Bus time indicators like these started to appear on our streets last winter replacing the previous style like steam taking over from horsepower.  They were welcomed enthusiastically until it was realised they did not tell you the very thing you want to know when you arrive at a bus-stop, "how long do I have to wait for my bus".  Instead they told you when according to the timetable your bus was due.  Now with the best will in the world buses don't always run to time and when the decreed time arrived your bus would disappear from the screen whether it had arrived or not. 

It was all the fault of technical problems they said and would be sorted out.  Now, more or less a year later, it has been.  Three small cheers.

For some years I've been going to a spot near Edzell for a twice yearly saxophone weekend but the one I went to this month is likely to prove the last.  The venue needs to make more money so we are being priced out.  With luck a new venue will be found.

I've been involved with old things recently.  There was a film based on a novel called Georgy Girl that was a hit that passed me by in the 60s.  A radio version, itself not in the first flush of youth, surfaced on Radio 4 Extra the other week and entertained me mightily.  As has done the TV series Line of Duty.  I did know about that one by reputation but had never seen it.  By chance I caught a screening of its very first episode and subsequently launched into binge watching it.  I've seen and thoroughly enjoyed five of the six series.

Quite a long time ago as their financial fortunes waned The Scotsman vacated their fine premises on the North Bridge.  They became a hotel with a restaurant called The Grand Cafe occupying what had been in my time the place you went to place an advert in the paper.  It has been on my target list of places to eat ever since and now I've eaten there.

It's a magnificent setting and Siobhan and I had a very pleasant lunch there.  The scallops balanced on top of strips of pork belly were gorgeous though not cheap.  But as is the way with lunches what starts out as a cheap, or lets say a value for money fixed price lunch doubles in price when you add on a glass of wine, a coffee and a tip or service charge.  Thus I found, not for the first time, when I lunched with Andrew in Glasgow this week.  It was a good lunch and a decent glass of wine and we had a good natter and the sun shone and all was well with the world.

We think of Australia as a place where the sun always shines, wrongly I'm sure but at their farewell party sunny enthusiasm surrounded Penny, one of Claire's girls, and her partner Zak who are setting off there in a few weeks taking with them nursing and IT skills respectively.  

We contemplated emigrating there at one time ourselves but went back to Africa instead.  Now it's not even very high on my list of places to visit.