After the show was over; the show in question being Christmas at the Conservatoire in which the music theatre students strutted their stuff, loosened their larynges and belted out their ballads.  It was a fun entertainment after lunch with school chums on election day.

The other Christmasy offering I've been to recently was Scottish Ballet's The Snow Queen.  I enjoyed it well enough but felt it lacked the strength and punch that they injected into The Crucible in the Festival.  I can't say I know the story intimately and I was bit puzzled here and there, no more so than when the Snow Queen imitates Tosca and throws herself into the void at the end. Here's what The Guardian thought.

I missed the Dunedin's concert because of a prior engagement with Nicola Benedetti and the RSNO.  However with seven alto saxes in the line-up these days I can't imagine I was missed.  The RSNO gig was a treat.

My Italian group had its last session. I'd dragged up a jolly Christmas song on which to base an exercise.  You can listen to it below but I'll spare you the find the missing words exercise.  They're not missing in the video.  That was followed by a convivial lunch at Vittoria's. 


The Clydedale bank branch across the road closed down some months ago and recently people have been hard at work redding up the premises for some new endeavour.  Most likely another coffee bar thought I.  But no it's a British Red Cross shop.  Just what we don't need, another charity shop.  But it looks like one with a difference.  The gear in the windows appears to be brand new and although I haven't yet been inside from what I could see all the stock may be new.  If so that must be a first.

I'm feeling rather pleased with myself this afternoon.  One of my responsibilities as Secretary of the Dicksonfield Owners and Residents Association is the maintenance of our website (www.dicksonfield.co.uk if you fancy a look).

When I took it over I revamped it using excellent software called Webstudio that I'd used for years but when I had to replace a hard disk some years ago and tried to port the software I discovered that the company had gone out of business and no-one had taken over sales and support of Webstudio.  I found through a user forum a workaround but after a second problem when I had to replace my computer the workaround no longer worked.  So I had to buy new web building software and recreate the site.

That's worked well enough for the last three years and the UK branch of the software developer has helped sort out a couple of problems.  I don't need to update the site very often but I do add information and files after our quarterly meetings and set about doing so after our meeting this week. But the software won't run and the UK people tell me they no longer sell or support the product and advised me to take my problem to the US.  I've done so but they say "Who are you?  You're not on our customer records."  Well I won't be because I bought the thing from Argos, who will certainly be unable to help.  I suspect that a Windows 10 update will prove to be the culprit.  That happened before and the symptoms are similar.

So pending the Americans getting back to work on Monday and possibly helping me I set about some old-fashioned editing of the site pages using my tried and tested method of coding HTML and CSS.  That is to say copy, modify and paste; and glory be it's all worked perfectly.

The weak winter sun over the Beveridge park pond, scene of many of my happy childhood days. I had a stroll through there when I went over to Kirkcaldy to see an NTLive screening of the play Hansard, neither of the two Edinburgh screening dates being convenient for me. It was a super piece. Ultimately a sad and tragic tale of blighted lives but for the most part a sparklingly written verbal sparring match with excellent political jibes. I had gone over in the late afternoon and had a wander through the park and along the prom. The High Street is a bit sad but otherwise the town didn't look too bad and the art gallery and library were in excellent order as was the Adam Smith. The Abbotshall though appears to have been abandoned. Ready for a new lease of life under a new owner?

I'm something of an agnostic as far as opera is concerned but some I do enjoy and one of my favourites is Tosca. Scottish Opera have a production running at the moment and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The music is unbelievably lush and the drama gripping. Despite knowing very well that she's going to jump off the battlements when the moment came it caused me a sharp intake of breath in shock and just about brought tears to my eyes. Great stuff.

In contrast I was not terribly moved by Mathew Bourne's take on Romeo and Juliet. Prokofiev's music is super though I prefer it live rather than canned and the dancing and staging were nothing short of admirable but somehow the emotions didn't overcome the disadvantage of this being a screening and not a live performance. The fact that the only connections with Shakespeare's play were the characters' names and the death of the lovers may also have had something to do with it.

Other wonderful dancing came from Carlos Acosta's Cuban troupe, Acosta Danza. Their closing number, Rooster, (which despite not remembering at the time I now realise I have seen before) is a dance set to music by the Stones in which Carlos himself plays a major part strutting around as the eponymous bird. I'd only recently seen the biopic about him. How true it is one doesn't know of course but it was rather the opposite of Billy Elliot. Carlos was a boy who didn't want to dance. It was only the pressure exerted (sometimes physically) by his father that kept him at it. If my parents had only enforced my attendance at piano lessons when I was eight instead of weakly letting me off the hook after a couple of months I might have been a concert pianist today, I don't think. Musicwise I'm actually just completing ten years with the saxophone and still enjoying the struggle.

I had a few days in Keswick staying at Connor's B&B with Siobhan. Her daughter Miriam has just left school and has gone with a chum to work in a restaurant in the town. Her chum's aunt lives there and the two of them are lodging with her. It's sort of a gap year enterprise though I think they plan to work and save over the winter and then do something more exciting before heading on to university next October. They both seem to be enjoying the experience and getting involved in things outside work as well. I think Siobhan was reassured by the visit.

While we were there we went to the lovely theatre they have by the lakeside to see a show called The Children. It was an interesting piece set in the aftermath of an accident at a nuclear power station, well suited to a Keswick audience with the Sellafield plant only a few miles down the coast. Anyway the argument of the play revolved around the setting up of a team of engineers and scientists of mature years to take charge of cleaning up operations in the plant to spare younger people from exposure to the dangers of such an undertaking. Not all the characters in the play were prepared to be quite so selfless. I think in the Fukushima incident older people did step forward.

Other theatre visits included Catch 22 produced by the Grads. It was terribly well choreographed and had lots of delightful caricatures. I particularly enjoyed Lawrence Waring's pop-eyed Major Major climbing in and out of his office window. The Barber Shop Chronicles at the Lyceum was a riot of colour, action, fast paced scene shifting and man talk set in barber shops all over Africa and back here in Blighty. A scene from Claire's work in progress featured with three other writers' work in From Page to Stage at the Roxy. All four pieces entertained and raised interesting and one hopes useful comments from three theatre luminaries there to give feedback.

Theatre of a different kind was provided by stand-up Ardal O'Hanlon who held the Queen's Hall audience's attention for an hour or more with his ruminative and mostly gentle wit. He owes his fame I understand to a long gone sit com Father Ted. A word of praise for his warm up act, a girl from Glasgow whose act was funny but definitely post watershed. I thought she was called Sue Riddle but Google doesn't know her so I must be wrong.

Another couple of girls who did well for me in recent weeks were Anna Clyne whose Prince of Clouds and Sound and Fury graced an SCO concert and a lady whose name I can't recall who gave a most entertaining talk in and about Scots at the Portrait Gallery.

On the music front apart from the SCO I revelled in Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony from the RSNO. I just love that man's big, loud noise and his soft sweet noise as well. It was preceded by a percussion concerto that reached the parts other instruments can't get to. Review here.

Then there was jazz. Tommy Smith with piano, drums and bass at the Queens Hall paying homage to Coltrane and a number of excellent players in a weekend of music at St Brides. I particularly enjoyed the guitar playing of Ben Macdonald and I'm not a guitar fan. On my own instrument, the saxophone, Matt Carmichael who is still at college was amazing.

