside the fact that I was watching a squarish black and white video recording sitting slightly unsteadily in the middle of my wide screen it was interesting to see how far from our present flashy computer graphics we were fifty years ago.

Individual results appeared on caption cards reminiscent of silent film dialogue frames but less professionally created.  Apart from a couple of block graphs the principal information presentation form was rather like an oldfashioned cricket scoreboard.  The most high tech item was the swingometer, lovingly tended by Bob McKenzie and whose development in later years was even more lovingly supervised by Peter Snow.

The most striking difference, noted by my inner feminist, was the absence of women.  None of the presenters, pundits or interviewees were women.  Not a total absence though, illustrated in a slightly surreal sequence in which two presenters held a discussion. Between them sat a woman who stared fixedly ahead hands resting motionless on the desk while remarks passed over her head like tennis balls over a net.  One of many female gofors I suppose.

Did that strike me as odd or unfair at the time I wonder?  I don't suppose so.  We did after all have some women fronting serious TV programmes, such as Mary Marquis and Joan Bakewell.  The vanguard of the many who have followed.

The Sunday Times this week selected Stockbridge as the best place to live in Scotland.  I can only think that their man must have been at the exceptionally fine concert that the Dunedin Wind Band and others presented in Stockbridge Parish Church on Friday evening.

For the dozens of Facebook friends and others who failed to respond to my invitation to attend, indeed not a single one turned up, here's what you missed.

And afterwards there was my homemade gingerbread.  I shan't give you the chance again however hard you beg.

The tunnel taking Edinburgh trains out of Queen Street station closed to traffic yesterday for five months and my fruitless journey to Glasgow which had taken an hour via Motherwell was further exacerbated by the hour and twenty minutes ride home by way of the innumerable stopping points on the Airdrie line.

Fruitless through my own fault.  I'd been to the Glasgow Short Film Festival on Thursday where a film I had some involvement with was showing; Dear Peter , which I learn today won the audience award.  I had gone back to see a film made by an Edinburgh College of Art graduate I'd met while doing a film there.  Unfortunately I didn't check the programme first and found when I got there that the film had been shown in the afternoon.  To sharpen my disappointment Isabella won the Scottish Short Film award.

Before going to the festival I'd been to the Fairfield's shipyard museum on one of my periodic jaunts with Andrew.  It's in their renovated offices which are largely given over to providing space for local businesses but quite an extensive set of rooms document the history of the yard from its beginnings to the present day.  It's well worth a trip to Govan. 

We were fortified for the excursion by lunch at the Bavaria Brauhaus.  New to me and possibly quite recently established, as the name suggests it's all German beer and grub (wine is available too).  My lunch looked so nice I had to snap it

It was called Spanferkel on the menu.  That's really suckling pig and this was humble pork belly but it was absolutely delicious and highly recommended should you find yourself in Bothwell Street at lunchtime.  The beer on the other hand was nothing to write home about.  But I speak as someone for whom lager is an unacquired taste.

The view of Edinburgh's skyline from in front of Inverleith House has always been one of my favourites and Monday morning's mist lent it an extra je ne sais quoi.  The mist was soon replaced by glorious blue skies and warm Spring sunshine that was no doubt further encouragement to the rhododendrons and other plants in the Botanics whose buds can scarcely contain their impatient flowers.

After my stroll around the gardens I spent a little while watching the controlled mayhem taking place in Inverleith park under a banner reading EPSSA, which I hazard to guess stands for Edinburgh Primary Schools Sports Association.  Countless kids were milling about being marshalled by loudhailing adults into appropriate groups to run around the park.  I don't know if prizes were being awarded but I hope if they were there were a few to spare for the teachers whose task looked to me a lot harder than that of the runners.

I suppose it's a hard task to turn a popular novel and even more popular film into a stage play.  Get Carter at the Citizens was such a play.  I knew nothing about either the book or the film so was judging the work purely on what I saw and heard.  The staging was super; a vast mountain of bricks behind a foreground space that served as laying out parlour, casino, bar and numerous other spaces with the adroit addition or removal of key bits and pieces.  A drum kit sat down left and was played from time to time by the main protagonist's dead brother.

The first half worked well for me.  Little shafts of light were shed on the plot, characters were drawn, tension built up and I went out at the interval full of expectation for an interesting second act.  Unfortunately it all got a bit convoluted and silly. Multiple deaths occurred, revelations tumbled over one another and it all seemed a waste of an afternoon. 

