I put up a wall mirror in my spare bedroom a couple of weeks ago.  So what you may ask; nothing very special about a bit of DIY.  That's true so far as it goes but this is a mirror that I brought from Mountcastle when I moved into this flat getting on for thirteen years ago.  It has lain propped up awkwardly against the fuse cupboard in the hall all that time.  It makes the pavement fix that I blogged about last time seem to have been carried out at the speed of light.

I shall have to do better with the ingress of water that has turned a corner of the lounge into a mini swamp.  But I shan't be bringing my DIY skills to bear on the problem.  I first suspected the central heating but a plumber cleared that and subsequently a roofer traced the source or sources to balcony and eaves.  Easy to fix he said.  We'll see.  Looking on the bright side the thirteen year delay in laying a new carpet seems almost prescient.

Bob and Caroline were up in Glasgow recently so the old school chums gang convened for lunch there and the usual jolly time was had by all.  Not quite so jolly as Claire's birthday lunch which ended up for me with a drop of shuteye in a Portobello pub until I was gently persuaded into wakefulness by the staff and went home to resume my nap on the settee.

Thanks to my membership of the Friends of the Queen's Hall I enjoyed a free gig and glass of wine there after my Glasgow lunch.  The gig was jazz of an elegant kind from Tim Garland and his trio.  Wikipedia tells us that Tim's music blurs the lines between modern jazz and classical music.  That seems a sound judgement to me.  Judge for yourself here or here.  

I was back at the Queen's Hall to hear Rocio and her quartet who were guests in a concert by the Kevvock Choir.  I was there to hear the saxophones of course but I did enjoy most of the choir's  performance and was particularly engaged by their singing of Victor Johnston's arrangement of Pie Jesu.

My own musical activity this month included a playaway day with the Dunedin Band.  The practice is for us to lunch together on grub supplied by the members and this time inspired by the delicious biscuits I brought home from Cortina I made a bundle of Amarettis.  So easy and so tasty.  Could be a weekly treat at home.

This may look like an ordinary bit of pavement with a little building behind it, but behind the picture  is a wee story illustrating how sometimes rather than shake your head in despair you can get things fixed even if, as in this case, it takes time.

Some time ago, a year maybe, two, more (?) this pavement was dug up to do something related to the sub-station in the picture.  When the pavement was made good the knobbly paving slabs were not replaced.  Instead the whole sweep of pavement was tarmaced over.

Now the knobbly slabs are there as you undoubtedly know to warn the unsighted that they are about to walk into a road.  (They are also quite handy to all as a helpful foothold in slippy conditions.) 

So I contacted Scottish Power whose sub-station it is.  A charming lady responded to my report and assured me that the matter would be drawn to the attention of the appropriate department.

Well nothing happened and then nothing happened again and so it went on until one day a man rang me.  He had taken over the part of the business in which reports such as mine were housed and was trawling through them to tidy things up.  Had my report been acted on he asked.

Over the next couple of months he rang me periodically firstly to establish what had happened and exactly where, and then to let me know how getting it sorted out was progressing.  Then lo and behold last week it was fixed.  Well done that man.

And well done Scottish Ballet and the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra.  Both have given sparklingly entertaining performances recently.  The ballet double bill celebrating SB's 50th year opened in the Highlands and here's what they thought of it.

The SNJO also gave us a double bill.  Led by American jazzman Bill Dobbins who had arranged the material and with Brian Kellock starring at the piano they played music by Fats Waller in the first half.  Solid stuff with impeccable big band backing but my feet didn't do a lot of tapping.  After the interval I couldn't keep them still.

In a complete change of style with on vocals Irini Arabatzi (who couldn't keep any part of her body still), Mario Caribe on vocals and guitar and Tommy Smith on tenor they headed to Brazil and the music of Jobim.  This was a delight and brought warm sunshine to the half empty Usher Hall.  They included a number of well loved melodies like Desafinado and The Girl from Ipanema.

Bill Dobbins had written a beautiful flute solo to introduce one of the songs (I can't remember which) that took me right back to my first day in Copacabana a few years ago when a flute was playing in the background as we took coffee by the beach.

I went with eager anticipation to see Loro, a fictionalised biopic about Silvio Berlusconi but after some thirty minutes of cocaine snorting and bonking, on screen that is, I left.

Rafiki which I went to simply because it was a Kenyan film was quite sweet.  I hadn't registered beforehand that it was a story of two girls whose fathers are political rivals getting it together in a sort of coming of lesbian age drama.  It was apparently selected for Cannes last year but can't be shown in Kenya because of the subject matter.  The Guardian's review is worth reading.

I had a lovely lunch with a rafiki at L'Escargot Bleu recently.  It's astonishing how easily a £15.99 fixed price lunch can end up costing £45 a head.