A quick rundown of films. Meeting Gorbachov reinforced, despite its somewhat hagiographic style that here was a great man who was cut down before he could do all that he might have done to improve our world. It Must Schwing.... was a fine tribute to the men who created Blue Note records and featured lots of music from their sterling cast of jazzers. Le Jeune Ahmed was a compelling portrait (albeit fictional) of a young man convinced that his religious convictions justified a decision to kill a teacher he considers an enemy of Islam. He doesn't succeed and has a rather unconvincing change of heart when he suffers an accident in pursuit of his mission. Relative Worlds in the Scotland Loves Anime festival was not my thing. But I knew that. I only went because of my current interest in Japanese and thankfully I did learn something because filmwise for me it was a big yawn.

This is the set of The Stornoway Way which has been playing to packed houses at the Festival Theatre Studio.  I was there yesterday afternoon.  As well as being attractive to look at it was cleverly designed.  The slatted wooden structures were used to create variously a bed, a supermarket checkout, an Edinburgh pub and more.  The rear wall performed as a video screen from time to time.

All that was grand and maybe the second half was a revelation but I left at the interval since the first half consisted of not much more than three actors expatiating on the subject of drink.  They walked, they talked and they drank.  I won't deny that what they did they did well but I found the story less than riveting and it didn't inspire in me any curiousity about how the story would turn out.  I daresay the nickname of chicken for the Famous Grouse will stick with me though.

I've been a bit bored at two other shows recently - Black Men Walking at the Traverse and Solaris at the Lyceum, though I did watch them both all the way through.  I admired their sets too but neither their narratives nor their metaphors held my interest.  I fear I am out of step with critical opinion, not for the first time and surely not for the last so here's what the unbored thought about the latter and the former.

Shows I did enjoy were A Taste of Honey at The Kings and Clybourne Park at The Traverse.  Ewan came to the Kings with me.  He was here for a few days on his way back to Houston after his holiday jaunt around Europe which had given him many pleasures but one disppointment - no trace of a birth certificate for my father that could have supported an application for an Irish passport.

The film The Farewell about the overseas resident members of a Chinese family gathering in China ostensibly to celebrate a marriage of a couple of the younger members but in reality to say farewell to their matriarch from whom the knowledge that she is dying of cancer has been withheld was very good and quite funny in parts.  In our society we don't withhold such information and give no value to the idea that ignorance of an oncoming death may indeed be bliss but it's something to reflect on.

Based on what the credits called "an actual true lie" the final reveal was that the old lady lived on for another six years, a period untroubled we may suppose by thoughts of death.   

One of the first classical records that I ever owned was a recording of the Brandenburg Concertos and I heard Number 3 played by the SCO under the direction of the charismatic Pekka Kuusisto.  I enjoyed it but preferred a modern piece called Bach Materia by Hillborg.  It was inspired by the Brandenburg and if my ear were better tuned I might have caught the references.  It has a tremendous beginning.  The band start what appears to be tuning up but before you know where you are you realise that the piece is in full swing.  It was very much to my taste.

At Greyfriars I had the unusual opportunity of hearing three alpenhorns in a concert featuring  Edinburgh Concert Band and a visiting group called German Winds.  It was an excellent concert and the piece played by the three horns and an oboe was great.  Unfortunately I didn't manage to take a picture of the horns in action but I've pinched one of them at rest from the ECB Facebook page.

The German Winds conductor had written two pieces, Greyfriars Bobby and The Royal Mile.  The band played them and the scores were presented to the Lord Provost. 

The concert I've enjoyed most in the last couple of weeks was the SNJO with Bill Evans.  They played Evans' music in arrangements by different people including several SNJO members.  It was a fabulous evening of saxophone playing (there were other instruments I admit).  I absolutely loved Paul Towndrow's solo in a piece that he had arranged.  I'm delighted to see in this review of the gig that he's been nominated as best alto player for the British Jazz Awards.  I'll be hearing more from him next weekend at Gallus.

The rugby world cup - no comment.

My U3A Italian class is underway for the 2019/20 session.  Waitrose couldn't fit us in on the day we wanted so I've moved the thing to the McDonald Road library which couldn't be more convenient for me.  Not so handy for everyone else but tough.

The Play, Pie and Pint Autumn season has kicked off as well and I went to see the first offering, From Paisley to Paolo by Martin McCardie.  It was an amusing and sometimes moving piece about friendship whose plot turned on the fact that one of the three protagonists was obsessed by Paolo Nutini to the extent that he had developed a close but fantasy friendship with him based on having been acquainted with him at school.  His mates had gone along with this for years but at a musical festival where Nutrini is performing they decide to call his bluff.  Other falsehoods fall away and there's a neat twist at the end.

Now Nutini as well as being a Paisley buddie is one of the many Scottish Italians whose roots are in Barga where according to Wikipedia 40% of the population have Scottish relatives.  John Bellany (not a Scottish Italian) had a home there.  Its jazz festival is pencilled into my mental diary for some future trip.

I've seen bits and pieces of the very popular TV show Fleabag and went along with Claire to see a cinecast of the original one woman Edinburgh Fringe show on which the series was based.  It was a very accomplished performance but I was no more excited by it than I have been by the TV show.  However because of some building work that was going on close to the screen in which it was showing Cineworld dished out compensatory free tickets so I've the chance of going to see something more to my taste at a future date.

Portobello has been blessed with a new bookshop which I browsed around when I went down on Saturday to the Porty Art Walk.  I wish the shop all success but refrained from buying a book on the grounds that I've got too many waiting to be read and on order from the library.  When I do need to buy a book I've promised myself I'll go down to Porty to get it.

This window wasn't part of the art offering but I think it deserves to be.

I had a good wander around but the only arty thing I lingered over was the showing of a film in what had been the site of the Victory cinema.  I was familiar with the art deco George cinema in Bath Street which was in operation until 1974 and whose slightly battered building is still there but didn't know that there had been another cinema further down the street.

According to the artist running the screening she had modified (artistically) a copy of the last film shown there.  Called John and Julie it was about two kids running off to see the coronation in 1953.  The modifications involved superimposing images, splitting the screen, distorting faces, changing voices and so on.  I don't feel competent to judge their artistic value but I did enjoy the pukka 50's accents and the appearances of various well known actors including Sid James, who was not sporting a cut glass accent.

There was a large crowd on the beach made up of supporters of the half dozen or more teams from  off-shore rowing clubs having an end of season regatta.  It had been going on all day but I only caught the tail-end.  Here's the North Berwick boat hitting the beach ahead of the fleet

Unfortunately for them their cox had to run up the beach, collect a wellington boot and run back to his boat to seal victory and someone ran faster than him.  It all looked great fun.  I loved the slogan on the back of one girl's hoodie

PS I came across this feasibility study for turning the George into a culrural event space.  I suspect that with the community takeover of Bellfield the likelihood of renovating the George is not high.

It was a lovely weekend at The Burn in Edzell with the Scottish Saxophone Academy.  There were a few more of us than usual.  Indeed one or two had to sleep in the lodge rather than in the main house.  We played a good variety of music from Bach to Bernstein, enjoyed the food, had a few drinks and basked in the warm September sunshine as the saltire wafted in the light breeze.

A busy ten days in France started in the middle of the night when the N22 took me handily from my door to the airport.  I was in central Paris by mid morning.  The sun shone brightly.  It was warm.

I had time on my hands so set off to do some saxophone browsing but this was August and the chosen shop was still closed for the holidays.  Getting there had involved climbing the 140 steps (some claim 200) of the decorated staircase from platform to pavement of the Abbesses metro station that brings you out into one of the most gorgeous corners of Montmartre.  It has all the beauty and none of the tat of the area around Sacre Coeur.

Those steps had fair worn me out so I had a coffee and then moved on to the Jardin des Plantes where I relaxed with a newspaper in the sunshine till it was time to cross the road to Austerlitz to catch my train.

Someone else relaxing in the Jardin des Plantes

Patrick and Isabelle collected me at Chateauroux.  He's moved since I left France and the new house is a stone's throw from George Sand's historic home of Nohant.  It's a converted farmhouse set in a large plot studded with trees.  There's a pool which was very welcome, no more so than when returning from 18 holes played at the Dryades at 36 degrees centigrade.  There were 36 people playing in the Sunday competition.  I knew 18 of them so a lot hasn't changed in the seven years  since I was a member.  I won two bottles of wine but with no space for them in my little bag I left them with my hosts.

Other weekend treats included visits to La Chatre market  







and to an agricultural show where for the first and probably only time in my life I saw a combine harvester race and more prosaically and not for the first time a ploughing competition.

The combine F1

Ploughshares at the ready

 After that delighful weekend I headed for Lyon.  Thanks to a late running train and a degree of denseness on my part I missed a connection and had to spend a night in Vierson.  Annoying but not fatal.  I stayed in a cheap and comfy little hotel whose cheery and chatty proprietor was fun to talk to.  I had a pleasant stroll in the evening sunshine by the river and a lovely salad and plonk in a busy outdoor restaurant.  A happy mischance.

On to Lyon in the morning where I was met at the station by my Air B&B hostess who escorted me through the metro to a little studio flat in the heart of the old part of the city.

A corner of the Vieux Lyon

I took an open top bus tour that afternoon to get a general idea of the place and grabbed some generally unsatisfactory snaps as it went along  Here's one taken as the bus drove along the banks of the Rhone, or maybe it was theSaône.

A rather better one I took when on foot the following day shows how the city hugs its rivers.

What you can't get away from is the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière which stands on the highest point of the city.  You see it in the far distance in this shot from the Opera House.

and in close up from the same spot with St Michael visible between the front two spires

and more obviously here.

There's a Roman theatre on the hill just a few hundred yards from the Basilica.  It was just too hot to contemplate clambering around it so I went into the museum that nestles into the hillside beside the theatre.  It's a super museum, certainly one of the largest collections of Roman material that I've come across.  You can enter it from either the top or the bottom of the theatre and inside are two large windows from which you can view the theatre.  This shot is taken through one of them.

The other museum that I visited was the Lumière brothers museum.  Credited with the invention of the cinematograph and consequently regarded as the fathers of cinema the useum is housed in what was their rather grand house.  Not short of a bob or two because they were owners of a thriving photographic paper and plates manufacturing business started by their father.

Their portraits hang either side of the fireplace in this fine room

and this is a model of their mansion.  It's no wee but and ben.

It's typical I suppose of the houses built by the monied bourgeois of the 19th century when the manufacture of silk amongst other industries made Lyon a wealthy spot where fine public buildings sprang up as well.

Town Hall

One rather cute facet of the town is that a number of buidings are covered in murals.  Here's part of one where the figures on the balconies are various kenspeckle worthies including the Lumiere brothers.

 In the 21st century a number of previously industrial or slum areas have been razed to the ground and modern buidlings have sprung up in their place, some cultural, some commercial and some residential.  A few snaps-

Eurosnews HQ

Museum

Blocks of flats

Shopping centre

My hostess turned up trumps again when I left by driving me to the station the Paris train leaves from and in a couple of hours I was back in Paris and at my friend Sylviane's flat.

In the few days I was there we went to one play, two jazz concerts and several exhibitions.  The play was in one of the many little theatres that abound in Paris.  I didn't know this one.  It was a only a few minutes walk from Sylviane's.  The play, Le Porteur d'histoire, by Alexis Michalik is a complicated story of a family mystery that I enjoyed more because of the production and performances than because of the play itself, but then I found it a bit hard to follow in detail.  It won two Molières (think Oliviers) in 2014 and has been on the bill somewhere since.

The jazz was at La Villette, ancient area of abattoirs and other messy activities which has been a cultural centre for many years.  Its latest addition is the Philharmonie concert hall and one of the gigs was there.  I was thrilled to be in the building which is claimed to have the best acoustic in Paris. 

Ultramoderrn interior

Ultramodern exterior

The jazz was good too.  Two groups - the Benoît Delbecq Quartet that I've never heard but who were pretty good and Joshua Redman and his band whom I have heard of and who were even prettier good.  This was an afternoon gig and in the evening we went to one that promised three bands in the Grand Halle.  Lots of atmosphere but no air conditioning.  The first band led by drummer Tony Allen gave us an excellent 45 minutes entertainment.  They were followed by Kenny Garrett whose band played for too long and too repetitively and with too much time spent getting the audience to sing bah, bah, bah, bah along with Kenny.  As a result of the heat and the boredom we decided to forget about the third band which was a bit of a shame.

Of the exhibitions the pick were Berthe Morisot at the Museé d'Orsay and Paris Romantique at the Petit Palais.  Morisot was an impressionist I'd never heard of but I liked her portraits (it was mostly portraits) very much.  The Paris Romantique exhibition surveys the art and culture of Paris between the fall of Napoleon in 1815 and the revolution of 1848.  It's stuffed full of all sorts.  I snapped a couple of things related to Claire's recent production of The Lark.

Here's a pair of Fragonard vases showing Charles VII and his mistress Agnes Sorel

and here is a sculpture by Marie d'Orleans of Joan of Arc greetin at the sight of a wounded English sodger.  A soft-hearted warrior she was.

After a visit to an exhibition of the photography of the American Sally Mann (worth seeing) we set off to have lunch and ended up near Les Halles.  The roof has apparently been replaced recently for no good reason according to Sylviane and not to her taste but I rather liked it.

Then we lunched here.

I recommend the food thoroughly and the wine, but I'd check the wine price before ordering.  I didn't alas, but I managed to smile as I paid the bill.

Are we not drawn onward to new erA - this Belgian production is one of the best pieces of theatre I've seen on the Fringe or elsewhere for some time.  It opens with light slowly rising on a small tree right of centre and a hunched body lying up left.  The body is a woman.  She rises slowly.  A man enters from the opposite side.  They meet centre stage.  The man plucks a fruit from the tree and offers it to the woman.  We're thinking garden of eden.  The apple is bitten and things start going downhill.  The tree is torn to pieces, plastic bags flood down from the sky and with the help of the cast cover the stage, a golden statue is raised, actors brandish hosepipes that issue clouds of smoke.  All the while the cast speak to one another in gibberish, make strange gestures and frequently walk about backwards.  The curtains close.  We get the message.  Mankind has destroyed his beautiful world.  That's where the show gets really interesting.  Like the title it's palindromic.  Think about it.

Understanding China - two books that explore the recent history of China in quite different ways.  One is a novel, The Promise by Xinran Xue, that follows the lives of a family over several generations against the background of turmoil and change that has characterised the country since the emergence of Mao.  The other an academic work, Maoism: A Global History by Julia Lovell, examines the impact of Mao's ideas and actions on places as diverse as Peru and India as well as on China itself.  The discussion, led vigorously by Paul French, was fascinating and brought back memories of how I eagerly followed the UK press coverage of the cultural revolution.  I didn't understand China then and despite this enjoyable and informative session I don't believe I understand it any better now.

The Rite of Spring - it's amazing.  It looks beautiful.  The dancing is astonishing. Perfection or maybe a tad long, maybe a touch ott, but not to be missed.
     

Looking Back Over My Shoulder - two novels that without being overtly biographical spring from family connections with the British Empire, in one case (Dignity by Alys Conran) inspired by tales of her granny's days in India and in the other (The Wild Wind by Sheena Kalayil) a childhood spent between India and Africa.  Both explore identity, the notion of home and of belonging.  The stimulating discussion in the spiegel tent has added them to my growing list of books to be read.

Before the End - my first and only visit to Summerhall this Fringe provided a delicate and thoughtful work.  Centred on the final moments of his life Catherine Graindorge performs a loving tribute to her father, a prominent left wing Belgian lawyer.  She uses a mix of music, spoken reminiscence, recordings of his voice, family photos and documents, video footage of news reports and private videos to convey both his admirable and humane attitude to life and her love for him.  The performance ends with a beautifully caught moment of home video.  The family are disposing of his ashes in a little country river and are disturbed by some riders.  As the riders move off a child's voice is heard saying "the horse drank some of grandad".

Bull - I saw a production of this earlier and expected this older, more mature cast to inhabit the characters more convincingly than the younger set I'd seen.  To an extent they did but gave a rather more austere and clinical performance than I think the play requires.  The actors playing Tony and Mr. Carter were too similar physically, and to a degree in their performances, for my taste.  I'd have liked a much more venomous Tony.

Inverkeithing Community Big Band - several of my saxophone chums are in this band and they all played terribly well.  As did the entire band.  They were absolutely together and accomplished that most difficult of tasks - playing quietly when required to.

Scotland's Role in Slavery - this billing is somewhat more extensive than either the event or the book being presented deserves.  It's a most interesting and informative study but focuses on one man, Lord Seaforth, a Highland estate owner who became governor of Barbados and a cotton plantation owner in Dutch Guiana.  The author, Finlay McKichan, argues that Seaforth was an exception to the general run of slave owners in that he was concerned for their welfare and to a degree for their legal rights from both a humanitarian and a commercial point of view.  He had, it is argued, displayed the same qualities in how he treated his Highland tenants.  While admitting that Seaforth's attitudes and behaviour were not always consistent McKichan pointed out that we live in complex and complicated times today and that the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century period in which Seaforth lived while different, was probably just as contrary.

Remembrance of Things Past - it was a chastening experience to be in a full to bursting spiegel tent to hear an author of whom I had never heard.  I believe myself to be reasonably culturally aware and what's more a francophile yet was clearly one of the very small minority in that tent who wasn't there to endorse the proclamation of Annie Ernaux as a modern day Proust and her novel Les Années as a more than worthy successor to A la recherche des temps perdus.  It was a delightful session and while I've never managed to finish Proust (even the graphic novel version) her book is half the thickness so there's a chance I'll redress my cultural lacuna.

Perchance to Dream - wandering around the festival bookshop I lingered over The Nocturnal Brain by Guy Leschziner wondering why with my interest in the brain and in sleep I hadn't picked that out.  In fact I had.  It was the next session I was going to.  The author runs a sleep disorder clinic at Guy's hospital and his book deals with a number of case studies at the extreme end of the spectrum, from the woman whose sleepwalking includes riding around on a motorbike to the man who falls asleep and collapses when he laughs too much.  Extraordinary cases and so far to go in understanding their causes.

Rebellion in the East - unusually I'd already read the book that was being promoted at this session, Japan Story by Christopher Harding.  It's a cultural history of Japan since it opened up to the west in 1850 to the present day.  This festival session didn't try to cover the entire territory of the book but focused on what the Japanese see as the specificity of their society and the stories they like to tell about themselves, the myths of the nation as it were.  Not everyone buys into those myths and that  also formed part of this interesting presentation. 

Low Level Panic - an Arkle production of a play that deals with women's concerns over body image, relationships and pornography.  It's not a new play (first seen in 1988) but these concerns have proved to be enduring.  In the play they seem more like obsessions.  It's set in a bathroom where three flatmates alternately argue the toss, squabble and commiserate.  An effective set marred I thought by the positioning of a stand where the girls gaze into a mirror (not actually there) as they make themselves up.  Down centre it brought much of the action close to the audience but it obscured quite a lot.  The actresses did a fair job of representing their characters.  It's a sad play really, the most telling line for me being "I'd rather be with anyone than alone."

The Taming of the Shrew - In the cut down form in which Shakespeare's plays generally appear on the Fringe there is a danger of losing something.  That surely happened to this production.  The representation of Kate's shrewishness at the beginning of the play went no way to suspending my disbelief at the extremity of Petruchio's taming tactics.  For me the cross dressing and false beards typical of the comedies have outlived their hilarity and I'm afraid that overall I didn't much enjoy the production although the cast made sterling efforts to entertain me.

Red Dust Road - In her EIF programme note Tanika Gupta says that adapting Jackie Kay's moving memoir about her upbringing as a mixed race adopted child in Scotland and her search for her birth parents was no easy task.  Unfortunately it has proved too difficult and resulted in a lack lustre production enlivened only by Elaine C. Smith's splendid portrayal of her feisty warm-hearted adoptive mother and Stefan Adegbola's cameo as her bible thumping Nigerian father who dismisses her as a sin of his youth when "everyone was having a good time".

Growing Old Gracefully - something close to the hearts of most of the audience who had gathered to hear Sue Armstrong and Daniela Mari talk about their respective books Borrowed Time and Breakfast with the Centenarians. They were both reassuring about progress in research into ageing and the possibility of enjoying later life whilst admitting that so far no silver bullet has been uncovered.  Moderation in consumption, exercise, maintaining an active interest in life and avoiding loneliness are all important factors.  In answer to a question from someone worrying about forgetting words Daniela quoted a contributor to her book who said that the time to worry is not when you forget the word for keys but when you forget what keys are for.

The Djinns of Eidgah - you could hardly be more up to date than to present a play about Kashmir and this one opened promisingly as actors with very real looking machine guns barked orders at the audience as we entered while an atmospheric soundtrack rumbled on in the background and our eyes took in a stage dressed with banners of grafitti and slogans.  It was a downhill slide from there.  The student cast didn't rise to the challenge of knitting together the story of a boy footballer (played disconcertingly by a girl in a headscarf) intent on being selected to play in the world cup while demonstrations are taking place against talks with India, Indian soldiers are enforcing a curfew, the boy's sister is suffering trauma from an attack in which her father was shot, psychiatrists are squabbling about the rights and wrongs of peace talks, footballers have their feet cut off and graveyard spirits hover about.  Who can blame them.    

