The Price Marking Order 2004 has been a boon and a blessing to us all. Since it passed into law (thanks to the EU) it has not been necessary to carry a calculator on shopping trips to work out whether a 450gm jar of jam on sale for £2.37 is or is not a better buy than a 385gm jar of jam on sale for £1.99.

Now the unit price must be displayed making comparison a piece of cake, though sometimes (and perhaps in contravention of the regulations) one sees a price per 100gm against one product and a price per kilogram against a similar product. The unwary or those unable to multiply/divide by 10 can get burnt.

I reflected on this as I shopped for coffee today. Amongst the brands on offer was one in a 250gm pack at £3.53. That's a unit price of £1.41 per 100gm.

For those who find it tedious or challenging to measure out their coffee the same brand's range also included packs containing three sachets of what they described as microground and instant coffee at £1.45. Of course you have to pay for the convenience of being able to rip open a sachet and empty the contents into your cup instead of going through all that messy and potentially inaccurate spooning.

Thanks to the Price Marking Order 2004 you can see how high a premium that convenience carries because coffee bought in this packaging costs £21.02 per 100gm. To be fair it's not exactly the same coffee in both cases but it would have to be some super duper coffee to warrant a price multiple of nearly 15.

Putting it another way, and I confess to using a calculator to work this out, the convenience premium per cup is about 40p. The inconvenience premium of having all that packaging to dispose of is incalculable both for the consumer and the planet.

We had more wind than usual at band practice last night when we were joined by a piper. She made more noise than the other 30 of us put together.

Many things strike me as incomprehensible. Try this one.

I left home at 9.45 this morning and the postman came to my door at 10 with an item posted in London yesterday. It needed a signature so of course he had to take it away and leave me a card. The card told me that it would be returned to my delivery office. So far so obvious.

On the reverse of the card it said please leave X hours before trying to pick it up. X appeared to be 40. Now the delivery office used to be five hundred yards along the road but it's now further away. Not so far away as would make it seem reasonable that it should take 40 hours for the item to reach it so I decided that it must be a badly scribbled 4 that was really a 1.

I went to the delivery office just before it closed at 7 this evening (not quite 10 hours I know but I thought I'd chance it). To no avail. The item was not available and I was assured that 40 hours was really 40 hours so there was no use coming back before Saturday morning.

If I'd paid 41 pence first class postage it would have been put through my letter box less than 24 hours after it had been posted. But I paid £5.50 for special delivery and so won't get it till about 72 hours after posting.

If you've never really understood how the financial collapse of 2008 happened, or even if have, this is the film to see. Gasps of astonishment, guffaws and gales of laughter swept the Cameo yesterday afternoon as the sorry tale was told largely in the culprits' own words.

It should be compulsory daily viewing in Downing Street, Threadneedle Street and Business Schools/University Economics departments throughout the land.

There's a really nice little exhibition about Edinburgh trams past and future in the St James centre. The display contains pictures ranging from the earliest horse drawn trams of 1871, which ran from Haymarket to Bernard Street, to the last tram run in 1956. We are told that the laying of the lines for the cable hauled trams in the 1880s and later the electric trams was an enormous disruption and went on for years. Plus ça change.

You can find lots of tram pictures and pictures of all sorts of Edinburgh related matters on this site.

In the St James centre exhibition there is a large map of the network and I homed in on this section, close to my heart.The red lines indicate the early horse drawn tram routes. I don't know to which point in time the tram service numbers relate but it's fascinating to see that most of the same numbers are still in use and pass along the same routes today.

The railway line shown crossing Leith Walk is still in use but the goods yard is now the sought after residential development of Dicksonfield.

This lovely souvenir of a weekend in Fife last March is heralding the Spring on my balcony.

I shan't manage to see all of the ten films that have been nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars but I have seen all the Directing nominees so I've been musing about where I would cast my vote.

It's terribly difficult to spot what the Director has contributed to a play or a film that has made it much better than it would have been without his/her involvement or under someone else's direction. So difficult that I think you have to judge every aspect of the work as being in the end the responsibility of the director. So for example, whether an actor is good or bad I'm likely to attribute 75% of the result to the director's work.

I complained in a previous post about Jeff Bridges' diction in True Grit. I'm sure he can speak as clearly as any man on the planet so either he was told to talk that way by the director ( in this case directors) or he invented it himself and it was accepted by the directors or they cobbled it together between them or horror of horrors they didn't notice. But leaving that aside (and I am, honestly) I rule True Grit out. It's a thoroughly well made and entertaining western but I don't see a quality in it that raises it above the well made and entertaining western that other competent directors could have produced.

The King's Speech is another fine film. It's a gripping story with a happy ending. It deploys fine British acting talent and what's more it's true. One of my neighbours received his DSO from the hands of George VI himself. He was understandably very moved by the film and even hard hearted republicans could surely spare a little sympathy for an afflicted fellow being. But is it more than a west end play with a movie camera stuck in front of it? I don't think so, despite its going outdoors for a mist swirling walk where speech therapist gets a temporary bum's rush. So for me it doesn't qualify for a film directing prize.

You might then think that I'd write off Black Swan straight away since it doesn't include a single exterior shot and could surely have been done on the stage. Should we not at least have seen the heroine staring moodily out of the bus window as it wended its way through rainy streets or her slow and thoughtful progress along crowded pavements as she choked back her fear of not getting the part? Maybe we did and I just don't remember. That's quite possible. But I do remember the close ups of weird bleeding, the magnificent feather sprouting pirouette and various other surreal bits and bobs that made it undeniably a movie. However the director didn't make me care one way or the other what happened to any of the characters so it fails.

That leaves The Social Network and The Fighter both of which induced in me very strong reactions to the characters. Interestingly enough in both cases my early dislike of some of them metamorphosed into a more sympathetic and nuanced appreciation. At one stage I was all for rushing home and cancelling my Facebook account but in the end I felt a bit sorry for the chap. I'd heard an interview with the director of The Fighter in which he said that the family portrayed had seen the film and were happy with it. By the end I could believe that, but was incredulous earlier that any family could be content to see themselves as the hopeless bunch of ineffective squabbling losers who appeared on screen.

The Social Network was fast-moving and tense. It cut through a fairly complicated story very clearly. It's characters were well drawn and multi-dimensioned. Everything about its physical being; costumes, settings, photography and so on was perfect. Until I saw The Fighter it had my vote for both directing and best picture Oscars.

But the magnificent fight scenes in The Fighter and what the director does with such unpromising human beings swings my judgement in his favour for the directing prize and despite the slightly sentimental tone towards the end (after all it's a true story and it's not the director's fault that there was a real life happy ending) I'd give it best picture as well, with the caveat that I haven't been able to judge all the contenders.

For best actor I'll swim against the cream of British acting talent tide and, even although I've only seen three of the contenders, award the prize to the chap who plays the Facebook chap. I'm not good with names but I'm sure at least one of them is called Jesse.

How's that for a 15 yard bunker shot, no more than 4 inches from the hole.

