Here's my printer nestling in its little lair where it has been for the last twelve years or so.  Printers can be temperamental and mine is no exception.  They require delicate handling but this week delicate morphed into desperate. It was not at all easily cajoled back from refusing to be recognised as a presence on my wifi network.  I spent two hours at it.  I climbed into the attic to search for a particular cable (later found to be in a more accessible location).  l unearthed the installation instructions and the installation CD.  Such a thing surely no longer exists.  I met obstacle after obstacle from PC and printer, deciding finally that I would just have to buy a new one when miraculously a panel appeared on my screen acknowledging the printer's presence but complaining about the absence of a driver.  That was easily remedied.

So now I was able to print off the 30 page script I'd been sent for the Arkle show I'm doing.  Somewhat galling then to learn a couple of days later that I will very soon be furnished with a printed copy in a natty ring binder.

The final Jazz Festival gig at St Brides was devoted to Miles Davis. A group led by the pianist David Patrick whose jazz version of The Rite of Spring was a much lauded success a few years ago gave us Davis after A Kind of Blue.  Not entirely to my taste but very well played.  Ewan Hastie who won the BBC Young Jazz Musician title recently was on double bass and Matt Carmichael who won all three of the RCS's jazz prizes in his final year played tenor sax. 

I heard Matt play in the Jazz Bar earlier in the week with a Norwegian trio led by the pianist Liv Hauge.  They'd met when Liv spent some time at the RCS.  It's a wonderful trio and the added sax only improved the gig. 

Another Norwegian, a saxophonist this time, whose gig at the Jazz Bar I enjoyed was Mona Krogstad.  The music I've linked to is great.

I was glad I hadn't gone to the Napier Jazz Summer School this year when I went to hear their concert that features as part of The Jazz Festival.  The five or six combos were brilliant and the sax players were all so much better than me.

There seems to be a flurry of interest in RB Cunninghame Graham with a number of books coming out.  I heard his great great nephew James Jauncey talk about him at the Book Festival a year or two back and I'm going to hear him again with the supposition that he's now managed to put pen to paper.  One who has is Lachlan Munro and I was at the National Library to hear him talk about his book and more generally about Cunninhame Graham in conversation with Alan Riach of Glasgow University.  The discussion was very interesting and well illustrated.  I flirted with the idea of buying the book but it looked a little to scholarly for my taste so I held back.  Jauncey's will I think be more jaunty.

Zambia's women failed to do much in the World Cup.  Disappointing after their performances in the Tokyo Olympics.  I don't mean in terms of winning matches.  I didn't expect that though they've still got Costa Rica to play; they might have a chance there.  Barbra Banda scored  hat-tricks against both China and the Netherlands in Japan but here she failed to shine.  I don't know whether that was excellent marking by the opposition or rampant failure by her own side.  Whichever, it was disappointing.

I went to my first Fringe show at The Traverse this week and it fair lifted the spirits in eager anticipation of a theatrical riot over the next few weeks.  The Grand Old Opera House Hotel was a really good fun show.  Very funny, impressively staged and performed - those lightning costume changes! And amusingly sung.  Yes sung. Opera doesn't just feature in the title.  

Birling Venezualen dancers at the Jazz Festival launch party.  The one in red is birling too fast for my phone camera to cope.  It was a good evening.  Dignitaries made speeches, artistes sang songs, dancers and punters (though not me) danced around to jazzy rhythms and drink was drunk (by me, and others).

When the festival proper started I went to St Brides to a gig featuring music by or associated with Lee Konitz.  The band was led by Martin Kershaw who told us how much he admired Konitz and how listening to him had been a major influence when he was studying in the States  Martin's alto was accompanied by Helena Kay's tenor and a fine rhythm section. 

That was a good start and over the weekend as well as an afternoon of convivialty at Siobhan's and a crackers rehearsal I managed to get to two gigs.  In the Jazz Bar, where I bumpted into some saxophone friends Sue Mackenzie entertained with a trio consisting of her, a harpist and a percussionist that grew into a septet with the addition of alto sax, trombone and double bass.  The music was all written by Sue and was excellent

After that, with one of the people I had bumped into, I went off to George Square to hear a marvellous alto player from the States.  Lakecia Benjamin can screw that horn up to high doh and beyond and down again at lightning speed with frightening precision and musicality.  The energy, physicality, good humour and interaction she put into the show was great.  And her piano player was awesome.

Anyone who is in Houston TX on September 8th can catch her at the Miller Outdoor Theatre.

One of the first jazz records I owned when I was a teenager was an EP of Sydney Bechet which I loved so a gig featuring Dick Lee and his band Nouveau Bechet was a draw.  With Dick on clarinet and soprano sax, Colin Steele on trumpet and vocals by Ali Affleck it was a treat.  Not everything was echt Bechet, but what wasn't was in the same genre and drawn from the same well.  

Because I was rehearsing I didn't see the Wimbledon men's final and because I was partying I didn't see the ladies final either.  But I'd seen a lot of the championship and had I been a betting man would have put money on Jabeur and Djokovic.  How wrong.  No prophet I.

This heron is a resident of the Water of Leith that I often see when I walk along the river between St Marks park and Canonmills.  Usually it's standing stockstill in the water waiting to pounce on some unsuspecting fish that gets too close.  

I was on my way to have a stroll round the Botanics where I popped into Inverleith House to see the exhibition that was on there.  Called Shipping Roots it's about the spread of plants through the British Empire whether intentionally in the case of the introduction of the prickly pear to Australia or accidentally in the case of many plants whose seeds came to Britain trapped in the wool of Australian sheep.  Not simply a factual exhibition it's a display of art and a musing on colonial history.   

The spreaders of the eucalyptus tree from its native lands of the Australian aborigine get a bad rap from the exhibition.  It sucks too much water out of too much of the planet it seems.  It's lovely though.

Here are a couple of reviews giving more detail and a more thorough consideration of the exhibition -  one and two.  

Much of the pioneering work in the development and application of computers took place in the UK, notably as far as the business world is concerned, by the Lyons company.  It was founded in 1885 and grew to be one of the largest food companies in Europe.  They ran a chain of cafes mostly in London where the Lyons Cornerhouse and its "nippy" waitresses became an institution.  In the 50s they built the LEO computer for their company's use but then branched out into the computer business by taking in work from other companies and then building and selling LEOs.  In the 60s things got tough and LEO Computers as a standalone company vanished amidst the mergers and takeovers of the time.  In three years in the late 60s I worked for four companies without moving from my desk.  One of those was English Electric LEO Marconi which goes some way to explaining my interest in a U3A online talk about LEO Computers.  It was excellent.  Somebody should write a book.  They probably have.

One of Lyons' enterprises in its heyday was running a tea estate in Malawi (then called Nyasaland).  Despite living next door in Zambia for ten years and despite Scotland's many ties to the country; its second city, until 1975 its capital, is called Blantyre for goodness sake, I never managed to visit.  Edinburgh U3A held a talk about those ties the other week that I really wanted to go to but rain stopped play.  No way did I fancy going out in that downpour.  Fortunately they filmed it and for a limited time it's available online.

For my final simulation of the season at Napier I was an old guy recovering from a hip replacement being administered to by physiotherapists trying to get me to move my legs about and get up and push a zimmer.  I cooperated as much as I thought a woozy pensioner in those circumstances would which wasn't as much as they would have liked I'm sure.  The idea is for them not learn not to have an easy ride.  The only downside for me was that my reward, a coffee voucher, couldn't be used because the coffee bar was closed by the time we finished.