The most notable thing I've done recently has been to walk along the coast from Aberdour to Kinghorn.

I took the train to Aberdour, very few passengers, all wearing masks.  Being not so very far from Kirkcaldy, Aberdour and its beaches is a place I was quite familiar with in my childhood.  The steep hill as you enter the town from the east provided thrills for the young cyclist but was the very devil to get up.  If I ever got up it without unmounting and pushing I'd surely remember it to this day.  So I guess I never did.

As an adult my visits have been much more infrequent.  I went climbing on the cliffs with a Stockbridge neighbour once and have a photo to prove it, if I could only lay my hands on it and I've taken the kids to the Silver Sands and the photographic proof is likewise somewhere unknown.

But this visit is documented in pictures.  First there's the castle, closed because of Covid.

It's been there a long time.  According to Historic Scotland its origins may date back 900 years.

This obelisk is more recent.

I noticed it in the distance as I walked down to the beach, too much of a detour for me to bother trying to get to it but thanks to my camera's zoom I got a picture.  I assumed it was built to commerate something or someone but when I researched it I found that it's purpose was to be spotted from afar.  From much further afar than from where I had spotted it.  From the other side of the Forth in fact.  It was apparently built by the Earl of Morton in 1744/45 to be viewed from his estate at Dalmahoy.  A handy landmark for today's Dalmahoy golfers to line up their shots.

So much of interest before I even got to the beach from where I possibly saw Dalmahoy, but without being that precise there is much to be seen over the Forth.

I got down on my knees to take this one.

Getting up again reminded me again of cycling up that brae out of Aberdour.

Then I set off along the track that runs between the railway and the Forth from where I took lots of shots of Edinburgh which I combined to make this panorama.  Click on it for a bigger image.

 

The British Aluminium plant that used to guard the western approaches to Burntisland closed down in 2002.  The husband of one of my cousins worked there and then turned his hand to psychiatric nursing when it closed.  On the main site there is now a very pleasant looking housing development.  The path from Aberdour runs parallel separated from it by a stream the banks of which have been sympathetically landscaped.

There were plans to develop the area on the seaward side of the path for leisure activities but I couldn't tell if any of that has been done. The "red pond", a deposit of sludge that is produced as a byproduct of converting bauxite to alumina is still there.  Maybe too toxic to do anything with?  There's a castle over there too.  It was on the market two years ago for £500K.  Might still be.

When I was a youngster Kirkcaldy's outdoor swimming pool was derelict and the indoor pool they have now hadn't been built so going to Burntisland's pool was a popular excursion.  It seems still to be there by the western end of the links but I didn't check its facilities.

At the entrance to the links there's a plaque showing people of note who were either born or lived in the town. No great surprise to see Thomas Chalmers, founder of the Free Church of Scotland or William Dick of the Dick Veterinary College or Henry Farnie who wrote the world's first golf instruction manual or even Mary Somerville the mathematician but there were a couple of surprises.  Robert Pitcairn was lost at sea when he was 17 but he must have been a popular lad since they named the island after him and David Danskin, founder and first captain of Arsenal FC.  My favourite though is probably Alexander Orrock who ran the Scottish mint in the 16th century and introduced the bawbee, the name derived from the name of his estate.   A more modern name is Anneila Sargent professor of astronomy in California.  She clearly profited from her time at Kirkcaldy High School.

It doesn't commemorate anyone connected to the world's first roll on roll off train ferry which ran from Burntisland to Granton from 1850 until the Forth Rail Bridge was built, presumably because no-one from the town was particularly instrumental in the project.  Passenger ferries continued to serve the route until the outbreak of the Second World War.  The service was revived briefly after the war and I travelled on it at some time before its closure in 1952.

I understand there was an attempt  to run a catamaran service in the early 90s but it didn't last long sadly. 

I went on to the beach and rested for a bit ruminating on my other connections with Burntisland.

It was the home of one of my sisters in law.  The family of one of my school friends made lemonade there.  I had a girlfriend from there.  Another childhood friend's brother settled in the town.  In my late teens I was in with a crowd who would drink cider and smoke late at night up on the local hill called The Binn.  Somone had access to a car to get us there.  

Fortunately the tide was out because then you can walk the next stage on the beach, otherwise you have to follow the main road.

Again you get great views of Edinburgh as you go along.

A noticeboard just before you leave Burntisland handily points out a couple of escape points should the tide come in.  One of those is by the monument to Alexander III who fell off his horse there en route to join his second wife the young Yolande de Dreux, but when I got to what I thought was that point I couldn't be bothered climbing up to it.  So I've borrowed this picture of it from Wikimedia.

Striding on into Pettycur bay I took some more pictures.  Here is a distant view of the bridges.  So distant that you really need a click to make them visible.

There's a lot of sand on this beach.  I thought the poles sticking up here and there might have been for some form of net fishing but a quick google tells me they were in fact defences against gliders landing.  

A little further on you come to the pretty vast conglomeration of holiday homes that overlook the beach.  Can't say I fancy it.  I have erected a tent on the beach in the dim and distant past but that was not to provide overnight accommodation, rather a shelter for discreet changing into swimwear or discreet canoodling.

There's a hotel in the middle of the park where I saw the Inverkeithing Community Big Band perform an excellent gig as part of the Fife Jazz Festival a few years ago.  I've got to know some of the players since then.

Pettycur was one of the points from which ferries crossed the Forth centuries ago but the harbour is a very tranquil spot today.

The last leg was a bit of a slog uphill from the harbour into Kinghorn but I was rewarded with this lovely view of the beach.  I thought of rewarding myself with a spot of lunch at the bar with a garden not far from this viewpoint but the Covid mitigation ordering system just seemed a bit too tedious so I didn't bother.

This is another beach that I frequented when I was a kid.  I particularly remember the evangelical groups who would tell bible stories and get us all singing religious songs.  The only one I could remember as I sat looking out over the beach was "the wise man built his house upon a rock" but google later brought a number to mind such as "this little light of mine" and "Jesus loves me" .  Youtube is full of them.  They sound a little jazzier than I remember the tambourine shakers of Kinghorn producing but the messages are there and I'm sure my ten year old self would have been thrilled if they'd had Youtube on a big screen.

Claire alerted me to a jazz band called Kansas Smitty's who run and perform in a bar of the same name in east London.  During lockdown they are presenting what they proclaim to be the only vitual jazz bar in the world on Saturday nights.  That's a payable event but they are a presence on Youtube where you can catch them for nothing.

They happened to be doing a livestream gig from Ronnie Scott's which is where I heard them.  A handful of personable young men led by the charming reeds player Giaccomo Smith playing mostly their own compositions which I'd call modern but mainstream.

They provided a pleasant curtain raiser to the Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival 2020 which faute de mieux was also an online experience.  I thought they did exceptionally well in putting togethere a varied and interesting programme.  It consisted predominently of videos of previous events but there were a number of lockdown performances including three Italians playing a mix of acoustic and electronic material in the woods near Turin.  I liked the music but not the soft focus filming.

I loved Playtime's gig from the Pathhead village hall and Aku performing in some cavernous underground space in Glasgow.  In another guise the Aku players appeared with others in a wildly crammed Glasgow flat giving it laldy while a pot plant spun round on a record deck. Tolerant neighbours on that stair.

Some of the reruns I'd seen live but not Lorna Reid.  I'll make a beeline to hear her when live performances reappear.

I haven't seen much else in the way of online entertainment.  I've watched a bit of TV without much enthusiasm or memory of what I've seen, inched a few episodes further through Narcos on Netflix and finished off some books.  The Whitehall Mandarin was a forgettable spy story.  At last year's Book Festival I heard the author of The Orchestra of Minorities speak at an African novels event and made a mental note to read it.  Now I have but didn't much care for this sorry tale of woe.  In parentheses The Old Drift  which featured in the same event and which I characterised as potentially the Great Zambian Novel I read some time ago but failed to enjoy.  Unnatural Causes is the professional autobiography of a forensic pathologist who's slit open every notable violently deaded body in the last forty years - absolutely fascinating.  The Way We Live Now which I read as a coda to watching its TV adaptation on DVD was equally fascinating.   

Of course being set in the 1870s it's the way they lived then but snobbery, greed, hypocricy, spendthrift sons, struggling mothers, lovers' misunderstandings, unrequited love, good samaritans and financial scams are with us still.

It's a couple of weeks now since we were relieved from the obligation to travel no further han 5 miles from home for leisure.  But since we were still enjoined to avoid public transport the concession appeared to favour car users (of whom I am no longer one), stalwart cyclists (certainly more than 60 years since I travelled 5 miles on a bike) and wheelers (I'm not one of those yet).  And I suppose walkers, but walking 5 miles before setting out on a leisure walk?

However, without worrying much about the fine print of the regulations and after a couple of false starts thanks to on the day adverse weather reports I set off for Abbotsford, that extraordinary house that Walter Scott built between Galashiels and Melrose.

The house has not yet reopened to the public but the gardens and grounds are open.  I caught the train to Tweedbank on the reopened Borders Railway.  Why on earth doesn't it go on to Selkirk, Hawick, Langholm and Carlisle? Perhaps like Edinburgh's trams they'll get an extension underway eventually.

I had intended to walk alongside the Tweed since the little bus that serves Abbotsford from the station doesn't run at weekends but there seemed no ready access to the river from the station so I walked there on a well signposted route through a housing area, across a main road and along a minor road.

Since my last visit decades ago they've built a visitor centre that hosts an interesting exhibition about the great man and his works, a gift shop and a café.  I visited the exhibition but left the rest for later, bought an entry ticket, provided my contact details for virus fighting and wandered around the gardens.

They are rather splendid.  I don't know who the chappie with his hands clasped is.  I expect there's a guidebook that tells all.

After the gardens I lunched in the café where I was served by a man in a perspex visor and gave my contact details again.  Next was the gift shoppe where I invested in some chutney and a copy of The Antiquary.  I've read several of Scott's novels but not that one.

I decided I would try to get back to Tweedbank by following the river.  It was a pleasant walk, narrower and muddier than I had perhaps bargained for.

At a point where the path split, one branch continuing along the river and one heading for the town I sought advice from some other walkers as to which would be the better route to get back to the station.  Their advice was to take the town path.  I wish I hadn't.  It was a boring walk and looking at a local map at the station when I got there ( a map I hadn't seen on my arrival) I could see how I might have got nearer by continuing along the river.  Even if I'd had to carry on to Melrose it would have been a more interesting walk.  Next time.  

There's been lots of on-line fun and entertainment in the last few weeks, some socially distanced outdoor meetings and a couple of decent walks.  One of the latter rather forced upon me when I went out to go to the Botanic Gardens having heard that they had reopened.  When I got there I discovered that you currently need to book in advance and that that day's tickets were exhausted.

So I set off along the Rockheid path towards Stockbridge.  When I emerged from the path instead of heading down to my left I crossed the road and followed a path that I'm sure didn't use to be there.

It led along to Inverleith park behind the Grange cricket ground.  What a good spot to be able to watch a game from.  Mental note made.

I bumped into a friend as I entered the park (spookily enough at the exact spot at which I had bumped into another friend the last time I was there).  I chatted to her and her grandchildren for a wee while and then walked on through the park and past the Gothic marvel that is Fettes.

I popped into Waitrose and bought some of the goodies that my local supahs don't stock and bussed my way back to as near as one can get to Leith Walk now that the tram works have shaken up traffic flows.

On-line socially there was Claire's quiz at which I performed miserably and the altogether intriguing mystery game called Plymouth Point where we followed clues to find a missing person.  I can't say I contributed a lot to the uncovering.  The heavy lifting being mostly done by the social media savvy younger members of the group.

I joined a Zoom event to watch a film Phil had been involved in making in Athens about democracy and to listen to some of the discussion that took place afterwards.  It was interesting but I don't give much for my chances of seeing a purer, more direct form of democracy springing up in my lifetime.  I'm not altogether sure that it would not be better to try to build on the representative form that we have at present.

