I got stuck in to knocking spots off the grass on Saturday but after an hour or so my machine developed a cough. I thought it was just fuel running low but despite filling it up I couldn’t get the damn thing to start. Having no suitable tools to take out the spark plug, the sooting up of which I suspect to be culpable, I had to abandon the job and take it down to Gueret on Monday.

I had to go there anyway because I’d managed to shred a tyre on one of the stones lining the rock garden as I swung left to get a bead on the hanger. The little Rover didn’t need so much room. Of course I’ve ended up buying more than one after being advised that the gendarmerie would not be satisfied by the state of two further tyres should they chance to run their fingers over them. Funny that the MOT fairy passed them a few weeks earlier.

While waiting for the tyres I had a stroll around the town centre and noticed that the rather good bookshop has gone, to be replaced by what seems to be the only growth industry around here – an estate agent, bilingual French/English descriptions of course.

Pending repair of the débroussailleuse I’m doing some gentle weeding of the rock garden.

Tuesday saw a downpour but with others I trudged valiantly over the golf course and earned myself three balls for having completed the round unlike so many fainter hearts who had given up partway. Didn’t altogether make up for those I lost but psychologically very satisfying.

On Thursday the weather was much better and Jean and I had a splendid day at Val de l’Indre; a very pleasant lunch in the clubhouse and 18 holes over a course in excellent condition. We’re playing there again in a competition on Sunday so this was in part a preparation and reminder of what the course is like. Its main challenge consists in avoiding the woods that line most fairways on both sides. If you are lucky enough to find a ball that you’ve carelessly sliced or hooked into the woods your problems have only begun. Threading it out between the trees can be a multi-shot adventure.

The big news on the way home was that T.Blair has at last told us when he’s going. Both French and British radio stations since have been delivering more or less qualified encomia. I was heartened to hear Dennis McShane this morning stoutly defending British public services in his impeccable French. The French tend to have an overblown opinion of their public sector, especially the health system, but did you know for example that there is a three month waiting list to get your eyes tested here. Anyway thank God the man has put us out of our misery and now we can get on with criticising Gordon Brown.

It doesn’t take long for new leaders to feel the rough side of the public’s tongue and poor wee Nicolas Sarkozy has already been castigated for his post election break on board a millionaire chum’s yacht in the Med. Shades of Tony and Cliff or Jack and Kirsty. Talk about mountains and molehills.

My postman, whom last year’s readers may well remember, has not been slow in giving me his opinion on the new president. “Hungarian” was his first comment, delivered in a tone that rather called into question what I took to be his attachment to his fellow man. He now sports a very Leninesque goatee but denies being a man of the left and declares himself a simple worker. Coupled with the “Hungarian” comment that makes me wonder which party best represents his ideas - must enquire further.

In our conversations I am cast as the Anglo-Saxon ultra liberal so I find myself looking for arguments to defend company bosses being paid a thousand or more times as much as their workers (a practice I suppose I deplore but that leaves me relatively unmoved – more fools the shareholders that let them away with it) or to support Sarkozy’s fanciful (it seems to me) idea that allowing people to earn untaxed overtime (at time and a quarter) will release a sufficiently large wave of buying power to revitalise the economy.

Recently, in order to publicise my Kitwe Little Theatre material and hopefully plug its photographic gaps I signed up to The Great North Road. (That’s a sort of Central African Friends Reunited.) There was some administrative delay but it has now come through and has already borne fruit. I got an email today from Barry Woodrow who was a prominent NKAS member in the 70s. In those distant days Ewan was friendly with a girl called Lynne who according to Barry is very keen to re-establish contact. I await with great interest how that develops.

The internet connection I have here is dial-up and is pitifully slow compared to broadband. My major use of it is for email and my Hotmail inbox has been taking an age to display so I spent literally hours today deleting 1000 emails, guessing that the need to marshall all that jazz has not helped display delays. Fingers crossed it’s helped.

I came across a rodent corpse last night. Perhaps he’s the greedy chap who guzzled his way through my poison grain. There’s also what one might delicately call some animal spoor in the barn. I expect properly experienced country people could tell at once the culprit but all I can deduce is that it was bigger than a mouse but smaller than a dog. That narrows the field don’t you think. Maybe the polecat/weasel creature who spent one winter in our roof decided to try more extensive premises this year.

I met a couple of chums for lunch and a game of golf today. A very tasty three course lunch plus coffee and wine for 11 euros put me in an excellent mood and my first strike of a golf ball for months reflected the carefree rapture engendered by the meal. It was a stotter. The succeeding 100 or so strokes were a mixed bag but I was not too disappointed at my performance on this first outing of the season.

When I got home I switched on my mobile for the sheer pleasure of seeing that little signal line for it seems that Vodaphone and Bouygtel have got their act together and my mobile can now be used at Barbansais. Lo and behold there was a message for me to the effect that a seat had fallen to the SNP at 1.17am. Well I had just heard on the radio that the SNP have won one seat more than Labour overall so things have clearly moved on apace since the early hours. Is there dancing in the streets now that the shackles of thraldom to New labour have been cast off? Is Jack demanding a rerun because of all those spoilt ballot papers?

I shall have to go online as soon as this lightning has gone away to get up to date.

I had a good run down to Dover although the traffic was nose to tail all the way. The Stilo is certainly a lot more comfortable than my little Rover and the radio is very good at changing frequencies to keep the same station coming.

Women’s Hour featured an item from Zambia about domestic violence. A number of ladies of a more traditional bent expressed the view that being beaten by your husband was a sign of his love for you – his desire to ensure that shortcomings were brought to your notice so that you would learn how to be a better wife.

I don’t suppose many of my readers will see it that way and indeed it is not how modern Zambia operates. Men are now being prosecuted for domestic violence and a refuge has been established. I remember when living there that women often got their own back. A favourite retaliation was to pour boiling cooking oil over the offender. That rather put his gas on a peep but I guess it’s not the modern solution.

I stopped only once and had a coffee from a Coffee Nation machine. That’s the machine whose manufacture was used to lure Connor south.

I made such good time that I caught an earlier ferry than anticipated. Norfolk Lines have bought a new boat since I last sailed with them. There was lots of comfortable lounging about space and I opened a book in eager anticipation of a good read only to realise that I had already read it. No problem really since I’ve no idea how it develops or ends, such is my power of memory. That’s just as well since it’s a detective story. Siobhan lent it to me and I think she must have recommended it to me before and that I read it on one of the occasions that I was staying at Craigmillar Park.

I hit the road after breakfast yesterday and had a smooth ride down to Barbansais apart from the crawl around Paris where the traffic is even worse than our motorways.

The house is in great shape and the countryside around is looking lovely. I nipped down to Gueret for some essentials via my favourite rural route. It was altogether delightful. Why sell?

As I said the house is fine if dusty and awash with dead insects. There is very little sign of rodent activity. One of the tasty piles of lethal grain I left has been devoured but the rest look untouched. The garden though is a jungle. Josette said that they had a fair amount of rain in March and a very hot April so grass and weeds have simply bounced up in glee.

There’s a rock garden hiding in here and this is what awaits my mower round the back.

Anyway it will have to wait a few days. I’ve been organising things inside today and tomorrow it’s golf so the grass and weeds have a stay of execution.

I listened to Ségolene Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy in their head to head debate last night. It lasted for 2 hours and 40 minutes. I can’t see the Scottish electorate’s attention span managing an equivalent event though I’m sure our politicians would be up for it. Nor do I imagine we have many citizens as committed as my neighbours Jean (late 80s) and Josette (late 70s) who are off to Paris on Saturday to vote in Sunday’s presidential election.