I idly wondered why the choir were sitting all over to one side with men and women slightly jumbled up and why it seemed below strength, but as soon as the music started I realised what a more than cursory glance at the orchestral forces onstage and a moment's reflection should have told me from the moment I sat down. They were being audience for the first half.

After the interval twice as many came in and organised themselves properly for singing. The band grew in size and added significantly to its noise making capabilities, not needed for Haydn but essential when you are about to give big licks to Brahms' German Requiem which has more crash bang climaxes than a triple X porn film.

They really gave it laldy and I could swear that at one point the conductor had both his feet off the ground such was his energic direction. But the piece ends in utter tranquility and Donald Runnicles managed to keep the audience silent for an impressively long time before relaxing his grip and allowing thunderous applause to break out.

It was a very full tenner's worth of music but £4.50 for a G&T was a bit steep for us in the cheap seats. Maybe if I could make it last for more than five minutes it would seem better value.

In the 1969 film True Grit John Wayne wears a patch over his left eye, leaving the right one in action, possibly as a wink in the direction of his political views. I don't believe he expresses any polital views in the film but I'm sure what he does say is clearly heard by the audience. His successor, Jeff Bridges, has his right eye covered instead and his mouth might well have been for all I was able to make out of his dialogue at times.

That apart I enjoyed the film. It looked beautiful: the heroes were rough and tough with hearts of gold; the baddies were properly nasty, and the girl who accompanies the marshal through the badlands in search of her father's killer is a splendidly forceful young lady. The Western is such a satisfying genre. You can rely on a good story with plenty of action and if not always a truly happy ending then a morally just one.

Morality gets an outing in Nixon in China to which the Metropolitan Opera did justice in their simulcast last night (tiny annoying sound transmission glitches excepted), not least in at last getting around to mounting a production nearly a quarter of a century after it premiered in Houston (Texas not Renfrewshire). It only took Edinburgh twelve months after all.

I've often listened to the music since that Ediburgh production but could remember only two or three scenes clearly so it was like seeing a new work, albeit depicting not the present day but a moment in history.

Can that moment when Nixon attempted rapprochement with China have helped turn the country that the opera portrays with its lauding of heroic peasants and soldiers into today's capitalist giant sucking up the world's resources?

If so he must be sitting in the afterworld echoing one of Chou En Lai's final lines from the opera - "how much of what we did was good?" - probably with the odd expletive deleted.

Ballet of a different order with Black Swan which I saw last night. I thought it was great entertainment, nicely tense and spooky, fast moving with an undercurrent of incipient violence throughout. And how did they do that wonderful sprouting of feathers as Natalie Portman spun around in the role of the black swan? Movie magic.

The Telegraph's review reflects my reaction exactly - "...delirious hokum, high-class trash...".

I paid particular attention to the heroine's bum throughout. Not dirty old man, peeping tom style but in an effort to substantiate a claim I heard on the radio (Woman's Hour I think) when an expert averred that although Natalie Portman's dancing was very convincing you could tell she was not really a dancer because she did not have a ballerina's bum.

I have seen quite a bit of ballet over the years but if pressed to identify a common characteristic of ballerinas I would have suggested that, unlike say opera singers, they tend to be skinny and small busted. It seems however that the defining characteristic is a muscular bottom; buttocks do not remain soft and cuddly under the rigorous regime of the dance class. Closer inspection than that possible from the back row of the cinema would be needed to verify the claim but I'm glad I tried.

The Palais Garnier was packed last night for a performance of Nicolas Le Riche's ballet Caligula but only a score or so of Edinburghers had been intrigued enough to come along to the Cameo for the simulcast.

Now my idea of Caligula is that he was mad, bad and dangerous to know; an impression reinforced by the bits of BBC radio's I Claudius that I caught recently. He loved his sister ( isn't that nice) and was so potty about his horse that it lived in bejewelled luxury and he proposed to make it a Roman consul (it didn't happen). He slaughtered thousands and was eventually done away with by the Praetorian Guard who tired of their mad, unpredictable tyrant.

Given all that you could be forgiven for expecting a Reservoir Dogs of a ballet. You would have been disappointed. According to the programme note "...Le Riche overturns clichés and embark (sic) upon an intimate exploration of a rich and complex personality."

This meant that his tyranny was reduced to giving some lads in black (guards, senators, legionaries?) a push from time to time and laughing hysterically at them. He danced lovingly with a couple of ladies, one of whom must have been his wife and the other the moon (another of his fixations) since both are named in the programme. By the way I almost never buy programmes but applaud managements like this one who give you a free A4 sheet of essentials.

He had a fit and twitched on the floor a couple of times to show us that he was ill not mad and every so often a chap in white came on stage accompanied by three others also in white but in flowing skirty garb rather than trousers ( well tights, this is ballet after all). These I took to be Mnester the famous pantomime actor (and said to be lover of Caligula) and his troupe. They didn't make me laugh.

I was particularly disappointed about the horse. Now the dancer did it beautifully, don't get me wrong and the close relationship between man and horse was tenderly portrayed but I was expecting a madman prancing about and adorning his horse with necklaces and sticking flowers behind its ears and a laurel crown on its head while putting to death the odd member of the gathered populace.

But it was all of a piece with the rest of the production, no blood and guts. I suppose I should have known from the start that it wasn't going to match my preconception since they were dancing to Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. It's lovely music but isn't in the blood and guts league and dare I say it, is a bit over used.

So the great question arose in my mind, will this Caligula die peacefully in his bed or will he be assassinated as history demands? I don't know what Nicolas le Riche decided because my eyes took a rest as the ballet reached its end.

Now my next ballet simulcast is the Bolshoi with Don Quixote. I do hope that we will get some decent and vigorous tilting at windmills.

I'm having doubts about Laphroaig. Not the craitur herself you understand, which is as fine a drop as ever warmed a throat, but the all too convenient translation.

When I raise my glass and say "slainte" am I not wishing you good health? So if the name of a whisky had anything to do with health it would surely have a smidgeon of slainte about it.

I'm after thinking it's not a translation it will be but a marketing slogan (Gaelic sluagh-gairm war cry, from sluagh army + gairm cry).

What I liked about Courtney Pine and his band ( apart from the music which was wonderful and was being heard in public for only the second time) was that they got on stage promptly and played for a solid two hours dovetailing neatly with the Dunfermline/ Edinburgh bus timetable.

Cyrus Chestnut on the other hand, for all that he started on time, followed the traditional pattern of playing for about half an hour, having a short, verging on long break, playing for another half hour or so then disappearing briefly to shuffle coyly back on stage for an encore.

Not that I'm complaining about the music. Far from it. He was brilliant and endeared himself doubly to the audience when his mobile phone went off.

No, the problem was that this left me with 50 minutes to fill before I could get a bus. But as we know every cloud has a silver lining and in those 50 minutes I enjoyed a hauf an a hauf (non Scots drinkers check here) and improved my Gaelic to boot.

For the pub in which I sought refuge had a board advertising various whiskies and giving an English translation of their names. Now from TV advertising I knew that Glenmorangie meant "glen of tranquility" but the pub's translation "glen of great peace" made lots of sense for leaving aside "glen" which has passed into English most Scottish non Gaels will recognise that "mor" means "big". So now I know the Gaelic for peace. Could this be where Angie from Eastenders got her name?

