Ballet Rambert are celebrating their 90th year and touring amongst other pieces a revival of Ghost Dances by Christopher Bruce.  It's wonderful.

When the curtain rises we see three macabre figures standing stock still, looking into the distance, dimly lit and silhoutted against a backdrop that suggests we are in a cave looking out onto a plain interrupted by rocky peaks.  They begin to dance in a silence broken only by the susurration of an increasingly bitter wind.  Their dance is sinister, wild and fearsome.

When music does come it is the plaintive lilt of Andean pipes, the clear notes of the guitar and Spanish song accompanying the entry of a group of men and women who are perhaps come to celebrate the day of the dead.  They dance in various combinations.  The three spirits watch and from time to time join their dances. 

Ultimately they leave the stage and the three ghost dancers return to the silent contemplation with which the piece began. Lighting, costumes, music, choreography and superb physical skills had given us thirty unforgettable minutes.

Not so the other two pieces on the programme. Tomorrow starts with a single dancer in a beige coloured shift oozing herself out from a slot in the back wall and dancing jerkily downstage.  She's joined by quite a few others, dressed similarly and dancing in much the same fashion.  I had them down as mechanical toys.  Perhaps this was a new take on the Nutcracker or Coppelia.

They kept themselves to one side of the stage while on the other people dressed in black tops and trousers strode about, left the stage, returned, pointed up, pointed across, gathered in groups, raised imaginary glasses, slit throats and so on.  They were obviously telling a story but I couldn't make it out.  At one point a chap came on and removed some imaginary headgear and I thought maybe he's a king or maybe a motorcyle courier.  But frankly it was a distraction from the perfectly pleasant though unclear as to its meaning dancing going on stage left.

It wasn't till I got home and glanced at the flyer that I learnt that I'd been watching Macbeth.  Witches cavorting on one side while the play was being performed backwards on the other.

If I'd read and watched all the stuff here before seeing it I would probably have a less uncharitable opinion of the work than I do. But uncharitable I am and will remain.

No mugging up in advance was needed to understand Frames but I didn't much enjoy that either.  Dancers came on with variously sized lengths of aluminium rail and ponced about with them, as single lengths or snapped together in different combinations to make frames in and around which the dancers moved.  So?  A bit like virtuosic piano playing without any emotional content.

The lady sitting next to me had come from Glasgow to see the show and when we exchanged enthusiastic comments about Ghost Dances she said she'd probably go to see Rambert again when they hit Glasgow in February.  I think that would be a good thing to do but I'd spend the first hour and forty minutes in the bar with a good book.

The Good Book was the source of almost all of the libretto of Handel's Israel in Egypt that I saw and heard courtesy of the SCO on Thursday.  I enjoyed it thoroughly.  It reminded me a little of the saying that history is written by the victors.  Words and music throughout enthusiastically revelled in the triumph of the Israelites.  God was clearly on their side.  He smote, he plagued, he drowned those poor Egyptians giving not a toss for their first-borns.  But no frogs were harmed in the making of this epic.

I met a singer friend in the interval who was there to suss it out because his choir are doing it next year sometime.  He loved it but declared that it was quite a sing and thought he might not have the stamina for it.  At 91 and still performing I can forgive him that thought and only hope to match the stamina he's already shown.

A weekend in London provided many pleasures, not least blowing up imaginary balloons for the amusement of my grand nieces.  Or should that be great? The answer may be here.

Another grand pleasure was a visit to the great Cutty Sark at Greenwich.

The intention had been to go to an exhibition about Emma Hamilton in the Maritime Museum checking out the Cutty Sark en route but time spent on board meant it wasn't really worth going to the museum so we pottered about Greenwich before heading to our next port of call, the Merchant Navy Memorial on Tower Hill.  But the part of that we wanted to see was behind locked gates.

We had lingered too long at 0° 0′ 0″ East and West.

So time for a bus to Dalston for Turkish nosh and a bottle of Kavaklidere Yakut before an hour or two of music from Idris Ackamoor and The Pyramids.  Described as west coast jazz mavericks they were very entertaining and on the whole I enjoyed their music though I'd have enjoyed it a lot more had there been any place to sit down in Cafe Oto.

