After catching a 4.15 a.m. bus and suffering the long tedious slog through airport, flight and arrival airport my holiday started around lunchtime here in Treviso.  There's nothing very special about this part of the town but the photo shows the typical arcaded streets that offer shelter from sun and rain with a hint of a square seen through the arches on the right. The beautiful roadway is made from their equivalent of our setts.  The setts are smaller than ours, square rather than rectangular and generally laid out in a non linear pattern, often fan shaped. 

I'd arrived before a hotel room was ready for me so I dumped my bag and wandered off to find lunch which sadly was a fairly nondescript plate of cold meat and salad.  But it provided enough fuel for me to get back to the hotel, now ready for me, and change into lighter clothing.  For it was hot, as it continued consistently to be until I got back to Edinburgh where to be fair it was pretty warm.

Anyway I spent the rest of that first day getting acquainted with Treviso.  It's a lovely place, not too big, not too busy, not a tourist magnet but with sufficient points of interest to be, in the famous Michelin phrase, worth a detour.  The town walls for instance.  They extend along

most of three sides of the central area of the town.  There are some fine churches, a few museums, markets and pleasant spots in which to pause. 

The next day I went to Vicenza, slightly by default.  I intended to go to Venice but thanks to machine problems and ticket office queues I decided to take the next train out and so bought a ticket to Vicenza via the Trainline app.

What a lovely day resulted.  The town is beautiful.  Reading The Rough Guide on the train I learnt about its connection with Palladio and about the oldest indoor theatre in Europe which lies at the end of the Corso Palladio, the main street.  So I made a dash for that on arrival.  It's really a Roman theatre with its standard highly decorated permanent background with its three doors brought indoors.  It looks bowed out in my photo but it's not in fact. Panorama shot effect.

After that visit which included a bit of a sound and light show I wandered back up the Corso and off many side streets admiring the buildings and public spaces.

On the next day (Sunday) I was going to buy a ticket online again but decided I should really be taking every opportunity to speak Italian so I queued up at the station and asked for a ticket to Trieste saying that I would be coming back later in the day but didn't know exactly when.  The agent said that would cost me €30 but for €29 she could sell me a ticket  which I could use on any train (except some high speed services) as often as I liked over the next three days.  No brainer. 

So I set off to Trieste.  There were lovely mountain views for most of the way replaced by lovely views of the sea in the last half-hour or so.  On arrival I decided it being hot and steamy to try to find the seaside.  Several buses claimed to be heading for the Castello di Miramare which sounded just the ticket.

Unfortunately they wouldn't sell me a ticket on the bus.  Smartphones were mentioned but I didn't grasp quite what the driver was on about.  There being no open shops in the vicinity I sat in a bus shelter and investigated (thankyou smartphone).  The SMS suggestion didn't prove fruitful. Next option, download the Trieste transport app.  Once downloaded you have to register as a user, providing all sorts of extraneous data.  That involves responding to a link sent by email.

Now we're ready.  I'll go for the €3 day ticket.  Wait.  My card issuer wants to protect me from the possibility that I'm about to be scammed out of €3 so we go through the one-time passcode text routine.  Finally I get on the bus and squeeze through the crowd of beachgoers to push my phone up against a QR code to validate my ticket.  Phew.

I say beachgoers but in the 5 mile stretch of Miramare this is the biggest bit of beach that I could see.

But the whole stretch serves as a place to take the sun, relax, picnic and slip into the sea.  It was packed.

There is one spot called Pineta di Barcola which I saw from the bus that is a wood laid out with kids' playgrounds and such that looked really good.

Anyway the bus stopped about a mile before the castle.  I walked on and got to the car-park within the grounds but was damned if I could be bothered to go all the way.  You can see from this Wikipedia entry that it's well worth a visit but for me that will have to wait.  I trudged back to the bus-stop with a cool drink pause en route and caught a bus back into the city centre.

The centre is all grand buildings and wide streets reflecting one period of its long history.   I got off somewhere and wandered towards the sea coming across the statue of James Joyce in the process. Famously he taught English here and lived for years in the city having got away from Pula, of which more later.

In approximately this area I was absurdly excited to hear Japanese being spoken.  I heard and recognised the language before seeing the speakers. It was a family or group of friends sitting chatting in a cafe.  Could be me one day (I hope).

I did a bit of sitting without chatting but imbibing before catching a bus back to the station. In the underpass leading there from the bus-stop somebody shouted after me.  I ignored it of course but as I went up the steps a youngish man came abreast of me.  He offered me sex.  I fell about laughing I'm afraid.

Masks were still obligatory on public transport and on the train home two young men were ejected (safely at a station) for not wearing them.  They must have put a hex on the train because it broke down later on.  I suppose the wait for another one was about half an hour.  No great sweat.  

I went to Venice the next day later than planned because the train I expected to catch only runs at weekends so it was pretty well lunchtime till I got there.  I decided it was too hot to focus on contemporary art so I spent the day pottering about on the vaporetti.  I had an excellent lunch at a restaurant that I hope to be able to find again.  Their terrace was full but a waiter set up a chair for me to wait and gave me a glass of prosecco to wait with.  It reminded me of being given something to drink when Claire and I were in a queue for a restaurant in Buenos Aires.  Very civilised.  When I did eat it was delicious.  I had a tender cuttlefish salad and fish filled ravioli washed down with a wine whose name I forget.

I checked out how to get to San Basilio where I'll be catching the ferry to Pula on Friday.

When I got back to Treviso in the evening I was able to watch Andy Murray's first round match on Sky Sports in the hotel.  A very satisfactory day.

On Tuesday an early start to get to Padua.  I'd bought a time slot ticket to see the Giotto frescoes online following the guide book and the website's imprecations about the impossibility of buying a ticket on the day.  This turned out to be nonsense by the way, but like a number of systems I dealt with in Italy you don't actually get a ticket online.  You get a code number or a QR code that you subsequently have to present to a machine or a human being to get a physical ticket. What is the point?

It took me a while to find the Scrovegni Chapel and when I did find the grounds I had to walk the whole way round to find the entry to the Chapel itself, annoying and hot work.  This was me getting my ticket to be used later in the day.  I had a wee daunder round the museum which had lots of nice stuff in it.  I bought some postcards but I didn't have a pen, nor surprisingly did the gift shop.  They had some pretty little notebooks though so I bought one of those on the assumption that it would come in handy.

I then headed off to town to fill in some time before my date with the frescoes.  I got myself a Bic pen for a euro in a tabaccheria (and subsequently passed a pen shop where one euro wouldn't get you a drop of ink) and a cheap umbrella (rain was forecast for later but when it came it was only a few spits).

The last thing these fragile frescoes need is a crowd of hot tourists giving off sweaty fumes so you have to spend time in an air-conditioned chamber before you get your 15 minutes in the presence.  It's an educational wait.  They show a video about the frescoes.  The wait turns out to be well worthwhile because the frescoes arre stunning.  They certainly rival Michelangelo's work in the Sistine Chapel.

Here are my snaps but you'll get a better idea of the beauty of the work if you google "scrovegni chapel frescoes".

I had lunch then in the museum cafeteria.  I ate a delicious black rice salad and by a happy misunderstanding was served two Aperol spritzes.  Not for the price of one alas.

In the grounds there are various bits of art that I wandered amongst before going back into the town centre for more wandering. Some examples

Back to town for some more sightseeing I came across the Cafe Pedrocchi which is historically, architecturally and intellectually one of the most important places in Padua.  It also serves delicious snacks, viz

And on the particular day I was there there were a couple of celebrations going on.  This girl complete with laurel wreath, symbol of triumph borrowed by the Romans from the Greeks, was there with friends and family to celebrate her graduation (laurea in Italian) in medicine in the 800th anniversary year of Padua University.

That was about it.  I headed back to Treviso and watched Rafa at Wimbledon.

The following morning I felt like a break from intensive sightseeing.  I had a leisurely breakfast, took my coffee out to the little seating area in front of the hotel and wrote my postcards.  Later in the day the very pleasant lady in a tabaccheria who sold me stamps insisted on positioning the large stamps accurately on the postcards and came out onto the pavement to show me the nearest postbox.

I had a bit of a toddle around town and went to an exhibition of the work of Cleto Murani called L'Ossessione della Bellezza.  As we all know beauty is in the eye of the beholder so I'll let you judge with a few pics.  Let's start with this image plucked from a video.

I like the cravate but I'm not sure that the eating irons in the breast pocket show an obsession with beauty.  His work is quite fun though.

The place I stopped at for lunch had a large selection of salads named after authors (and maybe characters as well, I forget).  I chose an Agatha Christie.  Presumably because it was composed of ingredients that I liked though I've forgotten them as well except for one.  This appeared to be croutons but burnt to a cinder croutons that were nonetheless still in one piece.  As coke is to coal so this stuff was to bread.  Definitely a mystery ingredient befitting the name of the dish.

It came on to rain as I was finishing my lunch so I was grateful for the protection of the little umbrella I'd bought the previous day as I made my way back to the hotel where I spent the rest of the day watching Raducanu and Murray lose their respective matches.

No rest for the sightseer the next day.  Off to Verona, which town I was lately the provost of on the Edinburgh stage.  The station is a wee bit of a hike from the town centre but I bought a traditional paper bus ticket valid for the day from a shop in the station and hopped on whatever number my guide-book said I should.

It's pretty easy to decide when you've reached the town.  Where else can it be but by the arena.

For those exhausted by the effort of getting there or just lazy there's a satisfyingly long parade of cafes just opposite in which to while away a while or so while considering the next move.

My next move was to circumnavigate the arena.  Famous for its use as an opera stage its scenery dock seemed to be the surrounding street which was full of Egyptian gods and other operatic riff-raff.

I contemplated going inside the arena but there was pretty big queue and to be honest when you've been in one Roman arena you've been in them all.  The design is standard though the dimensions differ.  There was also too big a queue for the town tour bus for my taste so I did my own tour through some central streets and along the banks of the Adige on shanks' pony  before collapsing at a table with this fine view and a cooling drink or two.  It was very hot.  According to my phone it was 32°, feels like 37° and that's certainly how it felt to me.

Once recovered I used my invaluable bus ticket to work my way back to the station where I caught a train to Treviso.

Next day was my day for moving to Croatia but first there was the small matter of the Venice Biennale.  I got down to Venice smartly, dumped my luggage at a place in the Piazzale Roma that I'd sussed out earlier in the week and caught a vaporetto to Giardini where I joined a ticket office queue knowing as I explained earlier that there was no point in buying online since I'd still have had to queue to collect the ticket.

Supposed to open at 10.00 it seemed they were having a long lie today and would open at 11.00.  I repaired to a cafe to fume with a coffee.  When the office did open I did more fuming because a woman a few punters ahead of me spent an inordinate time at the window.  There was much consulting of phones and notebooks and parleying with the agent within and handing over of babies to a companion.  Ultimately she moved off clutching a bunch of tickets 3 or 4 inches deep. I assume she was a travel agent or tour guide or something but really they should have a window dedicated to group sales and let the individual visitor buy their ticket promptly.

Once in I loved it but saw only a fraction.  I'm very tempted to go back for a couple of days later in the year to revisit and to use the Arsenale section of my ticket because I didn't have time to go there.  I'm just going to post a few pictures and let you share what I saw without comment.  I will tell you one amusing detail.  Outside the Japanese pavilion was a notice apologising for the fact that their installation wasn't working properly. How could you tell I wondered when I saw it.    

After all of this and much more I hurried back to collect my luggage and get to San Basilio to catch the ferry to Pula and at about 17.15 we headed down the Giudecca canal and through the lagoon into the Adriatic.

The puff of smoke is in celebration of the Queen's 75th Jubilee.  I happened to be in Princes Street when a salute was fired from the castle.  I didn't count the bangs but I don't imagine there were 75 of them.  There's a strict protocol which I'm not familiar with about the number of bangs that any particular occasion/person merits.

There was no street party in Dicksonfield, not I am sure out of any disrespect for the monarch but rather as a symptom of the apathy and prevailing lack of community spirit here. Personally I enjoyed what I saw of the Trooping of the Colour but other aspects of the celebrations, or at least the coverage of them on the telly, I found cringeworthy.

That dinner with friends at Cafe Konj that I mentioned in my last post turned out to be somewhat fateful.  Of the five of us who were there four came down with Covid within a few days.  The fifth didn't but then he'd had it in the recent past.  I'm glad to say it didn't present as much more than a heavy cold.

I completed the recommended five days of self isolation (which I quite enjoyed by the way although I missed playing in my concert and attending a social engagement) just in time to honour a commitment to perform in some simulation role play at Napier University.  I was the father of a cerebral palsy afflicted daughter who had just had an operation to lengthen an Achilles tendon.  We were at a hospital discharge meeting with a group composed of Physio, Occupational Therapist and Social Worker discussing after care.  We did it with six different groups of students over the course of the morning.  It was good fun.  The daughter was cast as an awkward uncooperative besom and me as a long-suffering dad.  I bumped into one of the students at the bus-stop on my way home and she reported that it felt really authentic so I guess we fulfilled our mandate.

I was most impressed by the set up for simulation.  They have what looks to me exactly like a small hospital ward, an intensive care unit (with a dummy at death's door in situ) and a "house" with kitchen bathroom etc.  It may seem daft but NASA came to mind when I saw all this.  It's just that at Napier they're not simulating zero gravity.  At least not in that department.

Before I knew I was stricken with Covid (the day after the fateful dinner in fact) I went to Edinburgh's Hidden Door festival.  This annual event started a few years ago.  The idea is they take over disused premises (in this case the old Royal High School on Calton Hill whose history of possible re-use is novel length but that's another story) and run music, theatre, dance and art events etc over a couple of weeks.  They didn't take up the offer of Rock, the play about climate change that I'd been in in Princes Street Gardens in May, which would have suited both the site and their ethical outlook but there was a lot of good stuff.  I saw a particularly good piece by two young women which like so much good theatre started off all fun and laughter before subtly letting its serious intent reveal itself.  How do you find the right thing to say to help a friend with misfortune, in this case miscarriage.

The art on display was, as I find is often the case, a mixture of the baffling and the beautiful.  The music similarly didn't always appeal to me but it would be remarkable if it did.  A poetry session in one of the building's most beautiful rooms was excellent.  The poets (I'd be surprised if any of them was a day over twenty-five) were drawn from a number of ethnic and geographic backgrounds and the focus of the work was on celebrating the generations that had gone before.  Mind you one young man's poem revealed a less than celebratory relationship with his father.  You felt for him.  What more could you ask from poetry.

 

The other older festivals will be with us shortly.  Boo to the Film Festival for having reverted to August thus adding to the clash conundrum.  Tomorrow I'll be booking Book Festival events.  I've got a little list that has been carefully checked against commitments already made. 

The view from the Ross Bandstand before the audience gathered for our performance of Rock.  The show went very well and we, the three bits of rock on the stage, had a very good view of the imaginative and well choreographed scenes that were played out at ground level in the area that the council have christened the terrazzo (sic).

As you can see from the photo the weather was relatively benign as it was throughout the StagEHd festival, which is a mercy since the casts not lucky enough to have the shelter those of us on stage had could have been very uncomfortable.

Plans are already afoot for StagEHd 2023.  See the website.

The week before Rock went up I paid a visit to the Saturday market on Castle Terrace.  It's something I've been meaning to do for some time especially since the bus home from my Saturday morning sax lessons passes conveniently close.  But there always seems to have been something that got in the way.  Rain for example or some pressing engagement or just a desire to get home and put my feet up.  

Not a patch on the market held outside my flat in the Boulevard Auguste Blanqui twice a week.  Or was it thrice?  A poor cousin even to the market in Guéret but not bad for Scotland and the fare on offer was very good.  I loaded up my bag with a pig cheeks and black pudding lunch, dressed crab, venison in various forms and a loaf of tasty bread.

I'll go again but not on my way home from a sax lesson.  Rocio has decided to stop giving regular private lessons.  Mostly it's in response to her husband's change of job which means they are both working full time.  Quite a change after twelve years but I'm in no rush to find another teacher.  I can still have the occasional lesson with her or I may just settle into playing what I fancy when I can be bothered.

We had a sort of farewell Sunday lunch but being a Spanish lunch the invitation was for 4pm, later postponed to 5pm because of her nine year old's attendance at a cello workshop. (Her six year old declares loyalty to the sax but we shall see.) In the event it was 6pm when lunch was served.  I had a very pleasant few hours with them and it was really nice to spend some time with the kids whom I've only seen in the passing over the years.

I missed the RSNO's performance of the Symphonie Fantastique which was a shame since I like it but have never heard it played live.  I've forgotten why I didn't get there but I did get to their season ending concert the main work of which was Beethoven's 9th Symphony.  The last movement of it is great with the chorus giving it laldy but I'm not a great fan of the rest of it.  For me the piece of the evening was a brand new flute concerto by the young Scotttish composer Jay Capperauld.  The piece is called Our Gilded Veins and in essence begins in chaos which gradually over the twenty minutes it lasts resolves into order.  It was absolutely beautiful and I look forward to being able to get a recording sometime.  It's worth reading what Jay has to say about it so I've copied his programme note:

"Our Gilded Veins is inspired by the ancient Japanese art of kintsugi, the mending of broken objects in order not only to repair them but to highlight their previous damage in a special and positive way. If a plate is broken, instead of throwing it away it is glued together with gilded lacquer to emphasise and celebrate the break as part of the object's history.

Essentially, as a human concept, Our Gilded Veins is an honest reflection on damage, failure and scars, with the intention of embracing the necessity of life’s negatives while attempting to forge a positive existential outcome. The concept of cultivating a positive state of mental health is at the crux of the work’s  concerns. The most positive step forward in  recent years is the gradual societal change in  attitudes towards the stigma surrounding  mental health, particularly where mental  illness is concerned. As attitudes change, a  deeper understanding of more sophisticated  practical techniques that nurture positive  mental health has developed alongside a  collective empathy and desire to help others  (and ourselves) maintain a balanced state of  mind. 

Musicians know more than most that  music plays a demonstrably powerful role  in the recovery process as well as the  safeguarding of our mental health - to the  point where the phrase 'Music saved my life'  has become a recurring theme in the stories of  those who have faced the various harrowing  circumstances in their lives. As a composer I also have an avid interest in  psychology - to the point where I would have  pursued a career as a psychologist had my  path towards music failed - and I am  particularly intrigued by how our internal  worlds are shaped by and, conversely, reflected  in the external world around us. In this way, I  often think of my music as having its own  independent consciousness and psychological  agenda, which is representative of specific  emotional states that attempt not only to  portray 'how' certain psychologies manifest  themselves, but to explore and highlight 'why'  these states of mind develop and why the  music might 'act' in the way that it does.

Therefore, the concept of kintsugi acts as a  fitting metaphor for the human experience,  which is an undeniable reflection of how we  must interact with the external world as well  as how we negotiate the various knocks that  life throws our way. It is through this metaphor  that Our Gilded Veins attempts to explore,  highlight and champion the message of  positive mental health in a musical context, as  well as the idea that broken objects ought to  be celebrated and nurtured, not discarded." 