Glenfiddich meaning "glen of the deer" could probably be guessed from the stag's head on their label and "big stone" for Cragganmore seems obvious but "healthy days" for my favourite tipple Laphroaig is welcome confirmation of how good it is.

Thursday's snow put me off from playing golf after my session at the range. I was relieved but not surprised when Friday dawned with only constant rain. Not surprised because I was going to Glasgow to lunch with a friend and it seems to me that it always rains when I go there.

I’d picked out a restaurant from a little 2010 Glasgow dining guide and had a look at the menus on their website and it all looks fine. Scottish recipes using local produce, family run and so on. When we got there the premises looked as though they’d been empty for years. Back home I had a closer look at the website and found they were now out in Houston (Renfrewshire not Texas!).

We had an excellent Chinese lunch just across the road but I was disappointed that a Scottish flavoured place had gone.

Because I was going on to Dunfermline later for an evening at the Fife Jazz Festival I decided to spend the afternoon in Glasgow and travel to Dunfermline from there. We went to the Scottish Caravan and Outdoor Leisure Show. I had a couple of reasons for that. I’m not in the least interested in caravans but I flirt from time to time with the idea of a camper van to trot around Europe with and I think betimes of a little log cabin that I could plonk down in France when our house there is sold. I had also been seduced by pictures of flapping sails on their site but the boats had sailed on leaving a row of big gas guzzling jet skis to cram into your caravan. It was a little disappointing but it kept me out of the rain.

The concert in Dunfermline was a bit of a challenge. I wouldn’t say that by the end I liked what they had played but my ears were a bit more receptive. Free improvisation they call it. Free seems to mean that they are not constrained by tunes or harmonies. Tonight I’m going to hear Courtney Pine whose music is bit more tuneful and then tomorrow an American called Cyrus Chestnut with a traditional piano, bass and drums trio. It’s a very diverse festival.

Bread quality forecasting skills sadly A1.

Many months ago inspired by a TV show or something I decided to try making some bread. So I bought the appropriate flour and some yeast and put them in a cupboard.

The other day I noticed that the flour was two months past its date of death so this evening I made the twisted looking loaf above. It doesn't taste too bad but I'm not sure that it won't deteriorate overnight.

No need for tranquillizers this morning. From the beginning of the second set, a few rallies excepted, the result was not in doubt. Djokovic was amazing and certainly deserved to win. Better luck next time for Andy Murray. He played hard, took his defeat well and doesn't give the impression of settling for second best so there's no need to consign him to history just yet.

I was celebrating one of Scotland's established champions last night at a Burns supper. It was a most entertaining evening, my toast to the lassies went down quite well and John Kelly delivered one of the best recitations of Tam O'Shanter that I ever expect to hear. I've made a mental note of some aspects of his performance and will unashamedly copy them should I have to do it myself sometime.

What a stressful morning I've had. I shall need to have a box of tranquilizers beside me when he takes on Djokovic on Sunday morning. Two boxes if it goes to five sets.

I was complaining to one of my French friends once about some nonsensical legal requirement. He agreed it was nonsensical but offered the explanation that with two buildingsfull of politicians in Paris with nothing else to do but pass laws some chunks of fool's gold would inevitably appear amidst the pure nuggets of sensible legislation. (He has a great sense of irony.)

A recent chunk (or nugget, depending on your point of view) is the requirement that, as of 1/1/11, a property cannot legally be offered for sale in France in the absence of a "Diagnostic de performance énergétique". By handing over €110 to an expert we have got four copies of a colourful five page report that tells us all sorts of things, some with unbelievable precision. Three of those copies have gone to agents who would otherwise have been obliged to take us out of their windows and delete us from their websites.

Mind you we've been in their windows and on their websites for two years without result so maybe a "Diagnostic de performance vente" should be demanded of them.

So on a scale from A (économe) to G (énergivore) of annual energy consumption required for heating the building and producing hot water we are in band G. Well a cursory look at our ancient building would tell you it's not in the snug and cosy league, even in summer. On the positive side though it takes so much energy to heat the place that there's none left over for global warming. On a similar scale dealing with the emission of greenhouse gases we're only at B.

It then gives you a whopping great number of the kilowatt hours needed per annum and tells you to the nearest cent what that costs and rounds off by estimating costs and return on investment for various ways of improving the energy performance of the building and tells you about the tax breaks available.

All very impressive but I don't think it will be an encouragement to prospective buyers.

A nice example of commentator's blight. As Murray and Dolgopolov warmed up yesterday the commentator was waxing lyrical about Murray's serve. What he particularly found impressive was that when Murray missed his first service the ball was going out rather than smashing into the net. This showed, according to him, that the ball throw was just right, that Andy was stretching and getting his elbow up and hitting the ball on a desirable upwards trajectory.

Then on the first point of the first game of the match Murray serves a double fault straight into the net. No comment from the commentator.

I got the recording organised perfectly last night and enjoyed Murray's game when I got up this morning. The one little disappointment was that I forgot not to switch on the radio when I woke and so heard the result before I got to the recording.

That rather drained the match of tension. But our man won. Roll on the next one.

Still having trouble recording the tennis. I set the machine to record channel 301 but but when I got up 301 was showing highlights of the previous day's play. I thought nothing of it, assuming the match would start after the highlights but then the highlights started all over again.

I discovered that behind my back the BBC had switched Murray's match to BBC2. Half an hour after the match got going I had to go out so I hit the record button. To no avail since not only hadn't they told me but they hadn't told the EPG which thought it was recording Pinkie the Perky Pig or some such kiddie programme and stopped recording when that finished - round about the end of the second set.

It's 2 love to the Beeb so far. Will I make a comeback in the second week?

It's not only bankers who can afford little luxuries in these straitened times. I clocked one of the labourers re-laying the pavement in Chambers Street this morning puffing on a 9 inch cigar as he worked.

I sat up late last night watching Days of Wine and Roses which I had recorded from its transmission in the middle of the previous night. My memories of the film had dulled over the nearly 50 years since I first saw it but I knew it was about the demon drink, that brandy Alexander was chief baddie and that Jack Lemmon played a stormer.

All of that was borne out by the re-viewing and although some of it seemed mightily melodramatic it was a story that could put the fear of death into you if you were sipping while you watched, even moderately. I had to cough furiously not to feel ill at ease about my hot toddies.

I toyed with the idea of watching another film to bring me up to 4.20 when Andy Murray's first match was due to start but decided to record it. It will be on the red button the BBC website said so I found red button on my channel guide, set the time and went to bed.

Morning came but no Murray. The recording was blank. I was I believe a victim of red button interactivity, which seems to be defined as splitting the activity between channels 301 and 303. Too bad if you plump for the wrong one.

I've hardly moved out of the house this week in an effort to shake off my cold. It's been a good opportunity to get stuck into reading some of the books that came my way at Christmas. For a short time I'll be able to talk knowledgeably about Tom Morris's role in the development of golf, an 18th century French expedition to the Amazon to establish the shape of the earth, and the banking meltdown as seen in fictional form.

