The sunshine tempted me out last Sunday morning and I had a stroll around the Figgie Park.  It's had a few upgrades in the forty seven years since I first visited it.  Not the least of them is this board at the entrance telling the visitor something of the stream it's named after and the history of the area.

Murals have been painted on the walls of the short tunnel that the burn runs through under Mountcastle Drive North.  Something which I heartily applaud because it seems to arouse the artistic sensitivites of grafitti taggers (who knew they had them?) who despoil the murals not. 

The electricity sub-station close by now enjoys the same protection

One of the features of the park that I often vaunted was that from a point just to the east of the pond the view westward contained not a vestige of the works of man despite thousands being housed within 100 yards of it.  Not quite true today, partly because of the seasonal loss of leaves but principally because a walkway has been built at the eastmost end of the pond allowing close but safe viewing of what's happening on the water.  It's also provided a handy perching place for the numerous gulls that frequent the park.

Apart from that excursion entertainment has continued to be confined to home and the occasional cinema outing.  The latter is due to cease shortly as tighter restrictions enfold us.

At the much delayed DORA AGM I managed to demit office but alarmingly no-one has taken my place and I have continued to monitor our email addresses and indeed respond to communicants.  Once at least in my own interest, in respect of a gas escape in my own block.

Two film festivals usually celebrated locally in the flesh (sort of) slid online for the nonce. The Edinburgh Spanish Film Festival and the Scotland Loves Anime shindig.  I was disappointed by the Spanish films on offer.  I watched only two feature films,  Pólvera en el corazón and El espíritu de la colmena.  Pólvera is a Guatemalan film that told the story of two female friends and their encounter with some nasty lads after a night at the funfair and their subsequent quest for revenge.  I´m sure I was mildy entertained as I watched it but it has left no lasting impression.  El espíritu was beautifully shot and the performance of the seven year old Anna Torrent was an early indicator of her subsequent success as an actress.  But it wasn't a terribly interesting film (for me).  Her young co-star as far as I know didn't make a career in the movies.

El hombre que diseñó España on the other hand was a documentary that I very much enjoyed.  Cruz Novillo did everything; railways, the postal service, the police, currency, the movies.  He even designed the poster for the documentary about him.  This was based on one of his most admired film posters.  Here they are side by side 

Since I started learning Japanese I've taken significantly more interest in animated films, starting from what might be euphemistically called a low base.  I can't say I've been converted. I will freely admit that they are (or can be) beautifully crafted and bursting with imaginative images but the storylines are another matter.  There's a lot of bang, crash wallop as baddies get their just deserts from sword wielding goodies.  There's a lot of school shenanigans and child heroes.  There are so many about disasters and aliens and scientific mumbo jumbo that I cry out for a grown up drama.

But the anime world is crawling with academic admirers so who am I to yearn for more than the mild enjoyment that some of these films have given me.  Spirited Away which I saw a while ago and Patema Inverted and Penguin Highway which I've watched this week were worth the watching time.  I have high hopes that the Lupin series of films, based as they are on the activities of a descendant of the great French fictional criminal Arsène Lupin will provide fare more suited to my tastes.

I've seen a Zoom play about Oppenheimer which I enjoyed.  It supplemented the documentary about him that I saw not so long ago.  Our own Zoom play, Shrapnel, is progressing.  Technical issues are being overcome magnificently and the cast aim to do just as well.

The musical The War of the Worlds made a brief appearance on Youtube.  The staging was terrific, the hologram appearances of Liam Neason belied belief, the music was tuneful, the actors acted and Well's story stood the test of time.

A comment on Ghost Quartet, another musical, said something to the effect of you won't understand what's going on but you'll enjoy it.  That was my experience.

Girls Like That was an excellent show that dealt with growing up, relationships, kids being nasty to their friends.  It was lets say economically staged on the less is more principle that suited the space and the cast admirably.  Viewers would have appreciated better or at least louder sound.

I ventured out to the cinema twice.  Once to see I am Greta, a documentary about the intriguing and wholly admirable Greta Thunberg.  It didn't entirely satisfy one's curiosity about her.  Suffice to say that a passionate and committed young woman has emerged from a diffident and isolated personality to shame us all.  I do hope the world listens.

The second cinema visit was to see a filmed version of a play that was forced to close in March because of the coronavirus.  This was a superb Uncle Vanya with one of my favourite actors, Toby Jones, in the title role.  I hope to catch it again when it's on telly later in the year.

Everyone has an internet problem from time to time and the Rambert dance company proved not to be immune when despite going through some tedious registration process I (and many more) was unable to access their show Draw from Within. 

Eventually, maybe the following evening, things were sorted out.  I think I quite enjoyed it but to be absolutely honest I can't recall a single detail.  I put that down to a limited ability to see pictures in my mind.

Anyway that preceded a Zoom snafu that angered me more because I could have prevented it. I've been secretary of my local residents association for more than a decade and decided it was time someone else had a shot at it.  I was looking forward to demitting office at our AGM.