Many years ago in my last year at university I was down in London for an interview and had to stay overnight.  Looking for something to do in the evening I wandered over to the Festival Hall and heard Beethoven's 4th Piano Concerto for the first time.  It's been one of my desert island discs ever since and I was delighted to have another chance to hear it played live at the Queen's Hall last week.  There was some nice stuff by Mozart and by CPE Bach on the programme as well but the piano concerto was the tops.

My nephew Max's funeral, like many, was an odd mixture of sadness and conviviality.  I didn't know him at all well and learnt much of interest from those who spoke.  He shared many of his opinions with his dad but was a bit more active in trying to implement them.  His dying had the merit if one can call it that of being pretty much organised by Max himself.  He’d written a lot about dying during the course of his illness and was active with others in developing ideas about controlling and planning end of life  You can read some of his stuff here http://peoplethinkingaction.blogspot.co.uk/.

Death by hanging is the lot of dozens of people caught up in the witchcraft paranoia of Arthur Miller's play The Crucible.  Although based on 17th century events that occurred in Salem, Massachusetts he wrote it in response to the communist paranoia stoked up by Senator McCarthy and his Un-American Activities Committee in the 50s.  I like the play very much partly because I found the part of Revd Hale a very satisfying role to play but also because of the work's richness of character and dialogue, its emotional charge and its forensic examination of intolerance.  The Lyceum's current production appealed to me very much.  The central matter that sparks off the whole dreadful tale is Abigail's rejection by John Proctor.  Her continuing desire for him, her jealousy and her anger lead her to concoct a tale of witchcraft on the basis of some youthful high jinks in the woods.  She's normally thought of as a wholly bad egg.  This is the first production I've seen that made me feel some sympathy for her.  It's also a splendid example of truly ensemble acting with around twenty actors taking part.

A rather smaller ensemble of two plus a little extra at the end took the stage in Blackbird at the Citizens.  This is a play about child abuse that was very well received in the EIF ten years ago.  I was spending a sunny summer in France at the time so had not seen it.  This revival delighted The Telegraph but struck me as no more than a thoroughly competent production of a perfectly well crafted play.  My companions were less generously opinioned.

In the great theatre that is sport Andy Murray did another sterling job at the weekend defeating almost single handedly (Jamie joined him in the doubles) the Japanese team in the first round of this year's Davis Cup competition.  His Sunday afternoon match was draining to watch so what it must have been to play in goodness knows.  He looked absolutely knackered as he dragged victory out of the fifth set.

Brooklyn is a novel that I bought after hearing its author Colm Toibin speak at last year's Book Festival.  I enjoyed this tale of a young girl's emigration from Ireland to New York circa 1950, her homesickness, her adaptation to American life, her romantic involvement, the tragedy that strikes her family and her subsequent return to Ireland.  Her return is intended to be temporary but things develop that threaten that intention.

I shan't spoil your enjoyment by disclosing what happens but suggest you run along to a cinema and see the beautiful film they have made of it.  Take some Kleenex.

What a musical weekend I have had.  As forecast Rachmaninov's 3rd Piano Concerto in the hands of  Boris Giltburg was exhilarating.  It's a high octane number so you'd expect him to choose a relaxed little ballad as an encore but not a bit of it.  He raced through another physically demanding piece albeit a lot shorter.

Even the orchestra most unusually played an encore.  I don't know what it was but it was a reasonably substantial latin sounding piece.  Not surprising given the conductor was Mexican.  It was very jolly with lots of odd percussion including at one point the conductor giving his head a knock.

The evening had started with another jolly piece called Naughty Limericks by a Russian I'd never heard of and after the Rachmaninov we were treated to a symphony by my favourite Russian composer, Shostakovich.  Lovely stuff.

 I should  have been at an SCO concert on Saturday but forty winks induced by an afternoon tea party although they ended in time for me to make a mad dash to the Queen's Hall doused my enthusiasm so I didn't go.  I mustn't drink so much tea in the afternoons in future.

On Sunday I was making music as well as listening to it at the Scottish Saxophone Academy's  saxophone day in the Roxy. Philippe Geiss who, inter alia, was the main man organising the sax congress I went to in Strasbourg was there to run a couple of master classes and we all played in various combinations in the concert that closed the day.

Not having had enough I went on to hear my chums the Jazz Romantics in an evening of swing in a bar I hadn't been in for over fifteen years.  It used to be a favourite post rehearsal refreshment stop called Maxies with pretensions to being a wine bar.  Now it's a mini brewery real ale place with twenty pumps on the bar counter.  Well maybe only a dozen I didn't actually count.  Fortunately they still sell wine and the ambience is still delightful.  And the music was good and there were dancers to watch as well - a jolly good round off to the weekend.