But that knowledge will sink more or less slowly and more or less completely into the pulped fiction and non-fiction sludge from the hundreds of other books I've read and forgotten that constitutes my cultural capital.

There has also been some excellent snooker to watch, culminating today in an all Chinese final between the self-confident and articulate Marco Fu and the shy and tongue-tied Ding Junhui. I am looking forward to that as the second best treat of the week.

Top treat was Connor's moist and tasty homemade gingerbread.

And the cold? The treatment has been successful. I shall be fit for normal life tomorrow.

You know those cinema drink ads full of good looking people in fashionable clobber having a whale of a time in up market bars where the final frame entreats you quietly in a corner to be responsible and drink in moderation.

Well the financial services industry, no doubt full of remorse at the part it played in the crisis of the last couple of years, has followed the drinks industry's lead. I got a replacement credit card in the post today and there was a little sticker on it with a message in block caps - "PLEASE SPEND RESPONSIBLY".

It was easily peeled off so if they genuinely want people to hold back they need to get a bit more hard hitting with a permanent reminder on the card. How about a range of Dickensian affinity cards? A picture of a debtors' prison or of Mr Micawber reciting his famous mantra. That would surely do the trick.

I'm self medicating at bedtime this evening with a brace of hot toddies against the pesky cold that has plagued me for the past two weeks.

I've managed to ignore it and get on with whatever but I was sorely tempted not to struggle out across sheets of ice and under driving rain tonight. However the siren call of St Cecilia was too strong to resist.

For tonight was the first meeting of the new session of the Dunedin Wind Band within whose ranks I am determined to blow my horn. I am testing their announced welcome to all ages and abilities. They were in fact very welcoming and didn't seem to mind that for most of the time I didn't play because I was totally lost.

It looks like their system is based on the well known chuck him in at the deep end principle and I was pretty pleased that there were a couple of numbers where I managed to keep afloat for more than the first few bars. We'll see if I can make a better fist of it next week given that I'll have time to try some of the music at home. I say some because there is a lot.

In case enthusiasm wanes and I am tempted to backslide I paid all the dues for the four month session straight away.

British, and more particularly English, musical history is replete with traditional observances. One thinks of the candlelit va et vient of the Sally Gardens, of Malcolm Sargent's adoring promenaders, of Glynebourne's picknicking middle classes, of Elgar and the three choirs festival, of Britten and the Snape Maltings. But no musical hero has so marked our British inheritance than did Herr Händel.

His Messiah is a towering work of genius and the fact that it first saw the light of day in Dublin only endears it more to the British audiences who have made it their own over the ensuing 268 years.

I thoroughly enjoyed the performance that I attended this afternoon and was only momentarily thrown when at one point a man in the front row of the stalls rose to his feet before the notes of the section just finished had died away. Could you not have waited a moment, I thought, before dashing out for a pee? But he stood ramrod still and to my astonishment the entire audience followed his example. I rose with them not wishing to be remarked upon as a heretic. The singers then burst forth into the Hallelujah chorus and as it ended and we sat back into our seats my neighbour pondered whether George the third had needed to stretch his legs and that was why he had stood up at this point.

That alerted me to the fact that we were here observing a tradition. Now I am informed by Google that it was in fact George the second who stood up, and I have no reason to doubt that it was. Especially since I know that the mad one was George III.

What Google is less positive about is why he stood up at this point. Far be it from me to adduce a reason. Let me only entreat that should you attend a performance of Handel's Messiah you rise reverentially and with a straight face at the self same point to honour and maintain an important British musical tradition.

For those of you inspired by the haikus written by prominent Scottish literary figures and projected in words and pictures onto a screen on the side of the RSA building yesterday contrasting in a very haiku like manner with the music emanating from the stage alongside here's how to do your own.

Remember that Basho said that each haiku should be a thousand times on the tongue so don't rush into print before you've tested it thoroughly.

幸有れ

A snowplough arrived in Dicksonfield this morning, about four days too late. The driver sat for a while, mobile phone pressed to his ear, no doubt reporting the absence of snow to his management. Had he bothered to drive around the back of some of the blocks or even just to the bottom of the entry road he'd have found something to plough but he put his phone back in his pocket and drove off.

No thanks to the ploughboy but normal traffic on top of snow clearing and grit spreading by some residents has brought our main drag into a passable without too much care condition.

This is a fine pair of boots that I have owned for many years and here they are sporting the latest in city winter walking technology.

We're all familiar with strapping on crampons when we take to mountain snowfields and I strapped on the urban equivalent on Sunday to get home from London Street.

Called Yaktrax and available from all good outdoor shops they must be the bestest birthday present I've been given this year so far.

Need cheering up in the bleak and snowy wasteland that is Edinburgh this morning?

Try Ronnie Corbett, one of the city's most cheerful characters, in a sketch for the electronic age.

There was a treat for snooker fans last night when John Higgins topped his come back from match fixing allegations with a come back on the table.

Trailing by 9 frames to 5 he took 5 frames in a row to win the UK championship by one frame.

For anyone who struggles to move the cue ball in a straight line from one end of the table to the other his skills are supernatural.

See the closing stages.

I've been watching the struggles of my fellow citizens against the winter weather with what might best be called amused indifference.

It's a long time since I did a 360 in my Fiat X19 in a late night snowstorm on the A68 driving back to Edinburgh from Norwich. One of the many benefits of being retired and living in a comfortably warm flat with a supermarket within spitting distance is that I don't have to go anywhere and if I do it's not far.

Who'd be young?

Today's Woman's Hour included an item on burlesque in which pro and con arguments were put. I liked the definition given at the top of the programme. It's posh girls stripping off when they ought to know better.

That's private education for you.

With help I got my car dug out on Friday and got down to the borders on Saturday for a Tempest reunion party. We drove down on clear roads through beautiful snow-covered countryside. The journey back on Sunday was just the same but today we're snowed in again.

What perfect timing, but that production must be blessed for didn't the rain stop just in time during the last performance to give us an entire run whose outdoor scenes were unaffected by weather.

I got an email in response to ordering something on-line that told me "Your order has been shipped and will be delivered to you within the next few days. You can check on the status of your order 9999 at any time by clicking on http:link."

So, eager to find out where it had got to in this fiendish weather, I clicked on the link and up came a Royal Mail page saying "Recorded signed for items are only tracked after the item has been delivered........Please try again later."

Are they serious?

There is growing discontent being voiced on the radio this morning about automatic school closures because of the snow. I saw a man and child arrive at the local primary at five past nine. They both left two minutes later. I expect he got straight onto the phone to join the complaining band.

Child safety is said to be the issue. That can't be the explanation for the cancellation of the daytime adult education class that I should be attending at this very minute. The school in which it takes place has someone there answering the phone so it can't be buried in snow. (Neither the school nor the phone.)

The man who is organizing a petition to parliament to prevent schools and other organizations from banning parents from taking pictures of their little darlings in nativity plays on the grounds of child safety might think about extending it to cover school closures as well.

