Somewhat oddly the first event of the Film Festival that I went to was actually a jazz gig with Tam Dean Burn reading various poems and other writings by Tom McGrath while the SNJO played Ellington and Miles Davis and others.

I knew of McGrath as a playwright and as something of a dramaturg at the Traverse and the Lyceum in the 80s or 90s but didn't know of his jazz interests.  Nor of any involvement in film.  Indeed I don't think he had a lot to do with film.  This evening was a celebration of him as a much admired Scottish cultural icon.
 

In terms of films I've since seen an excellent one directed by and starring Danny Huston, (son of John). The Last Photograph, a very poignant story of loss. Huston did a Q&A afterwards and came over as a really nice guy.

Hostages is a Georgian movie about failed young hijackers hoping to flee to the West. The episode was true but the film was drama rather than documentary.  Only one of them escaped execution. The sad coda was that if they had waited only eight years they would have been able to lawfully leave the USSR. 

Newton was a delightful little comedy about a young Indian civil servant zealously trying to set up and run a polling place for a tiny community in the middle of a jungle plagued by Maoist insurgents. 

Another film with an Indian as star, set this time in Sligo, was Halal Daddy.  It's a lovely romantic comedy with multicultural humour and inter-generational conflict.  Naturally there's a happy ending.  See it if you can.  It's fun.

I can't say the same for The Pugilist.  It's not at all a bad film but I thought it rather a run of the mill story of gangland violence and a good man's struggle against it.  The sort of thing I might watch on TV when I was too lazy to do anything else.

I couldn't resist this beautiful bow tie at less than half its original price in the Scottish National Gallery shop a couple of months ago.  As is often the case I had gone in looking for a present for someone else and came out full of self indulgent guilt.

Guilt turned to frustration as its delicate soft silkiness defied my efforts to tie it.  Proud as I am of my tie tying prowess, demonstrated to the world in 1992 when unaided by mirrors I tied a bow tie on stage in the course of a performance this little beauty refused to be tamed.

But last week I managed it in response to an invitation to a party where dressing up was encouraged.  Disappointingly, apart from the hosts the only people making a sartorial effort were the theatrically connected.  The rest of you - pathetic.

Now pathetic is an adjective you might well apply to Willie Loman, hero of Miller's Death of a Salesman but that would be cruel.  The American dream hasn't worked out for Willie or for his sons and the story is gut wrenchingly told in a very fine production from the Royal and Derngate theatre currently touring the country.  I'd forgotten just how harrowing it is and reflecting on Arthur Miller's other plays, or at least those I know, I marvel at his capacity to enable us to experience catharsis through the tragedy of his protagonists.

Music is Torture was an entertaining idea that rather lost its way.  The story is of a guy who runs a little recording studio where he's been trying unenthusiastically to produce an album with the same band for years and is just scraping a living.  In the past he'd had pretentions as a musician himself and produced a record but didn't make the big time, or even the not too small time.  Now he works and sleeps in his studio and is on the verge of being evicted.

A letter comes from a lawyer who tells him that his long ago recorded number is being used by the CIA in their enhanced interrogation sessions and offering him the chance to sign a contract to recover royalties.  His scruples don't take too long to be overcome given his dire need for a new pair of sneakers.

So far so amusing but subsequently we have a narrative that dribbles along fairly aimlessly.  The band behind the glass appear in orange jumpsuits as eventually does our hero but this denouement if that's what it was didn't make much sense to me.  But the show on the whole was fun.

The RSNO's penultimate concert of the season was not torture.  Indeed it was very good and I especially enjoyed Jennifer Johnston singing Mahler's Rückert-Lieder.  That was a pleasant surprise because I wouldn't say it's my thing.  Thomas Søndergård, who conducted, was announced as the successor to Peter Oundjian as music director.  He'll take over at the end of next season and judging by the applause from both audience and orchestra is a popular choice.

Scotland's most written about monarch is surely Mary Queen of Scots.  Just have a glance at this Wikipedia article to see how much there is.  It's a torrent that shows no sign of abating; one of the latest is Linda McLean's play, Glory on Earth, which deals with her relationship with John Knox.

Encounters between the vivacious young catholic queen and the priggish protestant reformer would seem fertile soil for cutting dialogue and lively drama but for me this production fell flat.  It looked lovely though and having Mary's four Marys (of whom there were actually six) playing various Scottish lords was an interesting idea.  Having said that a friend suggested the female voices didn't help provide the contrasts that the show sorely lacked. 

Edinburgh enjoyed more than its average June rainfall all in one 36 hour period last week.  Here's Princes St Gardens the morning after.

The rain stopped handily in time for QMU's open air As You Like It.  The play was presented in a delightful garden in Dunbar's Close off the Canongate.  They gave us a suitably nasty usurper, a cheerful usurpee, an engaging fool, a kind and honest hero and a jolly smart Rosalind who is of course the real hero of the piece.

It was very well done but the tiny plastic stools that we were given to sit on were very uncomfortable and come the interval I couldn't bear the thought of  further posterior punishment so I left.

That made it the first of  three shows that I have failed to see through to the end this month.  That's three more than in the last decade or so.  I was tired when I went to La Bohème and didn't much like it or the glass of  plonk I couldn't finish, so I left.  Milonga on the other hand was good but I felt that the second hour of a tango show was not going to be radically different from the first and that perhaps my fill had been had.  After all it's only five years since I spent a tango watching evening in Buenos Aires.

Far from the Pampas is this lovely farmhouse where I spent a weekend with several chums and various teens belonging to them.

Here's the view of the Cumbrian countryside from the garden.  The little castellated tower is, or rather was in the day, an outside toilet.

It was an eating and drinking weekend but we managed a walk or two and an excursion on a local heritage railway.  I was back in a different part of Cumbria the following weekend for a saxophone course that also involved eating and drinking but no walking.