I enjoyed Philip Glass's Akhnamen from the Metropolitan Opera

and several shows from the National Theatre.  A stunning Midsummer Night's Dream, a gloriously theatrical Amadeus, The Deep Blue Sea full of agonising emotion but which might have been better served by a stage half as wide and Les Blancs, a take on the chaos and brutality of decolonisation.

A lunchtime series on Radio 4 led me to the documentary film Icarus about doping in Russian sport.

Amongst the DVDs I ordered as makeweights to save postage on The Way We Live Now was Middlemarch which I enjoyed very much. I think the novel must have been amongst the many books that I disembarrassed myself of some years ago.  I'm now tempted to rebuy it but I'll endeavour to wait for the library to reopen.

I've read a few lightweight books, not all of them worth bothering with and am almost finished with The Way We Live Now which I bought as a result of watching the DVD.  I'm very glad I did it's an absolute pageturner.

I took the bus one day down to Silverknowes and enjoyed one of my favourite walks along to Cramond. It was a great deal busier than when I walked there a couple of months ago.  Social distancing was noticeable by its absence.

Cramond Island from Silverknowes

A corner of Cramond

Cramond imagined under the Romans

 

The fine weather in late May found me going through ice cubes but this picture reveals the fact that the weather has not been so kind for many years.  It's the last cube making bag from a box that I bought in France during the years I spent my summers there.  So it's at least nine years old.  June so far has not put any pressure on my ice cube making equipment.

Like June I have not been bustin out all over but have continued to be largely stuck at home, profiting where possible from the kindness of strangers in the form of theatrical freebies on-line. Of those I have enjoyed some and not others.

The Seawall was one of that much feared genre the oneman show but it was a poignant little tale of happiness and tragedy expertly delivered which moved and entertained.

Oneman in this context includes onewoman.  I'd say oneperson if it were not for the fact that I haven't managed to accustom myself yet to the feel of that formulation.  At least it's grammatical unlike "more better" and the like which strike a discordant note ever more frequently.  As for punctuation I spotted a grocer's apostrophe in a Scotsman headline to add to their various grammatical and spelling errors. Are they simply typos unnoticed by the subs or do the perpetrators think they are correct? 

OK. Put me in pedants' corner labelled grumpy old man.

Getting back to onemen.  The National Theatre of Scotland's Scenes for Survival have been, are and continue to be a delight.  These sparkling original pieces only a few minutes in length exhibit the plethora of writing and acting talent that we are lucky enough to enjoy.  Don't miss them and why not fork out a few bob in donation while you are at it.

Back in the big world I've seen from the National Theatre: This House, which I enjoyed no more nor less than when I saw it streamed to cinemas, i.e. not much, The Madness of George III, which I hadn't seen before and Small Island which I had.

Small Island is a joyous and moving play about the experiences of Jamaicans coming to the mother country (as they delusionally think of it) after the second war.  In the context of  Black Lives Matter it demonstrates at once both the distance we have come and the distance still to go.  The production itself is stupendous.  I can't think of many productions that have so effectively deployed a huge cast in a seamless sequence of scenes married to the imaginative design and use of essentially simple settings backed up by skilful lighting, sound and video. As for acting; incomparable.

The Madness of George III appealed to me somewhat less.  I wouldn't want to detract in any way from the fine performances of all the cast but I didn't find myself moved to anything like the same degree as I was in Small Island.     

The RSC's production of Macbeth with Christopher Eccleston and Niamh Cusack was not terribly well received when it hit the stage.  It's saving grace in critical opinion was that it wasn't as bad as the National's with Rory Kinnear and Anne-Marie Duff that came out about the same time.  Well I hadn't seen either nor read the reviews so approached the RSC one on BBC4 in a state of nature.

I rather enjoyed it.  Played pretty much as a horror story it had lots of touches that I loved.  The little girl witches with their dolls were satisfyingly creepy.  Blood was everywhere.  The onstage porter keeping score was doubly creepy.  Macduff's wife and pretty little chickens were dragged off to a spine-chilling screamy death behind a curtain.  Banquo's ghost did the business in the flesh as did the parade of kings to come.  The countdown clock above the stage leading from Macbeth's rise to his fall that resets itself when Malcolm takes over was an interesting touch.  All in all it was full of fresh ideas.

One that jarred with me though was the final fight.  Macbeth is given the lines "Lay on Macduff and damned be him that first cries 'Hold, enough!.'" and then they set to.  In this production the line ended with "Hold".  The fight gets going and Macbeth is beating the proverbial out of Macduff.  Then he stops, holds out his sword point downwards and says "Enough", at which Macduff cuts his throat. Odd.

I had tickets for the touring production of A Monster Calls but it was cancelled thanks to Covid-19 so I was pleased to find it was being streamed and a wonderful show it was.  Super staging, excellent acting and a touching treatment of a young boy's ambivalent feelings about his mother's imminent death.  He doesn't want her to die but he wants the stress and horror of waiting for the inevitable to be over.

My DVD of The Way We Live Now turned up in a set together with He Knew He Was Right and The Barchester Chronicles. I thoroughly enjoyed The Way...though I still hanker to see the 1969 black and white version again.  I didn't know He Knew... .  It's a great story about irrational jealously.  Is there a rational version?  Satisfyingly the jealous husband fades away and dies from his inability to master his emotion.  Loved by his wife to the end would you believe. 

Barchester awaits my finding a gap in the constant stream of entertainment that surrounds me.

My eye was caught by a French TV series on All4 called Philharmonia.  It turned out to be a silly and believability stretching story about murder and mayhem surrounding the arrival of a new conductor. I enjoyed the setting in the gorgeous Philharmonie de Paris concert hall that I visited last year and I learnt that the equivalent of "break a leg" for musical groups is "toi, toi, toi", so almost worth watching.  

Philharmonie Inside

Philharmonie Outside

A much better French TV series from the same source was The Other Mother. A child psychologist goes to the police because he is concerned that a boy of four is not the child he is said to be. After initially rejecting his suspicions the lady cop commander finds herself drawn into the mystery and into the psychologist's life. It's a good story that keeps you wanting to know more. It's set in Le Havre as well which is a change from the usual Paris centred cop stories.  Recommended.