Words Without Borders - two books about language.  Translation as Transhumance by Mireille Gancel was frankly too French intellectual for me.  My eyes glazed over.  Four Words for Friend by Marek Kohn was more my level but I thought he spoke a fair amount of tosh, no more so than when declaring that we had in some way expropriated words like chutney and bungalow so that they are no longer Indian.  He seemed to object to their assimilation into English, a process that has gone on for millenia between pairs of languages.  It doesn't stop them being perfectly good Hindi words as well as being English.

Love in the Time of #Metoo - one of the authors didn't make it so we had an hour of undiluted Ayelet Gundar-Goshen talking about her novel Liar, and an enthralling hour it was.  The novel deals with a false accusation of sexual assault.  The discussion ranged widely from the incidents that had led her to write the book through the ambiguities that it examines to the responsibility or not of the writer to champion or not the society they live in.  A really stimulating hour from a practicing psychologist who happens to write or is it vice vera and does that duality apply to all novelists.  Can't wait to read the product of her clever and compassionate mind.

Hitler's Tasters - a signal sounds, a trio of flaxen haired girls stand by their chairs around a table, they extend their arms, darkness, two dark clad girls highlight the scene with torches, darkness, lights up, the girls are seated and miraculously food has appeared in front of them.  This is the snappy beginning of the story of young women who have the honour of tasting food from Hitler's kitchen before it's served to him in case it's poisoned.  The show is never less than snappy. While they wait to see if they are going to die and while they wait for the next meal they chat, they bicker, they take selfies (one of the delighful anachronistic touches in the play), they dance and discuss forbidden dreams of Hollywood film stars.  One of their number disappears (suspiciously Jewish looking nose), she's replaced, another one goes (father is reported to have deserted).  Ecstatic delight at a rumour that the Fuhrer will visit.  Will he bring his dog Blondie?  Will they be able to take selfies with him? It's a bright and lively production with bundles of energy, super costuming, great performances, great fun.

Dreamtalk and Devotion - twenty years ago Sheena McDonald the journalist and broadcaster was hit by a police van and suffered severe brain injury.  In collaboration with her husband Alan Little, also a journalist and broadcaster, and Gail Robertson, the neuropsychologist who shared in the task of her rehabilitation she has written Rebuilding Life after Brain Injury.  The discussion of the journey from intensive care to fully functioning was fascinating.  Recovery was clearly very difficult and placed great strains on those around her, not least Alan but the discussion was enlivened by numerous humorous anecdotes.


Analysing the Brain's Functions - Ever since reading Gilbert Ryle's The Concept of Mind at university I've been fascinated by the workings of the brain and its products, our minds and personalities.  This session dealt with two books pandering to that fascination, Unthinkable by Helen Thomson, a science journalist and The Heartland by Nathan Filer, a former mental health nurse.  Both offer examples of the problems people live with.  Thomson focuses on odd and even amusing  case studies whereas Filer I think is more concerned with how we "normal" people should look on the schizophrenics amongst us.  I'm already reading Unthinkable.

Adam Smith: The Invisible Hand - a dramatisation of the life and work of Kirkcaldy's greatest son performed in the house he spent the last decade of his life in.  The 17th century building has been beautifully restored to commemorate Smith and to act as a learning centre.  The play is performed in an elegant room suitably furnished for the purpose.  The room was full.  Indeed the show had been overbooked so that extra chairs were dragged in before it could start.  The stage lights were strong, The room grew hotter.  I lasted through Smith's early years, his meetings with Rousseau and Voltaire and then dozed my way through the rest.  It was probably first class.

 Steve Reich Project - a solitary dancer, tall and elegant, creates angular shapes as she ranges  athletically over the stage while a string quartet plays Reich's wonderful music.  A microphone hangs over the centre of the stage dangling close to the floor.  The dancer uses the mike and its cable, sings into it, sets it swinging and limbo dances under it as it sweeps across.  The string quartet who are initially ranged in a line down one side of the stage become part of the dance.  They are moved by the dancer into different formations.  She picks up a music stand and drives the player forward with it.  So simple, so elegant, so precise.  The whole show is wonderful. 

Novel Views of Africa - another of my fascinations is with Africa.  Chigozie Obioma discussing his An Orchestra of Minorities and Namwali Sepelle her The Old Drift.  The latter seems destined to be the great Zambian novel.  It combines the intertwined sagas of three white, brown and black imaginary families over three generations with historical truths, magic realism, and a dash of science fiction. The story is fequently narrated by a swarm of mosquitoes.  Obioma's novel too uses a non human narrator, in his case a traditional Ibo spirit called a chi.  I've added both to my mental wishlist. 

Bull - a bleak tale of three office workers awaiting the arrival of the big boss. Two of them taunt, harass and bully the third, revealing to him that the meeting is to choose which of them the company will "let go".  He, who can least afford to lose his job, duly gets the push and they are even nastier to him.  The curtain falls on the play and on his life.  A competent production of an unsettling story which shows that man's inhumanity to man is not limited to the torture chamber or the battlefield.

Level Up - Jimmy want to marry Natasha but in the brave new world in which the play is set that cannot be because the state does not sanction marriage between high scoring individuals like her and humble drones like him.  Jimmy determines to raise himself up to the necessary level and in the process shafts his brother and his best friend and fails to realise that he is destroying all that Natasha found loveable in him.  Engaging performances from the cast of five and an ending if not quite happy then optimistic.

After the Fall: Crisis, Recovery and the Making of a New Spain - the author, Tobias Buck, was the FT's correspondent in Spain for a number of years.  This book is the result and its presentation kicked off my Book Festival programme.  Buck traced concisely and knowledgeably the course of recent Spanish history through the building boom, the financial crisis, the Catalonian secession attempt and the current state of the parties. On my list but by the time I get around to reading it Spain will have moved on.

Wine and Words - subtitled A Taste of Basque Culture this Book Festival event was in essence a wine-tasting.  Some music was played and poetry read.  The music was folksy and  the poetry in Basque (though subsequently translated) and the wine was Rioja. Pleasant but not riveting.   

Kalakuta Republik - an EIF dance show which I ultimately enjoyed once I'd decided that there was no good reason to worry about finding meaning in the show (or not) than there had been at the acrobatic circus a few days previously.  I was wrong of course about lack of meaning.  The EIF blurb tells us "...dance becomes a symbol of transformation, a ceaseless march towards ultimate freedom.  Kalakuta Republik is a carnival of insurrection."   I saw it as a colourful, noisy, celebratory feast of rhythmic joy.  Should have bought a programme.

As they say a week's a long time in festival going so here are brief notes before it all fades from my not very retentive memory.

The Crucible - My first EIF show and it's a cracker. Beautiful choreography beautifully brought to life by the dancers, lovely music, excellent staging.  The essence of the story clearly told and helped by making explicit from the start the relationship between Proctor and Abigail.  No wonder dates have now been announced for Autumn performances in Scotland. I expect a world tour thereafter.

Trainspotting Live - billed as immersive it certainly was.  Two rows of spectators on either side of a long tunnel under the conference centre.  Fast and furious telling of the tale by a brilliant cast of four running up and down in between and often amongst us.  All the filth and squalor and the humour of Irvine Welch's masterpiece brought to throbbing life.  Not for the fainthearted.

Super Sunday - under the big top in the Meadows out of the rain half a dozen Finnish lads jumped, tumbled and generally threw themselves about on seesaws, trampolines and spinning machinery.  Impressive acrobatics and not so impressive horse impersonations.

Being Norwegian - a short, delicate and touching tale of two incomplete human beings coming together finely performed by two excellent actors.

