The Cairngorms seen from the Highland Wildlife Park where I'd gone to see the macaques before my adopter status runs out.  I travelled up in a bus from Edinburgh that drops you at the end of the entrance road.  Because it comes off the A9 here and there the journey turns into a bit of a bus tour.  I was most impressed at how it arrived at every stop bang on the time listed in the timetable, rivalling Japanese railways.  The driver surely knew that Japanese macaques were my objective.

This is their playground but when I arrived it was close to empty.  There are some monkeys on the far side more or less invisible to the naked eye so I decided to look round the park and come back later.  First I took a picture of the heron on that little island.

On the way into the park I'd passed a clump or two of resting Bactrian camels and a cat that

was the spitting image of the cat that lived in Fiona's house sixty years ago.  It probably does a lot of spitting when provoked because it's a Scottish wildcat.  These animals are in danger of disappearing because they and domestic cats are making whoopee together so there's a project to save them presumably by restricting their sexual opportunities.

I managed to take out of focus pictures of tigers and polar bears and of arctic foxes with fence lines across their faces but better pics of a lynx and a snow leopard 

before coming back to the macaques now out in strength where I managed to take lots of out of focus pictures.  My camera liked to focus on the fence instead of the animals behind it and although it has a manual focus feature I'd no idea how to use it.  So it was a bit frustrating but now I've read the manual so may do better next time.  But I don't want to deprive you of the monkeys so feast your eyes.  They're not all out of focus.

 

There was more and there were more animals but eventually I left the park and caught a local bus to Kingussie to catch a train home.  I was the only human being in the station and was treated to a variety of pre-programmed announcements about time table changes, warnings to "see it, say it, sort it" etc including an announcement that the next train arriving at platform 1 was the 16.08 to Edinburgh.  Fortunately I had been pre-warned by the signalman who came out of his box and shouted to me that it would in fact be departing from platform 2 so I wasn't left in the wrong place gazing at a missed train.

The Eden Court Theatre in Inverness.  This was the only Scottish venue visited by Mathew Bourne's new ballet The Midnight Bell on its UK tour.  A few of us decided to make the trip.  Illness cut the group down to two so Claire and I took the bus north one Saturday morning, got there early afternoon, checked in to a hotel, visited the museum (small but full of good stuff and with a pleasant cafe to boot), had a tasty early dinner and saw the show.  Very good it was too.  Beautifully staged,lit, costumed and danced. Athough I disagree with their opinion of the lip synced thirties numbers this review is well worth reading and has excellent pictures of the action.  

After a substantial and delicious breakfast, (I was tempted to stray beyond my usual limited regime and am glad I gave in), we pottered about the town wondering at the number of churches flanking the river till it was time to take the bus home.  A most enjoyable trip and I came away with a new bunnet as a souvenir.

I've never considered myself a G&S fan although I've enjoyed those of their shows that I've seen and had a thoroughly enjoyable evening as a reviewer's plus one at Scottish Opera's production of The Gondoliers.  It's a very funny feel good show and some of its 19th century satirical references were replaced to good effect by digs at our current public figures.

In the world of straight theatre there was a super production of Jo Clifford's version of Calderon de la Barca's Life is a Dream at The Lyceum.  The stage had been extended to cover the entire stalls area and give a space for the play to be done in the round, although there was a little upstage directional emphasis to allow for the fact that a proportion of the audience were in the circle rather than on stage where I was. It's a story of honour besmirched and revenge sought and what we might now call preventive detention whereby Segismundo, crown prince of Poland, is imprisoned at birth because of astrological forecasts that he will grow to be a tyranical king.  Temporarily freed to test the waters he does indeed behave badly and is put back in his box.  Meanwhile Rosaura is looking for the man who knocked her up then left.  She has revenge in mind and knife in hand.  There's lots of Shakespearean cross dressing, coincidence and cunning plotting.  Finally, again as is common in Shakespeare all is revealed and the the appropriate matches are made.    

The performances were first class.  In particular Lorn Macdonald as Segismundo turns in a tour de force.

I saw a much smaller scale but very interesting and accomplished production at The Kings.  This was The Signalman, a one man play by Peter Arnott. It's a reminiscence in later life by the man who staffed the last signalbox before the Tay Bridge on the night of the disaster and who in fact waved the train on to its fatal rails.  A very fine performance and staging.

I've heard a lot of music this month, some old tuneful favourites like Sheherazade and The New World symphony, new to me Brahm's Piano Concerto Number 1, and two more profound pieces.  Both of those were at SCO concerts. 