The first annoyance was that it was postponed for three weeks.  Then there was what could be called a miscommunication.   Zoom details were sent out to committee members by our Chair.  Some weeks later a letter went to all owners from our factor containing different Zoom details.  Well, I thought, that must be because they have a business licence for Zoom so we won't be cut off after 40 minutes.  So I didn't query it.  My mistake.  On the night those trying to join using the factor's instructions could not get on.  A degree of chaos ensued and the meeting was abandoned and the AGM postponed yet again.  So I'm still the secretary and keeping my fingers crossed that nothing goes wrong on the new date.

This is one of the exhibits in a display called Chairs that filled the Lyceum's glass box foyer for the period during which in normal circumstances their first production of the season would have run.  It's the most poignant item in an interesting display.  During show times the foyer was theatrically lit and relevant ruminations were audible over external speakers.  

Latest news from the Lyceum is that they are building a stage extension that in essence replaces the stalls and will allow the setting out of cabaret tables that will accommodate socially distanced audience bubbles for a real live Christmas show.  Only four performances in vivo however out of twelve, the rest being streamed from a empty theatre.  Why?  I shall probably just watch a streaming leaving space for bigger bubbles than me myself alone.  Christmas itself should be fine for singles though, since I believe that smaller bubblyjocks are being reared for smaller dinners.

I saw Chairs on the evening that I made my second cinema excursion.  I went to Filmhouse to see La Haine.  The French classic about the tensions in the housing estates surrounding Paris between youths, mostly unemployed and mostly immigrants, and the police has appeared in a new print to celebrate its 25th anniversary.  I very much enjoyed the film and was surprised that there was a fair sprinkling of humour in it although the overall feeling is of tragedy.

Again at Filmhouse tragedy pervaded I Pugni in Tasca also.  Acclaimed in film circles as ".... astonishing 1965 debut from Marco Bellocchio....coolly assured style......a gleaming ice pick in the eye of bourgeois family values......continues to rank as one of the great achievements of Italian cinema". I'm not so enthusiastic.  Maybe in 1965 I would have been.  The original trailer certainly makes it look very exciting.

The City Art Centre was celebrating its 40th with a lovely, though brief, exhibition of a number of paintings from the City's collections.  Running for a distinctly longer period in the same venue is Bright Shadows: Scottish Art in the 1920s.  This again is well worth seeing with work by the likes of Peploe, Henry and Macintosh Patrick.  It runs till June so you have no excuse.

Let me put in a word for Mimi's Bakehouse who run the Centre's cafe.  A cappucino and a lump of their Scottish rocky road after seeing the paintings, yummy.

I didn't bother with a coffee after lunch at Valvona and Crolla, a lunch squeezed in the day before shutdown number two and very tasty too.  I look forward to lunching out again when restaurants are allowed to reopen.  I'm not so bothered about pubs being closed but I wouldn't like them to go out of business.

I've attended a couple of Zoom winetastings over the lockdown period and was at one recently.  It may seem an odd concept but the wine is delivered in little bottles like these

I suppose they hold about 175ml.  The wine expert joins the Zoom call and chats about the wines.  We swill, smell, sip and swallow.  Those who must pontificate.  I don't go much further than saying that I prefer A to B.  I don't you see smell all those notes of raspberries and tropical fruits or peanuts or whatever that more olfactory capable persons do.  Furthermore when pushed to comment on the taste I feel obliged to hide the fact that the overwhelming taste for me is one of wine, seldom more seldom less.  Tastebuds missing since birth.

The National Galleries are amongst the organisations whose emails I speed read and forget but I this week managed to watch one of the talks that they inform me about.  It was a look at David Wilkie's drawings.  Famous for his oils, unsurprisingly he was pretty hot stuff with the charcoal and the pencil as well.

The SNJO pitched a video of part of a gig they did with Kurt Elling in 2014 in one of their emails.  It features a brilliant interchange between Tommy Smith and Elling. Try it.  Music of a different kind got underway when the RSNO started their new season.  It's all via streaming  of course but it's only £10 a gig or £90 for the season and you don't have to go out in the rain and you're not stuck with a particular performance date because all the concerts are available from first showing to end of season.  What's not to like?  Sound quality you may think.  Not necessarily.  I bluetoothed the first concert from my laptop to my hifi.  Great sound.

Apollo 13 : The Dark Side of the Moon was the show that a number of us watched on Thursday past.  This was the mission that went wrong.  The three astronauts had to abandon the mother ship, crawl into the lunar module and whip round the moon to get a gravity assisted return flight to Earth.  I found that the show lacked tension.  Obviously we know they get back safely so there's no holding your breath moment.  Even so the developing sequence of problems should build up some sort of feeling of danger.  Maybe it was just me.

Shrapnel, the Zoom play I'm appearing in is now in rehearsal.  Tickets are available here.  It's an intriguing proposition to do a show live on Zoom.  The audience, that's you I hope, will be on the same call which is about as close as you can get to being in a theatre watching living beings perform while the coronavirus rules our lives.

I was delighted to find in the course of rehearsing that the latest update to Zoom means that I can now use the virtual background feature.  My hardware didn't use to support it but these clever people have got round that.  So I've had some fun.  Here's one of my efforts: