“Oh wud some pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oorsells as ithers see us!”

lamented Burns, and on Wednesday France Info became that power for the day.

They decamped to London to cover the changeover from Blair to Brown. Between 7 in the morning and 7 at night they had three two hour slots in which they reported the events of the day and looked at aspects of British society as diverse as; the changes in popular music over the Blair years, the City, immigration, binge drinking, and the structure and effectiveness of job centres.

There was lots of vox pop as well as the more familiar voices of those commentators who are trotted out regularly on French radio because they speak the language. I recognise Denis McShane’s voice for one, more readily when I hear him speaking French than English.

Looked at through French eyes then we appear to be an economic success with social problems. Not so different as being looked at through British eyes is it?

They broadcast Gordon’s touching wee reference to the old school motto but as it was overlaid with a French commentary I didn’t notice whether he said he’d strive to the “utmost” or to the “outmost”, discovering that controversy on various newsblogs later. But he said it in English, wi’ or wi’oot an archaic Scotticism, and I knew that our motto was in Latin although despite carrying it on my breast for six formative years I was damned if I could remember it.

So I hied me to the Kirkcaldy High School website and found “Usque conabor” which classical scholars amongst you will realise is a very satisfactory rendering of “I will try my ut/outmost”. Not being much of a classical scholar I realised it thanks to the internet. “Nisi google frustra” as they whisper in academe today.

But on the website is another slogan – “Working together to improve” and in the prospectus this appears to be offered as a translation of “Usque conabor”, a fact noted sneeringly on a number of newsblogs. I also found a website in a slightly sorry state of uptodateness as witness a page on which people are being welcomed back from their 2005 Christmas break and much more of the same.

Much concerned by such sloppiness in my alma mater I decided to take the school to task and was surprised to get an almost instant response, apologising for the state of the website with a promise to fix it in the hols and explaining that “Working together to improve” had been adopted as part of the process of fusing together KHS and Templehall on one site in 1993 and not as a replacement for “Usque conabor”.

I hastened to let The Herald, The Daily Telegraph and others know that KHS can tell a hawk from a handsaw but I wonder if Gordon can. Should he not have chosen that more collegiate slogan for his government of all the talents, or even the third slogan that KHS added to their armoury in 2005 when the current heid bummer arrived - “Only the best will do”?

Dropped in on some English friends this week to find that the two pet geese they had last year are now four. Not a case of natural reproduction but of what I regard as unnatural purchase.

The French with whom I had dinner that evening would certainly have thought so. Around here if you keep hens, ducks, geese, rabbits; really anything other than cats and dogs; they’re for the pot. There were eight of us, all acquainted through golf. It was a very convivial occasion. One guest delivered his party piece which he said was a poem in English. Well it could have been Chinese for all I understood of it, but I applauded along with everyone else before giving into temptation and taking the Mickey. No wonder he preferred Spanish at school.

Spanish and golf came together later in the week when Sally sought a second opinion on a translation. The one that amused me was where she rendered “en caso de duda tirar una bola provisional” as “in case of doubt throw a provisional ball”. I had to point out that golfers only throw their balls at moments of great distress when all doubt has gone.

Last night the Roches brass band did a tour of the villages to celebrate La Fête de la Musique (48 hours after the official date but so what). It’s a pity they look like a bunch of peasants on a low loader, even though that’s what they are, because they have quite a snappy maroon uniform. They look good in it and I don’t understand why they did this shindig in mufti. They and their entourage of following groupies (families I expect) far outnumbered the residents of Barbansais but we all turned out and Pierre the farmer supplied a couple of bottles for their refreshment after we’d been treated to sufficient oompah, oompah.

They call themselves l’Espérance de Roches. There must surely be a connection, linguistic or otherwise with the Band of Hope of yesteryear. I have meant to investigate this before, must get onto it.

A linguistic gem was my recent discovery that the French for hubcap is enjoliveur – something that prettifies. That’s just what Connor and I decided their purpose was when we were discussing my hubcap losses.

The week has ended on a low note. I have slipped back into the third division from whence I was promoted two years ago. A real ball-throwing moment.