The trip to London was originally decided upon so that I could attend the Zambia Society Trust AGM and meet my chum David Powell who I hadn't seen for a few years.  In addition to the standard review of activities and finance at the meeting there was a very interesting talk by a professor of African history who tried to pin down the reasons why Zambia has been, relatively speaking, a haven of peace and tranquility amidst a sea of warring countries both pre and post independence.

Unsurprisingly he didn't find one single reason but an amalgam of several that he felt had predisposed Zambians at all levels of society to value peaceful development over conflict.  Long may it continue and hopefully spread well beyond their borders.

As well as David another old friend was there and his arrival put me in a tricky position.  He was accompanied and greeted me with the question "Do you recognise this young lady?"  I ask you.  It took a moment or two but then the name popped into my head which I thought wasn't bad considering I had last seen her 31 years ago and hadn't heard much about her since.  Mind you it would have been a poor show to have forgotten the leading lady of my final directorial outing in Kitwe.

After the meeting David, Graham, Lynn and myself repaired to a handy tavern and had a good chat about times both old and new until I had to drag myself away for my next engagement.

This was a serendipitously arrived at opportunity to meet another friend I hadn't seen for a few years, a much younger one this time.  Ben did a show with the Grads about ten years ago although he's a professional these days.  Our paths have crossed from time to time and I was delighted to find that he was playing not a hundred miles from my brother's flat while I was visiting.

So on Saturday night we went to see The Worst Was This. It was a great little show played with gusto and skill.  The company hope to tour it next year so we may see it in Edinburgh.  It would be perfect Fringe fare.

A previous winter trip to London was bedevilled by severe train problems that resulted in a bonanzo of ticket vouchers.  This time I was only 75 minutes late going down and 45 coming back so my compensation package is likely to be more modest but handy for the next foray south.

I don't know about you but I was somewhat underwhelmed by the so-called super moon.

Every so often I go to see an opera.  I'm not sure whether that's in order to reinforce my gut feeling that I don't particularly like opera or in the hope of a Damascene conversion.  Scottish Opera's The Marriage of Figaro leant towards support of a take it or leave it attitude.  It was very nice but very long, too long.  The Lyceum despatched the story much more expeditiously when they did Beaumarchais' play a few years ago with the inimitable Jimmy Chisholm as Cherubino.  But then in a play the characters say a line once and move on whereas in opera they have a habit of singing a line half a dozem times before the lights come up on the surtitles again with a fresh bit of text.

Charlie Parker was renowned for the number of notes he could get into a short space of time.  He'd have had no bother getting through Mozart's entire score before the first interval.  The SNJO players at their concert of Parker pieces were up to the challenge.  It was a super gig.  I enjoyed it all but tops was Tommy Smith's solo on My Little Suede Shoes.

Parker was also famous for the amount of time and effort he put into his practice.  That clearly contributed to his success but according to a note in the programme he wasn't always successful in his early years.  At one jam session he had to leave the stage because he lost track of the chord changes while improvising.  It's reassuring to know I have such an illustrious forerunner.  Must point that out to my teacher.

The second play in the Lyceum's season is Jumpy, a woman centred comedy contrasting nicely with their opening woman centred play, The Suppliant Women.  The play revolves around the relationship between fiftyish mother and fifteenish daughter with a supporting cast of man hungry female friend, dull but dependable husband, daughter's boyfriend of few words, his on the brink of separating parents and daughter's teenage pregnant chum plus a full frontal twenty something chap.

Like all the best comedies it's both hilarious and moving. An evening spent watching people stumbling through life and reflecting between laughs on how close to one's own experiences it is is never wasted. 

This is public enemy number one in Leith Walk at the moment, a piledriver beating remorselessly from 8 to 6 six days a week.  Despite its being on the other side of the road with houses and carparks between us and my windows and doors being shut tight its thump is an ever present accompaniment to my saxophone practice. 

We're never short of roadworks and building sites have proliferated in the last couple of years.  The student housing complexes at Shrubhill, by the library and in the former Gateway Theatre seem all to be up and running.  Starbucks and Sainsbury have established themselves in one.  Costa and Morrisons are said to be coming to another.  Local independent traders are not delighted.