Shostakovich is a composer whose work I regard highly and his 14th Symphony is a dark and thought provoking piece.  Consisting of 11 songs about death linked together it could hardly be otherwise but it's a wonderful listen.

A more difficult listen was Berg's Chamber Concerto for Violin and Piano with 13 Wind Instruments.  This was the second and strongly contrasting half of a concert in which sweet romantic music from Mahler's happy days had pleased but not stirred. I couldn't call it insipid but it didn't move me that much.  Whereas I actually jumped at one point in the Berg as the pianist pounded the left hand end of the instrument. Friends said to me later that they hadn't rushed to stream it on Spotify when they got home.  Neither did I but I would like to hear it again.

Some friends are great fans of the food and wines of Turkey, the Caucasas and Iran and such like places.  They organised a meal at a tiny place in Tollcross run by an Iranian lady.  It's really a little cafe that closes its doors about 5pm and serves a party of up to eight people a selection of dishes from the region. It was lovely food and I particularly loved the way she did the rice.  I could have eaten that alone and left well satisfied.

I happened to eat alone at Rollo in Broughton Street one day because my lunch companion couldn't make it at the last minute. Lovely lunch and great service. 

The Zambia Society Trust held their AGM on Zoom again this year.  After the business of minutes, financial report etc there were two most interesting presentations.  One about the development of the Medical Licentiate programme bringing trained personnel to a large number of rural district hospitals.  We had a talk on the way ML training is being done as well as a report on a study into the lessons being learnt from the programme.  Then a presentation about Flyspec which is a flying doctor service active in the country.  Both of these as well as the Zambia Scciety itself are good organisations to help you use up your spare cash.  Just click on the links above.

I occasionally watch foreign TV channels (as much as one can given regional restrictions) and one of the best is TV5Monde.  They've been showing some films recently starring Yves Montand, either because of the centenary of his birth or the thirtieth anniversary of his death. I've watched a couple and after one I lingered on to watch a fascinating documentary.

This was about Dominique Strauss-Kahn, known to his friends (and I imagine to his enemies) as DSK.  Head honcho of the IMF until he fell from grace over some sexual shenanigans the programme sought to answer the question "what's he being doing since?".  The answer is making lots of money and paying very few taxes.  All within the law, as befits a former socialist finance minister.

 

This is one of the many, many monkeys to be found in Edinburgh zoo.  The fact that he's got himself slightly out of focus by hiding in a tree doesn't hide the fact that he's not the monkey I had gone to the zoo to see.  The Japanese macaque whose adoptive father I have been for ten months courtesy of a Christmas gift is it turns out domiciled at the zoo's Highland premises. 

Notwithstanding that disappointment we had a lovely afternoon, seeing the famous pandas and the zoo's newest acquistion, half a dozen giraffes as well as those old favourites the penguins.

 

 

 

 

 We finished off the day with platters and wine at Nótt.

The RSNO held their first Usher Hall concert since the pandemic struck.  The audience were very enthusiastic even though spread out socially thinly and masked; to the extent that the opening announcement was drowned out by applause.  

The main work was Stravinsky's Firebird ballet music and before the interval we heard some lovely cello playing in Tchaikovsky's Rococco Variations preceded by the very cheerful Festive Overture by Shostakovich and a short and appropriately celebratory fanfare called The Isle is Full of Noises by Scottish composer Mathew Rooke.

You can't beat a full symphony orchestra giving it laldy and we loved it.  It's a bit comical seeing the conductor's mask going on and off as he takes his calls but heh that's pandemics for you.

I also enjoyed another SCO concert, at the Queen's Hall this time.  Again we were all socially distanced and masked, though as at the Usher Hall the bar was open and there was an interval in which to patronise it unlike earlier more tentative gigs I've been to.

They played Bach, Mozart and Haydn which was all very fine but the piece that caught my ear was Die Schöne Melusine by Mendelssohn. Wikipedia tells me that 

The piece was written in 1834 as a birthday gift for Mendelssohn's sister Fanny In a letter to her of 7 April 1834, he explains that he had picked on the subject after seeing Conradin Kreuzer's opera Melusina the previous year in Berlin. Kreutzer's overture, writes Mendelssohn "was encored, and I disliked it exceedingly, and the whole opera quite as much: but not [the singer] Mlle. Hähnel, who was very fascinating, especially in one scene when she appeared as a mermaid combing her hair; this inspired me with the wish to write an overture which the people might not encore, but which would cause them more solid pleasure."[

Well I haven't heard Kreutzer's overture but I'm happy to take Mendelssohn's word for it since I enjoyed his so much.

There was more good music at Scottish Ballet's Starstruck, albeit recorded. This was a reworking of Pas de Dieux, a ballet that Gene Kelly choreographed for the Paris Opera in 1960.  It was a lovely thing to watch and seemed to me rather like a Broadway musical without the songs.  I didn't follow the plot other than realising that two chaps were squabbling over a girl - Broadway musical again.  Later consultation of the programme online enlightened me.  It was all about Aphrodite, Eros and Zeus.  Who'd have known.

There was an interesting post show chat with Kelly's widow and members of Scottish Ballet including their artistic director Christopher Hampton who choreographed Starstruck. 

Another stage work I've seen recently was The Enemy by The National Theatre of Scotland.  This again was a retelling, this time of Ibsen's An Enemy of the People.  

I very much enjoyed the presentation of the show, the combination of video and on-stage acting, the clever take off of publicity material, the twitter storm moments and more.  But I was less enthralled by the quality of some of the acting, a lack of dramatic tension and more importantly I'm not sure what the point of putting on the play was.

How exactly did they recast the play for the modern age?  They added a whiff of sexual misdemeanours and cast women as the main characters but I can't think of much else.  So was it just to point out that plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose?  Maybe it was and maybe that's a good enough reason.

 

We fortified ourselves before the show by eating at Ong Gie.  Korean food was new to me.  Unsurpringly it bears a resemblance to Chinese.  The meal was delicious but when they say "spicy" be warned, they mean it.

On a lovely sunny day I went out for a walk in the West Lothian countryside and this is one of the things I saw.  An unusual sight you might think but not in that particular corner of West Lothian.  I was in Jupiter Artland which as well as having beautiful woods, fine views and a magnificent country house is also home to works of art such as this.

I ventured to Modern One for some more visual art, a much praised video installation about Frederick Douglass the American slave who gained his freedom and campaigned thereafter for abolition.  He was famed for his writing and his oratory and spent a couple of years based in Scotland.  The ten screen video installation was pleasant to look at but if I hadn't already known about Douglass or watched the "making of" video next door I don't think I'd have learnt much.  Does that matter?

Back to an art form I'm more at home with I went to the Traverse to enjoy their brief Play, Pie and Pint season.  Two of the three shows were excellent.  First Rose, about Rose Reilly.  Who she you ask.  As did I.  Played  international football for both Scotland and Italy,  named female world fooballer of the year, banned by the SFA who eventually saw the error of their ways.  It's a fascinating story and was brilliantly dramatised and performed.  Then A New Life which was a sparkling musical comedy with a tap dancing baby and a serious strand about post natal depression.  The third, which I saw first was called Celestial Body.  I thought it was mildly entertaing but the story of the entrapment of a gym going washing machine engineer by the parents of a child who had died in an accident caused (?) by him failed to set my dramatic sensitivites alight.

Musically the SNJO gave their first post lockdown concert, a celebration for their 25th birthday which treated us to a selection of pieces from their extensive repertoire over those years with a series of first class solos from a number of players, not least Tommy Smith himself. 

The SCO likewise presented their first post lockdown concert in which they played two suitably upbeat and exhilarating pieces, Beethoven's 5th Piano Concerto and Mendelssohn's Scottish Symphony.

Although the music has a Scottish feel to it none of it is scored for the pipes but I had the pleasure of visiting the National Piping Centre in Glasgow where the sound of the pipes is ever present in their little museum.  Not in their restaurant though where Andrew and I had an excellent lunch.  My traditional battered fish and chips was one of the best I've ever had and was washed down with a very tasty white Rioja.

I've had two more eating out experiences since I last posted.  Claire and Phil treated us to an end of summer barbeque leg of lamb of exceptional tastiness.  The taste lingered but not as long as the smell of woodsmoke has persisted in my jersey.  In a less domestic setting I had lunch in The Lookout on Calton Hill.  This is an offshoot of The Gardener's Cottage down below.  The views are of course superb.  The food was excellent.  The wines were winsome enough to encourage the opening of a second bottle.  The prices were outstanding.

After lunch I wandered down to the Mound Precinct where the Homeless World Cup had been being played and where the crowd were being entertained by the Fun Lovin' Crime Writers Band with Val McDermid on vocals.

 

 

For several years I've been going to The Burn on twice yearly saxophone weekends and was delighted to be able to go last weekend after a Covid caused gap of two years.  There were about twenty of us, mostly old friends from previous gatherings there and elsewhere.  We had a lot of fun and the minor Covid related restrictions in terms of masks and so on were not such as to put a damper on our socialising.