It has continued to rain almost relentlessly since I last posted but we are not quite under water yet. This is not me in the Creuse but Ewan in the sea off the Maldives during his recent holiday there.

Tuesday afternoon turned out fine though and although I didn't quite break 100 I played my best round of the year so far.

Other than that the week has been domestic. I gave the barn a bit of a Spring clean and I got a plumber in to fix a persistent leak. That was not without its annoyances given that he didn't turn up for the first rendezvous. Had to go to a funeral apparently. Could be, but isn't that the adult version of "the cat ate my homework, miss".

A friend is going to do a bit of plastering for us and I did some preparatory work to fill in a rather large gap with plasterboard. As usual what looks like a rectangle turns out to be a complicated polygon so you spend ages shaving little bits off the plasterboard here and there to make it fit. The gap was so deep that I had to put in two layers of board so all in all I spent the best part of half a day at what at first sight would seem to be a half hour job.

I got another new tyre. That's not a new requirement but the final tidying up of the incident of 6th May. Why did it take so long? I refer you to "the cat ate my homework,miss".

In my capacity as Barbansais accountant Sally sent me some bank statements recently and I noticed that one of the local taxes (paid by DD in December) was substantially higher that it had been the year before. I had a vague memory of a plan to collect TV licence charges along with local taxes but we couldn't find the bill to verify this. So yesterday I set off in pursuit of the truth.

The truth was that we hadn't got the bill because they'd cocked up the change of address I gave them last year. It's an interesting debating point whether the fact that they hadn't changed the address on the other local tax bill counts as a cock-up or not.

Anyway it was indeed the case that we'd been charged for a TV licence so I've been in touch with the relevant authority. They were happy to accept my verbal assurance on the phone that we don't have a TV so the 2007 bill will omit it but I've had to write a letter to reclaim our 116 euros for 2006.

Maybe that will pay for the water that has leaked away.

Do you suppose it could be a pan-European gang stealing them to order? Two in two months can’t be mere chance. Fiat Stilo hub caps that is. At this rate my annual hub cap replacement bill will be twice my road tax. I shall have to borrow the “just in time” technique from industry and wait till I’m ready to sell the car before replacing any more.

My trip to Aurillac was lovely. I followed scenic routes in fine weather there and back and the town itself has a very attractive old centre. The golf course gave exceptionally fine views of the mountains of the Massif Central and was itself very pretty. My results were mediocre both on the course and in the prize draw but it beats spending the day at an office desk.

It’s a pity it clashed with the big screen showing of “Cold” at the Leith Festival but that’s life in the fast lane for you.

My grass lives in the fast lane and zoomed away during my absence. But after getting back from today’s regular Sunday golf competition (regular Sunday result) I razed it to the ground.

I’m playing competitive golf yet again tomorrow. This is the annual Château de Poinsouze campsite do where we all get invited to dinner afterwards. Should be a gas if last year is anything to go by.

Pressure’s off on Tuesday – 11 euro lunch followed by social golf.

Denied cinematic distraction in bad weather I often find myself web surfing. A recent exciting www discovery was that cinematic distraction of an above average degree of interest is available at Edinburgh Filmhouse on Thursday 14^th of June.

See the Napier University graduation movies on the big screen.

Let’s hear it for my top nominations: “Ladies Who Lunch”, “Tears of Milk” and “Staccato”.

Sunday’s golf competition was cancelled through lack of numbers so I could have gone to the flicks after all, but it was a nice day so I decided to potter in the garden. I weeded and hacked back vigorously, ran the mower through the grass again and finally sank into my deckchair aperitif in hand rejoicing that at last summer had come.

The competition was a Rotary sponsored event. They usually manage to get their troops out so I was surprised at the cancellation. The explanation I was given was that there was a clash with Mothers’ Day. I thought it was quite touching that so many preferred lunch with mum but a cynical friend suggested they were just making sure of their inheritance.

Pluvious Spring returned on Monday morning but I braved the afternoon’s mild drizzle to get my window boxes and doorside pots planted up.

They don’t look much as yet but I expect them to be riotous within weeks. Most of the plants therein should be able to be transplanted at the end of the summer to edge us further towards the target of a full rockery.