Solitary - in a performance space seemingly made of four shipping containers bolted together a man's confinement alone, his numbingly repetitive routine, his occasional conflicts with his guards, his anguish, his release and subsequent failure to re-establish relationships or to find employment, his final retreat into a living space uncannily similar to his prison cell.  All are effectively and silently presented by five talented performers.

Big Bite Breakfast - after coffee and croissants a packed house were entertained for an hour by excellent players who performed five sketches.  I found three of the five first class.  Top marks must go to the witty deadpan parody of the encounter between private eye and femme fatale from the  black and white movies of yesteryear.

Anguis - the setting, which is a set building success, is a recording studio where Cleopatra (visiting the land of the living for the purpose) is being interviewed for a radio programme.  Interlaced with her interview responses she sings, accompanying herself on the guitar.  So far so mildly entertaining as she displays her queenly strength and mocks the legend of death by asp. Fake news apparently. So further so still mildly amusing.  The interviewer we learn is a virologist and clinician.  She hears sounds that neither Cleo nor the studio engineer do and becomes increasingly distracted.  The play morphs into being about a medical negligence incident she's been accused of.  Whistle blowing is mentioned and probably metoo and feminism and other miracles of modern life but my attention had spanned its span.

Bleeding Black - growing up in rugby mad New Zealand.  Stop playing or harden up is the mantra.  Obsession, in this case with rugby but it could be with anything else can lead to doom.  That's what is put before us in this well constructed and performed one man show.  Rugby fans may get more out of it than others but it's a timely lesson for us all.

Parasites - great performances, especially from the lead actress in a dynamic, sometimes trite but always honest story of a girl with issues.  Expelled from school she spirals downwards.  Bad company,  abusive boyfriend, a spell in prison for assaulting her mother, pregnancy thanks to now junkie boyfriend, child in care, attempt to break the cycle and get a menial job in her old school, rejection.  I left with tears in my eyes.  Five stars from me.

Antigone - a novel and delightfully fresh presentation of the play.  All the drama and all the conflict of ideas, all the debate over loyalty to state or to family, all the themes are there but wrapped in what you could truthfully descibe as a joyous party atmosphere.  Indeed it begins with a party to celebrate the victory of Thebes where the lively cast of eight dance and throw balloons about.  The balloons are central to the show, burst as laws are discarded or trust broken.  Members of the audience are brought into the action from time to time.  The whole enterprise is steered to its heartbreaking conclusion with a deft lightness of touch.  Very impressive from this young cast.  

The Merry Wives of Windsor -  or in the Grads production, of a steamie nearer home.  It's Shakespearian comedy in all its glory.  The cast romp energetically through the twists and turns of Falstaff's plot to have it away with one or more of the eponymous wives and their counter trickeries.  A jealous husband disguises himself, a Welsh parson and a French doctor almost come to blows, an unwanted suitor is fooled, true love conquers and all is forgiven.  It's going on to Stratford with all my best wishes for success.

Pool (no water) - for the Grads other show a piece from the pen of the redoutable Mark Ravenhill.  Played with intensity, staged with imagination, directed with formidable skill.  Could not have admired it more.   

Tales from the Garden - A young South African tells us in her pleasant and gentle voice of how she was brought up as a good Catholic girl, how she loved her grandmother and shared her love of plants.  As she speaks she minds a little garden and recounts how her grandmother pulled the petals off a rose and challenged her to sew them on again to illustrate how something beautiful once lost can never be restored.  At eighteen she is proud to be sent for three months to a youth conference in London  as a reward for her academic success.  The night before her return to South Africa she loses something beautiful and however hard she tries over the next several years it's gone forever and she with it.  A delicate and moving piece of theatre that deserves larger audiences than the one I was part of.

Collapsible - Aping St.Simeon the performer spends her time on a little platform atop a pillar, no doubt to stress her isolation.  She's lost her job and much of the action of the piece revolves around her fending off enquiries from friends and family as to her progress in finding another, how she is and so on.  She in turn enquires of them what word or words describe her that she can use in interviews.  They are many and various: smart, perfectionist, reliable.....I was reminded in the early moments of the play of the character in Fleabag, her brightness, false cheerfulness and so on.  I haven't seen enough of Fleabag to know how it develops but in this play the character deteriorates, collapses as in the title.  It's a very powerful and clearly draining performance that takes it out of the actress and whose sincerity shines through.  Excellent show.  There is a deus ex machina who appears at the end not so much to offer her a way out of her predicament (though he offers some comfort) as to provide a ladder for her to to get down.

The Long Pigs - I can't really bear to say much about this. I disliked it pretty intensely.  Three Australian clowns in grubby grey outfits and with black piggy noses potter about the stage constucting a heathrobinson machine that fires red noses, creating a crucifixion scene in which lumps of bread are thrown at the victim, slobbering over cream tarts and so on without the distraction of a script or a storyline.  I do them an injustice there.  The absence of one red nose is signalled early in the show and the discovery of its whereabouts heralds the final scene. Bullshit.  Or in this case pigshit.

Devil of Choice - A perfectly presentable three act drama about cheating on your wife/friend condensed into an hour.  There's a carapace involving Faust and his pact with the devil which is something to do with there always being a choice and so on.  It's very well performed.  There are lots of good lines.  There's a fine live violin soundscape. But was it worth the performers' time to bring it all the way from New York?

Hughie - I was making my way to catch the bus home when I was handed a flyer and a free ticket for this show.  Call me mean but who could resist.  Let me play my part in this almost Faustian compact by declaring that it's good and you won't regret the forty five minutes lost in watching it.  Its duration comes as something of a surprise when you learn it was written by the author of A Long Days Journey into Night.  It's a two-hander but mostly one character riffs on his relationship with the recently deceased night clerk (night porter in our English I suppose) of the down market Manhattan hotel he frequents to an audience of one - the replacement night clerk. As befits its 1920's provenance there is no swearing, a rarity in the modern Fringe.

Enough - is one of those plays where patterned, poetic writing takes precedence over actual drama.  That's not me.  That's Michael Billington.  How right he is and how much I'd like to see some actual drama!

Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran - thanks to this show I now have an Instagram account.  I was advised that would be the best way to fully enjoy the experience.  Since 99% of the material appeared on on-stage screens, fiddling with a phone was more a distraction than an addition.  Anyway what of the show?  More of an illustrated lecture than a piece of theatre the two presenters traced backwards in time (as Instagram presents a users photographic history) the story of a pair of rich Iranees who end up, or since we are going backwards, start off dead in a smashed up Porche.  The whole thing seemed to be a musing on the iniquities of the rich and powerful and the awesomeness of time.  A million years for a plastic cup to disappear.  It was all very earnest and I expect too worthy for me to appreciate.

Ane City - the title is a Scottified nod to Dundee's slogan "One City Many Discoveries".   A single performer backed now and then by a guitar player talks about Dundee and her return to the city after an absence at university.  The night out with her chums to celebrate her return is not the happy time she had imagined it would be.  The actress does very well in inhabiting her various friends and relatives both male and female and with a few simple props gives us glimpses of some Holyrood stars.  She uses both voice and body vigorously and convincingly as the story of the night out progresses.  How does it end?  I won't spoil it for you.