Thanks to that socialising I missed 99.9% of the thrills of the Ladies final at the US Tennis Open.  I didn't know it was on free to air TV, though if I had I'd have had to watch it on my phone.  I had decided I'd listen to the radio commentary but lingered in the lounge and it wasn't until I was preparing for bed that I turned on the radio.  I just caught the last game of the match which had thrills enough and a very welcome ending.  What a girl!

The Dunedin Wind Band is back in live action which is a lot better than the Zoom sessions they had and that I abandonned.  The second altos who had also been playing on Zoom, but more pleasurably, have now graduated to a live get together in a studio not far away.  That was very successful and we intend to keep it up.

The weather on the day we played there was lovely and when I reached Leith Walk on the way back I decided it was too nice to go up to the flat so I wandered down the Walk till I came to the recently opened Nótt winebar.  I sat outside with a pleasingly cold glass of Reisling ( a welcome change from the standard set of Sauvignon, Chardonnay and Pinot Grigio) and a nibble of vine leaves.  Surely not (no pun intended) the fare of Thor's granny after whom the place appears to named.

More substantial fare was consumed at La Garrigue, a restaurant I have often fancied and which I have at last entered, thanks to Siobhan.  The food was delicious.  Claire's end of summer BBQ fare was not a million miles away from La Garrigue in deliciousness even if simpler in its presentation and more relaxed in its consumption.

I've seen a few films in the last couple of weeks.  At the Filmhouse I enjoyed The Courier.  This is a spy movie that tells the story (suitably spiced up for the screen as this review makes clear ) of Greville Wynne, a British businessman who collected material from a soviet informer, Oleg Penkovsky, and delivered it to MI6 in the early 60s.  I remember the case well.  Penkovsky paid with his life but Wynne got off with an uncomfortable couple of years in a Russian jail.

Also at Filmhouse was a rerelease of the gentle documentary about the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, Jazz on a Summer's Day.  The critics found it a bit bland which I suppose it is but there's some excellent music in it, which is surely the point.

From the BFI I watched two films.  After Love is an excellent film with a brilliant central performance by Joanna Scanlan.  She plays a contentedly married woman who when her cross channel ferry captain husband dies suddenly finds that he has been maintaining a second relationship in Calais. She sets out to find the woman concerned and the film explores the subsequent events and emotions.

I enjoyed that but I absolutely loved One Deadly Summer.  As L'été meurtrier it was a big hit in France in 1983.  Isabelle Adjani is wonderful as the sexy new girl in the village who chooses to bestow her favours on Alain Souchon's quiet motor mechanic rather than on the more macho contenders.  It turns out she has an ulterior and very dark motive for her every move.  She wants to wreak vengeance on the men who made her mother suffer many years before.  I can't reveal more.

Sophia by Frances Poet was the Lyceum/Pitlochry audio play for August.  The Sophia of the title was Sophia Jex-Blake who spearheaded the drive to have women admitted to British universities in the 19th century.  It was a riveting account of the struggles she and her colleagues, known as the Edinburgh Seven, had in trying to get a medical education.  She eventually became the first woman doctor in Scotland at the age of 37, having qualified in Dublin. 

Mention of Dublin reminds me that I've had a couple of scam emails recently that were written in Irish.  I don't know how I've got onto a list of potential Irish speaking suckers but there you are.  Anyway I don't know a word of Irish but I can spot a spam without too much trouble.  See what you make of it.

"Mo bheannachtaí go léir,

Seo an dara huair dom iarracht teagmháil a dhéanamh leat. An bhfuil an ríomhphost seo bailí? Karim Alassani is ainm dom, dlíodóir pearsanta an Uasail Jovan, nach maireann, a fuair bás i dtimpiste gluaisteáin lena aon bhean agus iníon. D’fhág sé ($ 4,211,000) sa bhanc anseo.

Tá barántas agam ón mbanc chun a neasghaol a fháil, ach tar éis mo thaighde fuair mé amach nach raibh aon ghaolta aige cheana. Táim i dteagmháil leat chun an ciste seo a aistriú chuig do chuntas ós rud é go roinneann tú an t-ainm céanna le mo chliant.

Tá na cáipéisí uile agam chun tacú leis an éileamh seo.

Coinnigh an fhaisnéis seo an-rúnda le do thoil agus freagair go díreach ó mo bhosca ríomhphoist pearsanta thíos chun tuilleadh soiléirithe a fháil.

Go croíúil,"

That $4,211,000 rather gives it away don't you think.

So festivals over for another year, including this one across the road which labelled itself the Fake Fringe.  Various artistic events were held here over the weekend; none of them seemed in any way fake to me. 