Whatever the weather I’ll give them a good doze of water tonight because I’m off in the morning to Aurillac to play at Le Golf de Haute Auvergne. Given that Auvergne is where almost all the best cheeses come from, the prizes will be worth fighting for and I play a mean hand in the prize draw.

Weatherwise May just ended has been the wettest and most miserable of the five that I have spent here. It didn't look like June was starting off any better so having discovered that at Aigurande, unlike Gueret, there is a cinema with weekday afternoon screenings I planned to shelter from the rain there yesterday.

Perversely the sun started shining about lunchtime but I decided to stick to my plan. When I rolled up to the cinema, admittedly ten minutes after the advertised starting time, the man was locking up.

He explained to me that the community had prevailed upon him to hold afternoon screenings for the benefit of old codgers who didn't like to go out at night but that during the week very few ever pitched up and that today no-one had. He'd obviously gone too far psychologically down the path of locking up to consider that here might be an opportunity to do his bit for the old codgers in the community because he offered me Saturday night at 20.45 or Sunday afternoon at 16.45 and turned the key.

Well 20.45 doesn't suit me because I usually have downed a modicum of wine with my dinner by then and in any case my lights point the wrong way. On Sunday at 16.45 I will be clapping politely as my fellow golfers step up to collect their prizes. So it looks like I won't see Jean de la Fontaine, Le Défi till it turns up at the Filmhouse, if I bother since no-one gave it more than two stars. I'll just read the fables.

One star weather returned in the evening.

La Fête départementale des sports de nature took place at Chateauroux over the Whitsun weekend. The départment being Indre where I play golf rather than Creuse where I live.

Although I take “de nature” to mean outdoor, of the 39 activities listed in the programme one or two seemed intrinsically indoor to me – basketball and judo for instance. Nothing to stop you doing them outdoors I suppose except the weather. And the weather was not kind on any of the three days.

The organisation was impressive. On arrival I reported to reception where I was issued with a natty sleeveless navy blue fleece embroidered with the event’s logo and a badge to wear round my neck. Next step was to collect my individual insulated picnic hamper. This little container held a tasty baguette, a slice of pizza, a brownie, an apple, a banana, an energy bar, a bottle of water and a coke. It’s eminently useful, in fact designed to be attached to your bicycle handlebars and has a transparent sleeve on top to slip your map into. This is the pre GPS model of course.

The setting was super. It was in a large park and the various sports were strung out around a central lake which was the venue for all the watery stuff.

Mind you on the Sunday you could have kayaked your way around the whole park such was the rainfall. That didn’t put off the youngsters who came to whack golf balls into the wild grey yonder. We had about ten mats laid out for people to play from and a sort of bouncy castle as a target. My job was to give basic instruction and supervise the punters. I was thoroughly drenched by the end of the day despite my umbrella.

Golf balls and clubs can be dangerous and in spite of our efforts at maintaining tight control one poor lad got a club full in the face. I believe what happened was that when he ran out of balls he bent down to pinch one from the guy next to him just as he swung his club backwards. He was hurt bad if the noise he made on the way to the ambulance was anything to go by.

The weather on Monday was better in as much as there was less rain but it was cold. Again the punters were not put off and right up to 5.30 when we closed there was an endless stream. By the end we were one of the few activities still running so people kept coming.

It was quite fun despite the weather. All the kids were very enthusiastic and some of them obviously sporty. Others might be better to concentrate on reading.

There were a few adults and one I was given charge of turned out to be a member of the départmental Olympic committee. He was probably not a man whose vote counts for much in allocating the Olympic games to anywhere but my teaching him golf seemed a bit of a cheek. However I suppose I am better qualified to do that than I was to teach the Old Tyme Music Hall chorus to sing and I got through that undetected. Next challenge brain surgery, though I believe that’s already been done.

My golf trip to Tours last week was a bit disappointing. It started off well. It was a lovely day as I drove up to Vierzon and then followed the valley of the Cher through pleasant countryside and picturesque little towns to Joué-lès-Tours, a rather undistinguished suburb of Tours where after a mildly frustrating search I found my hotel. My problem is that I can't hold more than the first two instructions that a direction giver imparts, sometimes not even that. So by the third junction I no longer know whether it's "keep right on" or "turn right". It often proves to have been "left" in fact.

I found the golf course in the adjacent and prettier town of Ballan-Miré very easily however. At least I found it easily on Thursday. On Friday I was spiralling round the town centre for ages.
It was late in the afternoon, very hot and I'd had a long drive so I decided against a reconnaissance round. I just strolled about and admired the magnificent course, had a drink and a chat in the splendid clubhouse and went back to Joué for a meal.

First disappointment; in Joué there are: a pizzaria, a couple of takeaway pizza joints and a snack bar that closes quite early but only one restaurant. I settled for a snack. I ate in the restaurant on the Friday night and by nine o'clock they had served exactly four people and two more arrived as I left. It's a wonder there is even one restaurant if that's a typical Friday night. My bill arrived accompanied not by a couple of mints or delicately wrapped sweets but by this lollipop. Somewhat incongruous in an establishment all done up in the traditional red and gold of fin de siècle splendour and sporting fine cutlery set on table-covers of crisp white linen.

Friday dawned warm and sunny. My tee time was not till one o'clock so I explored a lakeside park not far away, immaculately kept as all French public spaces seem to be, and then went on to the course for an early lunch on the château terrace and some gentle preparation.

We were on the fourth hole when the storm broke. As much thunder and lightning as you could ask for and buckets of rain. Play was suspended. We sheltered unsuccessfully emerging half-soaked when the storm's fury was spent. Play resumed after an hour. We were on the seventh hole when torrential rain poured from above and borne by wild winds smashed in from the side. Lightning was further away but we couldn't continue playing. We were near the practice area at the time so sought shelter under a tin roofed structure there. When the wind and rain eventually eased off, having heard no signal, we restarted but hadn't got far when someone came out of the clubhouse gesticulating and shouting that it was all over. The rain on a cold tin roof had clearly masked the klaxon.

A great disappointment because it's a lovely course and I would dearly like to have had my full round. I shall have to go again sometime. There was a minor recompense in that all the prizes were put into a draw and I carried off a bottle of very nice Chinon. I know it's very nice because I've already drunk it.

So on Saturday I went into Tours.

Not an unpleasant town by any means but not as immediately impressive as say Orleans. Here's a picture of the cathedral peeping through some trees. Inside the cathedral I found that the altar sheltered a rock. Now I could find no explanation but this must be, if not the entire stone, then surely a fragment of the one that was rolled away on the third day. Why else would you keep a great big rock in your church?

Why would you keep a fountain in your town? Well in the case of Tours it's to commerorate the work of the back-room boys of the American Expeditionary Force that came to Europe in 1917. Usually memorials are to the fighting men but this one celebrates the achievements of those who built a thousand miles of railway and innumerable bridges, who procured weapons and clothing, who delivered food and equipment to the two million men at the front. Tours was the headquarters of this Service of Supply.

I had a very nice lunch before I left, in particular a pudding that was described as raspberry crumble but not as I know it. The raspberry ran through the crumble like a ruby lode and the crumble itself was of a smoothness and delicacy akin to molten demerara. Yummy.

The storm didn't break last night so I got another cut done.

Now I can set off for Tours this morning light in heart.

I'd be even lighter in heart if the internet service we have here hadn't taken 20 minutes to get from the point at which I'd logged on to the ISP to the point at which I was able to start typing this post. It almost makes me believe that BT broadband is worth the money.

By dint of being very unFrench and working through the lunch-hour I got the rest of the garden beaten into submission before 3pm. Although I was cutting in straight lines I ended up with a final triangle of thick matted growth such as I haven’t come across in a long time. Yesterday’s tactic of skimming through with the front wheels in the air didn’t get me far and the alternative of driving straight at it on all fours and withdrawing just before the engine stalls wasn’t much better. I ended up trimming round the edges with only half the blade engaged until finally it was à poil.

I’d like to trim another inch or so off the whole garden this evening since otherwise it will be Monday or at best Sunday evening before I have another chance but the sky is blackening to the west and the atmosphere is close. Sure signs of an approaching summer thunderstorm. Maybe it will burst while still some distance away.

No doubt for a peasant hardened by working fifty years man and boy on the land, raking up 2000 square metres of grass cuttings counts as light duties. For a pen-pusher like me it’s tedious, back-breaking toil relieved by long moments of leaning on the rake thinking “*!!??*@#”.

Having mown the jungle down and got the cuttings cleared the grass was still too long, wet and tangled to operate the lawnmower normally so I found myself pushing it along with its front wheels in the air and the blade whirling wildly to snip off the tops, gradually lowering the angle of attack on repeated traverses of the same section until it was possible for the machine to chug along under its own steam with all four wheels on the ground. That mind you at the highest possible cut setting.

The only plus point of yesterday’s labour was that it gave me 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep. On balance though I think I’d rather be interrupted.

Not that this job is finished. I’ve only got beyond the jungle clearance stage for half the garden and I’ve delayed my golf outing departure till tomorrow so that I can make headway on that half and re-cut the “almost lawn” a couple of notches lower. All that for fear of what four days untrammelled growth might bring.

Jungle with a hidden metre rule

Twixt jungle and field

Overgrown field – you can now see the metre rule

Finally by 8pm almost lawn.

On Sunday my car’s electronic information system told me that a brake light had gone so yesterday I verified that this was indeed true. I don’t have a great deal of faith in these systems ever since I failed to convince a Zambian policeman that my brake light could not be out of order since the Honda’s electronic warning system reported all OK.

Perhaps as a reaction to last year’s brakes problem and its aftermath I find myself anxious to sort out any failure without delay. So I consulted the handbook. It looked feasible DIY if I had a spanner of the correct size and type. Of course none of the spanners in the barn fitted the bill so I decided that I’d just have to pay for 15 minutes of a mechanic’s time.

That’s when I discovered that there is no longer a Fiat garage in Gueret. Part of the rationale for buying this particular car was the proximity of an agent. I’d have been better off sticking to Rover. They may be dead but their vehicles can still be fixed here.

However there is a man who reckons that he knows his way around a Fiat so I went to him. No problem, fix it in a jiffy – but hadn’t I noticed that the left front direction indicator was not working. Well no. It’s difficult to spot that from the driving seat and the all knowing electronics seem to have missed it. Shame that you need to dismantle half the car to get at that bulb. And disconnect the electronics. They told me it was Saturday 1^st January 2000 when I got the car back. He only charged me an hour’s labour but I’m sure it took an hour and a half.

I love my bus pass.

I got the strimmer back a few days ago. It was, as I suspected, the spark plug. Even I could have changed that - given the tools. Aye there's the rub. You can't do everything with a Swiss Army knife, and in any event I've lost mine.

I managed to get through chopping the grass to bits on Friday and Saturday and laboured for a couple of hours at ridding the fosse septique area of weeds. We planted cotoneaster there the first year we spent here based on my experience in Mountcastle where cotoneaster spread like wildfire and smothered everything that lay in its path. At Barbansais it has grown, but much more slowly and I had to hack away the weeds to reveal it. The smotherer smothered.

The grass cuttings now have to be raked up. My peasant friends tell me to let them dry off first but the weather is such that I can't see that happening fast and more grass is busy pushing its way up. As it is I'm not convinced that the result so far has brought the grass into a state that the lawnmower will be able to tackle. I can see myself having to attack it again with the strimmer.

Better results on the website front. Google now gets me. Googling "Kitwe Little Theatre" gave 66 references. My website and my Great North Road entry were on the second page. If you google "Hamlet" you get over 21 million references. If you then search for "Kitwe" within those results you get 670 references and my site is number three. For top listing google "Hamlet" then "Kitwe Little Theatre" and I'm first of three.

Why would anyone do that though?

But my GNR listing has brought me several contacts. No-one has yet come up with photos to plug the gaps in my record, that being the object of the exercise, but it has been fun hearing from "my old Kitwe home where all the dogs are called futsaak and no-one knows why" as the song neatly puts it.

My seniors golf outings will be a little less bright for a while. My chum Jean has suffered a hernia, will be operated on soon and then have to leave his clubs in the garage for a couple of months. That brought this coming week's gang of three down to two but now John's wife is ill so it's just me. There are others going but just for the day whereas we were making a wee holiday of it.

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.