This is Gean House in Alloa where a couple of dozen saxophonists congregated for a weekend of music making.  Much fun was had by all and the food and drink were excellent.

Instead of coming straight home on Sunday I went on to Glasgow to an SNJO concert at the Conservatoire.  It was a good decision because the concert was brilliant.  Tommy Smith had arranged Peter and the Wolf for the band plus a classical flautist since as he explained in a pre-concert chat none of his reed section could play the flute well enough.  Liz Lochhead had written a new text with a mildly Scottish flavour and it was delivered in bravura style by Tam Dean Burn.  Playing the piano was Makoto Ozone, a Japanese jazzman who has worked with the SNJO before and who had created the second work played,  a jazz version of Carnival of the Animals.  I loved it.

I've spent a lot of time in the last couple of weeks in front of my TV drinking in the thrills and spills of the Winter Olympics.  I loved it all but am unlikely to emulate the teeniest, weeniest Olympic manouevre  when I get onto the slopes in Austria next month.

One of the events I enjoyed most was the figure skating and coincidentally or not the film I, Tonya which deals with the notorious attack on an American skater to prevent her taking part in the Lillehammer games in 1994 was showing at the Cameo.  Tonya Harding was banned from competitive skating for life because of her involvement.  The film paints a picture of Harding's upbringing by an unloving, fiercely pushy mother and her physically abusive marriage which inspires a great deal of sympathy for her, or it did in this spectator.

I've seen more films recently in a bid to maximise the benefits of my Cameo membership before it runs out.  They are asking what seems to me too much for renewal this year.  One was another abrasive mother daughter relationship, fictional this time, entertainingly told in Ladybird complete with happy ending.  While in Three Billboards outside Ebbing Missouri the daughter is already dead and the black comedy is the tale of how the mother tries to force the cops to get off their butts and find her killer.  It's very funny.

I wasn't so keen on Phantom Thread, despite it being lauded by the critics.  While it's very beautiful and well acted and all that it was a bit dull.

The Grads had a couple of shows in the SCDA one-act competition this month and I managed to see them both and enjoyed them both and they came first and third which must be the best result we've had for some time.  I'm in the Grads production of Macbeth which is now in rehearsal though so far it's been focussed on jaw, jaw, jaw  Luckily I missed the session in which we were asked to associate a song with our character (in my case characters since I'm two) and blether about various other odds and sods.  I'm all for getting on with the action and drawing out character and relationships and meaning in the process.

That's on in May.  One of our Fringe shows will be a new play called Skirt written by Claire and it had its first airing at a readthrough last week.  She's tried quite successfully to pack a multitude of what we might loosely describe as women's issues into a piece intended to run for an hour and twenty minutes. Men do get a look in with some nice parts.

I could give you a day by day account of my holiday in Tenerife but let me save a few thousand words by posting some pictures instead.

A lorryload of bananas spotted when out walking

Something of a cloudy day but it was perfectly warm and the sand perfectly delightful if you don't mind the colour.

It even snowed one day but only at 12,000 feet.

One of the floats in the Three Kings procession.  Sweets were sprayed liberally over the crowd. A "shortcut" back to my hotel ended up in a taxi ride two hours later.

 Here are the extraordinary jagged ranges of spent volcanic peaks that I remember vividly passing as we sailed into Santa Cruz en route home from Kenya in 73.

I couldn't get enough pictures of gorgeous waves breaking on the rugged rocks that make up the coastline.

In contrast a path through a forest in the mountains.

Flowers in the aptly named Orchid Garden in El Puerto.  This is the garden of a private house built by a Scottish wine merchant in 1730.  It's been in British hands ever since and lots of household names have stayed there, Oscar Wilde and Agatha Christie amongst them. 

This chap's picture is pinned up somewhere in the garden.  I discovered that he was the founder of an industrial empire in Tenerife that persists to the present day. He arrived from Greenock aged 17 in 1816 and flourished.
These two articles give the lowdown.

The Hamilton Heritage

The Scottish Origins of the Hamilton family   

It's a beautiful place.  I'll be back.