I stopped here on my way home from hearing a sub-set of the Festival Chorus present a short programme of rounds ranging from "Sumer is a icumin in" to Pachelbel's well known canon arranged by their director Aidan Oliver.  His light-hearted introductions and the choir's superb singing made for a pleasant, relaxed Sunday afternoon.

Kirsty Heggie, who was performing her own songs when I arrived had a lovely bright clear voice which it was a delight to listen to.

I can't say the same for the Laura Mvula gig that I went to in the evening.  I'd heard her sing on the radio, probably in a jazz programme and was struck by the individuality of her voice and the clarity of her delivery. At the EIF gig however the sound from the band (especially a loud unrelenting beat from the bass drum) was overwhelming, making it impossible (for me at any rate) to focus on and enjoy her singing.

On the evening that I saw 1902 in the railway Arches near the bottom of Leith Walk the heid bummer from Broadway Baby presented the show with a wee statuette of Greyfriars Bobby, this being a tribute to a show which in his opinion merited far more than 5 stars.  Other critics have also enthused over this story of the travails of a quartet of ardent Hibees whose desire to get to the 2016 Scottish Cup Final lands their leader in very hot water and his brother in a hole in the ground.

There's no faulting the energy and commitment shown by the cast as they rush up and down, in and out and around and about narrowly avoiding the audience squeezed tightly into the venue. Nor are their interactions any less intense.  Faces up close they scream at one another. The fights are realistic.  Musical contributions are excellent. There's even humour and the narration of the cup final conveys all the highs and lows that float over to my flat from Easter Road when there's a big match on.

All the same it's largely a sequence of; the baddie comes in, there's a shouting match (not conducive to clear articulation), the baddie leaves.  Repeat until a death occurs. Cuts could only improve the show.

I really love short films for their concision and focus.  Usually shown in a programme of half a dozen or more the good ones hit the spot and the duds don't last long.  Not that there were any duds in the Nightpiece Film Festival programme (one of five) that I saw.  They've been coming to the Fringe for some years apparently but this is the first time I've been aware.  That was thanks to the fact that a friend's grandaughter's boyfriend had directed one of those chosen by the organisers this year.  The granddaughter's mother, father and little sister came up from England to see it and I met them before the screening.

Ben the boyfriend's film was first up.  The Ark was a well crafted piece about the eponymous  mysterious organisation that had apparently sent a couple to assasinate a woman.  I'm not sure I understood all the twists and turns that led to would be assasin number one seemingly being eliminated by assasin two at the behest of The Ark but still.

The programmes and their films are listed here.  I saw the Hearts of Darkness programme.  I wish I'd seen them all.

In the opening remarks to a Book Festival event the presenter told us "my pronouns are her and she".  She went on to tell us that one of her guests (who it transpired used the same pronouns) had written a book of contemporary feminist ghost stories.

Two thoughts crossed my mind.  One - this is surely going to be too woke for me.  Two - why have I chosen to come to this event?

Well it wasn't intrusively woke and the ghost stories didn't feature.  Two books about words were under discussion and what's more one of them was about Japanese words.  So I knew why I was there.

Eley Williams' The Liar's Dictionary is an entertaining novel (I've read it since) about a 19th century lexicographer who inserts mountweazels into the fictional Swansby's New Encyclopaedic Dictionary and the 21st century young woman who is employed to root them out in preparation for digitisation of the dictionary.

Polly Barton's Fifty Sounds, which I have not yet read, is a memoir of sorts of time lived in Japan each of whose fifty chapters is a Japanese mimetic word. Japanese is it seems second only to Korean in the extent to which words like our miaou, woof and bang-bang pepper the language.  Barton studied philosophy then taught English in Japan and ended up as a literary translator from Japanese to English.  I'll tell you what I think when I've read it.  Don't hold your breath.

Back at the EIF I went to an event consisting of two string quartets numbered 13 played by the Gringolts Quartet.  In the delightful setting of the Old Quad pavilion Mozart's String Quartet 13 strikes a sombre note.  It's not the jolly sort of stuff that he mostly wrote but has a touch of his requiem to come about it.  Dvorak's similarly numbered work however was jolly and so it should have been given that he wrote it when he had returned to Europe from three none too happy years in America.  

One of the joys of this summer has been to frequent the various outdoor drinking and eating spots that have proliferated partly but not entirely in response to Covid.  While there have been plenty of visitors in town they have not flooded us out so it's been easier to find a space.  I particularly enjoyed time spent in the Pleasance and Summerhall courtyards.

