A week without a post disappoints at least one of my regular readers so just for her here are the highlights of my last seven days.

On Saturday I attended a concert in St Mary's Cathedral (the pisky one) in celebration of Ronald Stevenson's 80th birthday. The composer was there but not too many chums had turned out, or was I just fooled by the vastness of the space. Anyway he'd surely have been pleased by Murray McLachlan's playing of his Passacaglia on DSCH.

This is a pretty astonishing piece - solo piano without a pause for one hour and twenty minutes that grips the listener throughout. Apart from needing the stamina required to play for that length of time various other demands are made of the pianist. Perhaps the most entertaining for the spectator is when the page-turner, seated on the pianist's left gets up, knocks the music stand down flat and runs round to his right while the pianist, continuing to play with his right hand leans into the body of the piano and thumps the strings vigorously in various rhythms with his left hand for a page or two.

Sunday saw our second rehearsal for the reprise of 4.48 Psychosis and the eagerly awaited first episode of Mad Men. As so often happens the hype belied the quality of the product, for me at any rate. Since I'm not often faced with a surfeit of entertainment at 10pm on a Sunday evening I may watch it again. On the other hand The Westminster Hour can be a thrilling bundle of fun. No hype for 4.48. In Kelso crowds will roll up for that on the basis of a solid track record.

On Monday I bolted down Connor's delicious paneer pot au feu and rushed off to a residents' association meeting due to take place in a local cafe as a result of our previous meeting arrangements having been judged of a lesser priority than toon cooncil business. But alack and alas some cock-up with keys kept the cafe closed and we repaired to the chairman's kitchen for a rapid romp through parking schemes, lift malfunctions, vandalism, repainting funds, defective locks - the usual exciting ephemera.

Scott's great skill as a chairman is always to draw the meeting to a close bang on 7.30 which left me enough time to get to the Queen's Hall by half way through the first movement of Beethoven's string trio opus something or other. I managed to slip in while the crowd cleared its collective throat between movements one and two. The trio was elegant and was elegantly played but I was happier in the second half. A piano was added to beef up the strings for a rattling good chunk of Dvorak. I pass over Kurtag's little miniatures that never seem to go anywhere.

More music on Tuesday - at lunchtime I went to one of the university's extremely good value concerts - is there better value than free? An engaging short piece by Janacek was followed by a stomping rendition of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. The orchestrated versions are all very well but the original for piano alone doesn't need any help at all. It's one of my desert island discs.

My language sensibilities were intrigued by the fact that it was billed as Pictures IN rather than Pictures AT which is how I've always known it so I googled them both. AT wins hands down for the Mussorgsky piece but there is an IN, to wit Pictures in an exhibition by Death Cab for Cutie which is a very different kettle of fish. Listen to it and groan. There is also an AT by Emerson Lake and Palmer that is a rock version of Mussorksky's music with lyrics added. It's horrid.

I popped into the City Art Centre afterwards and admired Ansell Adams photographs, many of which I've been exposed to through the medium of calendars winging their way to me from the USA during Connor's sojourn there. There is an exhibition of political cartoons on as well that had me laughing out loud. My very particular favourite that might even be worth the £295 asking price features East Fife football strip burkas. I shan't spoil your fun by explaining why. Just go and see it.

Another very different kettle of fish cropped up that evening when I went with a number of Grads to Edinburgh Music Theatre's production of A Chorus Line. For some in the audience this was a chance to re-experience a well loved show/film but it was my first time. I shan't rush to re-experience. As a story it failed to interest, engage, move or excite me on any level and the music was musak.

The company however did a great job. They did the best they could to make it look interesting - hard with all that standing around in a long line in front of black drapes - and I failed to see the logic in sometimes having the practice "mirrors" visible and sometimes not but they got a good variety of groupings and interesting lighting effects. There was a lot of red but I don't really think I was grumpy about it. (see Play Thing).

The characterisations were all well judged. The acting was confident and sincere. None of the accents faltered even slightly. The costumes were excellent (notwithstanding the gents' baggy trousers in the finale which some people didn't like but which I didn't notice because I was concentrating on the girls). I loved the dancing, especially the finale and not being a pitch perfectionist the singing passed my muster without a stain on its character.

Choose a more interesting show next time please.

On Wednesday the Grads held their monthly meeting with the carrot of a reading of Twelfth Night (the autumn production to be) to encourage people to put up with the boring business stuff. Claire shares with Scott the desire to shoot through the agenda and despite a barely controlled bout of corpsing brought on by notification of an SCDA opportunity for younger people had it done and dusted just after eight.

Those with previous engagements bade farewell and we started the read. Fifteen lines into Act 1 Scene 1 Gordon interrupted to say we'll cut there and go on to scene 2. I confess to having been disconcerted. Was that just for this reading or does he intend to play it that way? If he does then the audience will not be told that Orsino is in love with Olivia and that she has rejected his overtures, a central element of the plot. Ah well!

After the reading I went home to sup on Connor's second culinary concoction of the week which had not matured (those pesky spuds) in time for me to eat before going out.

I had decided a while ago to go to the Citizen's production of Waiting for Godot and on Thursday set off to see the matinee performance. This was scheduled to be a cheap day out since I can travel to Glasgow by bus for nothing and the Citz charge only £6 for their matinees.

The bus I intended to catch pulled out dead on time, if not early, when I was about 50 yards short of its stance. No hassle, another will be along in 15 minutes. But that one was 15 minutes late so I arrived in Glasgow with so little time to spare that I decided I'd have to get a taxi - cost £5.20. I got to the theatre with ten minutes to spare to learn that the matinee had been cancelled. Should I just go away? Seems a shame having got here so I bought a ticket for the evening performance. That's £9 even for a wee concessionary like me so I'm now 135% over budget and naturally if I'm here all day I'll have to have some lunch.

I had in fact a very pleasant lunch (now 386% over budget) and did a bit of tourism. For the first time in my life I went into the cathedral. It's an absolutely splendid building and at least it is still there unlike many of the historic relics featured in a little tourist trail leaflet that I followed. I gazed in awe at the former sites of past wonders. What destructive planning ideologue allowed Britain's first music-hall to be torn down without even a brass plaque to mark the spot let alone a decent photograph and a recording of Harry Lauder singing "Stop yer ticklin jock"?

Back to the Gorbals for a coffee (413% over budget) and a great show. Gerry Mulgrew played one of the tramps and the play was even funnier than I remembered. I guess Glasgow accents and personalities are just that bit funnier than we are over here in the east.

So that's six of the last seven days. Today I finished reading "Utopia & other places" by Richard Eyre. It's an enjoyable read with good stories of his time at The Lyceum and at the Nottingham Playhouse. The book contains many thoughtful and useful aperçus for the actor and director.

And of course I wrote this post.

Coming home from a lovely meal at Telford College's Zero One restaurant the other night, made even lovelier by it being Nick's treat, I greeted an Indian gentleman who was leaving the ground floor for the basement as I approached the lift.

This is what met my eyes when the lift door opened. I stepped in and snapped then stepped back out of the lift whether to snap it from another angle or to ask the chap if he hadn't perhaps forgotten his chapattis I am not sure but the door closed and lift and contents vanished from view.

I jabbed at the button but the lift did not respond. It whirred on a journey up and down the shaft ignoring my persistent finger.

I could hear male and female sub-continental voices exchange incomprehensible remarks until silence fell broken by a descending whirr and a final clunk as the lift came to rest revealing only a trace of its former burden.


25kg of chapatti flour had disappeared in a mechanised form of Indian rope trick.

Collage of a happy holiday weekend near Cupar.

One gets used to miles of traffic cones on motorways with nothing very much in evidence to explain why they are there. Now this phenomenon has spread to the pavement in Princes Street.

Watch this space.

The team who swept to victory with 4.48 Psychosis on Saturday night. Does this garment belong to one of them or to one of their followers or has the litter lunatic penetrated as far as my bathroom?

Ndebele has closed down.

Ag pleez Deddy where will we get our biltong now? (with apologies to Jeremy Taylor).

This is the mini demo that met my eyes when I went to the City Chambers to sit in on the planning committee deliberations on the Caltongate development.

There has been a great deal of polemic over these plans. You can read the rosy view of the developers (don't miss the amazing movie) or the black views of the protestors or in search of undoubtedly partial but less visceral plaints see what the Cockburn Association has had to say.

Whatever you do you'll find it hard to make up your mind. Most of it is being built on the ground previously occupied by a bus depot. No loss there methinks. Some of it entails the demolition of existing buildings. This will go.
Built as an infant school in 1901 I wonder if there were protests about what had to be done away with to allow its construction? It's not a school now and I believe that provision is being made for its current functions to be carried on elsewhere in the area but still you'd like to think it might have been incorporated somewhere.

One of the more bizarre complaints I read in the comments in the on-line Scotsman was that Scotland's northern latitude dictated the need for wide streets and low buildings. Not I think a characteristic of Edinburgh's Old Town. Sydney Goodsir Smith called the Canongate a canyon not a boulevard.

In the three hours I attended there was a lot of discussion and some highly vocal protests from the public benches. "Money grabbing gits" or some similar remark met the approval of the sub-division of the planning application relating to the hotel.

The planning committee as a whole however had few doubts and voted most of it through. Next stop is referral to the Scottish Executive. What with Trump's golf course and this they'll be brought down to earth after yesterday's budget triumph.

Personally I like the overall ideas and the layout of the various elements but I'm not too keen on the look of the buildings. If we are going modern I'd prefer them to be more exciting, more daring, mould breaking - more Scottish Parliament than Victoria Quay.

Maybe they'll grow on me, if they ever get built.

Passing through a close off the Royal Mile the other day I came across three winos chewing the fat and overheard one declare "thae effin Poles are takin aw the guid pitches".

Now as we all know the recent wave of Polish immigration is composed entirely of hard-working and charming young people of good character whose presence has revitalised the Scottish economy and reinvigorated the Catholic church.

I understand that it's thae effin Romanians who are spoiling things for our industrious indigenous beggars, or is it the other way around?

For some time I've been laboriously scanning and cleaning up a batch of photographs that I took on holiday in Morocco in 1989. I've finished them at last and have linked the album to my Life of Brian website but they are also accessible from here:

Morocco89

Over the last several months these machines have been appearing at bus-stops throughout the city and now one has made it to my stop.
According to the Lothian Buses website they have been a great success and are very popular but so far I have not seen a solitary soul make use of them. I don't find that surprising given the list of things this machine does not do. It does not:

• take credit or debit cards
• take banknotes
• give change
• allow you to overpay by more than 20p
• dispense more than one ticket per transaction
• give a ticket for tomorrow or even much later today - get aboard in 40 minutes or else

Now I'm all in favour of off bus ticketing but it has to be a bit more sophisticated than this. Think of a family of four having a day out in Edinburgh. Currently that's nine quid but to get those tickets they have to assemble a bucketful of coins and conduct four transactions. Have the bus bosses never set foot on the continent?

Just wait till you are 60 folks, no problem then.

I have just received my first dollop of state pension. My old auntie, and many like her, enjoyed the thrill of going down to the post office every Thursday clutching her pension book to collect a sheaf of notes and a handful of shining shillings then running the gauntlet of muggers who hung about waiting to snatch the handbags of defenceless old ladies until she reached the safety of her council flat where she would stash the dough in a tin box hidden in the cupboard under the sink. Every so often she would grudgingly peel off a fiver or two and totter along to the gas board or whoever to pay a bill.

The gas board office has gone and it seems that the post office will not be far behind so it's just as well that I'm a fully paid up member of the electronic banking community. The pension will dribble into my account every four weeks and the gas bill will debit its way directly out.

Now along with the notification of first payment came a little leaflet (BR2215 12/05 for those who like precision) with an injunction to read it carefully. Naturally, not having a job to go to, I found time to do so.

Mostly it tells you about circumstances which you must report to big brother Brown's pension police. Now, although I suppose I might get married it seems unlikely that I will go into foster care. (I'm too old for that surely?). I'm happy to tell them if I have a transplant especially if it means I get the donor's pension added to mine, though if I end up in residential care I'll let the sods who put me there handle the admin.

But the leaflet also says:

Tell your Pension Centre if.......
you leave the United Kingdom(UK) for 3 months or more
The UK is England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland

elsewhere it says:

Tell your Pension Centre if.......
you intend to leave Great Britain for more than 4 weeks
Great Britain is England, Scotland and Wales

So I can't live it up in Belfast for 29 days without letting on. Strange restriction in a free country.

Why do they want to know anyway? You kind of suspect an ulterior motive, like not giving you any money. So I sought clarification in the FAQ of the Pension Service website.

To quote (I've left out some of the fine detail) :

What happens if......

I go to live abroad or visit?
Contact The Pension Service as soon as you can to let us know you are going abroad.

You can continue to get your State Pension anywhere in the world. (deletions)

I go abroad for 3 months or less
If you have your State Pension paid into an account, this can continue. (deletions)

I go abroad for between 6 and 12 months
If you have your State Pension paid into an account, this can continue. (deletions)

I go abroad for 12 months or permanently
We can pay your State Pension straight into your overseas account in some countries. If this is not possible or if you prefer, we can pay your State Pension into a UK account (deletions)

So nothing changes then, unless it's in the Bermuda triangle between 3 and 6 months.

I suspect I shall save myself the expense of a stamp next time I set off for France.

Here's what you may feel is an unsympathetic review of two plays that I suffered through on Friday but believe me the guy is bending over backwards to be polite.

Unconvincing works fail to break the ice

A good news litter report for a change.

I came in the other afternoon through a heap of litter at the back door and made a mental note to clear it up when I went out in the evening. So a couple of hours later, armed with a plastic bag I headed out.

To my astonishment and delight the litter had gone.

After the festive season back to life with a bang yesterday at Scottish Ballet's Sleeping Beauty.

I thoroughly enjoyed the show. Apart from anything else the music and the costumes are both gorgeous. I was puzzled at the end of Act 1 that bows and arrows were being destroyed, but, dozy me, had forgotten and, dozier me, had failed to pick up from the action that Sleeping Beauty falls asleep in the first instance because the bad fairy's curse exposes her to danger from pricks. Plus ça change.

In the Rose Adagio Ashley Page's choreography makes things easier on the ballerina than the twirling on one point that I saw Darcey Bussell do on the tele recently and according to the Guardian review gives it the air of a brothel scene. None the worse for that say I.

Today I enjoyed recognising Edinburgh locations in Hallam Foe and I was entertained by the film as well, though it's an odd little tale that doesn't seem sure whether it's a psychological thriller or a romantic comedy. Perhaps it's two for the price of one.

After the film I rushed off to rehearse 4.48 Psychosis. This was our second rehearsal but the first to set out the blocking. Claire has devised an intriguing presentation combining classical statuary, clinical detachment and brooding menace. I hope we can find a way to deliver the text that lives up to her imagination. Speaking for myself "The hair might go but the dream remains".

I'm used to finding all sorts of litter when I come home but this is a bit out of the usual. Admittedly it's New Year. I'd just come from an excellent party given by Claire and Russell where we had fêted the season unrestrainedly and loosed rockets of terrifying beauty from Portobello beach into the upper regions of our lovely planet.

This was potentially a pain in the neck - ambulances, police, whatever. I checked his breathing - regular and as normal as you'd expect from someone asleep. I tried valiantly to wake him without success. I decided he was in a drunken stupor rather than on the point of death and left nature to take her course.

We've now got a movie-maker in the family. Ewan has produced this charming little video starring some of my frequent summer visitors.

A package came through my letterbox a few days ago and by virtue of its timing has been declared a Christmas present and a most unusual one at that.

In the summer of 2006 Chus and Eduardo, Spanish friends of mine, came to France with a group of their friends for a fortnight's holiday in the Creuse. I spent a fair bit of time with them and recorded some highlights in my blog.

But Antonio went a lot further. He has produced 74 A4 pages of text and sketches celebrating those two weeks and that's what Chus has sent me. I may offer you extracts from time to time. For starters here are the drawing that decorates the cover and the paeon to the Creuse that opens the story.

UN PARAÍSO PERSONAL

Del explendor de un bosque,
de unas estacas hiladas,
de un mar de moras
y otro de hierba fresca.
Del explendor de un horizonte azul,
apenas despejado ante las nubes,
de las sinuosidades,
de las curvas del camino,
de aquel recodo de 180 grados
donde no pusieron la cruz
ni las señales amarillas.
Sí, todo da igual.
Pasamos nosotros
entre las piedras grandes,
comidas de musgo verde.

LA CREUSE

Alan came up from Manchester to help celebrate my birthday and stayed on for a couple of days. We visited various exhibitions together while he was here. The show of Joan Eardley's work at the RSA is wonderful. I love her paintings of Glasgow children. From the quick colourful chalk on sandpaper portraits of the faces of individuals to the much more elaborate groups in collages that incorporate elements of their environment you can feel their personalities bursting out.

It's fascinating too to look at the photographs of these kids in the east end of Glasgow that she used to help her portraiture. No wonder the city council wanted to raze those tenements to the ground and build decent homes for the post-war generation.

For something rather different we went down to the Botanic Gardens. In truth we went there to enjoy the gardens but there were a couple of exhibitions on in Inverleith House, the former home of the National Gallery's modern collection. They stick to a modern remit and currently are showing imitation girders mounted at decapitating height in a number of rooms. In the absence of attendants protecting the work (draw your own conclusions) I sneaked a picture.

The show in the basement was much more fun. It consisted of a small display case of odds and ends, a couple of posters and an excellent sequence of music videos inspired by and celebrating the works of a few contemporary artists including Peter Blake and Louise Bourgeois.

A songsheet was available so you could sing along with the video. In one mad moment Alan danced along as well. That may have been in the absence of other punters. We stayed a while but most punters did not dally. A man entered the room as we left it but still managed to catch the same lift as us back to the ground floor.

The Botanics have been familiar to me since we used to take the kids there in the sixties and I still think the best view of Edinburgh is from the lawn in front of Inverleith House. I've snapped it a number of times and did so again on Sunday. Playing with the picture in Photoshop I somewhat serendipitously produced the background image for the title of this blog. I'm rather pleased with it.

All that culture vulturing is hungry work and I'm glad to report that the cafes in the Portrait Gallery and in the Botanic Gardens provided us with excellent sustenance.

My birthday celebrations have always felt short-changed, falling as they do on the winter solstice. This year, the 65th in the series, their share of daylight was indeed short but they were particularly sweet after dark.

My very good friend Claire insisted that she should book a table for the small dinner party that I had planned. Clearly a giveaway that something was afoot since she has to fit things like that into interstices in the working day while I have the leisure to spend hours finding things to do to fill the self same hours.

Part of her plan was revealed when I set about arranging another dinner for a group of old school friends. They it turned out were destined to be surprise guests at the first dinner. Not that they spilled the beans - rather my sons decided that there was a danger of too many dinners spoiling the party.

So when I got to the advertised pre-dinner drinks at the Traverse it was no surprise to see the old school friends but a larger group of Edinburgh based friends had also been called up for service and that was unexpected.

The meal was good, the company was excellent and the surprise though not complete was sufficiently exciting to make this a birthday to remember.

Come out from under that hair Claire and take a bow.

This is one of my favourite walks: the Radical Road in Holyrood Park. It gains its name from association with the disturbances of 1820 that were as close to a revolution as we ever got before Walter Scott wheeled in George IV in his kilt and pink tights two years later effectively turning the spirit of insurrection into cheers for the tartan flavoured monarchy.

I followed it for the first time in ages the other day to get a breath of fresh air. The views were superb, even in the dull conditions that prevailed. Here we are looking over the south side of the city with the Pentlands vaguely visible through the mist and cloud in the top half of the picture. I carried on along the tarmac road that goes up the hill and cut down above Duddingston Loch to the Sheep's Heid for a refreshment.Astute readers will have noticed that the advertised title of the pub has no apostrophe s but it's always added in speech, just as we talk of St. Andrew Square as if it belonged to him.

I had coffee with some friends the other day and collected a box of odds and ends belonging to me that has been cluttering up their house for the last several years. I had rather forgotten it but on being reminded remembered that it held such treasures as a PC keyboard with Arabic characters that I bought in Egypt when I was convinced that nothing much stood between me and mastery of the Arabic language. How wrong I was. It's beautiful, intriguing, fascinating; but I shall always be its slave rather than its master.

One treasure that I had never seen before was a set of six CDs being the second half of a twelve volume set of the songs of Robert Burns that I subscribed to a decade or so ago. The second half pitched up while I was abroad. I've been listening to them with great pleasure over the past couple of days. It was a splendid initiative of Linn records.

I decided at the beginning of the 21st century that physical Christmas cards were old hat and that henceforth I should send only ecards. I've not lived up 100% to this forward thinking decision but I try and have just finished creating this year's card. For those of my readers not in my email address book here it is:

The layout of Edinburgh's New Town incorporated communal gardens for the recreation of the proprietors of the buildings surrounding them. In many of these buildings private persons have long been replaced by office slaves and a good case can be made for making the gardens a more widely available recreational resource.

I was delighted to find that the hard-pressed council tax payer ably assisted by his alter ego the hard-pressed income tax payer has seen fit to apply a few millions to do just that to the gardens in St Andrew Square. The work proceeds apace and will include the obligatory refreshment outlet and what is called a reflective pool, though the capital's youngsters might have preferred a skate-park.

The work has been extended upwards of the gardens to tidy up the 4.2 metre high statue of Henry Dundas that sits atop the column. I understand that the stonework of the statue has suffered a bit from exposure, especially between its legs. We know what damage 179 years of an Edinburgh wind could do to a brass monkey so I shudder to think what condition poor old Henry is in.

The day I didn't have my camera two workers were jauntily perched on the lower levels of this scaffolding. I gazed in some admiration and wondered amongst other things how they got there. The answer is via the staircase in the column.

His mission may have been to crush the rebellious Scots, as I have lately learnt our national anthem enjoins us to do, or to populate the East India Company with his compatriots but pending catching a view when the covers come off the statue here's what the lifesize Henry looked like and for the truly historically minded or those who can't sleep here's a long and detailed article about him.

The latest news is that one of the office buildings in the square is to be converted into expensive flats. The owners, like Henry, will just have to put up with the democratisation of their garden.

Never go out without a camera. I can't bring you a picture of the two newspaper billboards that caught my eye side by side earlier today.
The Scotsman proclaimed "On the trail of eagle killers" while The Record reported "6 Week-old Alexis beaten to death"
Such different news values.

It's taken me a while to find a review in English of "I Do" (Prête-moi ta main) that echoed my enjoyment of the film.

The French reviewers were pleased that it matched what they think is the gold standard of romantic comedy - the British standard. Perhaps that's why they've held onto it for 12 months before letting us have a look.

But TimeOut found it "heavily contrived, undemanding" and deplored "the complacency of the film's subtextual sexual politics". (Whatever that means.) They did admit that it's "often funny" but that seems a criticism in the context of their review.

The Sydney Morning Herald (I never miss an issue) said "Old-fashioned doesn't really describe it: it's the kind of war-of-the-sexes premise that was popular in the '90s, and I mean the 1590s, when Shakespeare was starting to sharpen his quill." Shakespeare old fashioned? Tell that to the RSC.

Film 4 says " Of course I Do is total fluff and nonsense". But like me and unlike TimeOut they think it is bloody good fluff and nonsense and they suggest you see it now before "the inevitable US remake"; unless, they say, Charlotte Gainsbourg crosses the pond to reprise her role.

I'll leave the last word to Miss Marmite in Hamburg and other users of IMDb most of whom, but by no means all, liked it.

Recently the graffiti around here has displayed a degree of sophistication some levels above the "F. the Pope" standard.

One that caught my eye disfiguring a billboard, or enhancing it according to your lights, read "Be bad. Buy nothing new this Xmas."

Strong on combating spoil the planet wastefulness but short on current economic orthodoxy (do we want to return to being hunter gatherers and subsistence farmers?) let alone friendly feelings towards our nearest and dearest.

Today they are painting out a slogan on Tesco's wall. At the moment you can still make it out underneath the fresh paint. It says something like "we've had enough of this red white and blue". I thought at first it was an anti-unionist cry but realised later that those are Tesco's colours so it was probably aimed at them.

I don't suppose Mr Tesco will lose much sleep and it won't be long before another slogan hits the wall. Let's hope it's amusing.

Hot on the heels of Litter Lunatic came Telephone Tosser.

Ring ring
Hello.
Who's that? (foreign accent)
It's Connor.
Oh yea, James tell me about you. You like bit of fun.
Sorry, you must have the wrong number.
No, no. He tell me you like play with your wife while other people watch. (or maybe it was the other way round)
You've got the wrong number.
Hang up
Ring ring
Brian picks up
Hey Connor, why you cut me off?
You have got the wrong number.
Tell me name your wife I tell you if is wrong number.
I don't have a wife.
Can I come play with you?
No, and if you call me again I'll get the police to you.
What the police do with this?
Hang up
Ring 1471
The caller withheld their number (surprise, surprise)
Ring ring
Brian picks up
Hello.
Employs recommended nuisance caller procedure by remaining silent then hanging up
Ring ring
Brian picks up
Hello. (different voice but still a species of johnny foreigner)
Same tactic employed, no further calls.

I hope my mobile never rings while I'm in the lift.

From what was found in the lift yesterday it appears that our Litter Lunatic is truly a nutcase. Even I hesitate to put a picture of a blood-stained towel and a condom draped artistically on the lift floor into public view so you will just have to imagine it.

It's a new one on the factor, used as he is to the odd goings on in common stairs, but pro tem I'm keeping a watch and he's considering how to approach the matter.

Connor suggested it might be a disgruntled ex hassling their former partner. But if so I and many others in the stair, not to mention visiting clergymen, are suffering collateral damage.

The Litter Lunatic has been at work again. I came home tonight from seeing a play (The Persian Revolution) to find this in the lift.

To add to the effrontery it contained some liquid so after I had removed it here's what was left on the floor.

It's hard to know what to do but I think I will have to engage the factor and the residents' association in reviewing possibilities.

The impossibility I personally favour can't be described on a family blog but would be familiar to Persian revolutionaries.

That our civil liberties are being unduly curtailed was the proposition put forward by Helena Kennedy in a debate in the form of a mock trial at the Royal Society of Edinburgh last night. The audience jury agreed with her in the proportion of two to one despite a well argued defence of Labour's record and intentions by Tony's old flatmate Charlie Falconer.

The debate was lively, at times fierce, but even though the topic is on the serious side all the speakers managed a wee joke from time to time.

One of the concerns put forward by David Blunkett whom I heard speak on Sunday fits quite nicely into the curtailment of liberties scenario. He said what we all know; that fewer and fewer people are voting.

He went on to say that those who will continue to vote are the older members of society, that they vote in their own interests (who doesn't?) and are likely to bring into power more authoritarian governments. He meant non-labour governments of course but labour or tory the fear is that the politicians will bow to the greybeards' desire to bring back flogging and send yobs to the saltmines.

So be warned.

Wild Honey opened on Wednesday to a pretty good house and was well received by the audience. The press was there in the shape of Thom Dibdin from The Evening News and he was slightly less enthusiastic but two stars after all are better than none. The News print alongside their review the opinions of three punters (not included on-line) and all of them praised the show.

I ended up having a late night.

The second night was typically a bit less sharp and we had an entertaining few minutes early on when we skipped a page or two and then fought our way back to fill in the blanks. Two down two to go.

Filling in time in the dressing room with a newspaper I came across an article about face morphing software developed at the psychology department of St Andrews university. Here's what it turned me into when I chose to be Afro-Caribbean.
Try it yourself here.

I had an "X wants you to be their friend" email from Facebook the other day. It wasn't a name that meant much to me straightaway but I have since realised who it is. I think she must have let Facebook run through her email contacts and fire off invitations to all and sundry. I just haven't been deleted from the list during the last five years; some people never tidy things up.

It was a pleasant reminder of life in Paris though so I have been gracious enough to accept. But does she really know who I am?

I don't think you could call the film I saw this afternoon pleasant but it was French and I enjoyed it thoroughly - a cracking thriller called The Serpent. There were only five of us in the house, all supping our free coffee supplied as part of the Cameo's Silver Screen offering. They can't make money that way but I suppose the cinema is open anyway. When you add their Wednesday Specials and their Cheap Mondays you arrive at help the aged in cinemascope and surround sound. It's pure dead brilliant.

Because of the Wild Honey schedule, today was my last chance to see Brian Friel's Living Quarters at the Lyceum and I took it. I'm never sure that it's a good idea to go to a matinee. Almost invariably there is a sweetie paper rustler somewhere and today she sat next to me. That old wifie was almost as distracting as the young lady who flashed her fashionably skimpy underwear periodically as she leant forward to get a better view.

However I managed to keep enough of my attention on the stage to be able to state categorically that it is an excellent production: super set, very good acting and magisterial direction. It's also apparently the play's UK premiere although it was written 30 years ago. I remember reading it in Kitwe with a view to putting it on there. I don't remember why we didn't

The play is structured in such a way that there is a narrator character who interacts with the others, bringing them periodically out of a fictional space that excludes him into one that includes him. He also addresses explanations to the audience and like a Greek Chorus foretells, or at least hints at, the tragedy to come. Well that may have whipped up the ancient Greeks but it didn't work for me. I admired it but resented having my emotional involvement in the drama interrupted. The Guardian's critic suggests that may be why the play has been neglected here for so long.

I shall have to get to the Citz to see if Desire Under The Elms suits me better. It is after all the same myth - as explained fully in this somewhat dry article.

I dashed out as soon as the show ended and distributed Wild Honey flyers to the audience as they emerged. I did the same thing this evening but chose the audience leaving a production of The Crucible on the grounds that as it was an amateur production the audience might be a better target for us. However the Lyceum audience seemed much more interested. God knows if it will bring anyone in. How to attract an audience is the great unsolved theatrical mystery.

It could have been an ABC Minors session circa 1950. There was the same incessant chatter drowning out the ads, the same clapping and cheering as the hero appeared on screen, the same whoops of appreciation during action sequences. Only the slightly raunchy comments revealed that these were adult cinemagoers, almost exclusively female who were letting their fantasies fly free at a late night screening of Dirty Dancing.

I should have had a big girl along to look after me but I didn’t know.

The next time I go swimming I'll wear a hat; not in the pool you understand but to keep my head warm on the walk home.

Leith Victoria just down the road is one of the numerous pools built here over a hundred years ago. I don't know whether the idea was leisure or cleanliness but given that most of them were originally referred to as public baths you'd have to suspect the latter. However it's all leisure nowadays and this one is in the throes of redevelopment. The pool has already been refurbished; there's a gym and a sauna and they are building an extension to accommodate aerobics and the like. They even have a creche where little non-swimmers can be dumped at certain times.

At the time the pool was built Leith was a separate entity from Edinburgh but was absorbed in 1920 much to the disgust of many of the citizenry, and to this day Leithers regard themselves as a race apart. As usual Wikipedia is a good source of information (I used it to check on the date of the merger) and it even led me to the explanation for the street sign I noticed recently declaring Leith to be twinned with Rio de Janiero.

I haven't noticed Rio's samba dancers around but Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly were magnificent in the 1949 film version of Bernstein's On The Town showing this week and the Indian A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Kings had some splendid dance routines which you can get a taste of here.

Capping both of those though was Matthew Bourne's The Car Man. It's a steamy tale of lust and murder set in a car repair shop somewhere in the endless plains of the mid-west danced to Bizet's music for Carmen by a brilliant cast who throw themselves around and bend their bodies into seemingly impossible but beautiful shapes.

If I do catch a cold through my hatless walk home I should, on the evidence of Michael Moore's Sicko, thank my lucky stars that it was in Leith Scotland and not Leith North Dakota. For the film paints a pretty black picture of healthcare in the USA. Of course Moore is a polemicist who gives no quarter so there is no attempt at balance. All the same when you see it (and I insist you do because it is an excellent and superbly crafted movie) you will come out giving three rousing cheers for the NHS despite its inadequacies. I don't think Rudi Giuliano can have seen it.

You could be forgiven for thinking that these artistically arranged objects were an installation in a gallery, labelled provocatively "A Good Night Out".

But no; this is the sight that met my eyes when I summoned the lift to take me to the top floor at twenty to four this afternoon. I hadn't been in the lift for twenty-four hours so I suppose they could have been there since last night but it couldn't have been that much of a good night out because the condom was empty.

Thank God for small mercies.

It was a beautiful day yesterday so I wandered about the gardens for a while then popped into the National Gallery for a coffee and a peep at some very imaginative work done by SQA Art and Design students. I suppose that's what we called Higher Art in my day but I don't remember seeing such creativity at KHS. Maybe at the time I couldn't see past Tam Gourdie's italic handwriting obsession.

There is a William Blake exhibition on as well and I found that I was just too late to get a seat to hear the very imaginative Alasdair Gray talking about him and reading some of Blake's verse to boot. The spoilsport health and safety bogey forbade me to sit in the aisle so I left muttering incantations involving up, yours and Jimmy.

Later in the day I meandered into a pub and had a very satisfying glass of IPA; what a splendid contrast to the insipid and gassy French lager that has been my post golf tipple all summer. You have to give them full marks for vino but a great big zero for beer.

Spanish beer is no better than French and on the evidence below you'd have to give the golf resort owning Spaniards a pretty low score for their language skills as well.

The group now running Les Dryades hope to make a bob or two by building houses around the course and have produced a flashy brochure extolling the project. However its title isn't quite right in either French or English and the inside is often worse.

Now Grupo Balboa is not a very big organisation so maybe you can understand their skimping on translation costs; not forgive of course but understand.

On the other hand FIAT could surely have spared a copper to have my car's handbook given the once over by a native English speaker. It is riddled with nonsense such as "These dusts are harmless and is not the beginning of a fire; then the unfold cushion surface and the car interiors can be covered by a dusty remains;"

I expect that when it is sung in Italian it sounds wonderful.

I've been in Edinburgh for a whole week and the word "litter" has barely passed my lips. I may have whispered it gently into the ears of an intimate few but that's all.

Here though is a manifestation of Dirty Scotland that has me scratching my head in despair and disbelief. Rubbish disposal is well organised at the flats where I live. Here's how it works. In the privacy of your own home you collect your domestic waste and when you have a bagful you go to one of the bin-stores, put your bag in the bin and once a week the bin is emptied and cleaned.

So what is this cretin's game?Was the bin full? No. Was he a dwarf who couldn't reach up to the lid? Unlikely. Was leaving the gate open a final fingers up to the responsible residents? Undoubtedly.

Unfortunately none of my windows overlook this bin-store otherwise I should mount a 24 hour watch with my litter lout laser at the ready.

I was sure I'd bump into Ming in the crowd of senior citz taking advantage of the £1.50 lunchtime shows at the Cameo yesterday now that he has more time on his hands. But no. By not taking my advice to enjoy the fruits of his age he missed a treat.

I saw Two days In Paris; written, directed, produced and starred in by Julie Delpy. She seems to be quite famous but her name meant nothing to me, although skimming through her credits I guess I may have caught sight of her on screen before. Whoever she is she did a great job of making me laugh.

That laughter was stilled later in the day when I saw Scotland go down ignominiously before the Georgian teenagers in Tblisi. They must have been on Irn Bru when they beat France twice and they'll need a double dose to get past Italy into Euro 2008.

I expect they'll try to intimidate Italy with the skirl and drones of the pipes but that won't be enough. At critical moments I'd throw in Brass Jaw. The noise a saxophone quartet can make in full cry would make any goalkeeper stick his hands over his ears leaving the way clear for a lightning strike.

Less than a week but I'm picking up the threads of the British way of life again. I'm still occasionally saying pardon instead of sorry when I get in someone's way and I've twice found myself on the wrong side of the road but I have not been disloyal to the Queen.

Alan was here for the weekend and together with Siobhan we took in a Picasso exhibition and the film "When Did You Last See Your Father". In the film Colin Firth discovers on his father's death-bed that he wasn't such a bad old stick after all. I think the DVD will make an excellent Christmas gift, two in fact.

I had to leave Alan to his own devices on Sunday while I attended my first rehearsal for Wild Honey. In the absence of the director, delayed in Portugal with a bad leg, it could have been a shambles but it passed off remarkably well. I thought that perhaps it was a little early for talk of the actors gliding through the piece as though it were a Mozart symphony, but still.

Last night the director's leg had not yet reached home but under the self-deprecating leadership of Iain Kerr we blocked Act 2 and standing in for a number of absent actors I had fun exercising my range of funny voices.

I got home to the news of Ming Campbell's resignation. I said at the time of his election that he was too old and it seems that for once my political judgement was right. My advice to Ming is to enjoy his freedom of Scotland bus pass, his winter fuel allowance, his concession tickets to theatres and cinemas and the other sundry goodies on offer to oldies. Leave running the country (or in the Lib Dem's case not) to those who still have hair to pull out at the frustration of it all. How old is Gordon?

It's different in the theatre of course. Oldies still achieve. Witness Fiona's winning production at the Woking Drama Festival. Best out of 26 entries is pretty good. Will she similarly sweep aside the opposition at the English, or even British finals?

I spent Wednesday morning putting the finishing touches to the house hibernation: covering beds in plastic; draining the water system; spreading poison everywhere a rodent is likely to stroll; and set off for the channel around lunchtime.

An uneventful journey followed by a tolerable dinner, a bit of a drool over Soir 3's Marie Drucker and half a night's rest saw me bright and early by the quayside for the ferry to Dover. My car was checked for hidden immigrants on the French side but I was spared examination on arrival in England thanks to the unlucky Latvian ahead of me who must have looked like better pickings to the defenders of our frontiers.

There followed a day of stressful close combat. British motorway traffic when not at a standstill likes either to play at Formula 1 or to dawdle in the overtaking lanes. Yesterday there was more than enough standstill, much of it incomprehensible, so a journey estimated at nine hours took close to twelve.

But here I am safe and sound and everything looks set for a splendid winter season.

It has felt like being back in the hotel business these last three weeks. I’ve had four parties of visitors, nine people in all. Everyone has now gone and I believe enjoyed their visit to the Creuse. They certainly had much better weather than they would have had at the height of summer.

My uninvited guests appear also to have gone and I trust that they did not enjoy their visit at all. Indeed I hope they are dead. I could never be a Bhuddist.

On Saturday we went to what was billed as a local agricultural show. However these country people are early risers so by the time we arrived there was no sign of any beasts, the farmers’ market had been reduced to one stall selling honey and the prize-giving was in full swing.

There were still some second-hand agricultural machines whose function was a mystery to us townies on sale, and we could have come away with a souvenir barrel for €10, but it wasn’t quite the swinging affair one had hoped for.













Except for L’Espérance de Roches who played a couple of swinging sets of old favourites, including “Roll Out The Barrel” would you believe, while we swigged a refreshment. They looked good in their new uniforms, except for that delinquent in jeans, but I’m not sure that Andy and Esther, who both play wind instruments, were totally convinced by their playing.

My playing, in the garden later, was much worse but then it was the first time I’d blown into a saxophone and the fact that I made a noise at all was a surprise. I even more or less played a scale so I’m clearly a natural.

Sunday was another beautiful day. We followed my first time visitors’ tour of the northern Creuse, taking in various beauty spots. We had a very pleasant lunch in the garden of the hotel at Bourg d’Hem from where there is a lovely view and strolled by the river here and there. We arrived at Crozant just too late to get into the fortress grounds. That was a little bit of a shame.

On Thursday I had an outing with four of my chums from Les Dryades. We went to a little nine hole course called Chammet on the plateau des Millevaches. It’s a little more than an hour south of Guéret. Set in beautiful wooded surroundings overlooking a lake it is, in fine weather, an idyllic spot.

The weather was exceptionally fine. We played nine holes in the morning, lunched in a nearby village and played another nine in the afternoon before ending up at Pierre’s in Guéret for dinner and a few glasses of vino in the evening.

I know it is reprehensible not to spend every waking minute working on how to save the planet and/or rescue damsels in distress but I find myself more and more focussed on self gratification.

Today at least I was able to bring a little pleasure into other people’s lives as well as my own. Patrick, a Belgian golfing friend who has a holiday home in the area, invited me to an end of season drinks and nibbles do this evening. I initially excused myself on the grounds that I was expecting visitors but he insisted that I bring them with me. So when Andy and Esther arrived this afternoon I whisked them off to his place. There were about twenty people, all of them very worth meeting - from Carmen the former La Scala ballerina to my particular friends Jean and Monique. I think my visitors enjoyed themselves.

Patrick and his wife Catherine are round the world yachtsmen whose voyage website is an absolute delight. For someone like me who has done a little bit of sailing but who quite frankly would feel distinctly uncomfortable out of sight of land in 50 feet of fibreglass it provides an exciting but safely vicarious experience. Read, or just enjoy the pictures of Caramel’s journeys.

I got back today from a very pleasant outing to Royan on the Atlantic coast. It was one of the Senior Golfers of the Four Leagues fixtures. I picked up Jean on Thursday morning and we arrived at the golf club in time for a spot of lunch before our reconnaissance round. We played our competition round on Friday.

The weather was delightful, the course was beautiful and the company was excellent. What more can you ask for? Well you can ask for a comfy hotel with sea view. Tick. You can ask for good food. Noix St Jacques with cepes in a chestnut sauce for lunch on Friday – tick. You can ask for success on the course – half a tick. I didn’t improve my handicap but I played well enough to prevent a further deterioration. I was 12th out of 55 which is a lot better than the 36th out of 43 that I achieved in the last SG4L competition at Aurillac in June.

We didn’t stay for the prize-giving because it’s a good four hour drive back to Jean’s where we intended to watch France play Argentina in the opening match of the rugby world cup and where I was to spend the night. In a totally unexpected turn-up for the books Argentina won. French supporters are understandably gutted but they deserved to lose and I, who have a soft spot for Argentina, was quite pleased.

It would have qualified as one of the most enjoyable periods of my summer had it not been for the fact that an hour after leaving home someone reversed into my motor car as I drove behind them at a crowded junction. Their car suffered a barely visible scratch on the bumper while mine was very severely scrunched all along one side. The lateral airbag also burst into action to protect the non-existent passengers and I’m now pestered by a light and a beep telling me it’s stuffed. Notwithstanding the fact that on this occasion I was entirely blameless I was (and am) really pissed off. I’d only just washed the car for God’s sake – not a frequent occurrence.

Back home I checked my emails and found that I have been cast in the Grads November production. It’s called Wild Honey and is Michael Frayn’s version of a Checkov play commonly known as Platonov. I play Porfiry Semyonovich Glagolyev. I’ve written that out in full because I need all the practice I can get in remembering it. He appears to be an old duffer who fancies his chances with a young bit of stuff. Well I’ll do my best but it’s always so hard to act against type.

I also got an email inviting me to be Gordon Ritchie’s friend on Facebook. I accepted of course since I thought we had been friends for the last twenty years or so. I guess this is a sort of formalisation like a civil partnership. Well not too like a civil partnership I hope.

It’s only a couple of weeks since I was asked to be Sabin Müller’s friend on Hi5. I checked that one out carefully because I’d never heard of Hi5 and suspected some scam. However it turned out to be genuine. It also seemed to be a bit accidental since as she explained to me she uses Hi5 to keep contact with the various youngsters associated with the projects she’s involved in. I seem to have been caught up in an email contact list swoop. But the upside was that I got an update on how she’s doing in the challenging field of youth social work. I always think of Switzerland as a haven of peace and tranquillity, but not so. They have at least as many social problems as anywhere else. Sabin has recently been working on reducing mobile phone violence. What’s that I thought? See for yourself by downloading a video at http://www.zentrale.ch

If your German is as weak as mine you could try Microsoft’s automated web page translation (right click menu). It gives an understandable English rendering of text on the page. Not as bad as that “one time sex thing” stuff but I suppose German’s a lot closer to English than Chinese is. It doesn’t help with the text in the graphics or with the video but you’ll get the idea.

I came across three deer on the road back from Gueret at lunchtime today. It looked like a hind with two youngsters. They were trying to get away from a car that was coming from the opposite direction so when I came around the corner they panicked even more than they were already panicking and ran back and forth across the road imitating the famous headless chickens. In my experience, gained as a chicken-keeper's neighbour, still having their heads on is no barrier to aimless dashing about. But that's another story.

Both cars stopped to give the deer a chance to get organised. Their problem was that high hedges border that stretch of the road making their normal tactic of rushing off into the fields a bit difficult.

At length, shattering my cosy notion that mother animals put their young first, the hind took a run at it and cleared the hedge leaving the wee ones to ferret about for a gap at ditch level.

Maybe it was their dad.

Will it displace Christmas?

If you are thinking of brushing up your Chinese in time for the Beijing olympics here's an item from the Language Log that will help you to say "A Time Sex Thing" even if that's not really what you meant.

Coping with being indoors during inclement weather means for me reading, listening to the radio and pottering about with software. Since I'm temporary custodian of some DVD's that constitute Connor's birthday gift to Ewan I've had a few hours entertainment from them as well.

The romantic/sexual adventures of the DVD boys (can't name them for fear that Ewan reads this before the gift is handed over) made me laugh, but perhaps not as much as the similar rich vein of relationship gold mined by Nick Hornby in High Fidelity. I really was helpless with laughter at some points. I could not have got onto my feet to run off had the house suddenly burst into flames. His work may seem far from Billy Connolly but in terms of its accurate and affectionate observation of people's frailties it reminded me of Connolly at his best.

One book I'm still reading that examines people's frailties in a wholly different context is The Middle Sea (A History of the Mediterranean) by John Julius Norwich. It may sound heavy but the text flows smoothly and deftly over the massacres of the Crusades, the venalities of the Popes, the plots of Kings and Queens and the almost always bloody rise and fall of empires. And I've only got up to the fifteenth century. Don't ask me any questions about it though. While it's an entertaining read it's a struggle to retain what I've learnt for longer than it takes to make a cup of tea between chapters.

Playing with the software I already have is never enough, although I'm quite pleased with these Majorcan triplets, so I've been downloading bits and pieces. With the pitifully slow connection that we have here that can take time. The last file I downloaded took four and a half hours. Best not to be in a hurry. More often than not I find that I can do without whatever joys the software offered and I get rid of it. However that can be easier said than done. They don't always want to go, or at least not entirely. I'm currently labouring to find out how to remove a harmless but annoying trace left by one piece of translation software. Keeps me happy while it's raining at any rate.

I found myself in the sports pages of the regional press this week. I'd like to tell you that it was as a result of some sporting triumph but that would strain your credulity as well as being bullshit. I took part in the regional heat of a national pitch and putt competition that was covered by La Nouvelle Republique. For some unaccountable reason the picture they chose to illustrate the event show me prominently in the foreground. Unusually you can't link to an individual story on the paper's website so here's a rather fuzzy picture I've pinched from them. (Well they didn't ask my permission to flash my photo round the world.) I've also copied the story itself which they do allow. If you should want to read it you can download from here the newspaper page it appears on. It's preceded by a football story so don't think you've got the wrong page. There are a few typos in it, notably wherever the reporter says "part" he means "par".

You may be surprised at the age of the winner.

Oh my God, prescient or what? It was glittering. Check the opening sentence of the news report.

Yesterday's rain drove me off the golf course after only four holes and home to an early bath and the exciting discovery that Claire's Fringe production had earned a FOUR STAR review on its opening night.

Further glory was bestowed on it by a commendation at a glittering awards ceremony in the Gilded Balloon last night. (I wasn't there to see but it was bound to be glittering because that's the way we theatricals like it).

What will today's rain bring?

Yesterday’s rain sent me to the cinema. Unfortunately I didn’t join the throng of adults and children queuing to see Pixar’s latest animation “Ratatouille” but, swayed by his reputation, went instead to Chabrol’s “La fille coupée en deux”.

I read the crits afterwards. Would it have made any difference if I’d read them first? That depends on who I would have believed. Many were impressed, Le Monde amongst them. Not so Libération which said “his latest film doesn’t add anything new to the body of his work. Even worse, it often lapses into caricature, gives off an air of déjà-vu, and dare one say it, is slightly dated and tacky.”

The most succinct crit that I read and every word of which I endorse came from a Le Monde reader who said “Badly acted, without interest, boring……avoid it.”

My failure to reach a podium place continued yesterday but I was happy that it did.

Yesterday's Terruzzi-Puthod competition prizes were very fine trophies which I'm sure cost Enrico and Carmen, the sponsors, a few bob. Anyone winning one would have a delightful and permanent souvenir of their achievement - provided they had an appropriate display space.

That's something I'm very short of so on those grounds alone it was a relief not to win something that would have to join my various copper plaques in the roof.

Now there is almost always a draw after the prize-giving. All the cards go in but anyone who has won a proper prize is barred from getting a second one. My card was the first drawn and I went home with a litre bottle of Campari.

I love Campari and it was tastefully wrapped as well. A case of the last shall be first, no?

There are no bishops in the French upper house, least of all bishops whose frocks are in the gift of a Presbyterian; but even such a robustly secular nation whose legal separation of church and state in 1905 was the culmination of centuries of wrangling, enjoys a Christian public holiday or three.

Witness yesterday's Feast of the Assumption. Civil servants left their desks, postmen put away their sacks, doctors closed their consulting rooms, dentists ignored cries of pain, car salesmen turned off the ignition, teachers would have put down their chalk but they were already at leisure; all in memory of a doubtful historical episode in which Mary went to Heaven.

For retirees public holidays tend to be a minor nuisance. Shops are closed just when you need them and the buses run less frequently. But we put up with them, knowing that they will soon be over and we can get on with the serious business of life without work.

Two days hard work in the garden deserved a reward I thought.

I had been dreading tackling that grass again but it turned out to be just within the competence of the lawnmower, albeit with occasional breakdowns and the need to do the whole job twice at different cut settings to get to the “domesticated field” state that is as close to a lawn as it will ever be under my tutelage.

At least I didn’t have to do a preliminary sweep with the brushcutter. I needed it only for particularly heavy patches and where mower access was difficult. “Brushcutter” by the way seems to me a closer translation for débroussailleuse and one that has a much more satisfactorily macho ring to it than “strimmer”.

Yesterday I weeded the rockery and cut back bits of undergrowth (and overgrowth) so at 17.20 having set up my deckchair and poured myself a glass of ice-cold white wine I was more than a little annoyed when it started to rain.

Looks like summer is as far off as ever.

Apropos the suggestion that I hie me to Kabul here’s something Simon Jenkins had to say in the Guardian the other day:

“A reputed 10,000 NGO staff have turned Kabul into Klondike during the goldrush, building office blocks, driving up rents, cruising about in armoured jeeps and spending stupefying sums of other people's money, essentially on themselves.”

To read the entire article go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,,2143787,00.html

Paddy Ashdown, whose name is taken in vain in the article replied thus: http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,,2145699,00.html

I was sitting quietly nursing a pint in the garden of the Dog and Shepherd near Brighton on Monday evening when I took a call from BT. I don’t know how they got hold of my mobile number but I’m glad they did. For the call was to tell me that they have agreed to refund me the 106 pounds and change that they charged me for connecting Dicksonfield to the wide world of telephony in October last. In addition they promised to provide me with excellent service in future. Does that mean they have turned over a new leaf?

This is the second bit of financial good news in almost as many days, for the car problem that threatened to prevent me from getting to Inverary fell within the tight constraints of my warranty so I’ll be refunded for that.

The car was fixed in time for me to get to the wedding, not without having to stop en route to buy a shirt, having forgotten to pack the one I intended to wear for the ceremony.

The Highlands were lovely and it was a brilliant bash. For Claire, who has had sight of the photos I took, the highlight was April’s shoes. I reproduce that picture here for the rest of the world to wonder at and may get around to making my other snaps available.

Claire’s interest is a validation of part of something I heard a female stand-up comic say the other day. For her act she dresses as drably androgynous as she can because otherwise, she claims, no-one will listen to her barbed wit. Instead the men will ruminate on the beauty of her knockers and the women will drool over her shoes.

Yesterday morning I rose at 4.45 and got to Barbansais around 18.30. It was a nice change to drive down from Dieppe but I don’t think I’ll make a habit of it. Traffic on non motorway roads can be abominably slow.

The grass is perhaps not as bad as it was when I arrived in May but the rockery is worse. Maybe I should take Ian’s advice (given in slightly slurred syllables at his son's wedding on Saturday) and head for the lucrative pastures of Kabul and leave the Barbansais garden to fester. NO chance.

More car trouble.

When I collected it on Saturday morning I felt it didn't pull too well in first but I just drove it home. Took it out yesterday for the first time since and had the same sensation. Coming back around 6pm from losing a few balls on Braids No. 1 it shook a bit and a wee picture of a spanner sprang up on the display accompanied by loud beeping and the text "Engine Fault".

This morning I should be en route to Inverary for April's wedding. Instead, after a restless night, I was at the garage before 8 o'clock demanding satisfaction (politely of course) since this cannot surely be the coincidental incidence of a fault just after it has left their hands.

If they don't fix it today, and they were not exactly optimistic about squeezing the job in, I'll have to hire a car or persuade the garage to lend me one and drive to Inverary tomorrow morning. No doubt the B&B will still want their money so this wedding looks like turning out to cost me more than my own did.

My car problem pales into insignificance however in comparison to David and Sally's.

They were en route to Barbansais on Sunday speeding along a Spanish motorway when one of their tyres went. The car left the carriageway and shot across the other one, turned on its side, ripped through a crash barrier and ended right way up in an oleander grove.

They stepped out essentially unhurt. Even their luggage was unhurt. Police and breakdown crew who attended regaled them with tales of recent fatalities and congratulated them on their astounding good fortune. Thanks to their membership of the Spanish equivalent of the RAC they were able to get back to Malaga where they are now keeping clear of cars for a while.

Their plans to spend August in France have been abandoned and Barbansais's fate is on hold again.