I've zoomed a fair bit for sax, Italian, Japanese, wine tasting, social chit chat and even the Dicksonfield Owners and Residents Association meeting.

Jazz at Lincoln Centre runs an annual school big band competition called Essentially Ellington.  Hundreds of schools throughout the states take part. This year was their 25th anniversary and they celebrated in part by inviting a number of non USA bands to join the final stage.  Among them was the Tommy Smith Youth Jazz Orchestra.  Covid meant they had to hold the final online so the finalists and I guess the foreign invitees missed out on a trip to New York. I listened to a fair bit and marvelled at the quality of those teenage musicians.

I've managed a couple of reasonable outings, one down to Stockbridge and Inverleith Park where you get lovely views of the city,

and one to Duddingston where I fancied I would get some shots of the Kirk and loch which in my imagination I'm sure I've had in the past but the best I could get was this shot and that was from miles away.

But I liked this grafitti that I passed in the Innocent Railway tunnel on my way back to town.

I'm rather surprised to see that a month has gone past since I last posted anything here, but then not very much worth reporting has happened (to me that is).  Like the rest of the country I've been pretty much confined to barracks.

Only occasional outings other than supermarket dashes - I've got out early enough twice to enjoy the specially put aside older persons shopping hour.  Disappointingly moves in the Scottish Parliament to change the law to allow older drinkers to purchase booze during this early hour failed so we have to make an extra trip when we are thirsty.

I've continued to watch theatre on Youtube but not so much as previously.  I enjoyed the National Theatre's Barber Shop Chronicles.  I'd seen that before at the Lyceum and surprisingly enjoyed the screening at least as much if not more.  The in-the-round staging improved it I thought and I appreciated its political content more.

Their A Streetcar Named Desire was also a rewarding watch.  Some of the people I watched it with felt that the open framework set worked against the creation of a sultry New Orleans atmosphere and that changing the period in which it was set jarred, but I had no complaints on either point.  The acting was excellent.

On the other hand Frankenstein and Antony and Cleopatra didn't appeal.

From the A Play, A Pie and A Pint team I loved Sunset Boulevard, was unimpressed by the caricatures presented in Wee Free and couldn't abide Spuds.

I tend to steer clear of one person shows but was inordinately impressed by The Encounter.  It runs for more than two hours and is technically superb employing as it does an extraordinary soundscape that rewards the nuisance of wearing earphones throughout.  Simon McBurney takes us intensely and questioningly through an encounter with an Indian tribe in the Brazilian jungle breaking the barriers of culture and language in an effort to engage with their world.

I enjoyed the film The Company You Keep, a fairly standard thriller of a man who's been in hiding for decades emerging to clear his name.  Entertaining and undemanding.  Just the thing for lockdown and for Robert Redford fans at any time.

My Italian group has met on Zoom quite successfully and a family quiz was more fun than I had expected.

Back in the land of drama I was seduced into taking out a Netflix subscription by a news item puffing a series about the trials and tribulations of running a jazz club in Paris. Called The Eddy it had 8 episodes and I watched them all.  The music was good and some of the characters made an impact but the story was somewhat incoherent and not too gripping.  The final episode left the way open for a sequel but I'm not looking forward eagerly.

In contrast to my attitude to Better Call Saul.  The fifth season is on Netflix and I devoured it and wish the sixth and alas final season would make an early appearance.  I'm now working through Narcos which is great. I'm trying not to overindulge but make it last.  I've finished the first season and am holding off from jumping straight into the next one.

I came across a reference to Trollope's The Way We Live Now in something I was reading.  I have a vivid but imprecise memory of immensely enjoying a TV dramatisation of it years ago (it turns out to have been in 1969) and scurried to my computer to search it out.  To my delight I found it, but didn't.  There's one there but it's a later version (from 2001).  However I hadn't seen it so set about watching.  It's on Daily Motion and I imagine from the picture quality that it's a pirate recording.  Nonetheless I was enjoying episode 1 when it all of a sudden dissolved into a series of adverts and showed no signs of getting back to the show.  Maybe episode 1 was finished?

I thought I'd search on my new chum Netflix and after some laborious typing the complete name sprang up and I was quite excited.  But the series isn't there.  Instead of just saying sorry we ain't got that a screenfull of thumbnails comes up saying "titles related to The Way We Live Now".  Believe me they are not related, although I suppose parentage by the BBC counts.  Anyway I've now sent for the DVD.

To finish on a happier note I rolled with laughter reading a Spectator article in which a singer was described as being in a state of advanced refreshment.  This may well replace tired and emotional in my lexicon.

Here are a few snaps from my few outings:

Despite being incarcerated at Her Majesty's government's pleasure in a sort of medically approved house arrest I am getting about and enjoying a social life.  Almost entirely virtually of course but no less (well maybe a bit less) enjoyable for all that.

Certainly more enjoyable to my mind than running round your penthouse terrace as this lady spied from my bedroom window.

Today as the chill east wind that has blighted our beautiful blue skies for most of the week died down in intensity I had my coffee on the balcony and read a bit more of Havana Requiem, a Cuban cops and robbers tale.  The corruption of some of the cops in the story is straighforward compared to the intrigues unveiled in the wonderful radio series about cops, robbers and nastiness in high places, The Corrupted.

I'd heard episodes of this now and again (all set during Margaret Thatcher's time) but it was only this week that I discovered thanks to BBC Sounds that the story started in the closing years of the second world war.  There are in all about fifty forty-five minute episodes split into five series.  I am working my way through with all the enthusiasm and pleasure that Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul gave me.  It's been fascinating as the back stories are revealed in early episodes of characters and incidents that I knew of from having heard later episodes first.  The mixing together of real and imaginary characters and events gives a truly absorbing flavour not unlike that evoked by Hilary Mantel's trilogy about Thomas Cromwell.  Fortunately for G.F.Newman who wrote it, you can't libel the dead.

The internet has abounded with free screenings of plays, concerts, musicals and other entertainments and I've taken advantage.

