Because of a minor cock-up the National Theatre of Scotland owed me a favour.  Amongst their suggestions was a visit to their new HQ in Glasgow which I gladly took up as an answer to what to do after lunch with Andrew on one of our occasional dates.

Such a date fell the other day.  Since Rockvilla, for so is their converted cash and carry shed named,  is a little distant from the city centre I did an internet recce for eating places in the vicinity and ten minutes away found Ocho.

With Google's help we navigated north from Buchanan Street to Speirs Wharf on the Forth and Clyde Canal.  The area was formerly a hive of industry and a transport hub but the offices of the canal company and associated warehouses have been titified up into fancy flats.  If you don't fancy a flat you can rent a mooring for your yacht and there's a spa adjacent to the restaurant as an alternative to a cleansing in the canal.

Lunch was fine although the wine was a bit warm.  But its fortifying effect came in handy when Rockvilla hove into sight.  It was ten minutes walk up the canal but separated from our bank by a ten foot fence behind which was a bridge leading from the other bank to a pathway to Rockvilla on our side.

On investigation I found that I could move out above the canal on a couple of piles to the end of the ten foot fence, squeeze in between it and the bridge, climb over the bridge balustrade and bingo I was on the path.  The wine had not fortified Andrew to the same extent so he retraced his steps to cross the canal at the other end of Speirs Wharf and twenty minutes later caught up with me.

Inside the shed, converted beautifully for around seven million quid, we found just what you might expect.  Offices, workshops, costume store, lighting store, props, rehearsal rooms etc.  All very impressive and enthusiastically presented by our guide.  Connecting us both firmly to the enterprise was meeting a fellow langtonian in the person of their Head of Stage. A good excursion.   

The City Art Centre is running an interesting exhibition called An Edinburgh Alphabet that brings together items from all of the city's museums.  There's a programme of talks and so forth associated with it and I've been to a couple.

This week I gathered with others around a display case of glassware and learnt something of the history of glassmaking in Edinburgh. It's pretty much all gone leaving a few traces such as the relief panels on a Holyrood hotel rescued from the glassworks that stood on that site and showing glass makers at work.  There is also the intriguing thought that the converted church that is the Glasshouse Hotel is named for the association of Greenside with the industry, not that I can find any proof.

Hotfoot from history I went to what may be the future.  Whist is a virtual reality show.  Three punters pitched up for the 1pm show in one of the Festival Theatre's bars in which a number of oddly shaped objects stood.  We were invited to familiarise ourselves with the space then equipped with big chunky VR headsets and headphones and let loose to wander focussing on what were called trigger points on the objects.

When you hit a trigger point a scene then appeared in front of you, or all around you actually.  That's rather the point.  It was pretty realistic.  I did feel I was in the space in which the action was taking place although since the action in each case was on the surreal side you could hardly call it reality.

It reminded me a bit of putting on red and green plastic glasses at 3D films years ago where the action of the film was subordinate to the technology.  3D films have never really caught on and 3D TV died a death.  I think the same could be true of VR unless the material presented is a good deal more worth watching than Whist was.

There's been a series on Radio 4 recently exploring the meaning of some of the terms you see in the list of credits at the end of a film. Terms such as Best Boy and Key Grip.  Whist's credits had Amazing Development Guy in their list.  Quite an accolade.

Before moving from VR to plain old R let me tell you that at the end of the experience, before the credits roll a number is displayed which is said to have been calculated in response to what bits of the various scenes your eyes were drawn to which when looked up on their website will reveal your personality.

Now just as fortune telling weighing machines deliver a wee card that tells you what a splendid chap or chapess you are I didn't expect to be classed as in any way nasty however much my eyes may have concentrated on the more dubious aspects of the VR vignettes.

But it turns out that I am altogether splendid.  So for the enlightenment of my readers and perhaps the puzzlement of those who know me I quote the assessment in full: -


The elements that captured your attention during your VR journey may point to your sensitivity, curiosity and openness to the world around you, which can captivate you without demanding answers. You can be capable of appreciating beauty and contemplating unknowingness and staying open to experience without the need for an immediate closure.

The elements that captured your attention during your VR may suggest that you are sensitive to the suffering of others. Your empathy and compassion make you notice things which often pass unnoticed – in yourself and others. Under certain circumstances, other people’s suffering may matter more to you than your own joy.

    

After the euphoria of the summer school gig I got back to being a spectator.

First stop was The Jazz Romantics at The Village off Ferry Road.  A pitifully small audience for an excellent evening of great American songbook classics.  They were competing with half a dozen Jazz Festival events though.  Why were they themselves not part of the festival?

Then the Edinburgh Schools Jazz Orchestra in the pouring rain.  Not exactly in it but the rain beat on the spiegel tent roof throughout.  This was a set of big band classics interspersed with a few solo or duo pieces demonstrating the enormous talent of our teenagers.  One lad in the band has been at a couple of the Napier summer schools so I knew he was a terrific sax player.  He turns out to be no slouch on the piano either.  Destined for greatness.

