Yesterday I could have been back at the Fringe.

I started off with an excellent play at the Traverse; at least the production was excellent though I'm not sure that the text will stand the test of time.  The three actors switched instantly from one character to another with just a change of voice and stance where we lesser lights would have needed an hour's make-up and a new costume.  They were ably supported by a sometimes complex and and always faultlessly executed technical plot.

Then it was off to the Blackadder exhibition.  Judging by the videos shown there and by a radio interview I heard recently she's a lovely lady and the critics say she's a great artist but her vision is not mine although I wouldn't refuse an apron sporting one of her flower paintings.

Despite saying that she's not really interested in acting Tilda Swinton gets the job done well in We Need to Talk about Kevin which I saw next.  But for my money the actors who play the eponymous villain make the movie.  It jumps back and forward a lot in time which is no doubt a device to keep our interest alive since we've pretty well sussed out that it will all end in tears before bedtime by the time the title comes up.

If you go to see it pay particular attention to the final scene in which Tilda says very clearly "I just want you to tell me why". I just want you to tell me what her screen son replies since either my ears, his delivery or a passing jet liner robbed me of the pleasure.

There was no not hearing Prokoviev at the Usher Hall later nor the jazz quartet with which I finished the evening in Bill Kyle's splendid establishment.    

One of my multitude of summer golf prizes was a jar of gésiers de canard confits.  I had friends for dinner this evening and it seemed an ideal occasion to make use of them so I served up as first course a salade tiède made up of various leaves, slices of artichoke and the gizzards, for that is what hides behind the frenchified name of the duck bits.  The whole was doused in a dressing made from the confit in which the gizzards were preserved plus balsamic vinegar, moutarde de Dijon etc.

I did not announce to my guests until they had eaten the salad that they had just enjoyed "the thick-walled part of a bird's stomach, in which hard food is broken up by muscular action and contact with grit and small stones" for fear that it might put them off.   

I had a jolly little party on Saturday to celebrate 50 years of intermittent residence in Edinburgh and clearly overcatered on the scoff front.  I can see myself living on the leftovers for some time.  Not so on the drink front. Not everyone was drinking champagne but those who were got through a bottle each.  Just as well not everyone I invited turned up.

It was great fun to play in a 1500 seat theatre on Saturday; the swooping crane TV camera and the very enthusiastic audience compensating for the fact that most of the seats were empty.

Disappointingly we were eliminated but it's hard to know whether to feel aggrieved or not since we didn't see the other three entries and only heard them imperfectly over a dressing room speaker.  There was very little in the way of adjudication afterwards but according to the cameraman who filmed the judges deliberations it was all very close and opinions were heatedly expressed.  No doubt Sky are happy about that since universal agreement would make a very boring programme.

Niamh Cusack rang us up, presumably from her dressing room in the Old Vic, to commiserate and encourage us, having been told by her woman on the scene that we had done her proud.  She even extended an invitation to give her a ring to talk over any future acting problems we might be faced with.  What a nice woman.

No celebrations were cancelled and we probably rivalled the Trekkie convention that was taking place in our hotel for late night drinking.  I escaped being burnt to death, despite my room-mate giving up on trying to wake me, by the fact that the fire alarm that caused the hotel to be evacuated during the night was a falsie.

So it was back to Hamlet this evening to round off a great weekend.

The little scene from The Cherry Orchard that we are performing in Northampton on Saturday in the quarter final round of the Sky Arts Stagestruck competition ends with the words "senile decay".  Those words are uttered as an explanation of my character's behaviour and it seems that I'm living the part off-stage.

Waiting for a bus after a Hamlet rehearsal this evening I saw from the bustracker screen what bus was due and decided as I often do to jump on it, get off at the bottom of the Bridges and cross to the top of theWalk to wait for a bus going my way.  But before it arrived a 14 turned up and that one goes to my door so naturally I got on.

I'm sure you've guessed what happened.  Fortunately the lights were with me as I sprinted from the last stop on the Bridges, across Princes St. and on to the St. James Centre in time to get back on board the 14.    

Modern dance is always a bit of a challenge and never more so than when it's like jagged and jerky brownian motion performed to a backdrop of randomly flashing lights and a soundtrack that might be music or might not.

What's it all about?  What are they trying to tell us?  Is it meant to be the end of the world or what?  Such were the questions going through my mind at Wayne McGregor's Far at the Festival Theatre the other night.  I eagerly awaited enlightenment from the after show Q&A session led by one of the Grads' stars from 4:48.

But michty me and help ma boab, as my granny would have said, the dancers had no more idea than I had of what it was all about and some of them had been dancing since they were three years old so you'd have expected them to have a bit of interpretative skill would you not.

Well enlightenment turns out to be the name of the game when you read the blurb on the website.  I quote:
"Inspired by the controversial Age of Enlightenment, FAR mines an era that first placed ‘a body in question’. Ten incredible dancers confront the distortions, sensuality and feeling of the 18th Century’s searing contemporary sensibility....." and it was music: "....to a new, haunting score by the critically-acclaimed composer Ben Frost."

I was also hoping for enlightenment when the following day I went to see Last Year in Marienbad at the Cameo, the very cinema in which I saw it as the nouvelle vague swept over us in the early sixties.  The Village Voice, whose review I recommend, says "back in the day.....audiences had great fun pretending to be baffled...".  Let me say it out loud - I wasn't pretending.

Surely now with all the experience of life I've gained since, the then puzzling movie would be as an open book.  Perhaps not quite.  It is still definitely odd.  I now think (though I could be wrong) that there is no meaning.  It's just the filmaker, having somehow got the money together, having fun doing the oddest things he could think of with his actors and his camera.  And it looks absolutely gorgeous.

So the moral is probably that, just because something is seriously weird it doesn't mean it's serious.  I can't wait to revisit Hiroshima Mon Amour.
    

After three years and a reduction of one third in the asking price an offer has been made and accepted for the house in Barbansais.  Failing unforeseen complicatuons it will shortly fall into the hands of the young magpie's family and I will be forced into a change of life though I don't expect to experience any concomitant hot flushes.

I do have the possibility of alternative accommodation in the area but I am looking on this event as an opportunity to do other things.  I don't intend to spend more than a few weeks there next year (so that I can fulfill my golf competition winning obligation apart from anything else) and probably even less time thereafter.

Casting directors may care to note that I expect to be available for the 2012 Fringe.

Only naive and inexperienced Scottish supporters could have thought that even when we were eight points ahead we were going to win.  Glorious defeat is our speciality. 

It's always a relief to see the solution to something which has puzzled one.

The current UK vehicle registration number allocation system uses two digits to define the point in time in which the vehicle was first registered, thus 01 means the first registration period of 2001 and 51 the second.  I've often (well occasionally) wondered how they would cope with 2011, whose first period would clearly be 11 but whose second could not be 51 without confusion with the second period of 2001.

I need not have worried.  Indeed if I had only googled UK vehicle registration number system when first the problem entered my mind I would have found that the 61 I saw on a car the other day was a consequence of  the basic principle behind the system, which is to add 50 to the year digits for the second period.

Thus I would have been able to sleep soundly long ago, except that I'm now wondering what will happen in 2051.  Alas I may never know.

I find myself out of sorts, and out of tune with majority critical opinion, having missed out on two hours of September sunshine watching a childish waste of celluloid.  The Guard is a comedy thriller from which tension is totally absent and where although present the laughs are few and far between.

It has a naive style all of its own which we might christen unmagical irrealism and which I hope for the sake of this cinemagoer is not contagious.

PS I know they don't use celluloid nowadays but that's no excuse.

We are told that if the discovery of neutrinos travelling faster than light stands up our understanding of the time space continuum goes for a burton and time travel into the future or the past will become the new reality.

In the fast moving world of telecoms they are already there.  I got a text from Vodaphone this morning telling me that I had three days left in which to use some bonus they had given me as a reward for having topped up my phone.

Fifteen minutes later by the old Einsteinien  method of reckoning a second text arrived telling me that the bonus had now expired.

Where Vodaphone lead Skype cannot be far behind.  They've just sent me an email saying that a credit I have with them will expire in 30 days, so I suppose I had better get my skates on and make a call before lunch.

What can you say - 13 points to 12 - grr!  And I didn't even have the compensation of spotting Ewan in the crowd.  He was clearly not dressed outrageously enough to attract the camera's eye.

I stood at the bus stop the other day beside a group of young men who were trying to impress one another with their tales of valour, an activity from which I confess older men are not immune.  I was struck by one little fragment that went something like "we wiz the best o pals efter that, hud a couple o drinks........., efter a stabbed im like".

I was glad they got tired of waiting and hailed a cab.

Before I visited Figeac I didn't know that the great Champollion who deciphered the Rosetta stone came from there.  But he did.  They have named a square and a museum in his honour.  Cairo has been less generous in naming only a street after him.

He's also celebrated on various postcards.  I don't know whether the one I bought is telling us anything else about him or if it's just an illustration of how much care went into male grooming in ancient Egypt.  

His great linguistic skills are not shared by all his modern fellow townsmen for when I asked for a postage stamp the shopkeeper offered me one for Belgium.

As a postscript to Vézac I learnt this morning that had I stayed for the prize-giving I would have had something to go with the champagne because my name came out of the hat in the lucky dip of scorecards that always follows the golfing awards.

In between playing golf in the pouring rain on Wednesday and under a boiling sun on Friday I had my one and only day of real tourism this summer.

Humble lodgings

 
I left our humble lodgings in the Château de Salles overlooking the golf course and set off along a now and then picturesque route to Figeac. 

Artisan at work

Narrow lane

It's a lovely little town with a medieval centre of narrow lanes where artisans have plied their trade for centuries.
 

I’m not the first Scotsman to have been charmed by the place although unlike Mr Nicolson I moved on after lunch.

Early Scotsman in figeac

Imposing medieval edifice

 I made a fleeting visit to this imposing medieval edifice a few miles from Figeac.  The fact that I once met the owner’s daughter on a train journey between Edinburgh and Glasgow didn’t seem altogether a good excuse for penetrating beyond the private property notice at the gate.  That’s a shame because I’m sure we could have had a cosy chat over a glass or two about the pleasures and problems of having a second home in France. 