We sorely miss that tram with all those young people clogging up the bus-stops in the morning.  Not that I'm often out early enough to be personally inconvenienced.

The piledriver is working on a non-student housing development at Shrubhill and Cala's flats on the old sorting office site look to be more than halfway done.  People are living in them and now that Brunswick Road is open again, the gas main project that closed it having romped to completion in twelve weeks against the forecast of six, the residents won't have to go all around the houses to get home.

Despite having given the road a good going over in preparation for not laying tram lines and thus causing a fair degree of nuisance for a fair stretch of time reasons are constantly being found to tear it up again.  The very useful bus-stops at the top of the Walk have just gone out of commission thanks to the St James Centre redevelopment.  I do hope they are not out of service till that work finishes in 2020 (or 2025 if their forecast is as poor as the gas men's).

The critics were divided over the Branagh Theate Company's version of The Entertainer.  The Guardian wasn't too keen but The Telegraph gave it four stars.  I enjoyed it quite a lot but had I paid £95 for a seat in the Garrick rather than £13.50 for a seat in the Cameo I might have been less generous because my engagement with the production tailed off a smidgeon or three in its final half-hour.

I thought Kenneth Branagh gave us a very good piece of work, as did the rest of the cast though I share The Guardian's reservations about Sophie McShera's high-pitched delivery.  Michael Billington writes enthusiastically about Olivier's definitive performance as Archie Rice.  I didn't see him play the part on the stage but I do remember admiring his screen portrayal.

These live broadcasts to cinemas are excellent.  I saw the National Theatre's Threepenny Opera recently and will see No Man's Land in January.  You may not get quite the same buzz as you would were you in the theatre but it's similar in that respect to watching sports on the telly.  One's interest and excitement is only marginally lessened.  I like them, and the seats in Screen 1 at the Cameo are a lot more comfortable than the seats I can afford to pay for in London's West End.

I got quite a buzz from El Clan.  This is the true story of kidnap and murder in the murky shifting tides of power and influence in Argentina in the 1980s by a pater familias and his sons.  I suppose it's fictionalised to some extent but certainly not romanticised.  The film has the pace and dynamism of a thriller, great performances and kept me gripped to the end. 

If you are keen on mounting site specific productions and the specific site you have in mind is an oil rig in the North Sea you might well feel that the idea's a bit impractical.  But, thought Gridiron, what could we do instead?  It's obvious really.  Build a wee rig in a big shed.

And that's what they did.  In shed 36 in the port of Dundee to be precise.  And that's where I went one dark and miserable Sunday night in the least comfortable bus I've ever been in, fortunately only from the city centre to the port.

The shed was big, very big with a very high roof.  The rig, dinky in comparison with the real live stuff parked in the water outside, was in a corner.  It had a derrick and a helipad and actors in orange suits and hard hats did manly things with pipes and chains and things as we took our seats in a semicircle facing them and wrapped the thoughtfully supplied blanket around our nether regions.

It looked and sounded great and I was full of excited anticipation.  But as we know it is often better to travel hopefully than to arrive.  The show was called Crude.  There was something of a narrative thread throughout centred on a oilworker; his trials and tribulations, the impact of his work pattern on his marriage and family life, the dangers he faced and so on. He even dreams about an oil selkie, an excellent bit of circus work here by an actress. Every now and then a jolly American jumped up to remind us how dependent we are on oil and for how long we've needed it.  His native forebears daubed it on their cheeks as warpaint and now we use it in making lipstick for much the same purpose.  And what about all those plastic bags.

Everything they did was well done and all the little scenes well thought out and woven together into a decent enough show but I didn't find it very gripping nor was I sure what its aim was.  Was it meant to entertain or to provoke despair at the rape of the planet or what.  That wasn't clear to me perhaps because of the very variable audibility of the actors.  Despite being miked up as soon as they turned their heads away from a straight line to my ears it was hard to hear.  Tricky to control sound in such a cavernous setting (with rain pelting down on the tin roof from time to time) but the non spoken sound worked well so I don't understand why handling speech didn't. 

Here's a professional review or two.