I’m looking forward to hearing all about the Scottish election tonight. I hope it’s an interesting result.

Bags packed, votes cast, off to France in the morning.

For the last wee while my regular tipple has been Rosso delle Marche, a nice little wine from Tesco. My belief that its quality belied its price (£2.99) has been confirmed. The sods have repriced it at £5.99. They may think that I'm hooked but they can think again. I've moved on already in the search for heavenly drink at earthly prices.

They have a weird way with sprouts as well. I bought some loose Scottish sprouts at 59p per kilo. I could have bought the same sprouts with outer leaves removed and wrapped in plastic for £1.62 per kilo. Or if I had been completely off my trolley I could have bought LUXURY sprouts, outer leaves removed, washed and polished, and wrapped in plastic for the modest sum of £4.97 per kilo.

I was quietly watching the Bahrain grand prix on Sunday afternoon when I got a call asking me to repond to a filming emergency. Rather than shiver in the cool of a vaulted cellar in the Cowgate some unprofessional extras had bunked off the set of Staccato to lounge in the sunshine.

Naturally I dropped everything, grabbed my collected works of Stanislavsky and headed for the location.

It would have been better if I'd taken a collection of cables and adapters. One was missing, rendering the camera unuseable. Boxes were searched and re-searched, but....nothing.

Sunday is not the best day for specialist cable purchasing so after a while a party set off to break into the film school. In fact they sweet talked their way past security and returned triumphant and we got started.

For the actors that meant official waiting time began. Shades of the old NHS.

For this film I was part of a crowd watching a Victorian freak show, shouting in German and throwing things at the freak. He was still in make-up and had been from mid morning but we didn't need him for the first couple of shots. When he did appear he was a cross between the Elephant Man and Quasimodo in a nappy. The make-up (which takes about three hours to apply) hid the man but he was being addressed as Nigel and I wondered idly if he he might be silent Nigel from the Caucasian Chalk Circle. It must have been the way he stood there that I recognised, because it was indeed he.

I thought the text being in German had to be a nod in homage to Fritz Lang especially since I had a vague memory of a crowd throwing things at a monster in M. In fact the director's beautiful sister explained to me that it was a device intended to hide an accent. And my memory of M was way off beam. There is a monster but he's not a physical monster just a monstrous serial child killer. Over intellectualised and wrong on all counts!

This film it turned out is more of a Beauty and the Beast story. The actress playing the heroine achieved the difficult feat of crying to camera on cue. But I suppose for a former circus performer turned burlesque dancer and student of Japanese that's small beer.

Anyway I was a crowd in fits and starts throughout the day and at one point discovered that you don't, despite the adage, need three to make a crowd since we were but two.

I caught up with the grand prix when I got home. What a driver this Lewis Hamilton is, bursting onto the scene like a Tiger Woods on four wheels.

You'd think you could get through all the crowd shots you'd need for a fifteen minute film in a day wouldn't you. You'd be wrong. It took most of Monday as well.

This is the mess a pair of magpies have been making to the baskets on my verandah. I assume that the coconut fibre makes the inside of a nest very snug. I've searched in vain for a child's windmill to scare the beasts so have resorted to disguise.
Let's hope the black plastic wrapping confuses them.

I think it's also an aesthetic improvement but I don't suppose they'll see it that way.

For the past couple of days the home page on my website has failed to display with something called an internal error 500. That's happened before but has not persisted because it has been due to a fault on the host's side of things that has been cleared up relatively quickly.

But it's been dragging on so I set out trawl their forums to see if anyone else was experiencing problems and to seek a solution. I learnt that pages are filtered for certain references and not displayed if those references are found.

Now you can understand that they might wish to exclude pornographic references or things that might indicate you were running a business (since they are hosting your site for nothing) but why do you suppose they added hotmail email addresses to the forbidden list? That's what the problem was with mine.

Someone else had their page stuffed because of a URL that contained the text "warmsnow". Well now I can only assume that frolicking in warm snow is disapproved of by Atspace.com. Can't say I fancy it much myself.

Alan was here for Easter and we filled the weekend with fun and frolics.

What used to be the Edinburgh Folk Festival but is now called Ceilidh Culture was on and we went to a couple of events. One was a bit crappy but the other was a great ceilidh band. In a pub basement they even managed to get us dancing.

We fitted in an entertaining lecture at the Science Festival by Raj Persaud on how to be irresistible to the opposite sex. Sadly there's no evidence yet that I've mastered his techniques.

We toured the galleries, put my new car through its paces on a day out in Fife, visited Newhailes House (a recent National Trust acquisition), did Dynamic Earth, enjoyed Il Caimano despite its lowly two star rating in the local press and finished off, thanks to free tickets provided by Claire, at the Whisky Heritage Centre where you get a dram at the very start of the show.

All in all a good weekend.

Overheard part of a conversation in the Portrait Gallery this morning that I've had myself from time to time. A chap was explaining to someone that he spent the summers in France and the winters in Edinburgh. She wondered if this wasn't the wrong way round.

He put forward the fact that in winter in his village snow covered the ground, unlike Edinburgh and that in the summer the sun shone and it was warm, again unlike Edinburgh.

I expect that he continued by pointing out that there is a lot to do in Edinburgh in the winter and not much going on in rural France.

QED

We all know that Sean Connery was a milkman before he became a movie star. I've turned that progression on its head by playing a milkman in a movie today. Of course the milk business isn't what it was in Fountainbridge in big Tam's day. The "Tears of Milk" production team had to go all the way to Berwick, yes Berwick England, to find a dairy with a milk float.

After a 6.30 departure from Leith Walk I found myself by the side of a one track road on the Scottish side of the border in freezing mist waiting and waiting and........waiting. But then my part is the bottom third of page 14 of a 20 page script and this is the last day of a ten day shoot.

Eventually for me it's "action" but the milk float won't move. "Cut", free the drive wheels from the mud and off we go driving past the principal actors. That's my first scene over. Well not over yet. One take is never enough.

After a while we're ready for my second scene. In this one I get out of the milk float, take two bottles of milk from a crate on the back, take a couple of steps, notice a man approaching, deliver a line, pursue him as he passes me and jumps into my cab, deliver another line and recoil as he pulls a knife on me. The director wants to do this as one shot but the cameraman is not so sure. We try it a few times as one shot.

Then we split it into two, or was it three shots and do them all three or four times. Next comes the second part of the same scene filmed from behind my shoulder.

OK we've got several takes for that one so it's on to the next. This is my recoil as the knife is pulled from the point of view of the man pulling the knife. So the cameraman gets into the cab, the director squeezes in beside him to have a look, discovers there's a screw loose on the camera which explains some earlier problems. The sound man has a wee screwdriver and that fixes that. Only 17 minutes recording time left on the sound gadget he proclaims.

Then someone climbs onto the bonnet with a reflector to get more light into the cab. He's fighting the wind to control the reflector and I can't see quite where he's getting any light from but the cameraman declares that it's worthwhile. Being a shorthanded crew the director does the clapper-board then runs round the milk float to watch the shot on a monitor, shouts "action" and I recoil. In fact I recoil in shock and then step backwards reconciled to my milkfloat being stolen and not too worried about it in comparison to the damage that the knife might do to me.

Repeat recoil a few times and then regroup for a wide shot of the next bit of action. This is my post recoil backward step to the edge of the milkfloat door at which point another actor rushes up, knocks me to the ground, pushes the knife man into the passenger seat and climbs into the driving seat.

Several knocks to the ground later we are ready to film me struggling to my feet, still holding my two bottles of milk, and watching the float being driven off. After several struggles the wide shot is done and we then do a few close-up takes of me getting to my feet and it's a wrap for the milkman.

After a warm and comfortable hour sitting in a car with a book while the principals do another scene we're all done. The milk float goes back to Berwick and I'm home by six o clock.

It was fun.

Reluctantly bought a car today. I say reluctantly because here in Edinburgh I really have no need of a car whatsoever, but I'll be spending some time in the depths of the French countryside soon and there I can't survive without.

For those interested in such matters it's a 5 door Fiat Stilo 1.6 Dynamic. Not necessarily the one that appealed to me most but as the French say it offered the best rapport qualité /prix.

On my way to a lecture at lunchtime today I couldn't resist Private Eye's cover, (the bubble says "Now I can lie through my teeth") and inside there was this most appropriate cartoon. In my own defence I must insist that I do have more sociable hobbies as well.



A Scottish historian, Christopher Watley, was talking about the 1707 Union based on work he and Derek Patrick had done for their book The Scots and the Union published late last year.

It was a fascinating insight into the process of historical research; looking for original documents, analysing their contents, following paths that others who had looked at the same sources had not, finding new sources and most importantly coming to conclusions.

Their conclusions, which I found convincing - but then I'm easily swayed, run counter to the current popular received wisdom of Scots being bullied and bribed into a union with England. They see it as the outcome of the wish to safeguard Scottish presbyteriarism, the wish to preserve the limitations on royal authority that came from the Glorious Revolution and the need to cure the economic basket case that Scotland was at the time.

It was a stimulating hour. I must read the book sometime soon.

Friends Reunited does work. I'm lunching soon with a school friend I haven't seen for years thanks to a modest investment of £7.50 which converted me from a browsing Friend to one with communicating rights.

I was glued to the tele on Wednesday watching the pre-budget prognostications, the speech, the analysis and ultimately when the English had to go back to normal life we got the Scottish perspective on it all.

It was great theatre. Gordon was very good and that 2p off income tax was a brilliant coup de théâtre, albeit it didn't take long to spot the flaw, even for failed mathematicians like me. Cameron did brilliantly in his reply and Ming confirmed me in my view that he was far too doddery to be appointed in the first place.

Theatre of a more traditional kind at the Traverse that evening. The Scotsman called it "a filthy and extremely funny satire" and they were right. Bad Jazz is about people putting on a play and given that we were a group of amdram luvvies we couldn't have failed to enjoy it.

Thursday saw Nicola Sturgeon and Jack McConnell having a good old barney. I'd have said Jack won on points but maybe that's just because I'm a little bit shy of the SNP however much I like many of their leaders. Annabel Goldie was just as stodgy at Holyrood as Ming Campbell was at Westminster. Let's hope we never see a Tory/Lib Dem coalition.

Mozart followed by Wag The Dog and a bottle of wine may not be everyone's cup of tea for a Thursday night but it suited Robin and me. In fact I could probably have done without the Mozart, which was a little on the bland side. Maybe that was because contrary to the original planning, Charles Mackerras wasn't goading the SCO owing to his having a gammy arm or something.

For some Climates would make for a dreary Saturday night. Indeed although Claire chose the movie she and Ross were underwhelmed, finding its languor soporific rather than soul searing but I put that down to their having too optimistic a view of life.

Optimism dashed today when crowds failed to turn up to Claire's audition for the Grads Fringe entry. Exactly the same nice round zero turned up as for my attempt to put on a one-act last winter. But at least she can take some comfort in her 37 words of fame in Thursday's Scotsman.

Aren't 15 normally enough?

I had a call from a film guy earlier in the week who was looking for someone to be a milkman for a day. He rang me again this morning to arrange a meeting and said he hoped to shoot on Wednesday, but it might be Thursday depending on when he could get the cow.

Isn't it milkMAIDS who have to do with cows rather than milkMEN?

How do like this nonsense?

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Had a day on location at the art college on Friday being an extra in a student film. As always with filming there was a high ratio of hanging about to doing anything and when I did do something it wasn't too exciting. If you ever see "Ladies Who Lunch" (unlikely) keep an eye out for the back of a man admiring a painting and then walking off. The same man is to be seen doing slightly less exciting things too.

In the evening a group of us went to a production of The Boyfriend. One of the Grads was in it giving an excellent impersonation of a randy old man. I say impersonation but.....

Anyway it was a good show. Although amateur it's one of those where a professional director and choreographer are involved - quite a big budget number. I particularly liked the chocolate box "curtain" that slid open so smoothly. The costumes were lovely, the acting good and far be it from someone who can't hold a tune to criticise the singing.

One of the group wanted something a little less sugary so I hope he saw Emma on the tele last night. That's my book should I ever be on Desert Island Discs and the 1996 film version starring Gwyneth Paltrow must be one of the best romantic comedies ever made. It's a jewel.

I clearly ate something not very romantic while watching the film because at three this morning I woke up and threw up. I suspect the organic mushrooms. A fungus that is not soaked in chemicals to get rid of the bugs can't be safe can it?

I've recycled the rest just in case.

I was at this lecture last night.

It provided an interesting analysis of the ebb and flow of unionist and nationalist fortunes over the last forty years or so. His principal conclusion was that it has been the parties rather than the voters that have changed their spots.

Mrs Thatcher he reckoned turned the Conservative party away from its previous identification with Scottish interests north of the border i.e. as a sort of nationalist/unionist animal into a party perceived here as irredeemably English.

The SNP on the other hand, at least the leadership if not every foot soldier, has shifted ground from a narrow, parochial, anti English stance to become a party which embraces all the peoples and cultures that are to be found today within our borders. This conclusion is supported by statistical analysis of the content of SNP manifestoes over 35 years carried out by a doctoral student.

The guy that slogged his way through that deserves a personal chair not just a PhD.

That last one looks a fun place to rest up till the building works are done.

There's a festival of Chinese cinema on at the moment. I missed out on the black and white 1930's silent classic with live orchestra with which it kicked off through a combination of lack of forward planning and underestimation of the number of sinocinephiles around.

SO, determined not to further tarnish my cultural credentials I invested a tenner in a four filmathon Sunday. I fidgeted charitably through "Liang shan bo yu zhu ying tai", a musical melodrama in which willow pattern bridges in misty landscapes announced a feyness that rivalled Brigadoon and where star-crossed lovers chose death together rather than life with another. You won't be surprised to learn that Shakespearian girl disguised as boy confusions also featured.

Then "Ying xiong" confirmed me in my belief that however beautiful a film is to watch, if its principal action consists in swordsmen/women flying at one another through the air complete with Dolby surround sound swishing and smacking, it's not my bag. Everybody important chose death in that one too.

The evening session started with a film much more to my taste. "Fa yeung nin wa" was a subtle and sensitively told story of a man and a woman brought together, or at least brought into an almost togetherness by the fact that their partners are each having an affair - together as it turns out. Nobody dies in that one but they don't live happily ever after either.

Finally came "Xiao chang zhi chun". The brochure says this has been "voted the best Chinese film ever". I don't know who voted when, maybe those who saw it in 1948 when it was made. But the somewhat tattered print with scratchy sound and subtitles whose English came from the same pen as whoever does the translations for the Japanese self assembly furniture industry left much to be desired. I could see it was probably a good film with fine acting but the story looked a bit predictable and I was hungry and tired so I chose life and left after half an hour.

There is still a score of Chinese films in the offing but I think I shall husband my appreciation resources until the New Europe Film Festival gets going in ten days time. I must Czech that out.

I went to see a film about Leonard Cohen the other day. It was in fact a tribute concert held in Australia a year or two ago where his songs were covered by various people interspersed with extracts from interviews with the man himself and with celebrity admirers. Quite an entertaining couple of hours. But not a patch on Goodbye Lenin which I saw the previous week.

On my way I had time to spare and bought a paper. From time to time I buy a foreign paper to keep my language skills from atrophy. On this occasion it was the Corriere Della Sera. Brushing up my Italian was brushed aside by a front page picture of the mess left by Celtic supporters who were in Milan for their match against AC Milan last Wednesday.

Feeding my obsession with litter I discovered that on their website is a whole gallery of pictures devoted to Celtic's visit and many of them focus on the supporters' debris.

It appears that the Tartan Army may have renounced physical violence but still wreaks an unpleasant amount of havoc.

One of the problems with this blogging business is that things pile us when you don't post. The bigger the pile the less inclined you are to resume posting. I've decided to cut this Gordian knot by ignoring everything that I should have recorded since my last post. For those who were there the memory will be as St. Crispen's day. Those who weren't won't give a damn.

It was a lovely bright morning today and I kept telling myself that I should get out into the fresh air. When I did, after lunch, it began to rain but I persisted. I'm glad I did because by the time I got to the top of Calton Hill the sunshine was back. I can't count the number of times I've been on Calton Hill But I have never until today climbed the Nelson monument.

Although there are lots of steps it's not half as much effort as climbing Arthur's Seat and the views are equally stunning. You can see the monument clearly from my little balcony as in this picture.

Logically you can thus see my balcony from the monument but to tell the truth it's not so easy with the naked eye, or at least with my naked eye. Next time I'll take a telescope.


The souvenir ticket seen here carries a painting of the monument decked in flags. I've seen it like that but hadn't the wit to realise that the flags were flying on the anniversary of the battle of Trafalgar and that they spell out Nelson's famous dictum "England expects...."

Of course as a good unionist we must suppose that he subsumed the Scots in that. After all it's not England that rules the waves but Britannia.

The man didn't much care for our production so the excitement of a trip to Cupar is off. But the audience seemed to quite enjoy it and we got this nice picture in the Evening News. Their man didn't rate it either, mainly, but not entirely, for the same reasons.

The cast repaired to the pub to drown such sorrows as they had - not many, and even fewer after the first drink, leaving stage manager, director and helper to disappear into the night with the set.

I saw most of the other plays. Some were good, some middling and at least one was dire. Our director was so scunnered at our adjudication that he didn't turn up on the last night to hear the results. That's a bit of an over-reaction in my opinion but there you go. It also left to me the glory of going up to the stage to collect the wee certificate that every entry gets as a sort of souvenir. After all it's taking part that counts isn't it. I'm looking forward to next year already.

Got onto the stage at 9.30 last night for a tech before tonight's performance. All went well so tonight we do our one performance. Of course if we do it well enough we'll have the excitement of taking the show to Cupar Corn Exchange at the end of March. The last time I was in Cupar Corn Exchange must have been in the late 50s for the jiggin.

My brother asked me how we had done in the Bafta/Orange 60 second film competition. I had to admit that we got nowhere but my curiosity was aroused so I had a look at the winning film. It's really good and cleverly adopts the 60 motif. Have a decko.

Just for comparison here's ours. Strange that they both feature candles being blown out. We were surely on the right track.

Anyone who knows me knows that I can't abide litter. A large metal piece of litter turned up outside the front door a few days ago, a LIDL supermarket trolley. It failed to disappear so yesterday I decided to do something about it. My thought was to ring the nearest LIDL store and ask them to remove it. Well they don't list their stores in the phone book and although you can find the stores on the internet there are no phone numbers. I did find a blog for LIDL lovers though. I have one LIDL-loving friend but out there is a whole community. To give them their due the blog is not wholly hagiographic. They do tell you which products to avoid.

No joy with the phone then so I set out this morning to push the trolley down to the store at the Foot of the Walk. I felt a bit of a twat but raised only one comment, which unfortunately I didn't catch, from an inebriated baglady. At least I thought I'll get a quid for my trouble when I slot the trolley into a rank of its fellows. No such luck, the quids had been forced out of all the slots I could see. Clearly there are LIDL haters too.

Work in Progress is the name of a one-act play in which I'm exposing myself this week. It's the Grads entry for the SCDA one-act festival. The play consists of a dialogue between the writer of a piece of detective fiction and his characters. It's being done in the style of the 1940s film noir. Private eyes in those days were cleanshaven thus the exposure.
Roll on Friday when I can start protecting myself against the winter winds again.

Mr. Abu Bakr may not be 100% right about Britain being a police state but the legislation that is meant to keep terrorists and other baddies from moving their ill-gotten gains around doesn't half get your goat.

I've earlier mentioned my difficulty in opening a savings account. It's got worse. They have now asked me for documents which for perfectly good reasons I can't provide. Either a personal cheque drawn on an account in my name with another UK bank. Why would I have another current account in the UK? Isn't that more a money launderer's trick. Or a tax document for the current or the next tax year that matches my application details. Well I haven't got around to telling them that I'm here yet so those documents have a Manchester address which is not one of the addresses in my application.

So to review the situation. I cannot transfer a small amount of money which they are holding in one of their piggie-banks into another of their piggie-banks. This from the bank where I have had an account for over 40 years, a bank where I was once an employee, a bank who lent me money to buy a house and, the final irony, a bank that rang me a couple of months ago when I temporarily had a largeish sum in my account and asked if I'd like them to transfer it into a savings account.

Of course if you complain they shrug their shoulders and say that they don't make the rules, they just apply them. What a pity they weren't drafted in to look after the pallets of 100 dollar bills sent to Iraq.

Whew!

All pictures back in place. That was exhausting.

Various people have told me that they don't see my pictures and I suspect that's because they were stored on another webspace, not on Blogger's servers. So I've decided that when I put them back I'll try to get them onto Blogger's server. That means I won't be able to put them back "en bloc" but will have to edit each post that has a picture in it.

I've started successfully and am working backwards.

I've accidentally deleted all the pictures from this blog today. What a twit. I'll see if I can get them back.

Tangled up in the war against terrorism and money laundering today.

I decided to open a savings account with the bank that I've had a current account with for over 40 years. I went on-line. That needs three separate passwords so you'd think they had some authentication of who I was when I got through. I filled in the form as best I could. Like most computer forms it really needed a box where you could write an essay explaining why the answers you'd given were not quite the answers you'd have given if their form hadn't been modelled on a strait-jacket.

So today I got a letter. OK life can't be paper-free, they need a signature.

The letter also said, and I quote "We are required by law to confirm the identity and address for all new and existing customers. For this application we require one original copy (we are not able to accept photocopies) from each table shown overleaf."

Well no tables were shown overleaf so I rang them. The perfectly pleasant young man having used the lucky thirteen digit application reference number from the letter said that he couldn't quite understand why the system was demanding a proof at all but it was. He asked that in that case, although it might seem a little daft would I be so kind as to enclose a bank statement with my signed form.

Salmon returning to spawn in the river of their birth? Coals to Newcastle? Can this protect us from Osama?

Used my Scotland wide bus pass yesterday to take a trip to Dundee to see a production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle. The journey up was a bit long though it was a nice sunny day to contemplate the beauties of rural Fife. The return journey via Perth and the M90 was much faster, not wildly longer than the train.

The theatre was full to bursting. It took a few minutes for my fear that the show was going to consist mainly of amplified noise to prove unfounded and I settled down to enjoy it.

It was a production with all its innards on show; techies squatting on the stage amidst sound boxes, microphones and mixers, child dummy wiggling its legs with the help of an actor, asm doing baby gurgles into a mike, actors pottering about in the visible wings changing hats and so on and so forth. The text was more currently colloquial and relaxed than ours. It suited the production style, but why change Grusinia to Georgia - an imaginary setting to a real one?. Interesting that in Act 2 at least (with which I'm more familiar) they had chosen to cut it in much the same places as Claire.

The overall acting style was high energy and full frontal. There were some lovely broadly drawn inventive characterisations and a co-ordination of actor and effect which I admired. I'm thinking of the soldiers marching for example or the precise crack as the messenger unfurled her arm to place a letter in front of the governer.

To play the bandit Irakli as a yardie was inspired and I just cracked up in the opening scene of Act2 as the Grand Duke sprayed Azdak with cheese. Bringing the audience in to share the pleasure of his retaliation we could have been at a pantomime and that didn't seem out of place.

On the other hand I thought the final court case where the fate of the child is decided was underplayed and lacked tension. There and in other places too I felt some lines were not delivered clearly, or is that my hearing starting to go?

A great show though with ideas aplenty to borrow.

With Oscars in the offing I'm keen to see as many of the contenders as I can so as to measure my evaluations against those of the Motion Picture Academy. We don't always see eye to eye. Today after two failed attempts I managed to get to The Queen. I was quite prepared for Helen Mirren's excellent performance but not for what a really good film it was. The mingling of fact and conjecture was brilliantly done to produce an interesting, absorbing and at times moving story. Helen Mirren aside, the man of the match for me was Roger Allam as the Queen's secretary. He could have a solid future in deference and tact training.

I well remember the British public's mass display of grief at Diana's death. It so happened that the weekend she was being buried was scheduled for the implementation of system changes that I was managing for a major Scottish insurance company. It was a window that wouldn't reopen again for some three months but we had to go pretty high up in the company to get permission to work, most of British industry and commerce having shut down as a mark of respect. I've absolutely nothing but sympathy for any poor girl who hands in her dinner pail so young but I didn't understand or share that mass hysteria like feeling so I could see where the Queen in the movie was coming from.

Ewan rang me this week to tell me that he had been appointed Vice President. Unlike the American government who have only one, American corporations have several so he is one of a number but it's an impressive title so I'm altering my email and mobile phone records to list him under VP. What's more he's being relocated to work out of the UK so at some stage later this year it should be the case that my two sons and I are living in the same country for the first time in twenty five years or so.

Bunked off my Italian class this morning to watch Andy Murray play Rafael Nadal in the Australian Open and what a good decision that was. It was a great match. Murray won the first set in the tie-break and was 4 - 1 up in the second when he lost the plot. He came back strongly to win the third but then failed to capitalise on a significant number of breakpoints especially in the early games of the fifth set but all in all he played a stormer. Given that two years ago we had never heard of him his rise in the rankings has been phenomenal. Surely at some point in the near future he's going to be the first home grown Wimbledon winner since the ice age.

Back in the rehearsal room our one-act is coming on. Everyone has a pretty reasonable grasp of the lines and we've got various props out to help the action. For an ex-smoker blowing rather than sucking to produce smoke from an imitation fag takes a little bit of getting used to. Of course I failed at one point yesterday and got a mouthful of cotton wool and some obnoxious powder.

Failed too to see a documentary about Leonard Cohen after the rehearsal. It was sold out by the time I got there. That's the second time this week I've missed a film. Clearly need to do a bit more in the advance planning line.

I got some Labour party junk mail today. It was pretty self congratulatory in tone throughout as these things tend to be. For example they beat their breasts with satisfaction at reported praise for Lothian buses. Not sure to what extent the Labour party has played a part in providing our good bus services but if they have, all credit to them. It set me musing a little. It may be a great service but they have the weirdest shift patterns. Is it that my natural travel rhythms match driver changes? I was on three buses yesterday and on each occasion experienced a change of driver. Such a 100% hit rate is unusual but I suspect that my daily average is around 50%. What's the statistical probability of that do you suppose? Is it like tossing a coin, 50/50 every time? Or like love at first sight, 100 to 1 against?

Answers on an electronic postcard please.

I thought I had better put in my tuppence worth to commemorate the passing of the Act of Union by the Scottish parliament on 16th January 1707. A lot of books have been published this year analysing the events that led to the Union, assessing the strength of opionion for and against at the time and evaluating the benefits that have or have not accrued to the two countries since. I confess that I have read none of them despite intentions to the contrary.

There is lively discussion in the media on both sides of the border about where the Union goes from here. Will the SNP win in May? Would the Scots vote for independence if it were offered? Is there an answer to the West Lothian question? Do the English want a parliament of their own?

The Scotsman has published some good stuff and they are sending a van round the country to take what they call "The Nationhood Debate" to the people. I'm planning to go to a couple of events at the university in March to hear what various luminaries have to say.

Personally I have no problem thinking of myself as Scottish, British and European more or less in that order and while I have no doubt that Scotland could thrive as an independent state I don't see independence as particularly desirable. Should we not be looking for ways to come together in the modern world rather than draw apart? Devolution has given us the opportunity to go our own way in building a society for daily life in accordance with our own values, traditions and ambitions. It seems to me that we should develop that opportunity to the full and at the same time draw from and contribute to the British state and the European Union.

The flag images came courtesy of World Atlas.

At Barbansais we have a large expanse of grass. Quality-wise it's more of a field than a lawn. You can be sure that efforts to remedy that would be frustrated by moles. Every so often we stand in dumb rage staring at their nocturnal ravages and rush off to finger the multitude of anti mole potions and devices on the DIY shop shelves. There are so many to choose from and all are declared useless by those who have tried them. According to neighbours strychnine soaked worms are the only sure solution although one friend swears by clobbering them with bricks.

You can imagine then how much I sympathise with the poor German chap who electrocuted himself this week when he connected a high voltage power supply to a row of metal stakes that he had driven into the heart of the moles' galleries. In case you get the wrong impression it wasn't our moles he was after.

Some years ago I was kept awake by grey squirrels running around in my loft. It took months and the failure of lots of cunning catching devices before the problem was solved by blocking every orifice with inedible glass fibre to keep them out. It was illegal to kill them so even if you did catch them you had to let them go and of course they would just make their way back into your nice cosy loft. I've loathed the little creatures ever since.

I was surprised then, but pleased, when gunshots around the cottage I was in with friends near Hawick turned out to be the local gamekeeper exterminating grey squirrels. It seems that if you are in an area where red squirrels are being driven out by grey ones you can kill the little beasts. I call that enlightened. I wonder if there's a bounty?

Back in the land of culture and refinement the mini movie I appear in in Charmaine's pursuit of a Bafta (well a sort of mini Bafta) is now on the web. Go to Bafta 60 Seconds and browse the film gallery (Scottish region) to marvel at "Cold" by Yerkelmarr. The comments viewers have left are at least as entertaining as the film.

If the film seems short don't worry she's planning a "director's cut" and these as I'm sure you know are always much longer, and naturally much more satisfying - for the director at least.

I had a very pleasant few days in the Borders with some old school friends. We've got into the habit of meeting up every so often. Sometimes just for a meal, sometimes for a couple of days, and most elaborately a year or so ago for a week together in Croatia.

