One of the features of where I live that I never fail to be thankful for is the ready supply of buses that are available on my doorstep to whisk me to almost everywhere in the city that I ever want to go.

And I live in high hopes of the tram line being extended down Leith Walk within the next year or two to add a direct link to the airport.

Now that undertaking will entail some disruption to the bus services during construction of the line.  Current plans indicate that buses coming from town would no longer pass my door.  They'd go down Easter Road or Broughton Road.  Not a big inconvenience.  Indeed adding a healthy little walk.

However a new transport option has just been introduced that would overcome the problem and would be even more healthy.  Edinburgh now has a bike hire system with a docking station just round the corner.  I got all excited about it and kitted myself out with the phone app needed to use the system.  Rides were free on the first day but it was close to midnight before I was ready so I thought better of zipping down Leith Walk then.

I still haven't tried it out but I will.  What would be great would be for the conversion of the Powderhall railway into a cycle track to be speeded up.  There's bound to be an access point pretty near here so I could revive my long disused cycling skills more safely than on the roads, or even pavements.

The resolution got me out on the golf course again about a week later but weather and other things have conspired to keep me off it since.

One delightful other thing was a weekend making music at The Burn.  I've been to this lovely place a few times now but this was my first carless trip.  It required a train to Montrose then a bus to Stracathro hospital which is in the middle of nowhere, then a taxi to The Burn.

  
The journey was enlivened by a sprint along the platform and up and down a bridge over the tracks to catch the bus.  I needn't have bothered rushing because a fight broke out on the bus after a few stops.  The sane and sober passengers all got out and hung about till the next bus came along.  To our dismay a couple of the unsobers also got on but collapsed into the land of nod after exchanging a few unimaginative expletive undeleted curses.

The sound of a dozen saxophones playing fortissimo was tranquility itself in comparison.

Then the resumption of my U3A Italian ate into possible golfing time.  Not the class itself which is only a couple of hours every two weeks but I'm now in charge of the group which means I have to prepare materials for our sessions.  It's time consuming but quite fun.  Of course what we need is an actual Italian leading the thing not me but at least I can make sure that what we do is of interest to me if to no-one else.

It's a shame that in his 150th anniversary year Macintosh's art school should have burnt down but fortunately I went round it a few years ago and have visited other buildings of his in the past and this year have been to various celebratory exhibitions.  One of the things that tends to be displayed at such exhibitions is the design he (and his wife Margaret Macdonald) submitted in 1901 to a competition sponsored by the German publisher Koch for"A House for an Art Lover".  They didn't get a prize but the drawings were purchased by Koch and later published.

No house was built from his or anyone else's designs at the time.  I didn't know that a house based on those drawings had been built in Glasgow between 1989 and 1996.  On my most recent visit to that city to lunch with Andrew I had the great pleasure of going to see it.  It's lovely and what's more contains a restaurant that provided us with an extremely good and pleasingly affordable lunch.  Here's some pics

Exterior

Gable view

Dining Room

Music Room

Piano - visitors can play it!

For lots of information about the competition and the design click here.  The Glasgow realisation of the design is very lovely inside and out, but I'm not sure I'd be comfy living in it. Maybe I'm not enough of an arts lover. 

But I do love Chicago, the musical that is; I've never been to the city. The show has been the toast of Pitlochry this season so a bunch of  us took a train up, with fizz thoughfully supplied by Claire for sustenance on the journey.  After an excellent lunch we went to the show.  It merited all the plaudits it has received.  The play on which it is based was written (in 1926) as a satire on the corruption and bending of judicial processes that the city was famous for at the time.  The musical stays true to that except that it's such fun, the songs are so bright and catchy, the characters so engaging and we are so removed from the environment it is set in that the message has a hard time getting through.

Another show that deserved not only plaudits, which it probably has had elsewhere, but a decent sized audience, was Richard Alston's Mid Century Modern which played to a very sparsely peopled Festival Theatre last night.  The dancing was beautiful especially the last piece in which the dancers in various combinations and ultimately the whole company whirled and leapt to Brahms' exciting gypsy piano pieces.