Nearly forgot.  The Grads Fringe involvement this year was online, a trio of plays.  Ripe for Improvement was an amusing encounter between a couple looking to buy a house and a seller intent on putting them off.  Guilty Animals starts with a firefighter under investigation over a fire at his ex-partners home, a fire in which she died.  The story works its way backwards through time to a point that clinches what we already are sure of.  He did it.  Going backwards can be dangerous but this play carried it off well.  The Report, clearly inspired by Grenfell interrogates the architect, the builder, the council official whose names feature in the report of some incident.  The same three actors take the parts of interrogator, note taker and interrogatee in turn. Under questioning each one presents cogent reasons why no responsibility attaches to them for the outcome of the identified failures in their area of involvement.  A clever play superbly presented and with a sting in the tail for the buck passers.

A view from inside the pavilion that the EIF has built in the Old Quad to meet the demands of the pandemic by keeping its audiences together but apart (socially distanced seating) and inside but outside (walls open to the wind). 

I was in the Old Quad at noon on a blissfully sunny and warm day to hear classical music live for only the second time since Covid cancelled everything.  It was delicious.  The young Dutch violinist Noa Wildschut played a sonata by Fauré, a selection of Shostakovich preludes, a pair of Sibelius pieces and the spooky, lively, lightning fast Dance Macabre of Saint-Saens.  She finished off with a contrasting slow and peaceful encore from Gluck's Euridice that had the audience spellbound as its closing notes drifted quietly away.  Hats off too to her accompanist Latvian pianist Lauma Skride who had stepped in at short notice to replace an injured Elisabeth Brauß. 

The previous week I was in the pavilion's big sister out at Edinburgh Park.  You could shelter an aircraft carrier in it. I had gone to see Shona the Musical Choir.  A Scottish/African choir are developing a musical interracial love story that has the modern history of Zimbabwe and its Shona people as background.  It was a little hard to follow the narrative but the music, singing and dancing were joyful and exuberant.  

Joyful and exuberant are not terms you could apply to the EIF's only substantial theatre offering but Medicine at the Traverse was stunning.  Rather than my feeble attempts at describing it read Joyce Macmillan's five star review in The Scotsman.

I left the festivals to their own devices for an afternoon to listen to a reading of Animal Farm on Radio 4 Extra, followed by an "In our Time" episode discussing the book.  Had the weather been better I'd have gone to Holyrood Park to see what the EIF programme calls "a durational outdoor dance-happening conceived in a physically distanced world".  Not sure which of these is truly satire.

 

After one of my Fringe shows I walked home via the Canongate and was entranced by the renovation of the physic garden and the Abbey Strand buildings.  The garden was opened to the public in November last and although I've passed that way since I hadn't noticed and I think the buildings have only recently lost a carapace of scaffolding, but for me recently often turns out to mean within the last year or three.

I had a festival packed weekend with a leisurely start at 11.30 on Saturday at the Book Festival.  They've moved from Charlotte Square to the Art College.  The Covid diminished festival fits into the space but I think it would be a bit of a squeeze if they were ever to welcome the crowds of the past.  However I believe the intention is to continue with the hybrid model that combines a limited number of events in which writers and audience are physically together onsite with many events that allow a worldwide audience and a worldwide body of writers to get together online.  

Thomas Pringle was a writer from the Borders who led a party of settlers to South Africa in 1820.  He was not much cop as a farmer and went off to Capetown where he was involved in running a school and running newspapers.  He fell foul of the colonial government and returned to London where he became secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society.  Known, at least from a white colonial standpoint, as the father of South African poetry; literary awards are made there in his name to this day.  But he's not well known in Scotland.

Indeed he was unknown to Stuart Kelly, a Borderer himself and a literary critic who lives a stone's throw from Pringle's birthplace.  He was at the festival to discuss with Zoe Wicomb her novel Still Life.  At school in South Africa she had to learn a number of his poems by heart.  Intrigued by the man, his championship of native rights, the paradoxies of his life she has written a novel that weaves together real and fictitious characters in a time-shifting story that she insists cannot be characterised as a historical novel and which Scottish publishers turned down as being too difficult for the reader. 

I hope it's not too difficult for me because I bought a copy.

I suppose we could call the version of The Importance of Being Earnest that I went on to see an inclusive production.  Thanks to the conceit of replacements being needed for actors who hadn't turned up it included members of the audience. There was even an audition for the part of Miss Prism, the winner being selected by audience acclaim.

If these were plants they were very skilful actors indeed but I fear they were genuine punters.  I don't want to be negative about this production.  I'm sure it wasn't that easy to do. The audience actors clearly enjoyed their frolics on stage.  The audience were in gleeful fits.  A good time was being had by all.  I loathed it and left well before the end.

