The Winter Olympics are in full swing but this picture is of an international match played at Murrayfield just a few days before the Olympics started.  Poland, Slovenia, Ukraine and Great Britain fought it out over three days in front of enthusiastic crowds. I had a ticket for the first day which entitled me to see two matches but I saw only one, Slovenia versus Poland.  That match finished before 4pm leaving a long gap before the evening match.  I spent the gap at home and couldn't find the energy to go out into the rain again when it came to it.  I enjoyed what I did see though and it whetted my appetite for the Olympic ice hockey games.

I've been glued to the TV's excellent all day coverage of every conceivable event including ice hockey.  A number of British athletes who were hyped up before the games haven't managed to deliver while coming creditably close but at today's date GB has had three successes and more may follow. 

Crans Montana where they had that dreadful fire at New Year is where I learnt to ski and Cortina, the Olympic venue, is the last place I skiied, the year before Covid hit us.  I can't say that I recognised any of Crans Montana in the reporting but I did recognise the centre of Cortina and even a couple of the rock formations on the slopes.  The mountain views there and at the other centres were gorgeous.  I grabbed a couple of pictures from my TV screen.

View of Cortina as seen from the BBC Olympic studio

     

Olympic flame in Cortina

The opening ceremony was fun and was very cleverly orchestrated between Milan, Cortina and other event venues.

I had to do a bit of channel hopping to keep an eye on the six nations rugby competition.  I saw France comprehensively demolish Ireland and Scotland battle unsuccessfully in a continuous downpour against Italy only to triumph a week later in the Calcutta Cup. 

Carlos Acosta's ballet company brought their Cuban flavoured Nutcracker to the Festival Theatre. The blend of classical dance and music with Cuban sounds and movements made for an enjoyable evening but as the review I've linked says, the Cuban element was dropped in the second half to the detriment of the production.  

Much of the figure skating on display at the Olympics is essentialy ballet on ice.  The lifts and throws that the skaters achieve evoke even more admiration and wonder than does the athleticism of the stage performers.

The weather on St Valentines's Day broke the pattern of miserable, cold and wet weather that has persisted for some weeks.  Instead we had blue skies and crisp air.  So I went out for an excursion and in the garden of Inveresk Lodge came across a tree with this appropriate formation.

      

Here's my contribution to the Scottish Snowdrop Festival.  They flowered well before Christmas and I'm pretty sure will be dead long before the official end of the snowdrop season. But they are a joy to have on the balcony for a few weeks.

After his skiing trip Ewan went down to Keswick to see his mum.  Connor brought him back up to Edinburgh and we went out to lunch at Howie's in Waterloo Place. Apart from the food being very good there, as evidenced by the fact that it was packed on a Tuesday lunchtime, it was chosen because Claire, who joined us, works just across the road.

The following day Ewan flew back to America after having been my lifesaver/domestic slave for six weeks or so.  I went out in the afternoon to a U3A meeting.  They have a general meeting every month at which in addition to whatever U3A business needs to be attended to there's a talk.  I often find myself thinking that it looks interesting and that I must go but seldom do and this was the first occasion I'd been to the venue they currently use.  Like Howie's it was packed and I was lucky to get a seat.  The talk itself was about a beer duty fraud carried out in Edinburgh in the 1920s and 30s not much more than 100 yards from where the U3A meeting was being held.  It was a super talk well presented and illustrated by a  chap who maintains a website of  events in Edinburgh's long and interesting history.  It's well worth a browse.  

I made my first visit of 2026 to the Filmhouse with Mary to see Rental Family.  It's quite a jolly piece that declares itself to be a comedy-drama about an American actor living in Tokyo who gets employment with a company that supplies actors to play roles in various family occasions, such as groom for a wedding that's not really a wedding but is being held to mask the bride's sexuality and intention to emigrate with her real love.  There was also some sort of dummy funeral which amused me although I didn't understand the point of it.  Our hero then is tasked with pretending to be the father of a girl of around 10 or 11 who doesn't know he's not really her father. This is all tugging at the heartstrings stuff so when the truth comes out and the girl is distraught we are too.  Spoiler alert - there's a happy ending.

New Oleans jazz at the Assembly Roxy was my next outing and I rounded off  the most active week I've had since before going into hospital with a non Burns Supper evening of delicious haggis.

The following week was much quieter.  I went for a walk up town and took a few pictures including this panorama of one of my favourite views.  It was not a bad day but bitterly cold and I took advantage of a pleasant little cafe to warm up my camera wielding hands by wrapping them round a cappuccino.

I went to hear the SCO play Mozart's last three symphonies in the Usher Hall. I'm not a great fan of Mozart.  I like his operas and his choral pieces but I can do without the symphonies.  Not that you can fault the guy for effort to please since he wrote somewhere between 40 and 50, and 30 of those before he was 18.  I suppose I do enjoy hearing some of them but three on one evening was just too much.

Last outing of the week was dinner with friends where I consumed delicious vegetarian middle easternish dishes and went home with a goodie bag of tablet.