Crocodile Fever - hooray! This is not a lecture, not a monologue but an actual play.  There is a set, a box set even, excellent stagecraft and five characters (only four actors).  It's a black comedy about the return of a girl to her home after an absence of some years eight of which were spent in prison for burning her mother to death.  But it was actaually her sister who did the burning.  Her sister does not welcome her return. Their father, dismissed as a monster by the returnee, is upstairs.  From there we descend into a spiral of what you might describe as horror movie sequences with a pretty smashing finale.  Worth seeing.

Somebody behind me in a theatre today said to their chum speaking of some other show "it wasn't a transcendental theatre experience......".  That's what we're all hoping for when we buy a ticket and fingers crossed it happens to me sometime this Fringe. 

It hasn't happened yet but early days, indeed only day 1.

Mengele - Josef Mengele was a nasty piece of work (see Wikipedia) and it's right and proper that the world should be reminded of the horrors that he and his like perpetrated for fear that we allow such things to happen again.  Theatre is an ideal way to do so for it can act on both our heads and our hearts.  I'm not convinced that this particular play succeeds in either exposing the irrationality of Mengele's ideas or in arousing the revulsion that his acts deserve but it tries.  I was struck by the minor irony that the production is dedicated to the memory of Eva Mozes Kor, a holocaust survivor who forgave Mengele and the Nazis, since the final scene gives him very short shrift indeed.

Spliced - I was very entertained by this play which is staged in a squash court.  The protagonist is a player of hurling and devoted member of the Gaelic Athletic Association.  (I had an Irish friend who was a keen GAA man and frequented the squash courts, but he never launched into the Irish national anthem in my hearing unlike my neighbour in this squash court and in Irish to boot).  Your man  jumps about and whacks the sliotair (ball) with his hurley (stick) back and forth most athletically.  Later in the play he recites yoga mantras while standing on one leg in his briefs and he acts while standing on his head.  I think it's about identity and group think versus individuality but it hardly matters since the actor is a most personable chap and the show is such fun.

Dazzle - the perennial display of beautiful jewellery which I wandered into between shows and was rewarded with a free glass of plonk. Some of the stuff was so lovely that I wondered if it was worth getting my ears pierced.

Suffering from Scottishness - a show that lulls you into thinking that it's all harmless humour but turns out to pack a political punch delivered with genuine passion.  Worth seeing.

Apart from the Jazz Festival my diary was pretty empty for July so I optimistically pencilled in "play lots of golf".  I only managed one round.

But I did have a little seaside holiday. 

Some friends were over from Spain and used my flat.  To give them some privacy and save me from sleeping on the floor I spent a few nights in a flat in Portobello whose owner was on holiday.

I took part again in the Napier Jazz Summer School.  As is the usual drill we were split up into groups and given a couple of tunes to work on for our end of the week gig.  A particular challenge for me this year was that I had to memorise the tunes and the forms we'd developed for them.  Luckily that wasn't too hard and thanks to John Rae who steered the group I played in, our contribution to the gig was pretty good.

The festival concerts that I went to were a mixed bag.  I very much enjoyed Tommy Smith and Fergus McCreadie's contribution and Graham Costello's STRATA Expanded as well as the exploration by Konrad Wiszniewski and Euan Srevenson of the relationships between jazz and classical music.  One gig I went to was brilliant provided you kept your eyes shut.  Otherwise the constant fiddling about with laptops and control boxes on the floor was very distracting.  None of the rest were particularly memorable except perhaps Like a Cat Tied to a Stick billed as Radiohead reimagined.  This has earned me respect from some of my younger friends who don't realise that Radiohead means nothing to me.  It was the intriguing title that attracted me.

Small Island was beamed from the National Theatre to various places including Edinburgh.  It was an absolutely wonderful production of an adaptation of Andrea Levy's moving novel about the experiences of the West Indians who came to the UK after the second war.

Also wonderful in lots of ways was The Lehman Trilogy, another National Theatre production though it was broadcast from the Piccadilly Theatre.  The Guardian gave the show five stars.  I'd have given one fewer for the one defect that the Guardian review points out.  The collapse of the bank in 2008, what happened and why, was past before you realised it was there.

On a rather smaller budget than either of those shows was Battery Theatre's Mary, It began with a Lass... which I saw in the gardem behind the Storytelling Centre.   They ran competently through the events we are all reasonably familiar with about Mary Queem of Scots.  The small cast ably supported by a couple of singers switched roles adroitly to inhabit the principal characters of Mary's story and turned to advantage the different levels and nooks and crannies of the garden.

I ate out a few times, including with my school chums in Glasgow.  We went to the exhibition of Linda McCartney's photographs at Kelvingrove.  There were some fascinating glimpses into the family life that she and Paul enjoyed and a number of good portraits of The Beatles and other musicians. Other photographers may have teased out more from their subjects than she did but the work is worth making a trip to Glasgow for.

My Fringe starts tomorrow.

Another Film Festival event that wasn't a film was a concert by the SNJO playing Sketches of Spain to tie in with the Spanish strand of the festival's programming.  A fine gig made even finer by Tommy Smith and Laura Jurd's encore of  So What from that other great Miles Davis creation Kind of Blue.

Before getting back to the cinema I took in Women in Parliament, a translation of an Aristophanes comedy in which toilet humour and sexual gags took pride of place.  There were a number of familiar faces in the cast and one that I only later found out I knew such was the depth of her disguise.  The show was variable in quality but it was fun.  Its two star review was fair.

I'd probably give no more than two stars to Emperor of Paris.  Based on the life of François Vidoq before he became a top cop it was a gungho cops and robbers, cowboys and indians sort of movie that would no doubt have appealed to my very much younger self.  But that self is no more.  I realised when the credits came up that I'd picked it because of its Scottish connection.  James Bridie's great grandaughter was in the cast.  I didn't like the other festival film she was in so her presence is clearly not a reliable criterion on which to base my filmgoing.

Sakawa I'm afraid I didn't much like either.  A documentary about West African based internet scams sounded fascinating.  It wasn't.

I finished my festival going with two programmes of Scottish short films, twelve films in all.  Every one was well worth watching and all the filmmakers had something of interest to say in the Q&As after the screenings.  I'll try to give them one sentence each and I've given the directors' names - to be kept an eye on:

Dark Road (Rory Gibson) - grief shared by a boy who lost his brother and the man who accidentally caused his death.

Duck Daze (Alison Piper) - revenge on an abuser when his daughter returns to her childhood home for his funeral.

Belonging (Rory Bentley) - a child and his sister moved to Scotland after their father's death have to adapt.

The Egg and the Thieving Pie (Lola Blanche-Higgins) - surreal and humorous tale of the search for a stolen egg that finds animal traits in human beings.

Educated (Tom Nicholl) - a schoolboy, a schoolgirl, a teacher in unspoken communication

Let's Roll (Chris Thomas) - a teenager defies her mother to train for the town's dangerous tradition.

Never Actually Lost (Rowan Ings) - memories from the director's granny

Stalker (Christopher Andrews) - an old stalker combats a poacher in the Highlands

Jealous Alan (Martin Clark) - two best mates one girl, the old story 

Lucky Star (Russell Davidson) - a young woman fighting to reclaim her home from an alcoholic husband and rebuild life for her eight year old

Farmland (Niamh McKeown) -  black comedy - Sibling rivalry takes a deadly turn after the reading of a father's will.