Now I didn't loathe the next one but The Laird Strikes Back struck me as much less entertaining than it might have been.  We meet Gussie McCraig, the sort of Scottish toff who went to Eton, hunts shoots and fishes, drinks to excess, condescends now and then to the odd Scots expression but strangles the vowels and holds opinions to the right of right.

He's practising a speech or presentation, swilling whisky and consulting notes as he does so.  He does that so well that I wondered if indeed he didn't know the lines.  But he inhabits the character brilliantly.  There's a videoed sequence of him on a Zoom call, sozzled and as we see at one point semi-clad.  Super acting but I couldn't for the life of me work out who the call was with or what its point was.

We see him later in Number 10 blethering on about what he said to Dom and how he sorted out Carrie while waiting to be fired for some misdemeanour.

Being fired leads to elevation to the Lords and a spot opening COP26 against a backdrop that unaccountably proclaims the conference to be being held in association with Italy.  Something to do with the Mafia?

Satire I think needs a much better defined target and a razor sharp delivery. But the actor was great.

Saturday night at Tynecastle.  I think only the second time I've been in the stadium.  This time at least it was to do with football.  In case you're wondering the last time was to watch rugby league with my late chum Dick Bowering.  The play Sweet F.A. is about the flourishing of women's football before, during and for a few years after the First World War before it was consigned to oblivion for decades.

A talented cast of about a dozen women act and sing their way through the story of the creation of a works team, their victories, their defeats and their struggles with the SFA.  Their individual backgrounds with husbands, brothers and lovers off to war and the close relationship two of the women develop are skilfully woven in.

The show is joyous, funny and moving.  Maybe a bit long when the cold wind of a Scottish summer evening blows through the park.

I began Sunday with Richard Holloway, everyone's favourite former bishop, talking to Joan Bakewell, one of my favourite former frequent faces on TV.  She's getting on a bit (88) and has downsized from a large Victorian house where she'd lived for fifty years to a ground floor studio flat and has wrtten a book about it, The Tick of Two Clocks. 

The discussion moved from this particular experience to the more general problems of old age both for individuals and for society, to the question of assisted dying. What's the difference Joan asked, between upping the dose of morphine in the name of palliative care and the same manoeuvre to take the pain away forever.  What indeed?

Black is the Colour of my Voice was the choice of our Thursday online theatre watching group a month or two back.  I missed it but probably would have enjoyed it.  I most certainly enjoyed it live.  I count Nina Simone amongst my favourite jazz singers and Apphia Campbell's voice has similar strengths but the focus of the show is not on Simone's jazz repertoire or that aspect of her life but on her beginnings and on her growth through the civil rights movement. Campbell shows herself to be an accomplished actress as much as singer.

The show ran for a bit longer than billed and I had to sprint up from the bowels of the EICC and walk vigorously to the Filmhouse bus stop where after only two minutes wait an 11 whisked me off and deposited me at the door of St Andrew's and St George's West with seconds to spare before the Guitar Recital I had come to hear started.

I was greeted by name.  You recognised me, I said.  The lady on the door didn't seem to realise this was meant to be a joke and informed me in serious tones that I happened to be the only single (ie unaccompanied) attendee on the list.

The recital was lovely.  A complete contrast to the show I'd just come from.  Quiet, contemplative classical pieces.  I didn't have a programme so I've no idea what the guitarist played.  He didn't announce any of the pieces.  Indeed he didn't so much as say hello or goodbye.  He just melted on and melted off.

Then to the Castle Terrace muti-storey carpark rechristened MultiStory for the nonce.  Rituel was a dance-like piece in which four young men, assisted at times by a guitar player or by a soundtrack, played out the sort of male bonding games that characterise the growth from childhood to adulthood.  It was excellent and the release of a helium filled balloon into the sky at the end was a beautiful moment though no doubt environmentally questionable.

Back to the Book Festival for a discussion between Alan Little and Nick Bryant about the latter's When America Stopped Being Great.  Bryant has reported from America  since 1984 and regards the roots of Trump's ascendancy as dating back decades to Vietnam and earlier.  This was an interesting conversation and on the day that Kabul fell to the Taliban the book's title could not have been more appropriate.

In the week of the Plymouth shootings Screen 9 also resonated with the present.  It's an account, in the words of survivors, of the mass murder of twelve individuals and the injuring of many more at the midnight premiere of a Batman film in Aurora, Colorado in 2012. 

You're offered popcorn as you enter what could well be a cinema.  The four actors appear on stage below a screen on which a blurred image is being projected.  They recount how they spent the day of the screening; how they were looking forward to it; how they'd decided to go; how they prepared.

