A walking tour of Warriston Cemetery was just the thing for a sunny Saturday afternoon.  Since it was under the auspices of the National Gallery the focus was on artists and architects buried there with an additional nod to some of the pioneers of photography.

I confess only one name was familiar to me, the artist Robert Scott Lauder.  The architects I knew none of  but I'm familiar with many of their buildings; the McEwan Hall, the University Medical School, the Portrait Gallery etc. etc.

The grandest monument we came across was not to an artist but to one Robertson Mclean from the island of Coll who when his father died was taken off with his siblings by his mother to Australia where they made lots of money and moved to New Zealand where they made even more money.  Some of it was eventually used to pay for this:

He appears in his brother Allan's entry the New Zealand biographical dictionary.

Leaving the cemetery and en route to a birthday party in Leith I passed eight fine tennis courts in Goldenacre which at 4pm on a sunny Saturday were devoid of life.  No wonder we are short of Wimbledon champions.

When the party venue door was opened to me a toddler rushed down the long corridor and more or less threw herself into my arms.  "Oh" said her dad "She must think you are someone else."  How cruel is that?

The fine weather persisted into Sunday so I went out for a walk mid morning and satisfied an urge I've had for a while to examine the Collective Gallery's new home on Calton Hill and the new restaurant that's up there now.  I hadn't been up literally for years and wondered how my aging legs would cope with the steep path up from Royal Terrace.  They coped fine though I needed to stop to draw breath a couple of times but I probably had to do that even when I was a lot fitter.

The refurbishment of the observatory is excellent though I didn't think much of what the Collective was showing.

I skipped a film about sex workers in favour of a display of colouful clothes hanging on a line.  A light projects their shadows onto a wall. You are invited to listen to a vinyl (no doubt a critical element) record of odd music with a voice saying something over it (no doubt another critical element).  Here am I doing just that thing and looking suitably stern or is it puzzled as I do so.

The restaurant, called for good reason The Lookout, is a relatively unobtrusive modern building that in a couple of hundred years or so will fit in nicely with the existing buildings.

I'm generally late in getting to exhibitions that run for a long time and the robot show at the museum has been no exception. It's been on since January but I've only managed to get to it ten days before it ends.

I really enjoyed it especially the modern stuff and my total favourite unsurprisingly was the Thespian Robot who does a great little show.

Reassuringly for actors in fear of losing their jobs a caption tells us that acting ranks 210th in a list of 366 jobs at risk of automation.

My favourite tree in a corner of the grounds at Gartmore House where I spent a very pleasant Easter playing the saxophone with other enthusiasts.  There were breaks to enjoy the sunshine and even one session playing out of doors but the main business was some twenty hours of blowing indoors in various groups from duos to our full complement of over twenty players.  It was great.

A quick rundown of activities between Cortina and Gartmore to remind me when dementia strikes.

Ross's birthday lunch at Aurora, a lovely little restaurant in Great Junction Street the most unexpected of locations.

Big Band Divas at the Queen's Hall which thanks to the birthday lunch wine I dozed through.

Another saxophone afternoon at the Big Blaw after which I went to Glasgow with Rory to hear Bob Reynolds.  The music was super but it was standing room only in the tiny cellar venue with an hour cooling our heels before the band turned up.

It's only taken ten years but I've at last had a light installed in my hall cupboard and a few more electrical improvements such as replacing the jet turbine extractor fan in my bathroom with a quieter model.

A lovely piece of modern music by Anna Clyne was the filling in a sandwich of two Mozart violin concertos played by Nicola Benedetti and the SCO.

I loved Pepperland, Mark Morris's tribute to the Beatles Sergeant Pepper album on its 50th birthday.  The score was not a straightforward rendition of the album but what the Guardian called "an idiosyncratic reinvention".  The costumes were bright as a bunch of Spring flowers and the dancing as buzzy as swarm of bees.

Connor took a few hours off from mountain biking in the borders to come up to Edinburgh and take me out to eat at the ever tasty Vittoria's.

Another excellent SCO gig whose centre piece was Ravel's Piano Concerto in G.  That and Variaciones Concertantes by Ginastera put Beethoven's Symphony No. 4,  somewhat in the shade for me and I count myself a Beethoven fan.

The Grads did a show called Hand to God which must be one of the best productions I've ever seen them do or been involved in myself.  The review points to inadequacies in the script which I must say I didn't really pick up on entirely because of the superlative quality of the production.

One of the Grads longtime members, indeed I think she was a founder member, died recently.  Joyce had been living for the last few years with her son down south but he organised a memorial service for her here and quite a few of us attended.  I liked her a lot and was in a number of shows with her.  The service was not a particularly sad occasion (she'd made it to 89 after all) but rather a good opportunity to meet up with people I hadn't seen for some years.

Heat and Dust is one of the wonderful Merchant Ivory movies that I've enjoyed over the years of their partnership.  It's based on a novel of the same name which earned Ruth Pawer Jhabvala the Booker prize.  The screenplay brought her a Bafta in 1984.  The film is set in India both in the present day (1970/80s) and in the 1920s and handles two intertwined romantic dramas.  The Guardian like me admired its reappearance in cinemas and found perhaps even more depth than in the first time around.

Cora Bisset is a consummate theatrical and what's more she went to school in Kirkcaldy.  Her play What Girls Are Made Of was a hit at last year's Fringe.  I regretted missing it so was keen to see the revival currently touring.  I was I have to say a little disappointed.  Maybe it's just that I never had ambitions to be a pop star despite my washboard playing at the YWCA circa 1956 or that the popular music of the 1980s was not all that popular with me.  It's a slick show terribly well performed and the events portrayed were clearly seminal for her so I'm not knocking it.  I just wasn't personally much engaged by it.