We did nothing very active. Most of our time was spent loafing about the house drinking and chatting. The girls inspected various cashmere outlets and I found myself, after a disappointing visit to Hawick's Saturday market (more of a car boot sale) having a potter around the town with Bob and Caroline that included factory shop visits. They bought a few things but despite being sorely tempted by some of Pringle's delightful golf shirts I resisted. I must sneak back sometime when the budget allows.

One evening we ate a good dinner, served in a warm, comfy dining-room by friendly staff at the Mansfield House Hotel. The place seemed to be empty apart from us. Let's hope that this was unusual else they'll be out of business before long and I can't think that they deserve that.

I got back to Edinburgh on Sunday in time to start rehearsing Work In Progress. It's the Grads entry for the SCDA One Act Festival. The most exciting thing about the rehearsal for me was that I discovered that the one member of the cast I didn't know was the daughter of a girl I was at school with. One of those small world moments.

I've been trying to post since I came back from Keswick after Christmas but Blogger has been out of action. It's up and running this morning but I'm off to Hawick shortly for a few days with some school chums so there's no time to write much.

Let me just wish anyone who reads this a Happy New Year and leave you with a picture of the Lake District countryside that I was able to take on the one day the mist rose above ground level.

Last week's highlight was undoubtedly the arrival of my sofas. Something comfortable to sit on after twelve weeks of hard wooden folding chairs. I'm celebrating by having some friends round for dinner on my birthday. Let's hope they don't spill their wine.

With the approach of Christmas social events pile up and I had three outings for food and drink including one with Arkle, a local amateur drama group, where they announced their programme for 2007. The only one that seemed to offer a possible role for me is in the Fringe and I'm not likely to be here to rehearse in time for a Fringe show. However I have been cast in a one-act play that will be the Grads' entry for the SCDA one-act competition in February. I'm playing a Philip Marlowe type private eye. I see it as challenge that will hopefully be helped by some cunning make-up and costume.

The golf course does not beckon in this weather and I've been missing the exercise it offers. I'm not a fan of chlorine laden pools and don't much like swimming anyway so this afternoon I thought I'd try the ice-rink. When I was a kid I loved skating and it came in useful once to get my own back on a lad who bullied me a bit. But during the last 50 years I can only remember skating on a handful of occasions and the last was about twenty years ago so I was very pleased to find that I could get round the ice. I even managed a reasonable turn of speed but essential manoeuvres like avoiding other skaters were more difficult. Skating backwards proved tricky and a nice sideways slide to a halt remained a dream. I can do it on skis why not on skates. One other difference from skiing - ice is a lot harder than snow to fall on. Ouch.

I met up for dinner with some of my former FI/Xansa colleagues about ten days ago. The torch on my mobile phone came in handy to supplement the faintly flickering candles but once the menu had been read we were able let our tired old eyes relax. The food and the company, not to mention the wine were very agreeable. Try The Outsider yourself sometime.

A production of Scrooge starring Ian Aldred who played in Caucasian Chalk Circle provided a very enjoyable musical evening to open the run up to Christmas and the following night I went to a Grads improvisation show. Teams of three or four actors are given a small number of parameters by the audience and have to build a sketch with them. Nine times out of ten they produce amazingly inventive and entertaining results. The first time I saw anything similar was in Paris and I was very sceptical when the friend who was in that group assured me that it was not rehearsed. Now I know that while not rehearsed they do have something of a structure to work in and they practice a lot but that knowledge has not dimmed my admiration. I prefer a nice solid script to work with myself.

The weekend finished for me with a double bill of black and white classics at Filmhouse. Riffifi is a great crime movie with an absorbing dialogue free safe-cracking scene. Morality triumphs since even the best of the baddies dies in the end. Dialogue is the star of Raymond Chandler’s Farewell My Lovely, confusingly called Murder My Sweet in the opening credits. Unfortunately I missed rather a lot of it because I dozed through much of the film. I couldn’t even summarise the plot. Still what I did see and hear was cracking stuff. It’ll be on the tele some wet Sunday I expect.

Had the Dicksonfield Owners and Residents Association AGM been longer I might easily have dozed off but it was very short. There was hardly anybody there and not much business. It’s a pity that something of a festive nature had not been organised. I know that social interaction is not the object of the organisation but maybe socialising would create some community spirit which in turn would help achieve the objectives. I should get off my butt and do something about it I suppose.

On Tuesday I went down to Manchester. It rained cats and dogs almost all the time I was there but I had a good time. The highlight was probably the Royal Exchange'sproduction of Cyrano de Bergerac. It’s an absolute joy of a space and the company always make terrificly good use of it. Proscenium theatre seems so distant and unexciting in comparison. Caucasian Chalk Circle is a good example. Claire extended the use of Adam House’s stage and auditorium as far as I’ve ever seen done but it still wasn’t a patch on theatre in the round for impact.

In addition to visiting Alan the plan was for Karl, in town for a conference, and I to meet up with Pam and Ron, who live in Harrogate, in Leeds for a meal. I made the final arrangements with Karl by email, copying the emails to Ron. Karl and I met, walked briskly to the station and got on the earlier of the trains that I had told Ron to expect us on. I rang his mobile from the train with no joy. They weren’t in Leeds when we arrived and there was still no mobile response. It turned out they were still at home having not read their email for some time. A shame but Karl and I had a good Italian meal and then re-crossed the Pennines.

That was a train ticket I could have done without but at least I got some value from it. Another ticket has proved entirely worthless. I bought tickets for Connor and I to go to the Lakes at Christmas but he is now down south and will travel from there. Virgin refused a refund so I thought I’d try selling them on e-Bay. Blow me but they’ve zapped my listing. Apparently Section 129 of the Railway Act of 1993 makes it a criminal offence for me to sell a ticket. Doesn’t seem fair does it? I’ll just have to wrap them up and give them to Connor for his Christmas.

While in Manchester I spent a wet afternoon in the Museum of Science and Industry looking at lots of fascinating stuff including a demo of various machines involved in the cotton business. I came away with a pocketful of samples of material produced at different stages of the journey from plant to cloth. The evidence of the great wealth generated from the cotton industry is all around in the shape of buildings, not least the Royal Exchange where Cyrano was played, but what a hell on earth for the workers.

I visited the Whitworth Gallery to see an exhibition of wallpaper through the centuries. They claim to have one of the largest collections of wallpaper in the country if not the world but judging by the quantity on display they must be big fish in a small pond. However I liked the wallpaper a lot more than Douglas Gordon’s installations on show at the National Gallery in Edinburgh that I gawped bewildered at in the hour I had to spare before I left for Manchester. That Turner prize has a lot to be ashamed about.

When a show is over life can seem a bit dull for a while so it was good to shoot off to Poland so soon. It was also I'm sure a welcome relaxation for those who, unlike me, had been doing fulltime jobs at the same time as the play.

We arrived in Katowice in the dead of night and taxied into town passing through some rather dark and ominous tumbledown streets to get to our hotel. The area didn't seem nearly as threatening the following morning when I went out for a stroll before breakfast though it did have a touch of that bleakness that I associate with eastern Europe under communism.

I came upon a funeral and was most impressed by the undertaker's men's outfits. As they took the coffin into the church a trumpeter played a suitably mournful tune. It was a pity he wasn't also dressed for the role.
We took the train to Krakow later in the morning and found a perfectly lovely city. There are lots of pictures and information about the city here so I shan't strain my limited literary powers to describe it.