Since my next concert was only an hour and a few hundred yards away I slipped into The Angel's Share for some lunch.  I ignored their vast (and pricey) range of whiskies and washed down my very tasty steak sandwich and yummy chips with a velvety smooth Merlot.

The restaurant used to be a post office and my next port of call used to be a chapel.  It's now The Rose Theatre in whose basement we had our gig.  This one was upstairs in the main space.  The Baptists moved out because there wasn't enough room for their growing congregation but three hundred seats was plenty for those who assembled to hear Ryan Quigley and Soweto Kinch being Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker.  Ably supported by a rhythm section of first class players they gave us an hour and a half of high octane grooves.
 

I snapped a piccie but only Soweto came out tolerably well.

I was released early enough from the Outside Mullingar rehearsal in the evening to have gone to Soweto's other gig and I was keen but.....

Maybe I'd had a surfeit or old age is creeping up on me so I went home and enjoyed Radio Scotland instead. 

Pure dead brilliant is the only possible description of yesterday's Napier Jazz Summer School concert in the Rose Theatre basement.  It's the cheapest of the Jazz Festival gigs and you get a lot for your money.  The 120 seat venue was full, helped admittedly by the presence of the 45 summer school participants.

Ten of those participants were singers.  This is the first time the summer school has catered for singers and they gave a major boost to the concert.  We had five bands playing.  Singers performed in various combinations between the band sets and rounded off the gig singing a vocal version of Take Five as a choir.

The origins of jazz are a bit on the hazy side but it's generally accepted that the first jazz recording dates from 1917.  So to highlight that centenary the repertoire for the week was made up of ten pieces, one from each decade since.  The bands chose a couple each and miraculously there was only one repetition.  The two bands concerned provided interestingly different versions.   

The week itself was good fun, incorporating various group activities as well as the work directed towards preparing the concert pieces.  We had a couple of theory sessions most of which was either just above or far above my head though my eyes were opened to one or two aspects of the fundamental building blocks of the music.

That was doing but I've managed a fair bit of appreciating as well.  Two gigs in particular stand out for me.  One was music by Ellington and the other was music associated with Cannonball Adderley and his band, his greatest hits as it were.

I had to sacrifice a couple of evenings of concert going to meet my Fringe rehearsal commitments but that's life in the culture vulture's cage for you.

The City Art Centre has been running a series of Saturday lunchtime singsongs by local choirs and I went along to one to hear a friend sing.  I got there early and took in the exhibition of the short-listed designs for the replacement of the Ross Pavilion in West Princes Street Gardens.  Like many residents I've always called it the Ross Bandstand but that was demolished and the present structure erected in 1934.

The seven designs vary enormously from a couple that put the emphasis on minimising the built aspects in favour of the garden to those that confidently impose pedestrian flyovers and chunky structures.  All of them have something exciting to offer and I'd hate to be responsible for the final choice.

The Dunedin Wind Band celebrated its 10th anniversary with a concert of pieces chosen by band members past and present from the large number that have been played over that decade.  Several past members joined the ranks for the evening, some travelling up from the deep south to do so.  We were 56 strong on stage which was quite a squeeze.  A jolly good time was had by all even though some of us didn't manage to play all the notes at the right time and in the right order.

Brief notes on what I saw on the final weekend of the Film Festival:

I Dream in Another Language - a Mexican film in which a young linguist engages with the last two speakers of an indigenous language who have not spoken to one another in any language for fifty years or so thanks to a falling out.  It was a nice little story that ended happily enough with the two old boys joining the spirit world in the cave where all the dead speakers of that particular tongue end up.  A touch of magic realism there.

The Last Men in  Aleppo - a documentary about the so called White Helmets who pull bodies from the rubble of that pounded to death city.  There was no commentary or analysis, just observation and eavesdropping.  Disgracefully I missed large chunks by nodding off periodically.  Not that it was boring, I was just tired.

Demonio tus Ojos -  I've forgotten the English title of this tale of a man who takes an unhealthy interest in his half-sister.  I expect all sorts of intellectual bullshit can be advanced in support of the mix of voyeurism, incest and violence against women displayed in the film and there may well be some merit in the loss of innocence theme but on the whole it gets the thumbs down from me.

Time bandits - pure delight and fun from the Monty Python stable of writers, film makers and performers.  A young boy and half a dozen dwarves, former employees of the supreme being, romp through time in pursuit of treasure to steal. They encounter Napoleon, Agamemnon and Robin Hood, go down with the Titanic and enjoy sundry other fantastic adventures.

The Quiet Earth - science fiction from New Zealand.  A scientist who has played some part in an experiment that I didn't entirely understand, or rather entirely didn't understand, wakes up to find himself alone in the world.  Well, not quite alone.  He encounters a young woman and then a young Maori.  They potter about this empty landscape.  The scientist works out that the sun is about to explode.  They decide to save the world by blowing up the installation where the experiment was taking place.  Scientist sacrifices himself in doing so so that the young couple can be together.  Or maybe not since the closing shot is said scientist apparently reviving on a beach as the saved sun rises. Not my cup of tea really but harmless.