From the National Theatre; One Man Two Guvnors, Jane Eyre, Treasure Island, Twelfth Night..

From Hampstead; Tiger Country, Amsterdam, Drawing the Line.

From The Royal Court; Cyprus Avenue.

From The Really Useful lot; JC Superstar, Phantom of the Opera.

From a pirate; Hamilton

From Curve Theatre; What the Butler Saw

From Northern Ballet; 1984

From the SCO; Various musical vignettes in a weekly email

From the RSNO; regular Friday night concerts

From the Berlin Philharmonic; free access to their archived recordings

From the BBC; iPlayer abounds with stuff.  I watched Wise Children first half only cos it didn't grab me.

From Mind the Gap; Zara

From the Scottish Jazz and Blues Festival;  The 2019 Blues Weekend gigs.

Some of these have been watched in virtual company through Zoom, meeting for a pre-show drink and then a post-show chat which has been most enjoyable.

Add to that a weekly blow with three other saxophonists from the Dunedin Band, my individual sax lesson, my on-line Japanese sessions and occasional social get-togethers leaving little time to bemoan one's fate.  Can I squeeze in U3A Italian?  We'll soon find out.

Out for my approved exercise I photographed Arthur's Seat through some foliage from Regent Terrace.
 

Wednesday would have been the opening night of The Venetian Twins which I was rehearsing with Arkle until the virus intervened.  Another excellent Goldoni play is The Servant of Two Masters which in its adapted form of One Man Two Guvnors appeared last night on Youtube as part of the National Theatre's contribution to relieving the boredom of the housebound population.  I can't say I'm in the least bored but more of that later.

I saw One Man... at the Kings when it was touring and loved it.  I'd forgotten much of the detail but after the opening scene was over and the action moved to Brighton it gradually came back. Brilliant characterisations, amazing slapstick skills, such fun.  If you were depressed by home incarceration that would surely have lifted your spirits.

Wikipedia lists 13 adaptations for stage and screen including Victor Carin's Scots version Servant O' Twa Maisters which I have also seen.  I'm not sure where or when but it is not impossible that I saw Tom Fleming's production in 1965 that opened the first season of the then new Royal Lyceum Company.

Lord Reith's succinct BBC mission statement "inform, educate, entertain" still governs what they and the other broadcasting organisations that have come into existence since the 1920s do.  Add to that the worldwide digital resources that we have at our fingertips today and no-one with a radio, a TV or particularly a broadband connection need experience a minute of boredom.  Perhaps the Chancellor should have added Corbyn's free broadband pledge to his support packages.

I've been making full use of my broadband connection.

I auditioned online for a Fringe play.  The play itself has now fallen foul of the festival cancellations but that's another tin of beans.  I'm having my sax lessons via Skype.  I've signed up for some online Japanese conversation.  I've watched ballet and theatre that I would not have been able to see live and which under normal circumstances would never have appeared on screen, and there is much more in store.  The RSNO are providing concerts to their subscribers and the SCO have been sending little musical treats to my inbox.

I've started getting some indoor exercise (the outdoors being mostly verboten) thanks to dance classes for the elderly being screened by Sadlers Wells and by Scottish Ballet.  There's not much actual dancing involved which is just as well and it's not that ultra vigorous jumping about to the accompaniment of uncomfortably loud music that is also on offer online.  Sedate stretching and bending is at its core.

Last but certainly not least have been social gatherings via Skype and Zoom.

Offline there's reading of which I have lots to catch up on and my CD collection.

I'm making infrequent trips to the supermarket and taking even more infrequent short walks.

I am not undertaking a thorough or even a cursory Spring clean.

Wellnigh deserted Leith Walk

Closed All Hours

You'd think that on a fine sunny Spring day like today a man playing alone on a golf course could hardly be more socially distant but even that strategy has been denied me as the Coucil has closed all its golf courses.  Of course it's a cordon sanitaire rather than a barbed wire fence so one could sneak in but... Could I be so bold?

Everything else I do has vanished like snow off a dyke.  Looking on the bright side as I suppose one must, I have a pile of books waiting to be read, a pile of DVDs waiting to be viewed again and the leisure to do so.

Before the sky fell in I saw three wildly contrasting films and got to one concert.  You can always rely on Beethoven for a good tune.  The young Sumwook Kim rang all the changes out of the Emperor concerto from the most delicate pianissimo to thunderingly majestic chords.  Most concert pianists remain poised over the keys when not playing but Kim swivelled round on his stool and enjoyed himself watching the band.  The audience was a bit thinner than usual (virus effect) but gave him lots of applause which unfortunately didn't prove quite enough to get him back on the stool for an encore.

When Uncut Gems started I thought I was in for an uphill struggle.  Fast paced images jumping all over the place straining my eyes, disjointed and heavily accented New York Jewish dialogue taxing my ears as our hero winged his way from one incomprehensible encounter in the diamond district to another.  But it turned out to be a great film in which the little man almost won.

All I knew about Judy Garland before I saw Judy was that she had been a child star and that she was Liza Minelli's mother.  The film focuses on a series of concerts she gave at The Talk of the Town in London in the sixties to try to restore her finances.  It fills in the background to her increasing unreliability due to drink and drugs with flashbacks to her childhood career with MGM, where we are encouraged to believe lies the origin of her tragedy.  I have no difficulty in accepting that.  She was essentially an abused child who was never able to maintain a stable lifestyle as she grew up.  A sad film but very well made.

There's been a set of Japanese films touring the country under the title Happiness is a State of Mind with the tagline Joy and Despair in Japanese Cinema.   Hogwarts is for witchcraft but Hyakkaoh Private Academy where Kakegurui is set is for gambling, which is a milieu more or less certain to foster buckets of joy and despair.

It's the only one that I managed to see and I thoroughly enjoyed it even though on the face of it you wouldn't think it was my cup of tea.  The film depicts a struggle to win the ultimate prize of being assured of being able to lead whatever life one wishes to after graduation.  The means is to come out on top of games of chance such as Paper, Rock, Scissors (who'd have believed it ) and a game that I didn't follow too well that involved slapping cards down on the table, the team with the highest card winning ( slightly more complicated than that).