We had a very pleasant little flat a few minutes walk from the main square in the sort of building that is typical throughout continental cities but just doesn't exist here. I suppose it goes back to the basic Roman villa where the accommodation is built around a central courtyard.


Krakow is crowded with attractive bars and cafes where we enjoyed delicious meals and snacks. Here's a typical offering from one of the city's oldest establishments in the cloth hall which takes up a large part of the centre of the main square.

In between eating cakes and washing down delicious meals with malty Polish beer (which I hope is available from my local Polish deli) we naturally did some sightseeing. The castle and cathedral were well worth visiting. The only disappointment being that the fire-breathing dragon who lives in a den deep in the bowels of the hill on which the castle stands hibernates. To see him in action you need to get there between May and October. There was a very interesting theatre museum and a fair bit of theatre going on. If our Polish had been up to it we could have chosen between "No Sex Please, We're British" and "Endgame". It wasn't so we made do with the museum and another museum where the work, including stage designs, of a Polish polymath was on show. He painted, wrote plays, made furniture, designed this that and the other. A talented chap called Stanislav Wyspiański. There are lots of other museums if you can stand the pace.

This is a view of part of the complex of buildings on Wawel hill. The picture is mostly cathedral but there's a bit of castle.
Our chum Wyspiański had big ideas about enhancing the hill with the addition of a hippodrome and a Greek theatre to create what he saw as a Krakovian Acropolis but didn't get any further than we did with Edinburgh's Parthenon.

Of course the museum that everyone who goes to Krakow has to see is Auschwitz, though I have to say I didn't think of it as a museum before I went. We were accosted at the station by a young man called Daniel who persuaded us to let him take us by car. He took us straight there, waited while we went round, took us on to Birkenau, waited again and then ran us back to Krakow. That was a lot easier and more comfortable than the train/bus route and in to the bargain he was friendly and informative. It reminded me strongly of how my tame taxi driver in Cairo would run me miles out of town to a golf course and just wait around till I was ready to go home.

In Auschwitz there are various displays in the buildings, piles of forlorn artificial limbs, stacks of suitcases and so on purloined from the prisoners and retained long after their owners were disposed of. The mechanics of everyday life and death in the camp are spelt out. Individual countries explain how their citizens were affected. The French for example have a very fine display detailing how Jews were rounded up and shipped off. One room is full of family photographs, mostly of children all of whom were systematically put to death.

Going around Auschwitz is clearly not an especially jolly experience but I found Birkenau much more chilling. The fact that it was previously an entirely respectable military barracks lends Auschwitz an air of normality which is missing from Birkenau where the buildings are more like battery farm sheds and were constructed specifically to house people destined for extermination. With all its displays and explanations Auschwitz is very much a museum whereas Birkenau is left almost unlabelled to speak for itself and you feel could have been abandoned by its masters only yesterday.
You can see in this photo how desolate the place appears. It's a view probably familiar to you from films and documentaries of where people spilled out of cattle trucks after an airless, foodless, waterless journey of several days to be herded into huts or straight to the gas chambers. The strange thing was that when I stood there I found it easier to imagine how proud the Nazi overlords must have felt of their work than to imagine the despair of the damned.

The hope in keeping these places intact is that they will act as a reminder of how awful man can be and prevent future massacres. To date with the Balkans, Ruanda, Darfur and countless other genocidal conflicts we can't say the policy has been too successful. I heard on the radio this morning an apposite quotation from Brecht. In speaking of Hitler he said "The bitch who bore him is still in heat." Alas.

The last week has been dominated by The Caucasian Chalk Circle despite the fact that it has occupied only a few hours of each day.

The second dress went pretty well as did all the performances. There were a few hiccups here and there, some of them to be laid at my door but on the whole the show felt good every night and the audiences while small were very appreciative.

Obviously I didn't see much of it but I was able to watch and listen to a very beautifully presented and performed scene towards the end of act 1 as I waited to stumble down the aisle to spend the interval on stage. If much of the rest looked and sounded as good then Claire has done an excellent job.

For the interval to start just as a new character appears on stage clearly offers scope for confusion in the minds of the audience. It also caused a little consternation in the more traditionally minded front of house staff. I don't know which of these situations Claire enjoyed more.

One cast member's parents decided that my interval activities, which included darning and doing an imaginary crossword and falling asleep fell into that ultra modern category - performance art. Didn't I just love that.

So show over. Director is catching up on her diary of the production. When she's finished I must read it all at one sitting.

I've spent the last two days at the cinema watching Italian films. Tonight was three hours of La Dolce Vita in black and white. You got your money's worth forty six years ago. Made today it would doubtless feature lots of sniffing but these people managed to be hedonistic and vacuous on no more than fags and booze.

I'm off to Poland this evening for a few days so hope to have lots of interesting things to report on my return. I don't want to have to fall back on the story of my hunt for extra curtain rings.

Readers will see that the previous post gave rise
to a comment which, inter alia, takes me to task for the infrequency of my postings. That’s fair and I again promise to do better but I can’t help thinking that it is the finger of irony that points out that I have not yet shared with you the story of the warped table.

The table whose arrival I have already reported was fine until after a few days the central portion of the top started to curl at the edges. After a few more days it rocked when you put your elbows on it; bad manners I know but a tabletop should be able to cope. After a week lots of daylight was clearly visible between the top and the frame, as you can see in this picture.

I went off to Habitat to complain. They were as good as gold and promised me a new one without hesitation. I admit I was relieved because I had not relished an argument over what degree of warping might qualify as acceptable in their eyes.

Lo and behold after a few more days the table started to uncurl. By Saturday last it had reached a state I felt was ok so I popped into Habitat on my way to the Lyceum and cancelled the replacement. I suppose it was just coming to terms with its new environment.

I was on my way to the Lyceum to join a Grads group going to see Schiller’s Marie Stuart. I was disappointed. I liked the austere setting but the cast failed to move me. Years ago in Kitwe I was in a production of the play that I hope communicated more emotional intensity than this one did. Of course it may have been the Heisenberg principle at work so that I cooled it down while it stayed on the boil for others.

Though I can’t remember too clearly I think we had an on-stage execution which was surely more fun to watch than the genteel procession down a stair to offstage oblivion that the Lyceum gave us. And doesn’t history tell us that she went to her death in a blood red robe? I’m sure our Mary slipped off an outer garment to reveal a red robe as she mounted the scaffold. The Lyceum gave us a trace of red peeping out under a white dress.

Here’s what one site has to say on the subject. Points for historical accuracy to Kitwe I’d say.

Much more engaging was the production of Shadow of a Gunman by Sean O’Casey that I saw at the Citizens in Glasgow the previous week. The final scene that leaves the tenement room and its inhabitants looking like a shipwreck to which humanity barely clings was brilliant.

I’ve also seen some art recently, and been to Red Road, the film that won plaudits at Cannes and lots of Scottish Baftas. It was good but must surely have had little competition to win so many.

Hallowe’en is long past now but I revived my fifty year old skills in tumshie lantern carving and dressed up to go to Claire’s party where we were treated to delicious but foreign fare in the way of pumpkin soup.

Back home there is still nothing soft to sit on but my shelves are up. The few books I didn’t give to Christian Aid last winter are in place and all my CDs are sitting comfortably waiting for me to invest in a player. Yes I’ve given that away as well. It was rather old and getting a bit noisy and what’s almost as important was too bulky for my slimline shelving.