 © Jay Capperauld 

By coincidence mental health lies beneath the plot of The Scandal at Mayerling with which Scottish Ballet bestrode the Festival Theatre stage to great acclaim by the audience including myself.  Crown Prince Rudolph going nuts (syphilis?) as he spirals down through a torrent of sex, violence and alcohol to a dramatically conclusive murder/suicide with his besotted young lover.  Some very strenuous dancing by the principals and great ensemble work against a grandly imagined Hapsburg Empire set.  I loved it.

I've never been a great fan of the style of humour found in the days of the silent film which persisted through at least the early years of the "talkies".  Some of that features in Laurel and Hardy by Tom McGrath that the Lyceum has revived with the same cast who played in its world premiere in the same theatre 17 years ago.  They do those snippets very well and I found myself amused despite my reluctance.  The play though is not simply a recreation of their work but a presentation of the origins and development of their partnership and of aspects of their personal lives.  It's extremely well put together, staged and performed.  A treat for fans and non fans alike.

Andy Ellis, an erstwhile stalwart of the Grads and of the SCDA, with his wife Sue was on a visit to Edinburgh and I went with others to say hi at a meal at Pomegranate just up the road. It was a good evening with excellent Middle Eastern nosh.  I'd taken a bottle of wine but the restaurant is no longer a BYOB establishment so we forced to drink from their rather tasty list.

The place I'm going this evening, the unique Konj Cafe, also provides Middle Eastern food, in their case specifically Iranian.  The food is lovely and this time the bottle I take won't come home with me because they are still BYOB.

Summer seems a long time coming to Edinburgh this year.  We had a few nice days in March, fewer in April and it seems to me almost none in May.  The last day of May wasn't too bad and got better as morning turned to afternoon so I determined to make a little excursion and set off along the East Lothian coast.  Not very far along because I got off the bus at Fisherrow and walked along the sands to the mouth of the Esk and then upriver to Musselburgh town centre and a bus home.  But it was a beautiful walk and I clicked away with my camera.  I leave you with one of my artistic shots - Inchkeith and the coast of Fife glimpsed through gorse.

The Burrell Collection was reopened to the public after several years of refurbishment to the building housing it in Pollock Park and Andrew and I were amongst those who visited in the first few weeks of its reopening.

Weatherwise it was a lovely day, so lovely in fact that Andrew got slightly sunstroked as we drank our after lunch coffee out on the terrace.  He's got substantially more hair than me but not enough to keep the sun entirely at bay.

The collection itself is a vast, rambling selection of the world's treasures.  Not so much a selection perhaps.  More a case of "look at that, it's lovely, I'll have it."  Not that Burrell himself chose every item.  He had agents.

Nonetheless it's a brilliant place to wander around in and admire and wonder at what's on display.  Upstairs there's a set of galleries each focussing on a craft form; metalwork, ceramics, glassworking and so on.  I found that most interesting. 

To get to Pollock Park we'd taken a train to Pollockshaws West which according to a blue plaque on the wall there is the oldest Glasgow station still in use, having been opened in 1848. 

I've been busy with Rock but have managed to fit in some more acting as a pretend COPD patient being interviewed by trainee physiotherapists.  It was quite fun and I've agreed to suffer some other malady for the benefit of more students in June.

I've seen two productions since I last posted. Red Ellen at The Lyceum. Ellen Wilkinson was a pint-sized firebrand active in socialist politics before and during the Second World War when she served as a cabinet minister. She worked and played hard, living life at a hectic pace and the production mirrors this in a rapid succession of episodes and locations. I'm not sure that I'd have much liked Ellen had I known her but I found the story interesting though I was only emotionally involved towards the end.

With Hay Fever I wasn't emotionally involved at all but nor should I have been.  It's an amusing and mildly satirical comedy of imagined pre-war middle class life in the household of a grande dame of the theatre, Judith Bliss, recently retired from the stage.  She, her novelist husband and her two self-indulgent children have all independently and without giving notice to the others invited a guest for the weekend. In essence they all have fun at the guests' expense who seize the opportunity on the Sunday morning to sneak away leaving the family squabbling enjoyably amongst themselves.