It's a beautifully stylishly put together and filmed movie and while the plot is fairly silly the characters are intriguing and played with great enthusiasm and energy, even the traagically morose and silent one.  It springs from an anime TV series.  I know nothing about anime but I might be developing a taste for it.

One of the joys of the film for me was the number of snippets of Japanese that I picked out and understood.  No need to despair of linguistic success then even though the class has been cancelled.

What on earth is this you wonder.  There's a group on Facebook dedicated to the past life and times of Kitwe Little Theatre which is where I found this picture.  I was thrilled because if you look at the page devoted to our production of Joe Orton's black comedy Loot on my website you'll see a plea for pictures of the show and now years and years later there are umpteen on Facebook.

So the photo is me as Mr Mcleavy with lots of shoe whitener in my beard and hair to age me up plus plasters covering the wounds inflicted on my character in the action of the play, and Pete Heath as the policeman who very energetically hauled me away.  My neck still bears the scars.  You can also see Jack Smith the stage manager lurking behind the set.

As well as action shots of the dress rehearsal there are some portrait shots as well and I can't forbear from publishing mine.  Just the ticket for all those occasions when a profile pic is demanded.

In 1988 thanks in part to an appeal by The Scotsman to which I like to think I contributed (if I didn't I should have) Nixon in China came to the Festival.  I saw it then in the Playhouse and memory tells me I enjoyed it.  Now thirty years on I enjoyed Scottish Opera's new production at the Festival Theatre.  As this review makes clear the opera lacks the political frisson that it carried then but for my money the music retains its novelty and strength and this staging is wonderful.  It doesn't have Airforce 1 trundling on to the stage but more than makes up for that with all sorts of technical wizardry.

I'm not a great fan of animated films but in deference to my current interest in things Japanese I went to a film called Spirited Away in which a little girl en route with her parents to a new home spends an adventurous time in a magic world.  Her parents are turned into pigs and the little girl suffers lots of slings and arrows but her grit, determination and absolute goodness defeats the powers of evil and releases her parents.  It was very colourful, very lively, very beautiful, and full of terribly clever effects.  I loved it and managed to pick out the occasional Japanese word into the bargain.

I can't say the same for First Love, another Japanese film.  It dealt with a feud between rival sets of baddies in which a young man who thinks he has a brain tumour intervenes to rescue a young woman.  The film out Tarantinos Tarantino in the amount of blood spilt and it's one of those in which characters survive and indeed thrive on what would clearly be mortal blows.  Heads literally roll. Nonsense.

Seeing that came on the back of spending over three hours watching what I thought was going to be the German family saga Heimat that was very popular on TV some years ago.  This was a family saga of a different stripe called Heimat is ein raum aus zeit.  It consisted of long slow black and white shots of countryside, of woods, of gravel pits, of trains moving, of trains not moving, of people going up steps or down,  accompanied by an intermittent voiceover.  Tedious in the extreme but much lauded on the festival circuit.

You can't apply the word tedious to  Planet Wave.  Colossal, daring, inventive, creative and literally poetic you can, because the work is a collaboration between poet Edwin Morgan and musician Tommy Smith whose music enfolds poems charting the history of the world from the chaos of 20 billion years ago to the age of scientific revolution ushered in by Copernicus.  First performed at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival over twenty years ago the work is being revisited in celebration of the centenary of Morgan's birth.  The performance in the Queen's Hall was magnificent.

I squeezed in one brief visit to the recent Scottish Jazz Weekend to hear a lovely hour of Dexter Gordon in the capable hands of pianist Fraser Urquart  and saxophonist Fraser Smith before having to shoot off to see Ballet Rambert.  I thoroughly enjoyed the show although neither my dance partner nor the reviewers were quite as smitten.  Three stars from each of Guardian. Independent.

Shostakovich is high up in my list of favourite composers having been there since I stood at the back of the Usher Hall and listened to his Fifth Symphony over half a century ago.  I got leave of absence from The Venetian Twins rehearsals the other week to hear his First Cello Concerto.  It's a very intense and vigorous piece and I found the Schubert symphony in the second half of the concert bland in comparison despite its nickname of "tragic".

This is Pittencrieff House in Dunfermline.  I nipped over there one fine day recently.  Although I've been to Dunfermline several times in recent years it's always been to an event, generally some jazz in the Carnegie Hall.  I hadn't visited the town since I was a child and thought it was about time I saw how the one time capital and resting place of many Scottish kings was getting on.

The Abbey is at least as much of a ruin as it was when I last saw it and the Abbey Church has crumbled a bit and was closed.  They look pretty good though.  Here's a shot from the church doorway of the Abbey ruins.

And a closer view of part of the ruins,

and an attempt to get everything in the one shot.

Getting back to Pittencrief House, it was built in the 17th century by one Sir Alexander Clerk and passed eventually into the hands of Andrew Carnegie who gifted it and the extensive grounds to the town in 1903.  Read all about it here.

Anyway Alexander had an eye for a good spot.  There's a brilliant view south over the Forth to the Pentlands.  There were no bridges in his day but if anything they enhance the view.  My snapshot doesn't do it justice but blown up it's not bad.  Just click on it to test my contention.  I'm now using it as my PC wallpaper.












There have been some fascinating photographs on display at the National Library and at the Portrait Gallery.  This is a collection that spans 100 years from the beginnings of photography in the 1840s and contains the work of early pioneers, of professionals and of amateurs.  Closed now it will be on tour and I think ultimately all of the images will be available online. Google provides a selection here.

Moving on to moving pictures I had a bit of a binge over three days.  I saw Parasite, the Oscar winner.  It was very entertaining and while I appreciated its social message about the disparities between rich and poor I didn't rush out to buy a copy of the Sociaislt Worker or (spoiler alert) a carving knife.

Ninotchka is a 1930s romcom starring Greta Garbo.  Filmhouse had it scheduled for their biggest screen on Valentine's Day but it was pushed out to the much smaller second screen by Parasite.  I'm sure there is some sort of social message there but I can't quite identify it.

Anyway the film is great fun.  Garbo is a severe straitlaced Bolshevik aparatchik sent to Paris to rectify the incompetence of her Marx brothers like comrades who are not doing well in trying to sell the confiscated jewels of a White Russian duchess living there.  They have been thwarted by the Duchess's right-hand man (and lover?) Count something or other, played by the devilishly handsome Melvyn Douglas.  Naturally he takes on Garbo and things wind up as might be expected.

The third was another romcom, the newly released Emma.  Jane Austen's annoying, even to a degree unlikeable heroine has long been one of my favourite characters in her canon. Her other heroines have a tendency to be flawless but Emma gets it wrong every time.  Her match making falters and fails thanks to her need to manage others and an overconfident assessment of her own people reading skills.  Her putdown of Miss Bates even suggests a touch of cruelty in her nature.  But with Knightley's help she redeems herself and her eyes are opened not least to the fact that she loves him and he her.

I loved the film.  The plot unrolls with nary a glance at any of the grim reality that accompanied the golden age in which it exists.  It is delightfully shot in chocolate box settings.  The country house grandeur was maybe even a touch too grand.  The acting and characterisations were beyond criticism.  Escapism of high degree.

Garbo was a Hollywood legend as was Marlene Dietrich and at the Queen's Hall this month there was a show billed as Ute Lemper sings Marlene.  She did, but she did much more.  She performed Marlene's life ranging over her cabaret years in Germany, her Hollywood career, her political views, her involvement in boosting the morale of American soldiers in the second world war, her relationship with her daughter (not good), and her love life in which she spread herself widely over man and womankind.  Check out this website for the tantalising story of the coming together of those two amazing stars.

Ever heard a pibroch played on the violin.  Well that was Rachel Barton Pine's encore after she played Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto with the RSNO.  She actually swapped her own violin for a Scottish fiddle to play Macintosh's Lament.  No doubt that gave it greater authenticity.  It was lovely.  I wouldn't say it overshadowed the concerto but it was jolly engaging.  If you look at her very catholic musical activities on Wikipedia it comes as no surprise to hear a pibroch at her hands.

Just as well I didn't resolve to be an assiduous blogger this year since I've totally neglected that task not only since New Year but since long before Christmas.

So a rapid catch up would be in order.  Delicious Christmas lunch of Mushroom Wellington by Claire.  A post Christmas binge watching session of three seasons of Better Call Saul which I enjoyed so much that I rushed onto the internet, ordered season four and devoured it on arrival.

Rugby at Murrayfield to see Edinburgh triumph over Glasgow in  the 1872 Cup.

Then off to Keswick for New Year rescuing a damsel in distress by taking Miriam's passport down so that she'd get off to the snow with her auntie and others.

Stayed up till midnight and watched this wonderful firework display coming, courtesy of BBC iPlayer from Edinburgh.  Imagine being too idle to nip out to Keswick Market Square to rejoice with the populace there.

A few episodes of Armando Ianucci's Veep were great as was a wee fresh air stroll in the beautiful though occasionally spooky forest while Connor was hurtling himself downhill on a bike.

Then a week in Gran Canaria enjoying some winter sun as well as some winter mist, winter cold and winter rain.  They have fascinating climates these Canaries where within a few miles of one another are all year round sun-soaked beaches and well watered lush forests. Here are two contrasting views from different parts of the island.

Back in Blighty things got going in their usual manner, wine-tasting, Dunedin Band, U3A Italian, fascinating university lunch and talk about robotics, Pride and Prejudice (sort of) at The Lyceum (a fun-filled evening) and rehearsals for a show I was cast in before Christmas.  It's a Goldoni farce called The Venetian Twins in a scottified version that romped through The Lyceum four or five years ago.  If we do it well enough it will be very funny.  It's very much a comedy, indeed a farce centred on the situations of mistaken identity that arise from the simultaneous presence in Verona of the twins who don't know that each other is there and their interactions with the other characters.  As is fitting in an 18th century story the servants tend to be wiser than their masters.  There are three deaths but as my character says "you can't have everything" and all ends happily with no fewer than three weddings. 

After the show was over; the show in question being Christmas at the Conservatoire in which the music theatre students strutted their stuff, loosened their larynges and belted out their ballads.  It was a fun entertainment after lunch with school chums on election day.

The other Christmasy offering I've been to recently was Scottish Ballet's The Snow Queen.  I enjoyed it well enough but felt it lacked the strength and punch that they injected into The Crucible in the Festival.  I can't say I know the story intimately and I was bit puzzled here and there, no more so than when the Snow Queen imitates Tosca and throws herself into the void at the end. Here's what The Guardian thought.

I missed the Dunedin's concert because of a prior engagement with Nicola Benedetti and the RSNO.  However with seven alto saxes in the line-up these days I can't imagine I was missed.  The RSNO gig was a treat.

My Italian group had its last session. I'd dragged up a jolly Christmas song on which to base an exercise.  You can listen to it below but I'll spare you the find the missing words exercise.  They're not missing in the video.  That was followed by a convivial lunch at Vittoria's. 


The Clydedale bank branch across the road closed down some months ago and recently people have been hard at work redding up the premises for some new endeavour.  Most likely another coffee bar thought I.  But no it's a British Red Cross shop.  Just what we don't need, another charity shop.  But it looks like one with a difference.  The gear in the windows appears to be brand new and although I haven't yet been inside from what I could see all the stock may be new.  If so that must be a first.

I'm feeling rather pleased with myself this afternoon.  One of my responsibilities as Secretary of the Dicksonfield Owners and Residents Association is the maintenance of our website (www.dicksonfield.co.uk if you fancy a look).

When I took it over I revamped it using excellent software called Webstudio that I'd used for years but when I had to replace a hard disk some years ago and tried to port the software I discovered that the company had gone out of business and no-one had taken over sales and support of Webstudio.  I found through a user forum a workaround but after a second problem when I had to replace my computer the workaround no longer worked.  So I had to buy new web building software and recreate the site.