Boys Night (James Price) - boy trails round city after drunken foul-mouthed father

I've been indulging in the Film Festival.  Ten down, four to go plus one missed because I was reading a book and forgot the time and one cancelled to accommodate the visit of a roofer to fix a water ingress problem.  So how have they been?

The Fall of the American Empire - an to me unaccountable title for a French Canadian film about a painfully introverted but very bright philosophy graduate, a high cost escort with a heart of gold, an ex con who learned financial skills in clink and the escort's former sugar daddy who knows a thing or two about tax havens and their attemps to launder a large amount of stolen money that comes into the hands of our young philosopher.  Mildly entertaining.

Food for Thought - not a film at all but inspired by one.  A three course meal washed down by multiple glasses of prosecco and other drinks in praise of Scottish produce and accompanied by a panel discussion on our food and how to promote it.  The grub consisted of novel variations on mutton, Cullen skink and cranachan.  Served in nouvelle cuisine portions but tasty.  There were bowls of delicious whisky smoked cashew nuts with which to while away the intervals between courses.  Great value for the £3.25 it cost me.

Chef's Diaries: Scotland - the inspiration for the foregoing.  A documentary tracing the journey of one of the Rocca brothers who run El Celler de Can Rocca in Girona, (elected several times as the best restaurant in the world), through Scotland to discover the glories of our food resources and culinary traditions with a view to developing new and exciting recipes for their restaurant. So so.

Loopers - a documentary about golf caddies. It was fun, a bit schmaltzy here and there as can be the American way.  A telling fact was that one year in which Tiger Woods did particularly well his caddie New Zealander Steve Williams was the best paid athlete (sic) in New Zealand.  Nice work if you can get it and a far cry from the days of Tom Morris.

Wedding Belles - a great fun rollick through the lives of four Edinburgh girls and through their home town as they prepare to marry off one of their number.  With Irvine Welsh in the writing credits you can imagine the sort of fun involved.  Made for Channel 4 in 2007 but never before seen on the big screen it's up there with Trainspotting in my estimation.

Balance not Symmetry - exalted in the festival programme as "a beautiful cinematic tribute to art, music and Scotland (Glasgow in particular). A moving, funny and inspirational new film....".  I wasn't moved, didn't laugh and wasn't inspired.  The cast were credited with creating the dialogue. Nuff said. I did like the music though.

Cléo from 5 to 7 - from the nouvelle vague this 1962 film tells the story of a singer's anxious wait for a medical test result that she fears will be a cancer diagnosis.  As she waits she wanders through Paris encountering friends and strangers and reveals her inner self to us.  It's a lovely film that I don't remember seeing back in the day when the Cameo was the place for foreign films.

One Sings, the Other Doesn't - another brilliant film from Agnes Varda (Cléo above).  This is a 70s feminist piece with stunning performances from the two actresses playing the women whose friendship the film is about. Loved it.

Aleksi - the one I missed through book reading.

Contemporary Spanish Shorts - five very different works.  In Vaca a slaughter house worker meets the eye of a cow, can't pull the stungun trigger, rescues the cow and persuades a lugubrious looking bus driver to let her take it on board.  Cuban Heel Shoes explores the fascination with flamenco of two young men who dabble in drug dealing to keep the wolf from the door but who escape to dance for their dinner by passing the hat around in El Retiro.  The Great Expedition is an animation about escape to another planet from a devastated earth whose virtues cinematic or otherwise largely escaped me.  My memory of Bad Faith is that it was mostly a series of black and white stills of interiors in which nothing happened coupled with video passages of childhood beach holidays (again black and white and again in which nothing happened).  The festival website description is "Across the stretch of a long, languid summer, power dynamics shift within the complex relationships of three young siblings".  Too subtle for me obviously.  Grey Key I found the most interesting. José Carlos Grey was born in Equatorial Guinea and the film is a memoir by his daughter. of her father.  He was a student in Barcelona who fought against Franco, fled to France and then during the second world war was deported to the Mauthausen concentration camp where as a black man he was subject to special humiliation.  The story is told in voice over to a series of family photographs, super 8 videos and archive materials.  He died when his daughter was quite young.  She remembers that he always worked at night and her exploration of his story tells her why.

Jacquot de Nantes - another Agnes Varda and the one I cancelled.  Where tradesmen are concerned it's seize the day, the film's on Youtube after all. 

I've never been keen on The Duchess of Malfi and Zinnie Harris's version at The Lyceum did nothing to make me warm to it, excellent production though it was.

My minor participation in The Lark was not informed by anything so grand as research into the subject of the play although I did buy a book about Joan of Arc in a fit of mild enthusiasm.  After the run I got round to reading it.

A super book much to be recommended.  Joan of Arc: A History by Helen Castor is quite scholarly, (over 20% of it is notes and bibliography and the like), but it reads like a novel and a gripping one at that.  I'd always understood that thousands of Scots marched with Joan and indeed thousands of them were in France fighting the English in the 15th century but it seems that practically all of them had died in battle before she set out to ride to the rescue of France.  Another illusion shattered.

I've been a member of the General Council of the University of Edinburgh for over 50 years which is no great accomplishment since the council consists of all graduates and all academic staff but it sounds quite grand if you don't know that fact.  They meet twice a year and this year was the very first time that I've attended a meeting though I have thought about it from time to time.

The meetings generally have an add on of some sort to attract the brethren and this time there were for me two such attractions.  One was that it was to be held in the McEwan Hall and I hadn't been in it since it was refurbished and the new entrance built (whaur's yir Louvre peeramid noo?) .  The second was that the meeting was to be followed by (not counting lunch) an exhibition and presentations about the university's connections with Africa past, present and future.

The refurbishment is lovely; all that fancy decoration bright and shiny and comfy cushioning on the seats.  The bringing into use and extension of the hithertoo unused basement areas (where the meeting and presentations were held) is impressive.

I enjoyed discovering the various academic and practical African connections and had some very interesting conversations with those involved.  I even had the opportunity to remonstrate with the director of the 1971 (or was it 72)  Nairobi production of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie for not casting me.  I hadn't seen the man since but the wound runs deep.

In the pursuance of art I've been to a big exhibition of Victoria Crowe's work.  She does wonderful trees but disappointingly none of those pictures featured amongst the prints and postcards of her work that were on sale. 

I'd have liked a Crowe tree print but wasn't tempted to buy a souvenir of the Bridget Riley exhibition.  However one might admire the skill and the extraordinary amount of detailed work she does in preparation for her abstracts the sworls of black and white and the columns of colours fail to inspire much enthusiasm: in me that is, her world renown speaks to other impacts on other people.  Mind you I have to admit to a nascent admiration, indeed liking for a canvas covered in purple dots.

Oor Willie statues have sprung up around town and one of them could well have been decorated by her:

I've always admired the library building in Dundee Street and very much enjoyed the talk about it given by Alice Strang at the National Gallery.  It was illustrated by some fine slides of the building and its decorative panels with their relief sculptures.  Apart from introducing us to the various worthy gents involved in its creation and design and reminding us of the part played by the generous endowment of Nelson the publisher she was able to quote from the reminiscences of a chap who grew up in the area and used the library and its predecessor.

The Dunedin Wind Band finished its year with an excellent concert in Old St. Pauls that raised a £1,000 for charity.  An excellent social evening two days later rounded things off as we split for the summer.