There's always a certain amount of disruption when wintry weather strikes but in Edinburgh today the buses were doing their best to get around the city and most businesses seemed to be up and running.

I was disappointed to hear that tomorrow's celebrations in St Andrew's Square had been cancelled because of the wintry weather. That seemed a bit chicken-hearted to me but apparently "The snow has damaged two of the marquees, creating a potential public safety issue, " Well I don't want to be smothered by a collapsing marquee so I suppose I'll have to let them off for acting on the better safe than sorry principle.

The airport was closed at times and given the way my bus was sliding about at 15 miles an hour on a gritted road that was probably a sensible application of the better safe than sorry principle as well.

Why were the schools closed though? In rural areas where roads may well be impassable and people live quite far from their school you can see a reason for it. Who wants to be trapped overnight in a badly heated building with hundreds of kids and an inadequate handful of teachers. If ever there was a case for better safe than sorry then that's it.

But here in the city centre? I've had a look at the catchment area map for my local primary and the furthest point from the school can't be more than half an hour's walk even in snowy conditions. So the pupils could surely have got there. Travel problems for the teachers then, who may well live much further away. That hasn't stopped hundreds of other people getting to work. So what's at issue? Snowball fights in the playground endangering pupil safety? Greater potential for accidents? Something might go wrong so better safe than sorry and too bad for the parents who had to take a day off as a result?

But if we give the schools the benefit of the doubt we surely can't do the same for my local library, also closed because of adverse weather conditions according to a notice on its door. I am truly struggling to see how the weather impacts on a library. This one doesn't even open till 1pm on a Monday, so it's not as though overnight snow hadn't been totally cleared by the time the staff needed to set out from home.

It's the sort of mystery that give public services and public servants a bad name.

Looks like I've been well and truly had.

The consensus of those commenting on the royal wedding article that I posted about is that it's a spoof. They pick out a number of points that are giveaways for someone better acquainted with Marlborough College and/or popular culture than I am.

So hats off to i and The Independent. I may buy you again.

"Make no mistake, there is nothing grand about young Kate Middleton! Her parents may be multi-millionaires with a sprawling mansion in Berkshire, she may have been public school-educated, own her own London flat and take her holidays in Mustique but, beneath the surface, she is simply "our Kate", a modern girl like thousands of others."

I fear the paragraph above is not ironic. It is part of a wholly cringe inducing article that appears in the soi-disant new kind of newspaper i. You can read the whole nauseating piece in i's progenitor, The Independent.

I read it en route to a talk at the NLS by the author of Scott-land, a fascinating sounding book about Walter Scott. Much of the book I gather (in spite of the warm feelings aroused by the vino accompanying it's promotion I did not buy but shall wait till it's in the library before reading) is concerned with the remarkable influence that Scott has had culturally throughout the world over the last 180 years or so.

Part of his non-literary fame rests on his stage management of George IV's visit to Edinburgh in 1822 when he bigged up the king to the Scots and vice versa. I suspect the i's royal correspondent to be an acolyte of Scott in this respect if not in his prose style nor (hopefully) his cultural influence.

As you know I loved Disgo but there was another show at the Traverse this week that fear of the laws of libel prevented me from reviewing.

Joyce generously gives it two stars, thanks in all probability to the brownies which I agree were tasty.

She should come and see the Improbables who do improvisation a whole lot better.

As I sat at breakfast looking at the clear blue sky the radio declared that there would be rain in Scotland and that it would fall mostly in the east.

At lunchtime the weather forecast spoke again of rain in eastern Scotland. The sky was no longer predominantly blue but I had not yet seen rain.

At 5pm I was assured that the rain in eastern Scotland would ease in the course of the evening.

It is now after midnight and Edinburgh is as dry as a bone as it has been all day, though to be wholly truthful I cannot vouch for the period between 17.45 and 20.15 when I was at the cinema.

I draw no conclusions from this set of circumstances.

In these terror times we don't raise an eyebrow at an airport when asked to take off our shoes, but it is a little more unusual to be told - not even asked - to take off your shoes when about to take your seat in a theatre.

But that's how we were treated at the Traverse last night. Full of bonhomie engendered by the drink that had been liberally served at what the Trav luvvies called their wassail before the show, we the audience cheerfully complied. As the lights dimmed we were cajoled out of our seats onto the black performance space, ducking under the blue fluorescent light bearing bars that surrounded it as we went. For the ensuing hour or so a performance took place around, amongst and with us. We were cleverly marshalled here and there at times and at others were free to roam and frequently had to move smartly out of the way as a body slithered along the floor or gyrated across the space. We were incorporated into the performance when for example a dancer curled herself around a spectator's leg, leant on a shoulder or took two people by their waists and whisked them adroitly from one side to another through the crowd crying touch me, touch me to the rest of us. Some of the dancers were clearly identifiable as such by their clothes and where they appeared from at the start but others had been seated in the auditorium dressed normally so it wasn't always obvious who was performer and who was spectator. The show culminated with the audience grouped together in the centre of the acting area waving their arms in the air while the performers looked on.

It was great fun. Clearly about removing barriers between audience and performer Disgo didn't just breach the fourth wall but consigned it to oblivion along with the other three. I can't imagine how the job could be better done.

I know almost nothing about video games and I care even less. But that may be about to change for I am lending my voice to a video game modding project.

The little I do know about these games is that they seem to consist of trying to get from A to B while running about shooting, wielding swords, slicing the heads off people, fighting weird creatures, indulging in various sorts of derring do, and all to a deafening soundtrack.

This game, Dragon Age, looks to be from that mould since players are said to "engage in bone-crushing, visceral combat against massive and terrifying creatures". But there is perhaps something more subtle involved since they also "experience complex moral decisions".

I'm not sure if they make them or suffer the consequences of them. Both probably. Judging by the brief I have been given about my character he'll be in the thick of the moral decision making side of the game, but not above slicing off the odd head.

Here tis:

1. Ruggieri (Roo-jerry)

2. Character Acting Style:

Ruggieri is always concentrating and pondering. He has a warriors posture and resolve coupled with the wisdom and experience of his age. As such, he always stands with his chest out but is never too forceful in his posture. His face is always calm and dictating. He uses soft and short physical movements when walking or making gestures.

3. Number of lines: To be determined

4. Character Role:

Ruggieri is sort of the father Farinata never had. He loved her mother very much and acts as a guardian for Farinata and Neona due to the death of both their parents. Ruggieri often helps calm Farinata’s rage and embues (sic) her with a sense of morality and understanding throughout troubled times.

5. Male, 44, Dalish. Calmly spoken, always encouraging.

6. Character Personality:

Ruggieri has a warm dismeanor (sic) that makes him very approachable. He’s dealt with a lot of pain in his life but somehow still came out an optimist.

7. Character Voice:

Ruggieri has a warm and calming voice. He can generally talk someone out of any rage induced fit. He thinks before speaking so his comments are always calm and concise.

8. Character Background:

Ruggieri was desperately in love with Farinata’s mother before the sisters were born. Farinata’s mother chose a human male instead and it ate away at Ruggieri over the years. Since then, he has had to care for the sisters from nearly toddlers and is constantly reminded of his loss in love for their mother. While he doesn’t tell them about these things, he knows Farinata is at least somewhat aware of the past.

9. Character Story Arc:

Ruggieri is taking care of Neona throughout the entirety of the game until the end when they are attacked by the Darkspawn and Neona is killed. He then relates the news to Farinata which triggers the last event, rage-filled Farinata slaughters the Darkspawn at Hunter Fell.

10. Dialogue Samples:

“Farinata, this war is going to be more costly than you can imagine. Are you sure you want to seek out the Grey Wardens?”

Delivery: Concerned comment, worrisome/concerned

Situation: Ruggieri asking Farinata to reconsider searching out the Grey Wardens to fight the Darkspawn.

“The Grey Wardens need your skills Farinata, no one can conquer the Darkspawn alone.”

Delivery: Debate on the issue of humans handling their own problems. Encouraging/steadfast

Situation: Ruggieri relates the importance of everyone working together despite racial differences in order to survive.

“We were attacked again at Kal-Sharok....their (sic) were too many Fari...I’m....I’m sorry.”

Delivery: Emotional breakdown, nearly crying/ashamed

Situation: Ruggieri reveals to Farinata that her only living family is dead.

I can't wait to get that armour on and stick my chest out.

I saw an interesting programme on the box this evening tracing the history of Donald Trump's campaign to build "the greatest golf course in the world", not to mention a hotel, apartment blocks and hundreds of houses on the coastal dunes just north of Aberdeen.

It's taken four years but he's overcome almost all obstacles and work has started. I say almost because there are still two pieces of land that he wants but which the owners refuse to sell. The threat of compulsory purchase hangs over them and I have little doubt that Trump will ultimately prevail.

The glimpses inside his Manhattan apartment and private jet afforded by the programme indicate something of a Louis 14th lifestyle and three wives suggests a nod towards Henry the 8th but he seemed a nice enough chap and by all accounts he loved his teuchter mum from Stornoway. So it's a combination of big businessman ambition and sentiment that's the driving force behind the project. Your guess as to the proportions of each.

A small golf course could maybe have nestled in there without doing much damage but I think the scale of the development will completely spoil the area. The saving grace may be that, as an Aberdeenshire friend of mine said, no-one will be mad enough, given the climate, to live in the place.

The solemnity of a day like remembrance Sunday can cause one’s thoughts to get a bit mixed up and words to come slightly out of order.

I’m sure that must have happened to the lady whose email arrived just after the two minutes silence. Going by the name of 2HotRebecca she invited me to visit her on a website. She assured me that access was free of charge but cautioned that “They make you join to verify your age.”

Verification of my age is I think assured by the fact that I didn’t take up the little poppet's invitation.

In my earliest days at primary school an essential tool for writing and drawing was a slate. These were much in evidence when on Friday I visited Scotland Street school, one of Rennie Mackintosh's fine buildings that is now a museum showing the school life of yesteryear.

I went round the museum with an object in my hands that was extraordinarily like a slate and which had writing and drawings on it. But this was an Ipad and I was participating in a site specific theatrical presentation called Alma Mater developed by Fish and Game and presented as part of a get together of the International network for contemporary performing arts.

The drawings were technically speaking a video, and I was led around the building by a series of children who appeared on the screen. It was a bit weird to walk along a corridor following a child who was in the video image of the corridor but wasn't in the real corridor and to encounter other members of the virtual school community in various situations.

It was entertaining and enjoyable, but keeping an eye on the screen and on the real world at the same time (to avoid tripping on the stairs for example) meant that I didn't think much about what it was all in aid of, i.e. its artistic purpose!

Fortunately I had a handout that I read afterwards that spelt it all out. It's quite long so I'll just quote wee bits of it:

"....Alma Mater follows children learning how to behave, resisting their own playful, carnal desires and submitting to the world of adults. ......Mackintosh employed images of growth up through the vertical levels of the school......the film echoes this growth both in the size of the children's bodies and in the accumulation of knowledge gained on the journey through the school...."

At the Traverse earlier in the week Wedekind's Spring Awakening also put slates to good use but here the children were not resisting their playful, carnal desires and the poor dears paid the price.

The Guardian review gave it four stars and I will admit to having admired the staging (apart from the tedious back and fro of the big blackboard) and the capabilities of the actors but I just didn't engage with the piece at all, probably because whatever adolescent angst I experienced has vanished into the mists of time and the shock value of the play along with it.

Maybe the rock musical version would have got me scribbling on my slate with more enthusiasm.

The other day I moaned about the distribution of The Edge of Dreaming. The film-maker has contacted me to let me know that it is showing at the Eden Court in Inverness this weekend.

Unfortunately I am not free to attend but others may be, especially since after seeing the film on Saturday you can take part in a dream workshop on Sunday. Here is the description from the Eden Court website:

"The director is offering a special space for people to engage with film in a new and personal way. The Edge of Dreaming is a documentary that takes us into the dreams of an ordinary woman, a rational, busy mother of three who doesn't have time to remember her dreams. But when they come, shockingly, true, she begins to explore the interface between dreams and neuroscience. The results are startling and profound.

The film has a lot of space for the audience to bring in their own perspective and this workshop is an opportunity to bring your own experiences to understanding gained through the film. There are a maximum of twelve places for people to take part in this 2 hour workshop the day after the screening as a group, we will work with your own dreams, fears and life experience, engaging with it further through story. "

This would be just the ticket for a blogging friend of mine who has been going on about her dreams a lot recently.

One of my dreams when I'm awake is that one day I will be a good golfer. The nightmare is that the summer has shown, as did the previous summer, that I am just getting worse. I have decided to take matters in hand this winter. Normally I eschew the practice range but there is a deal in town where senior lads and lassies get a basket of balls, a cup of coffee, a plate of biscuits and some tuition on a Thursday morning for only 50p more than the cost of the balls themselves.

I tried it out this morning. The other oldies were a cheerful group and the coffee and biscuits were excellent. What's more, and after watching me for only a couple of minutes, the pro made a small change to my swing that gave a much better result. So I'll be back. Had it not been raining I'd have played nine holes on the adjacent course but you have to draw the athletic line somewhere.

On the way home I passed an LRT bus vaunting an improved exhaust system with the cheerful and imaginative slogan that I might make my own - "auld but not reekie".

Homework for my Spanish class was to prepare something about national stereotypes so being a thoroughly modern schoolboy I turned to the internet for inspiration and information.

I found this amusing set of maps showing how the world looks from different points of view.

I was very dismissive of Inception, mostly because it was little more than lots of people running about in various places shooting at one another, but partly because of its absurd premise about infiltrating people's dreams.

Nonetheless I find dreams and dreaming intriguing so I was very interested to hear the other day about a film documenting the film-maker's experience of dreaming that she was going to die and subsequently falling ill and coming within an inch or two of fulfilling the dream. It's a Scottish film by a local film-maker and it premiered at the Edinburgh Film Festival in June, although I wasn't aware of it then, so it is not a little annoying to find that a DVD is available in the USA but not here. To find further that one can watch the film on-line but not with a Scottish IP address adds to that annoyance.

No doubt it is all to do with money. I would feel more charitable towards Amy Hardie's escape from death if the film had been made available here before it went on to rake in the dollars. But it is about to be released in cinemas in the UK and I very much hope that it will return to the city of its birth so that I can see The Edge of Dreaming.

I must have been on the edge of dreaming this evening when at Fort Kinnaird I found myself going frenchwise round a roundabout. I blame the complicated layout of those commercial centres.

Two weeks ago tonight I was enjoying a delicious roast dinner with friends in Northumberland en route home from France. My time there was lovely but apart from the square bottomed pepper and salt mills that I forgot to pack I'm not missing anything so far, thanks to having been much diverted here by theatre, cinema, live music and suchlike cultural outings, none of which figured in my six pleasant and peaceful weeks in the French countryside.

Have no fear I'm not going to list them all but will report that I enjoyed the very entertaining and up to date Tamara Drewe coupled with the ten years older equally entertaining but quite different Amélie at the Cameo today. The contrast in styles was an entertainment in itself.

When the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in Scotland comes along I'm sure there will be much celebration, very douce in nature of course and even a little dour, but if like me you can't wait another 50 years pop along to the National Library and marvel at the small display of contemporaneous books and documents commemorating the 450th anniversary. These include an Act of the Scottish Parliament abolishing the Pope's authority in Scotland. I hope they kept that discreetly out of sight when Benedict was in Edinburgh last month.

The big man of our restoration was of course John Knox and much of the work here is his including the order of service he put together for the new church. The copy on display is open at Psalm 23 with a very different first verse from the one I learnt at my mother's knee.

The Lord is onely my fupporte
and he that doeth me fede.
How can I then lack any thing
whereof I ftand in need?

There's a tune as well which is undoubtedly not Crimond but I didn't manage to copy it down.

If recreation rather than restoration is your bag then daunder further to their brilliant exhibition on the history of golf.

Scotland claims pantomime as well as golf but like the sport the entertainment may have roots elsewhere, Taiwan maybe? If you'd been in the George Square theatre with the Lord Provost and me watching 明華園 (the Ming Hwa Yuan Arts and Cultural Group) perform 鴛鴦槍 (Lovebird Spears) and 護國將軍 (General of the Empire) you'd have had no doubts that there was a link. They've even got a principal boy and there was audience participation - three volunteers and a pressed man.

It's quite a coincidence that having just mentioned Glenrothes in a post I should find myself within days setting foot in the town for what is probably the first time since a school trip to the shortlived Rothes pit. I think I remember that it was wet down there but that may be an example of something akin to inception.

Not that anyone has been talking to me about pits in my dreams but knowing that the pit was closed because they couldn't prevent the levels from flooding could easily over half a century have created a false memory.

I went to Glenrothes to see Beautiful Burnout, the National Theatre of Scotland's smash hit Fringe success. It's a magnificent piece of physical theatre whose athletic cast produce wonderful stage pictures. Such hard work. The skipping sequence alone left me dripping with sweat. God knows what it did to them.

I wouldn't say there was much of a plot though, but I guess the intention was to explore the paradox of boxing. The drive, discipline, self control, skill and athleticism that combine to produce a spectacle as delightful as any ballet but which can end in blood, tears and the obliteration of a human personality.

Mind you just as it's fairly obvious that filling your lungs with smoke day after day can't do you much good, the idea that having your head thumped repeatedly isn't sensible is surely a no brainer.

My own boxing career was fortunately too short to have had any deleterious consequences. I retired undefeated after my twelve year old opponent hit the canvas in the 1954 Dollar Academy inter-house championships. Some ill-intentioned spectators aver that he slipped but I know that I floored him.

As a native born Fifer proud of his roots I should probably have told you about this celebration long before now but to be honest although I was aware of it, it has largely passed without my participation.

Earlier in the year I went to St Andrews during the Stanza poetry festival and to Dunfermline for a Fife Jazz Festival concert, both operating under the year of culture banner. One day this summer I happened to be in Anstruther when something was going on but of the multitude of other events I can say nothing.

Until now that is. A film festival was launched in Glenrothes as part of the cultural year. It's intended to be an annual event but for it's very first edition it awarded third prize to A Lifetime, the short film in which I took part this summer.

Click here to see the proud directors being awarded their trophy on Saturday night and click on their picture to see the film if you haven't already or if you feel that now it's won a prize it deserves a second look.

Vichy has been somewhat demonised in many people's minds because of its role as headquarters of the collaborationist government during the war, but that was hardly the town's fault.

It's a pleasant place that nestles cosily in the valley cut through the hills of Auvergne by the river Allier. Standing there watching the trotters go through their paces on the Hippodrome track with at your back the beautiful spa that still attracts the well-heeled, waves of bourgeois comfort are almost palpable.

On the other side of the river stands Bellerive, named thus as though the opposite bank were not belle enough. Vichy Sporting Club, one of France's oldest golf courses stands there. I played it a couple of years ago but this week I visited Vichy's other course a few miles away in the forest of Montpensier.

The forest is a lovely place for a walk especially at this time of year when the trees present so many beautiful shades of green and gold and where mushrooms rise up ready to be harvested for the pot - provided you know your mushroom from your toadstool. The gorgeous weather that has prevailed this week would have been the cherry on the walker's cake.

But someone had the silly idea of cutting a few narrow paths through the forest and tempting us into thinking that we could hit little white balls straight down them. Believe me, my little white balls very seldom ventured onto the paths and couldn't see the forest for the trees they kept colliding with.
Now I'm in Dunkirk, someplace else whose fame owes much to the last war. A not so little boat will arrive tomorrow to take me over the channel in greater comfort than that experienced by the retreating armies - in pretty bourgeois comfort in fact.

I’m not sure that we hit 27 degrees yesterday but we were certainly in the warm 20s with bright blue skies in the morning that became progressively overcast as the day went on. One of the interesting side effects of this sudden, and as it turns out brief flourish of summer weather was its effect on the insect population.

I don’t, but no doubt some enthusiastic and dedicated entomologist does know where flies go at the end of the summer. It can’t be very far away for more than a dozen of them, fooled by this temporary summer, buzzed back to invade my kitchen yesterday. Most I am pleased to report were found dead on arrival. That’s my arrival back from the golf course.

A few were sluggishly hanging on to curtains and lightshades and a couple attempted brief flights. I killed them. Others hid overnight but by lunchtime today I had exterminated the living and disposed of all the bodies except for one that I have left struggling in a spider’s web as a warning to those who may still be skulking about.

In the evening several examples of another species, this time a beetle like creature whose method of locomotion is a cross between a scuttle and a hop decided to play about on the kitchen floor. They are usually about an inch long and not very pretty. They scurry across a foot or so of floor and then remain stationary for ages. Can they be imbibing some sort of nourishment from the tiles, or are they, on the contrary, laying down some microscopic excrement? Maybe they are just thinking about the glory days to come when the insects take over the earth.