That's worked well enough for the last three years and the UK branch of the software developer has helped sort out a couple of problems.  I don't need to update the site very often but I do add information and files after our quarterly meetings and set about doing so after our meeting this week. But the software won't run and the UK people tell me they no longer sell or support the product and advised me to take my problem to the US.  I've done so but they say "Who are you?  You're not on our customer records."  Well I won't be because I bought the thing from Argos, who will certainly be unable to help.  I suspect that a Windows 10 update will prove to be the culprit.  That happened before and the symptoms are similar.

So pending the Americans getting back to work on Monday and possibly helping me I set about some old-fashioned editing of the site pages using my tried and tested method of coding HTML and CSS.  That is to say copy, modify and paste; and glory be it's all worked perfectly.

The weak winter sun over the Beveridge park pond, scene of many of my happy childhood days. I had a stroll through there when I went over to Kirkcaldy to see an NTLive screening of the play Hansard, neither of the two Edinburgh screening dates being convenient for me. It was a super piece. Ultimately a sad and tragic tale of blighted lives but for the most part a sparklingly written verbal sparring match with excellent political jibes. I had gone over in the late afternoon and had a wander through the park and along the prom. The High Street is a bit sad but otherwise the town didn't look too bad and the art gallery and library were in excellent order as was the Adam Smith. The Abbotshall though appears to have been abandoned. Ready for a new lease of life under a new owner?

I'm something of an agnostic as far as opera is concerned but some I do enjoy and one of my favourites is Tosca. Scottish Opera have a production running at the moment and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The music is unbelievably lush and the drama gripping. Despite knowing very well that she's going to jump off the battlements when the moment came it caused me a sharp intake of breath in shock and just about brought tears to my eyes. Great stuff.

In contrast I was not terribly moved by Mathew Bourne's take on Romeo and Juliet. Prokofiev's music is super though I prefer it live rather than canned and the dancing and staging were nothing short of admirable but somehow the emotions didn't overcome the disadvantage of this being a screening and not a live performance. The fact that the only connections with Shakespeare's play were the characters' names and the death of the lovers may also have had something to do with it.

Other wonderful dancing came from Carlos Acosta's Cuban troupe, Acosta Danza. Their closing number, Rooster, (which despite not remembering at the time I now realise I have seen before) is a dance set to music by the Stones in which Carlos himself plays a major part strutting around as the eponymous bird. I'd only recently seen the biopic about him. How true it is one doesn't know of course but it was rather the opposite of Billy Elliot. Carlos was a boy who didn't want to dance. It was only the pressure exerted (sometimes physically) by his father that kept him at it. If my parents had only enforced my attendance at piano lessons when I was eight instead of weakly letting me off the hook after a couple of months I might have been a concert pianist today, I don't think. Musicwise I'm actually just completing ten years with the saxophone and still enjoying the struggle.

I had a few days in Keswick staying at Connor's B&B with Siobhan. Her daughter Miriam has just left school and has gone with a chum to work in a restaurant in the town. Her chum's aunt lives there and the two of them are lodging with her. It's sort of a gap year enterprise though I think they plan to work and save over the winter and then do something more exciting before heading on to university next October. They both seem to be enjoying the experience and getting involved in things outside work as well. I think Siobhan was reassured by the visit.

While we were there we went to the lovely theatre they have by the lakeside to see a show called The Children. It was an interesting piece set in the aftermath of an accident at a nuclear power station, well suited to a Keswick audience with the Sellafield plant only a few miles down the coast. Anyway the argument of the play revolved around the setting up of a team of engineers and scientists of mature years to take charge of cleaning up operations in the plant to spare younger people from exposure to the dangers of such an undertaking. Not all the characters in the play were prepared to be quite so selfless. I think in the Fukushima incident older people did step forward.

Other theatre visits included Catch 22 produced by the Grads. It was terribly well choreographed and had lots of delightful caricatures. I particularly enjoyed Lawrence Waring's pop-eyed Major Major climbing in and out of his office window. The Barber Shop Chronicles at the Lyceum was a riot of colour, action, fast paced scene shifting and man talk set in barber shops all over Africa and back here in Blighty. A scene from Claire's work in progress featured with three other writers' work in From Page to Stage at the Roxy. All four pieces entertained and raised interesting and one hopes useful comments from three theatre luminaries there to give feedback.

Theatre of a different kind was provided by stand-up Ardal O'Hanlon who held the Queen's Hall audience's attention for an hour or more with his ruminative and mostly gentle wit. He owes his fame I understand to a long gone sit com Father Ted. A word of praise for his warm up act, a girl from Glasgow whose act was funny but definitely post watershed. I thought she was called Sue Riddle but Google doesn't know her so I must be wrong.

Another couple of girls who did well for me in recent weeks were Anna Clyne whose Prince of Clouds and Sound and Fury graced an SCO concert and a lady whose name I can't recall who gave a most entertaining talk in and about Scots at the Portrait Gallery.

On the music front apart from the SCO I revelled in Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony from the RSNO. I just love that man's big, loud noise and his soft sweet noise as well. It was preceded by a percussion concerto that reached the parts other instruments can't get to. Review here.

Then there was jazz. Tommy Smith with piano, drums and bass at the Queens Hall paying homage to Coltrane and a number of excellent players in a weekend of music at St Brides. I particularly enjoyed the guitar playing of Ben Macdonald and I'm not a guitar fan. On my own instrument, the saxophone, Matt Carmichael who is still at college was amazing.

A quick rundown of films. Meeting Gorbachov reinforced, despite its somewhat hagiographic style that here was a great man who was cut down before he could do all that he might have done to improve our world. It Must Schwing.... was a fine tribute to the men who created Blue Note records and featured lots of music from their sterling cast of jazzers. Le Jeune Ahmed was a compelling portrait (albeit fictional) of a young man convinced that his religious convictions justified a decision to kill a teacher he considers an enemy of Islam. He doesn't succeed and has a rather unconvincing change of heart when he suffers an accident in pursuit of his mission. Relative Worlds in the Scotland Loves Anime festival was not my thing. But I knew that. I only went because of my current interest in Japanese and thankfully I did learn something because filmwise for me it was a big yawn.