Rodez cathedral

But perhaps not, so I set off on an only occasionally now and then picturesque route to Rodez.  The town has a cathedral which you can see from miles around but otherwise is possibly not worth the detour.  The cathedral is not tumbling backwards by the way.  I don’t know how they get them straight on the postcards.

Big hole of Bouzou

The road back to Vezac was much better value touristically and I stopped off at various spots including one called something like “the big hole of Bouzou”.  I don’t think I’d fancy living on either the edge or beside the fetid stream at the bottom but it was very impressive.

Vezac view

Returning to Vézac I got stuck into a special festive Alligot dinner.  The main course consisted of sausage (remarkably unfatty) in an onion sauce served with cheese rich mashed potatoes.  It was delicious but none of my French friends could explain the connection between the Alligot of the dinner and the Alligoté of the lovely bottles of Bourgogne that I buy now and then.

Golf course view

And the golf?  Well I didn’t distinguish myself and certainly won nothing to go with my champagne but thanks to the arcane juggling that is the handicap system I stayed still.  This means that over the season I have trimmed one neat digit from my handicap, in contrast to the previous five seasons in each of which I have added a digit. 

So it's all (minus one) left to do.

My trophy winning form soon deserted me and my handicap even crept up by 0.2 last week.  After the first nine holes yesterday in my last Dryades competition of the season it seemed that a repeat performance was on the cards, but I rallied on the back nine and turned in a respectable score that at least staved off a further deterioration.

And I came home with two bottles of champagne and admired a lovely new moon so the day was not entirely wasted.


                  I hope the SG4L competition at Vézac this week brings me something nice to go with the champagne.

To encourage someone to believe that crime pays may not be in itself a crime but it is certainly reprehensible and I fear that to my shame I am guilty of it.

I sat in the garden yesterday while the potential purchasers visited the premises.  At one point from the far end of the garden mummy sent her oldest little treasure over to me.  He held out a shiny object and asked if it was mine.

“Ah” said I. “It’s a foreign coin.  It’s Brazilian and I visited Brazil a couple of years ago, so it could well be mine.  Where did you find it?”

“Under our car.”

“Strange” thought I.  “How did it get there?” I continued to think. “The last time I saw one of those I’m sure it was in the top drawer of my desk.” 

But would I be forgiven for at the very least embarrassing, and probably causing to flee, these people who were in the market for a holiday home by crying out “Your son is a liar and a thief”?

“No” I said to myself.  “Think of Sally and David and keep schtoom.” And to his delight I said “Would you like to keep it?”

He raced off happily, no doubt reassured about his career choice.

The gas ran out while I was cooking last night.

We used to keep a spare bottle in the barn but haven’t bothered since we put the house up for sale and are thus doomed to occasional inconvenience.  It’s very occasional since a bottle lasts about two years of summer occupancy.

In this instance I was very little inconvenienced because I was able to complete my vegetable curry and rice in the microwave but the question arises as to whether or not to re-stock given that I have a week to go during which I expect to eat out definitely on four days and probably on a fifth and given that an English family looking for a holiday home spent well over an hour viewing the house yesterday afternoon.

I set out to give the grass a what I hoped would be a final cut on Thursday and I was inconvenienced there as well because the starter cord snapped on first pull.  This was not really a surprise since it has been frayed and bedraggled for a while but it was not handy.

My random collection of spanners didn’t look sufficient to even take the outer engine cover off so repairing it myself didn’t look to be feasible and I couldn’t see Mr. Brico doing the job in time for me to get a cut in before departure so I did the job with the strimmer.

It wasn’t quite as back-breaking as it is when the grass has had the entire season of mellow unoccupancy to get to knee height but it was still a pain and the result looks much like a self- administered haircut but it’s one more closing down task ticked off the list.

This morning I’ve been washing floors.

There was some heavy booted scrabbling going on the other afternoon in the noman's land bounded by the cellar roof space, main bedroom and kitchen wall.

I responded by making wild hunter noises and beating the wall with a broom until the intruder was silenced.  This morning I reckon I saw the culprit in the shape of a red squirrel gambolling happily in the back garden.  He hasn't come back indoors again so far but as the local saying has it - you don't count the cowpats till the end of the fair - so I remain vigilant.

Poisoned chalices come in many forms.  They are not always recognizable as such.  Here is one in the form of a golf trophy which has been consigned to my care for a year as a result of my fine round yesterday in an annual invitational competition at Les Dryades.

The poison comes from the fact that the winner has not only to organise the following year's competition but host the twenty odd competitors afterwards.

Last night we had a very pleasant drinks and snacks evening in a lovely garden setting at last year's winner's fine home.

Barbansais's field like lawns can't compare, my catering facilities are limited and I'm short of about fifteen garden chairs.  Maybe I'll be saved by a sale.

The even more annoying thing about this win is that if it had been one of our normal FFG competitions I'd have knocked a couple of digits off my handicap.

Amongst the cheap DVDs that I’ve bought recently was a movie featuring Javier Bardem and Victoria Abril.  They are the reason I bought it but I suppose even good actors can’t redeem utter rubbish.
  

I was saved from watching the entire film by the fact that the DVD itself was rubbish and froze after an hour to the accompaniment of an endless whirling and whining.

But thank God it did because not only were my cinematic sensitivities saved but when I turned on the radio I caught the most wonderful double piano concert by these two guys:

It was recorded at Marciac a few weeks ago.  Next year I must give up golf for a week and go listen to the music.   

Yesterday was dry and warm, a perfect day to cut the grass.  I wish I had done it.  Continuous rain overnight which lingers even now and is forecast to hang about for a few days means that by the time it dries out sufficiently to cut it will have grown another three inches.

I added three bottles of wine to my small collection of golf prizes yesterday and knocked half a point off my handicap.  I'm now back to where I was at the beginning of the 2010 season.

Three competitions left to undo the losses of the four previous seasons.

It's coming up to the third anniversary of putting our French house on the market so we are celebrating by knocking fifteen grand off the price.

Now, provided you steer clear of agents and come directly to us, this lovely residence can be yours for a measly 100,000 euros.  That's around 90,000 pounds at current exchange rates.

Form an orderly queue.

It’s been a busy golfing week so far with four days on the trot.  I’m having a rest day before taking up the clubs again tomorrow.

I was a bit surprised to be asked for 18 euros instead of the usual 8 to take part in Sunday’s competition and the explanation when it came wasn’t universally popular.  The extra ten bucks were going to the French Golf Federation to help finance the 2018 Ryder Cup (which is being played in France) and there will be a small supplement on the annual dues each registered player pays the FFG over the next few years to the same end.

It’s the mega billionaire status of the guys who play in the Ryder Cup teams that caused a few grumbles I suppose but I have some sympathy with the FFG.  Putting the event together must cost a bob or two and although they will no doubt get good crowds the interest in golf here is not of the same order as it is in the States or in the UK and Ireland.

Even the players make a contribution if my belief that they don’t get paid to take part is correct.  Mind you they get showered with clothes and equipment and I daresay my annual income wouldn’t make much of a dent in either team’s fully expensed travel bill so the sacrifice is limited.  

Ten of us went for a golfing day out at La Jonchère yesterday.  It’s a course I really enjoy playing and it’s no further away from me than Les Dryades but being a member there I don’t go to La Jonchère very often.  Usually we have lunch in the nearby town of Gouzon but since January an English couple have been running a restaurant at the course so after nine holes we ate there in lazy sunshine and played a wine assisted back nine in the afternoon. 

Sporting activity didn’t end there because we went to Pierre’s in Gueret afterwards and played pétanque for a couple of hours and then wound up with a barbecue that went on till ten thirty or so and over which the peccadilloes of the French political establishment were scurrilously examined. 

I’m glad to report that I hit both my balls and my boules with a fair degree of success.

The reign of the rectal thermometer is over, in France at least, and you are not asked to sit up in your hospital bed and clutch a thermometer firmly in your armpit or under your tongue. Technology moves on.  Now they poke a little gadget into your ear and when it beeps they read off the temperature.  What double entendre could Carry On Doctor possibly get out of that I wonder?

I learnt of this advance thanks to being in hospital in Clermont Ferrand for a coronarographie.  I don’t actually know what that’s called in English but it’s where they put you to sleep and pump some nasty stuff through your heart so that they can see your coronary arteries as in seeing the safety pin your two year old swallowed on an x-ray.

I’ve often scoffed at the fact that if you are a registered player of any competitive sport in France you have to present a medical certificate once a year stating that there are no contra-indications to your taking part.  I once asked my doctor in Edinburgh to do it and she was very dismissive of the whole idea.

But now I’m scoffing my words and maybe she’ll have a re-think for at least it means there’s a chance something amiss will be noticed before you fall down dead in the street.  When I saw a doctor here on my arrival in June he told me that my heart was not producing a nice regular thump, thump, thump but was sticking in extra beats here and there.  Now anyone who has danced with me knows that my sense of rhythm is a bit dodgy.  I can put up with that even if it’s a bit hard on my partners but wasn’t keen to let my heart get its time signatures mixed up so I waltzed off to see a friend who happens to be a cardiologist.

He gave me an ECG and an echo sounding thing (I thought that was just for finding U-boats and fish), put me on some pills for a month and checked out how I performed in vigorous rides on an exercise bike during which my blood pressure leapt up off the scale.  I’m not given to exercise bikes in real life so you wouldn’t think it would matter but he felt we might be looking at the need for surgery.

So he rang the hospital and they said can he come in tomorrow and off I went in a taxi (normal practice) on the road and the miles to Clermont.

It turns out that all but one of my coronary arteries are ok and the one that is irregular (their terminology) doesn’t need the scalpel.  Sighs of relief all round but I am doomed to daily pills for some time to come, hopefully into a ripe and active old age like Yusef Lateef (91 next birthday).

As I went to bed at midnight on Monday night Yusef was walking on stage at the Marciac Jazz Festival to perform his set. Now there’s a role model for me.  And Happy Birthday to another old man, Fidel Castro 85 today.

   

 

This jolly map of hotspots shows the admirable work done by a consortium of local authorities to set up a network  of access points throughout this area to provide free wireless access for both residenst and visitors so none of us wandering around with our laptops, netbooks or smartphones should be out of touch with the wider world at any time.

Alas fine words as they say butter no parsnips.  I have tried this out a number of times in the four localities closest to my domicile.  In three of these I have been unable to detect the network.  In the fourth I have confirmed that it is there and even on one occasion seen a welcome screen, but able to connect I have not been.

So it's byte my lip and back to dial up.

I was in Aigurande on Saturday morning having a new silencer fitted to my car.  It was an important day for the town for other reasons as well.  This was the day of their big brocante and vide grenier, or car boot sale to us, when numerous streets were given over the buying and selling of junk.  Unfortunately it was a washout as you can see from the picture.  For most of the time most of the goods were covered by plastic sheeting.  Only the beer stand and the chip stall were doing any business and not much at that.

I can understand why you would want to get rid of junk but who wants to buy a box of corks or a couple of chamber pots, and believe me those were bits of high class junk I thought were worthy of a picture. But brocantes are amazingly popular.  There's a booklet you can buy that lists them all.  It's a nice yellow colour reminding me of the Scotland's Gardens scheme booklet that list all the garden open days throughout the year.

Back home the rain eased off a bit in the afternoon so perhaps it did so there as well and let the chineurs begin to chiner.  You see there are even special words for junk browsers and junk browsing.

I'm just back from shopping at Carrefour.  One of the things I've always disliked there is that you have to weigh your own fruit and veg and stick a price ticket on them.  I still dislike it but I must admit I'm impressed by the technology they've put in place this year.

The weighing machine works out what you've put on the scales.  I suppose there must be a wee camera in there focused on the weighing platform.  You place your whatever it is, more often than not in a plastic bag, on the platform.  On the screen appear pictures of one or more items that it thinks you are weighing.  You touch the right one and it prints out a price ticket.

If it doesn't come up with the right item, which in my experience is very rare, you can scroll through pictures of fruit and veg to find it or if all else fails there's an alphabetic search.

I don't suppose these machines are cheap.  Maybe that's why their loyalty card gives you next to nothing.  Often it's a chit entitling you to a miniscule reduction on something provided you spend X amount of dosh on a given day.  Today my card gave me a reduction of 5 cents on one of the 37 items in my trolley and added 5 cents to my loyalty account, which is now groaning under the weight of a grand total of 76 cents.

For a couple of floors in a hotel lift this morning I was in the company of a young American lady.  She enquired about my health - as ye do.  I replied that it was excellent - as ye do.  She then said "You smell great."

Fresh from the shower though I was I suspect that it was not my manly odour but the fragrance left by a previous passenger that had excited her nostrils.

But you never know.

It's not every prison that has an 18 hole golf course in its grounds but I've just spent three days in one.  Mind you it took them 137 years from when the reformatory was built to create the course, but way back in 1848 the inmates were kept fit by labour in the fields.  Now the young people serving time there are in fact employed by the hotel/holiday centre that the reformatory has become.

This touching little memorial to the bad boys and girls who were locked up there is at the end of an imposing entrance alley of trees behind which stand the wardens' houses where we had rooms.

The text reads " To the memory of the children imprisoned in St. Hilaire and deprived of their childhood, and to those who fought for the establishment of proper legal protection for young people."

The reform agenda centred on teaching agricultural trades and the place is awash with barns and farm buidings, most in a state of dilapidation.  I was particularly struck by the pig sheds but I forgot to take a picture.

Instead here are a few that I did take.

The entrance alley

Wardens' accommodation

Inmates' quarters

The modern welcome sign

My saxophone practice has suffered this week.  I dropped the mouthpiece at the weekend and the tiled floor took a chip out of it.  It's only a small chip but the result is that the reed is off the rails and much of the air that should be going down the tube is going down the tubes.

But I'm off tomorrow for three days golfing near the Loire (let's hope the rain stops) and am then away again for a few days so should have a new mouthpiece in place by the time I'm free to resume serenading the neighbours.

Fortunately the rain did not continue into Thursday and spoil the Fête Nationale.  We celebrated with a team competition in Chapman format (I shan't bother to explain that, suffice to say that it combines the talents of two players).


My partner and I scooped the prestigious third prize. Thanks I like to think to a prodigious 7 iron shot of mine.  Because of the lack of rain over recent months many of the ponds on our course are waterless seas of mud.  My partner put his drive straight into one of them where it nestled comfortably on the muddy surface leaving me the task of recovery.  As I sank slowly into the mud I whacked the ball 120 metres out of the pond, over a few trees and onto the green where we sank it for par.

That was not my only contribution , who could forget my delightful birdie chip, again with my trusty 7 iron, but truth be told my partner was the mainstay of the team.  Tomorrow I'm on my own.

I was injudicious enough to comment in an email yesterday on the warm dry summer we were having here.  In the evening it started to rain and it hasn't stopped since.

With a hint of pink as the paint manufacturers describe some of their off whites is about the extent to which I was tickled in the town hall on Saturday night.

The first play featured the devil suffering from depression because there was so little evil in the world.  She (for it was an all female troupe) summoned three minions who each proposed a course of action.  In the end the devil decided to saddle the world with thinkers.  Since the author is by trade a philosopher I guess this was his little joke, no doubt received with appreciative chortles in intellectual circles.  This audience appreciated it as well but more noisily. 

 

The piece undoubtedly had potential but the production was a bit stolid.  The three minions were dressed identically which I suppose is reasonable but they each stood stock still and delivered their radically different suggestions in the same somewhat wooden way. That was boring.  The devil laughed falsely a lot of the time which was also boring.

The second play, called Inventions for Two Voices, was a string of little playlets or long sketches that had nothing in common except – you’ve guessed it.

The potential was better realised here but not consistently.  One of them, interestingly presented in shadow play behind a white sheet, would have been much better had it not been for the fact that one character was a prisoner on all fours chained like a dog, with the result that no-one behind the front row saw more of her than the occasional bobbing up head as she thrust forward against her restraints.

Two hairdressers manipulating their clients’ heads as they discussed the suicide attempt(s) of mutual friends was a good laugh and I caught the punch line explaining that the result of their wrapping themselves in stripped cable and sticking the ends in a socket was only to blow the fuses.

Unfortunately despite the best efforts of the actress in another piece to allow wildly enthusiastic applause to die down before she delivered her exit line I missed it.  The applause showed that the audience favoured what we might call a very broad style of acting.  The style fitted the sketch though.  It involved a flippers, snorkel and facemask wearing couple, the male half identified by the actress wearing a pair of Speedos and adopting a manly posture, who have agreed to dive simultaneously into the water on a given signal.  They never do of course and wobble precariously as in a silent movie while they find a new excuse for not diving each time.  They stagger about on their flippers and come to blows etc etc.  All good clean fun.  But I’ll have to buy the script to get that punchline. 

At last a point shaved off my handicap and a bottle of champagne gained to boot.  Not only champagne but a jar of foie gras and several of gelatinous fluids containing various bits of duck anatomy.  These will make delightful tit bits for those enjoying my Red Army choir DVD at Christmas.

These trophies were won at Aubazine, a lovely little spot in Corrèze where I've played a few times in the past.  We had excellent weather and lots of jollity including, for half a dozen of those spending the night on site, a post dinner hack around their nine hole pitch and puttish course where I put down a marker for the following day's competition by scoring nothing but pars till light stopped play.

Play stopped before the light vanished at Trent Bridge on Wednesday.  I had the Radio 4 ball by ball commentary on throughout although I only sat and listened attentively in bursts.  But as England swept vigorously to victory in the evening I found myself unwilling to leave the game to attend one of the infrequent entertainments going on in Châtelus that I'd had in my diary for a couple of weeks.  I musn't be distracted tonight though but make the 21.00 double bill curtain up.  I don't know either of the plays being performed and hope to be tickled pink.
 

The American professor who blogged about seagulls and refuse sacks in Edinburgh's New Town has had a European adventure.

My regular email from the Cameo tells me that not only am I missing Senna for the second time but I won't see Life in a Day either.  I've got a little bit of personal interest in that one since the cameraman on A Lifetime uploaded some footage of its filming as part of his day.  I'd love to see whether any of that has survived the distillation of the 4500 hours submitted down to the 95 minutes being screened.  Though I won't be surprised if it's been bumped in favour of the animal slaughter the Cameo warns us that the film contains.

The director of Similar Lily, one of the student films I worked on a month or two back, had some distillation done for him when someone stole the camera with the last day's footage in it.  Despite what must have seemed at the time to be an artistic bodyblow the remaining footage has been edited into a coherent and entertaining short film that you can watch here provided you have or are willing to open a Facebook account.

A treat for anyone visiting me around Christmas was plucked from the Lions Club golf competition scorecards at Sully-sur-Loire on Saturday.

Prizes for those displaying prowess on the course included computer printers, golf paraphernalia of all sorts, cases of wine and other costly goods but still left a handy 30, 000 euros or so (not all from that one day) for the children’s cancer charity the Lions were supporting.

For the less successful with club and ball  there is always the leftovers draw and the innocent hand doing the dipping pulled me out a sleeve of three golf balls (always useful) and Jeane Manson and the Choir of the Red Army’s 2006 Christmas DVD.  There’s a medley of carols and Ave Maria and a French version of A White Christmas amongst other goodies that will have my friends vying for an invitation to my flat over the festive season.

Though further encouragement to come over is hardly needed, let me tell you that not only did Jeane Manson (an American resident in France since the seventies) represent Luxembourg in the 1979 Eurovision song contest but was Playboy’s playmate of the month in August 1974.

Perhaps inspired by a need to avoid such excitements I turned in a score of 36 Stableford points at home on Sunday to qualify as a proper prizewinner and, this being a competition enjoying Spanish sponsorship, was rewarded with a bottle of Ribera del Duero and a pound of Manchego cheese.

Mentioning the Forsyte Saga TV series in my last post piqued my curiosity about how it's various stars went on in life and art. I found this excellent website. Although it's not actually up to date having been put together ten years ago it gives a good idea of the impact of the series as does the Guardian's obituary of Nyree Dawn Porter that it points you to (the Times obit isn't there).