Whatever they were doing it was a bit of a distraction to someone who was watching a DVD of a film that he had missed in the cinemas last winter. They were not welcome unlike the film which was in fact Welcome. Whether I had sated my bloodlust with the flies or hated the thought of scraping squashed beetles from the floor or was being softened by the moving movie I don’t know, but I carefully captured them one at a time and returned them to the wild, including several recidivists who squeezed back in under the door.

While I love warm weather there’s a bit of me that’s now thinking that it wouldn’t be too bad if it was just a bit cold and slightly miserable for my last week.

It's been a quiet week starting off on the cold side but summer came back again yesterday and they are forecasting 27 degrees centigrade on the golf course this afternoon. Too late I suppose to invite the Ryder cup teams to finish off their competition here.

One of my beefs about Radio 3 is that they don't give enough airtime to jazz and when they do it tends to be at unsocial hours, not to mention the constant moving about of Jazz Record Requests on Saturday afternoons to accommodate the Metropolitan Opera. Now France Musique certainly play jazz at unsocial hours but they also provide a regular weekday slot at 7pm which fits very well with my dinner hour and listening to it the other day I picked up a tip that I may pass on to David Milliband.

I know that Ed is for the moment only a prime minister in waiting and that a week never mind five years is a long time in politics, but David could perhaps protect Ed's chances even more by copying Dominique Fillon, the French prime minister's brother. He plays jazz piano.

I can see David teaming up with Ken Clarke for late night sessions at Ronnie Scott's with Bill Clinton dropping by to jam with them when Hilary is over telling our foreign secretary who to invade next. So much more fun than running the country.

Next time you are tempted to take a second helping of pudding spare a thought for the distress you may cause posthumously to your nearest and dearest. A French family eager to satisfy their deceased relative's wish to be cremated have been thwarted because the corpse is too big to fit into the incineration chamber. Could there be a better reason to exercise self control around the dinner pail?

Disturbances are taking place throughout France at the moment in an attempt to prevent the government from increasing the pension age from 60 to 62. In one of the reports I heard about this an expression that obviously meant work to rule caught my attention. Its literal translation is zeal strike.

Now don't you think that the crematorium employees could have gone out on a limb as it were and with a bit of zeal got that poor lady to where she wanted to be?

It is heartening to learn that the Indian authorities are putting their shoulders to the wheel, straining every sinew and marshalling all their resources to ensure that the Commonwealth Games go ahead.

But did they have to repatriate their summer this morning?

This may not look like a technological leap forward in the fields of medicine or warfare but in the fight against household dirt it has both improved the quality of my floor cleaning (look at those tiles shine) and reduced the strain on my ageing joints and knees now that I no longer have to get down on all fours with a scrubbing brush.

The big smoke around here is Limoges. Although I’ve been there often; to the golf courses, to the airport, to the station, I’ve only once had a stroll around and that was just to some fine gardens not far from the station. So I decided to have a day out to see more of the place and to let the train take the strain rather than drive down.

I was a little put out at being asked for €25.40 for the privilege but Michelin assured me later that it would have cost me €18.30 for petrol and I am sure I could easily have spent the balance of €7.10 on city centre parking so I suppose it was a competitive price. My belief that rail travel in France was relatively cheap was shaken though and to reassure myself I investigated the costs of a similar journey in UK.

I chose Berwick-upon-Tweed to Edinburgh as a comparable market town to big smoke expedition of roughly the same length (in fact 10 kilometres longer) and started digging. Now France offers various fare deals but nothing of the complexity of the British system. Eventually I managed to get a fair comparison. I chose trains leaving at approximately the same times and on the same day of the week and under an equivalent fare regime. Lo and behold I was not reassured at all because that journey would have cost only €20.88. So no whining from the rail passengers alliance next time fares go up. They don’t know when they’re well off.

Saxophone players however may well have cause for complaint. Reeds are sold in the UK at French prices.

As for the day in Limoges, it passed very well. The weather was lovely for a start. If it had rained I might have gone to the museums that I had pencilled in but instead I admired them and other buildings from the outside (apart from the cathedral, into and out of quick I went quickly), strolled in the gardens, watched the world go by while sipping coffee in a pavement café and browsed in a shop or two.


The city’s iconic building is its railway station (completed in 1929 from a design done in 1914), seen here across a fountain, but there are others of interest. The round one in the picture is an art gallery that started life as a cold store for Argentinean beef in 1919 and another is a trompe d’oeil. The flag bearers are gathering for a demo in protest against the retirement age being raised from 60 to 62 and the boys in the orange suits are not a chemical warfare unit but gardeners spraying some toxic juice on the grass. The suits and breathing apparatus may help them to get to 62 but what about the punters sitting in the little garden doing some passive inhalation?

One of the shops in which I browsed was practically giving away DVDs so I went home clutching a handful, including Das Boot. I’ve never seen it. To do so I need to find five hours to get through its two discs, but I’m bound to be confined indoors by rain sooner or later.

These ducks are escaping a barrage of balls from oncoming golfers at Royan. Although the ducks probably don't appreciate it this is a lovely course that is well worth a visit even just to stroll around. It is set in a beautiful pine forest a couple of miles inland from the Atlantic. When we were there last week the sun shone and a good time was had by all.

In contrast to Dryades where bunker shots are a lottery the bunkers here are full of proper sand and it is a positive pleasure to get out of them with a classic stroke that sweeps sand and ball onto the green.

Two failures to report.

I failed to refuse to take a copy of the Watchtower from two English Jehovah's Witnesses who live in a neighbouring village. I need a strategy for the return visit they will no doubt make.

I failed to resist a bribe from Carrefour to sign up for a loyalty card. At least they don't have either my email address or my phone number so perhaps I'll just get more junk mail than usual and the €10 came in handy.

It's been a relatively busy week for my lifestyle in this part of the world.

On Monday I went up to Chateauroux to collect Claire and Naomi. They had been to a wedding in Normandy at the weekend and were adding on a few days down here. They were very lucky with the weather. We enjoyed a little tourism and a gentle country walk on Tuesday, a chill-out day in the sun-soaked garden on Wednesday and off they went on Thursday.

Luckily they left from La Souterraine which made it easy for me to join some friends for a day's golf at Chammet. This is a nine hole rustic course on the Millesvaches plateau which is a northerly extension of the Massif Central. The countryside is very beautiful and it must be one of the most peaceful spots on earth.

It's always difficult to capture landscapes with the sort of cheapo camera that I have but you may get a flavour of the place from this picture.



The course was in beautiful condition, especially the greens. They were a lot better than when I played there last. We played nine holes in the morning and apart from a splendid par on the third hole that saw me land my drive on the green from 200 yards away and 500 feet above I failed to impress and delivered several balls up to nature.

One of those great value French country lunches followed; four courses, coffee, wine, aperitif, mineral water. The whole for 16 euros apiece.

That bucked up my game and the afternoon's round was much better.

Then it was back to Pierre's in Gueret for dinner. The accompanying refreshments were wisely handled and I drove soberly home to a good night's kip.