Lights go down.  The actors take up positions amongst us in the audience.  They tell us what happened.  The teargas canister.  The shots.  The blood.  Their friends, relatives dying beside them.

Back on stage the aftermath; the grief; the questions; the guilt; the ongoing fear.

This is a fine piece of theatre that to a British audience, even with Plymouth a live issue, causes us continuing puzzlement at the role of guns in American culture. 

The festivals are back and crowds of visitors with them. Not in quite such overwhelming numbers as we've been used to in recent years but enough for the Grassmarket to be packed with outdoor diners on a sunny Saturday. 

 The Royal Mile has it's entertainers again, who like policemen get younger every day.

Not everyone enjoys the shows they go to see and some go to extreme lengths to leave the venue.

Luckily most of the shows I've seen so far have been worth the investment of my time and treasure.

I started off with Phantasmaphone at the French Institute.  Alone in a little cubby hole just inside the building you pick up a phone and have a fifteen minute chat with someone in Paris about whatever you like but which ends up with them reading you a poem.  The reading will be in French but you can chat in English though I gave my French a whirl in what was the first conversation I've held in the language for two years.  A great start.

A little later came Granny Smith, also at the Institute.  The billing reads "Join us for a show full of humour and gentle instruction on language and cooking."  What I hadn't picked up was that it was really a kids' show.  In fact that made it even more fun.  The actress (English but working in France for thirty years or so) explained that the show had been developed following requests for a show that would help with language learning.  So she potters about getting up in the morning, having a cup of tea and so on the while getting across various French words.  She has the whole audience up doing a French hands kness and boomps-a-daisy at one point.

The centrepiece of the show is the making of a cake and by this time she's got three kids on stage reading the recipe, mixing the ingredients and generally having the time of their lives.  Three adults in the front row were handed a pear and a peeler each and instructed to "épluchez les poires et enlevez les trognons".  It's pretty obvious that means "peel the pears and take out the cores" but I don't know that I'd ever come across the word "trognon" before so the language learning objective was met in my case at least.

Unfortunately there was then a fire alarm and we all had to leave the building.  We hung about for a while chatting and one little girl who'd been sitting near me and sticking her hand in the air whenever a volunteer was called for and who had obviously been deeply disappointed at never being chosen bravely went up to Granny and asked if she could take part when the show resumed. 

I had a lunch date so didn't wait for the resumption.  I've since had an invitation from the Institute to go again but I doubt that I will though I highly recommend the show even if you don't have a kid to take you.

In the afternoon I saw Moonlight on Leith.  This had a faint whiff of Under Milk Wood about it as the doings of several denizens of Leith are displayed and in the heightened language of the narrative.  There's not what you'd call a plot but there's a romance here and there, a glimpse at interconnecting lives, animal as well as human and the exposure of the nasty developer who wanted to tear down the red sandstone parade in Leith Walk but was foiled by the community.  Ably presented by recent graduates of acting courses offered by Napier and Queen Margaret universities. 

I thought I was going to see a play but Love in the Time of Lockdown was a sketch show.  Some of the sketches were quite substantial though and one quite a moving riff on loneliness. The accent in general however was on humour.  Even the slightest was entertaining and very well played by an excellent cast.  The opening sketch was love blossoming between a man and his lady vaccinator which she explains as he goes off happens several times a day.  My own particular favourite was the woman in love with her car who it turned out returns the feeling and has a voice with which to tell her so. 

Miss Lindsay's Secret at the Netherbow was the sad story told through letters to her of a romance that never flowered. Her young man left Glenesk to seek a fortune in the Yukon gold rush at the beginning of the twentieth century and conducted a correspondence over a period of years.  All we know of what she said to him is conveyed by what he said in reply because she kept his letters but we have no idea what happened to hers.  He talks about how he longs to come home and how his luck is bound to change soon but it never does.  The letters stop or she didn't keep them or they got lost after fifteen years or so.  She died unmarried still in the glen at 85.  He also died unmarried in Canada never having been home.  As well as two actors there was a musician on stage whose playing sometimes for my taste intruded on what was a fine if depressing production.

It hasn't all been about festivals.

You no longer need to book an entry slot to the Botanics so I had a pleasant stroll around them last week and went on to Stockbridge where I bought some tasty bread and cheese and things.  I had a delicious dinner at the Outsider.  I was supposed to go on to a show but lingered over dinner instead.  It turned out to be a good choice because I'd have missed it anyway.  I thought it was at the Pleasance, not far from the restaurant.  But it was at "The Pleasance@EICC",  a much further away venue.

I had a rehearsal (online) for a short podcast play and I went to the dentist.

Back to the festivals for my next post.