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.