I missed the notice of her death when it happened since it didn't cause much of a stir in Egypt. I must sometime have a look at the 2002 remake by Granada. That didn't make much of a stir wherever I was then either.

When I went on holiday recently I bought three books for the price of two to take with me but I feel that I ended up with one book for the price of three.

The translated from the Italian cops and robbers novel was about as boringly predictable as it could be and only cussedness led me to complete it which I did at an early stage.

My second choice was The Forsyte Saga. It was satisfactorily thick and long lasting and enjoyable and sealed the bond of affection for the story and characters that the black and white 60s TV adaptation had engendered.

Thickness is an important criterion in holiday reading so despite my lukewarm appreciation of science fiction I took Dune whose 596 pages include a map, four appendices and a glossary. After all one must keep an open mind and this novel has won prizes and according to the blub is the finest and most prescient science fiction novel ever written.

Well God preserve me from its lesser competitors. I didn’t get round to it when I was on holiday and started it the other day. My favourite condemnatory word for works of art that don’t appeal is tosh. For Dune let me spell that TOSH. Now I don’t deny it’s imaginative and the author has gone to a lot of trouble to make up funny objects and funny words and to harness genuine or near genuine Arabic and other terms to delight our eyes and ears and it’s a lovely map. But what TOSH, and I’ve only read 10% of it. That’s when I decided my prejudice against science fiction was in fact sound literary judgment and gave up reading the book.

Let me give you a wee flavour or two. Here’s a definition from the glossary:” Poling the sand – the art of placing plastic and fibre poles in the open desert wastes of Arrakis and reading the patterns etched on the poles by sandstorms as a clue to weather prediction.” Now that, while akin to reading tea leaves at least makes some sort of sense. Unlike “ CHOAM – acronym for Combine Honnete Ober Advancer Mercantiles.”

And here’s a bawdy song sung by the player of a nine string baliset (?) whose multipick (?) is going like the clappers: “ Oh-h-h, the Galacian girls/ Will do it for pearls,/ And the Arrakeen for water!/ But if you desire dames/Like consuming flames/ Try a Caladanin daughter! “ What could Rabbie Burns not have done with that raw material.

And this is where I hope one of my female friends can help me out. “A skinny girl the colour of bronze, her body tortured by the winds of puberty..” I don’t recall flatulence being a problem of male puberty. In fact there’s nothing a young boy likes better than a good fart.

I had a bellyful of young boys and girls this afternoon and it was nothing to do with puberty since these were about nine years old. The occasion was a kids golf competition for a couple of classes from the local primary who have been coming along to the course during the year and learning the rudiments. This competition was their end of the year treat. Several adults were called upon to provide some supervision.

In France you don’t have to be proved innocent of child abuse to do that sort of thing but by the end of the afternoon my thoughts were well past abuse and moving rapidly towards slaughter. I’ve done this and other child and golf activities before and enjoyed it but the six I had charge of today were the most ill-disciplined and obstreperous lot you could hope to meet. I earned my free pint I can tell you.

Life in the country can be crude and rude. The various village ducks and hens that forage around our property don't rush back to their coops when taken short but relieve themselves on our land. Their lavatory of choice in recent days has been the doorstep. Fortunately the dog who occasionally comes by to do business prefers grass to granite.

I expect zombies can be crude and rude and I'm sorry to be missing the chance to meet up with them on my other doorstep in the Brad Pitt blockbuster to be shot in Glasgow in August. For those who are free here's the call for extras.

Here's a humorous reflection on the effect of the recent Spanish protests that a friend sent me a few days ago. I've just been able to watch it courtesy of the bandwidth available in Gueret chez

You don't need much knowledge of the language to appreciate the plight of the little girl whose parents are too busy to talk to her.

The ball bashing I slogged away at over the winter has not so far brought the enormous improvement in my game that I had hoped for, but I am slightly encouraged. Two shots in particular in yesterday's round gave me heart though I don't think that either was the result of winter work.

I sank an extremely long putt, at least as long as any fish that ever got away and had a brilliant wedge shot out of a greenside bunker to within six inches of the hole. That was in the annual Chateau de Poinsouze competition where their merry campers, mostly Dutch, join us for golf and we go off to the campsite (where there actually is a chateau) for an excellent dinner afterwards. They serve some jolly nice wine with it but one of the penalties of country living is that you can't risk more than a glass for fear of repercussions on the road home.

One of the penalties of having too much to do in my last week in Edinburgh was that I didn't manage to squeeze in seeing Senna. It looked super from the trailer and all the press reports I had read raved about it. My friends here didn't seem aware of it and I'm not surprised. It came out in France in late May but even had I been here I'd have had to travel to see it because it was only screened in four cinemas.

Could that conceivably have been a post mortem incidence of the old rivalry with Alain Prost?

It's very nice to be back in France -such lovely countryside and quiet, albeit pricey, motorways and reasonably priced wine (see below). And don't let's forget their weekday jazz slot on the equivalent of Radio 3 and related weekend bonanzas. Not to mention the musical treats at the Parc Floral. Those I haven't been able to enjoy since I left Paris but I like to know that they're there.

You think Edinburgh is a village but here it's the same. I stopped off at a supermarket in a town half an hour's drive away to buy something for my tea and bumped into a couple who play golf at Les Dryades.