The Caucasian Chalk Circle is almost upon us. The technical rehearsal last night was lots of fun. That’s the first chance lights and sound have to practice their art and the actors get to blunder around the stage. It may seem a bit shambolic to the outsider – “Do you see that sky getting red over there?” It says “Yes” in the script but I hate to lie. By some miracle though it will all be sorted out by opening night. We have the luxury of two dress rehearsals, mitigated somewhat by the fact that not all the cast can do both.

I was provided with handcuffs last night for one scene but they’re flimsy plastic gadgets which don’t look convincing and which I’m bound to break so I bought a length of chain this afternoon to add weight to the performance. It will be handy for the director to beat us with if we fall short of her artistic vision.

It's been several weeks now since I posted anything. It's laziness I'm afraid and illustrates why I've never successfully kept a diary in the past for any significant length of time.

Must do better, just for my own satisfaction. Like the box of Kitwe Little Theatre memorabilia that I stuck in the loft the other day I'll gain enormous pleasure from browsing through it at some distant future date.

Yes this flat has a loft. That was one of it's strong points in my eyes and I've laid down some flooring and put a dozen boxes of not wanted on voyage material up there already. Most of the boxes are fresh from spending seven years in the loft at Mountcastle. That's despite the enormous clear out I had last winter when I sold the house. I have plans for some of the stuff, like digitizing my slides for example but I fear some may spend many more years in oblivion before finally being put to good use in fuelling my funeral pyre.

Another strong point about this flat is access to the rest of the city. Buses run up and down Leith Walk heading for all parts at satisfactorily frequent intervals. How different from anxiously keeping an eye out for the number 5, missing one and cursing the service interval. Now I generally get where I'm going earlier than I need to. Lethargy as well as laziness is another of my sins. I could have been in a convenient location like this twenty years ago.

I've spent a lot of time looking at furniture and yesterday the first new piece arrived. It's a table so henceforth no eating on my knees or bending down to an old coffee table or picnicking on the carpet. The carpet is still there. I've deferred change in that department for the moment but all three of my oriental rugs have been deployed so the floors look a bit different. Seating is on order. Part of a shelving arrangement arrived yesterday. Because the seller's computer system can't cope with a slash in a house number field it went to the wrong flat but I recovered the two boxes when the occupier came home in the evening. The third box missed its bus somewhere around Watford but is now in Edinburgh winging its way towards me, or perhaps towards my neighbour again. I hope that by Christmas I'll have everything organised.

I've been out and about a bit enjoying some of Edinburgh's cultural offerings and a few of its pubs. I've bumped into at least three old acquaintances in the street and am looking forward to catching up with more. I'm making new acquaintances at the Italian class with which I start the week on a Monday morning. Of course rehearsing Caucasian Chalk Circle is taking up a lot of my time. I'm enjoying it but rehearsals would be even more fun and the quality of the work being done would certainly be greater if we could rely on all the actors turning up. It's going to be one of those shows where the first time the entire cast put in an appearance is on opening night or, if we are really lucky, at the dress rehearsal. See the director's blog for more.

The weather when we set out from Barbansais was foul and the rain persisted all day. The traffic around Paris was awful. One boy racer dodging in and out of lanes spun his vehicle in front of us on the wet road but by a miracle nobody, least of all us, collided with him. We weren't so lucky just 20 kilometres from journey's end at Zeebrugge when I ploughed into two cars at traffic lights thanks to brakes which it has to be admitted were not in peak condition.

The drivers were philosophical about it and the Belgian police were positively charming and we still caught the ferry so it was not all bad.

The car has now gone off for inspection and I suspect the insurers will decide that the economic answer is to scrap it rather than repair it.

The first week back has been pretty good. I've started redecorating the flat with Connor's help. Curtains have been thrown out and the carpets are scheduled to follow. With fresh paint on the walls in addition the lingering smell of tobacco from the previous occupants will soon be gone.

I've started rehearsing Caucasian Chalk Circle. The production has suffered various cast losses so it's a bit fraught and I didn't do the director any favours by being out of sorts one evening for reasons having nothing to do with the show but I hope to make amends.

Connor is meeting considerable obstacles in what you would think is the simple matter of opening a bank account thanks to the UK's anti money laundering regulations. The fact that he has no money to launder doesn't seem to count.

We went to the RSNO's first concert of the season last night. It was a splendid rendition of Mahler's Resurrection symphony. Very large forces were marshalled with the chorus filling the organ gallery to overflowing. Lovely music but as Connor pointed out no tunes to hum as you head for the Filmhouse bar afterwards.

I've been a bit busy over the last ten days fitting in "final" games of golf and dinners and drinks with various friends who were kind enough to want to entertain me before I left for the winter. I also had a fleeting visit from Karl and Lissie who were so charmed by the area last year that they came back for a week's hiking around and about the valley of the Creuse. I picked them up in Anzème at the end of a hard day's walking, took them home, fed and watered them and dropped them off the following day near La Celle Dunoise.

At the weekend I was in Paris visiting Sylviane who is an old friend from my Institut Francais d'Ecosse days. She was performing in an evening (it was actually a whole day but I only went for the evening) of short plays. Hers was A Bourgeois Wedding by Brecht and was the best prepared of those that I saw. I thought the others could have done with a bit more rehearsal. Many of the actors in them were a bit shaky on the lines and gave me a far more amateur impression than I had expected. It was after all a professional theatre although most of the actors were amateurs.

Connor joined me in Paris. Sightseeing there was not altogether up his street but he did enjoy the food. He's been charmed by the Creuse however.

Up at the crack of dawn tomorrow for final water draining and suchlike then it's off to Zeebrugge for the ferry.

Edinburgh on Saturday and winter life begins. I'm sure it will be as enjoyable as summer has been. Vive la différence!

This is Germanicus's triumphal arch at Saintes. It may be that he mastered the course there rather better than I did or on the other hand maybe he triumphed by raping and pillaging since that was considered more fun than golf at the time.

To get there I chose a route that took me through much of the area that we explored when we were looking for a house. There are some lovely spots but on the whole I think we are better off here. During the few days I was there I managed to visit the coast and dabble my tootsies in the Gironde estuary. The weather at the beach was gorgeous and since the season is essentially over it was not overcrowded.

On the way back I took in Cognac and Angouleme. I was very struck with the wynds and alleyways of the latter. A very pleasant place to wander around.

Until the other day I had been congratulating myself (undeservedly since the happy circumstance surely was not my doing) on there having been no wasps (I really mean ZERO) in the house or garden all summer long. Last year we had to get the fire brigade in to clear a nest from the roof and the year before the wasps commandeered an old mole hole in the garden and we had to have the nest dug up by an intrepid wasp catcher. In parentheses I should say, with apologies to Kenneth Grahame, that mole is public enemy number 1 and what we desperately need is an intrepid molecatcher.

Now I have seen two wasps in as many days. Perhaps this is the result of the recent resurgence of fine weather. July was a scorcher but August rather cooler and damper than seemed proper until its final days. Not cold though I did put on a pair of trousers one morning instead of shorts. By early afternoon I was regretting that decision but by then I was on the golf course and not in a position to change matters.

Although this morning is rather overcast my neighbour assures me that September's weather is forecast to be fine so the last three weeks of my villégiature, as the French have it, should be pleasant.

One creature other than the mole that we are not short of is the spider. It's an ongoing struggle to clear the house of webs. I grew quite fond of this one. He's on the large side compared to most. I suppose a two to three inch legspan. He spent the summer quietly in my bedroom lazing the days away behind the wardrobe and settling down at night by my bedside presumably to feed on passing insects or to digest those trapped in his web during the day. Ultimately though in a frenzy of housekeeping he has gone. I'm sure the winter would have killed him off anyway.