The drive down from Dunkirk was relaxation in spades compared to yesterday's run to Dover. At some point my wipers failed and I had to choose between risking my life in the thunderstorms that pursued me almost all the way or missing my boat. I don't recommend crawling along the M25 trying desperately to keep your vehicle between the white lines that demarcate the slow lane while huge pantechnicons thunder along on your right hand side casting waves of glaur onto your windscreen. After that bungee jumping holds no fear.

My neighbour Alain had kindly cut my grass in expectation of my arrival but unfortunately he expected me last month so it's grown a bit since. I shall have to grovel.

The house is in good order but the spiders have been busy over the winter so I shall have to put my shoulder to the wheel tomorrow and hoover their works away, not to mention getting to grips with the grass. Fortunately I have fortified myself this evening with a wee steak and the best part of a bottle of Bourgogne. That was reassuringly expensive at five euros and something compared to the run of reds at two to three euros a throw.

My support for the SNP's minimum pricing for alcohol strategy is undimmed. The French are not the Scots and the Scots in France are not the Scots either.

I thought I'd get up to speed with local matters before setting off for my summer quarters and have learnt that the Creuse has had an abnormally sunny and dry Spring thus earning headlines of the type "Creuse farmers threatened by drought".

Just as the pound strengthened against the euro immediately after I transferred my Summer funds I foresee floods getting underway from Thursday next.

This fine painting, or at least a print of this fine painting, now hangs on my wall as a souvenir of Cuba.

The original hangs in the Museo de Bellas Artes in Havana where there is a magnificent collection of Cuban art from the conquest to the present day. It is the work of Mario Carreño whose pictures have sold for millions. My investment in his work was more modest. I spent substantially more on getting it framed, 13 times more in fact.

If your Spanish is up to it you can read about him here, or if not just enjoy the pictures of which there are a dozen or so. If you like them you can order copies in oils from this site where there is a bit of biog in broken English. They it seems will copy anything you like so a Titian in the toilet is within reach of us all.

No doubt like me you absorbed with your mother's milk stories of hospital patients being roused from slumber by officious night sisters in order for them to take their sleeping pills.

So you will appreciate my irritation as a resting partygoer at being shaken awake around five this morning to be told (by it has to be said an employee of our national health service) that it was time to go to bed. He promptly took over the spare room, where I imagine he is snoring his head off as I write, leaving his hostess and myself to continue dozing as best we could on the settee. An hour or so later she gathered enough will power to wriggle free from the sofa and shuffled off towards her own sleeping quarters.

My sleep now broken twice I left her applying a late but no doubt essential coating of cold cream and struck out up Easter road dreaming of breakfast. Tesco being unaccountably out of fresh croissants at 6.20 on a summer Saturday morning I am toasting some stale bread as I inhale the wholesome odour of fresh Cuban coffee.

Good morning and good night.

Can I stand the strain of watching Andy Murray play again? He's just won the scrappiest match, admittedly in straight sets but each set and indeed each game followed a crazy paving path that had me screaming at the TV in disbelief.

STV launched an Edinburgh focused daily news broadcast at the beginning of this week just as the Guardian is folding up its Edinburgh local web offering. I haven't tried the STV programme yet but I was a daily visitor to the Guardian site for an encapsulated view of what was happening in the big wide city that surrounds Spurtleland.

I shall henceforth have to have an early morning dip in the Edinburgh Reporter to set me up for the day.

The BBC are giving tennis lovers a treat with their continuous coverage of the French Open on the pretty little red button. Yesterday I saw the young English girl Heather Watson become the first British lady since who knows when to get past the first round. She won convincingly against an opponent who simply lost heart in the second set. The monetary reward for reaching the second round is $45,000 so even if she goes no further she can pop home to mum and dad in Guernsey with her head held high and her pockets bulging.

I had to go out just as Andy Murray came on court this morning and have just watched a recording of his match. Given that the guy he played is well over a hundred places lower than him in the rankings I expected him to slaughter the poor chap. But in fact he struggled here and there in a way that I don't think either Nadal or Djokovic would have done so I don't rate his chances of getting past the semi-final but I'll be pleased if he does.

There was an absolutely cracking match later when Isner took Nadal all the way to the wire. Five sets of very exciting tennis which should fire Nadal up for the rest of the tournament.

It would seem that in my case the effect of jet lag increases as time goes on. Not only did I drop off around tea-time yesterday causing me to be late for a drinks appointment but last night I slept for an unprecedented nine hours.

In between I stayed awake for the Grads production of A Comedy of Errors. This is all about the mistakes and confusion provoked by the arrival in Ephesus of a master and his servant each of whom has an identical twin in the city.

The Grads original twist on this story is that their sets of twins are not exactly identical. Although that may seem daft I found it quite helpful in following the plot and since the other members of the cast behave as though they were identical the farce rolls along with the fun and games that Shakespeare had in mind unimpaired.

Any of my readers thinking of mounting a production of Laurel and Hardy should rush along. There is a perfect Stan on display and with a bit of fattening maybe an Ollie as well.

It's nice to be back in fresh-aired Edinburgh but the music of Cuba is still in my ears.