The Grads' production is efficiently and intelligently staged, lit and directed. The costuming is first class. For my money the cast were all up to the mark although here and there a bit more Lady Bracknell would not have gone amiss.  The production like many others was on, off and on again because of Covid but persistence paid off. It was worth the wait.

The SCO concert season reached its end with a brilliant evening in the Usher Hall.  Russian born Alina Ibragimova came on stage in a vivid red dress and gave us a performance of Prokoviev's 1st Violin Concerto full of fire and colour to match. It's wonderful music and she did more than justice to it.  In the second half more fire, or indeed firewoks from the orchestra in Stravinsky's ballet suite The Firebird. Maxim Emelyanychev conducted with his trademark enthusiasm and energy, dancing his way through the piece. It was written for the ballet after all.

In the same hall the following evening the RSNO under the baton of another lively young conductor, Tabita Berglund, performed Sibelius's 5th Symphony and with Torlief Thedéen as soloist Dvorak's Cello Concerto.  I love the intensity and melancholy of the Dvorak.  The Sibelius was less my thing but I do have sympathy with the guy who said "It makes me want to go home to Finland, and I'm not even Finnish." 

Our third great orchestra, the SNJO, presented Tommy Smith's latest work, Tales of the Tribe which the Scotsman's reviewer declared to be "a triumph" and I wouldn't contradict him. It was an excellent fusion of jazz, folk and poetry.  Here's what the critic had to say.

I was checking up on my vaccination status in anticipation of going on holiday this summer and much as I expected found that my tetanus and whatnot were out of date.  So I phoned the surgery only to be told that GPs no longer do these jags.  I would have to go to the travel clinic at the Western.  Thanks to the staff there calling me back after several fruitless efforts to get through on my part I got an appointment and went to the building site that is the hospital.  It rather reminded me of the construction project that is Leith Walk.

Cherry blossom is making its brief annual appearance in Princes Street and elsewhere in the city.  The fact that the weather is windy, cold and grey rather takes the edge off it but that's global warming for you.

I hope that when Claire's play on that subject, Rock, gets to the Ross Bandstand, a stone's throw from where this picture was taken the weather will have improved.  To get into the mood we've held several rehearsals outdoors, not in all weathers but on occasion distinctly chilly.

In my last post I mentioned Peter Johnstone as one of our excellent jazz pianists and I had the pleasure of hearing him play with Helena Kay's trio this week.  Helena was young Scottish jazz musician of the year in 2015.  I've seen her play with the Tommy Smith Youth Orchestra and with the SNJO but this is the first time I've seen her play as leader and I'd never heard her speak before.  It goes without saying that she's a superb sax player but In addition her compositions which I hadn't heard before are beautiful; graceful and melodic, eschewing the frenetic runs up and down the instrument favoured by many players.

She's a slightly built shy looking young woman who seems almost too small to hold never mind play the tenor.  But she's not shy at all.  She spoke confidently and a delightfully cheerful and happy personality came out to charm the audience.

Another young saxophonist with a strong and confident personality is Jess Gillam who I heard playing with the Scottish National Youth Orchestras Symphony Orchestra.  She'd been due to play with the SCO in a concert that was Covid cancelled so I was pleased that she'd made it to Edinburgh.  The whole concert was excellent.  They played Respighi's Fountains of Rome and Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony while Jess played a super piece by John Harle called Briggflatts after a poem by Basil Bunting.  It was written for her and she premiered it in 2019.  The last movement of the concerto is available on Spotify here. It goes like the clappers.

There's been something of a Shostakovich-fest recently.  In March Sheku Kanneh-Mason played his Cello Concerto with the RSNO, then a couple of weeks later came the Tenth Symphony with the NYOS Symphony Orchestra and just last week the RSNO gave us extracts from Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, the Second Piano Concerto and the Fifth Symphony.  The latter is a strong contender for the disc I'd rescue from the waves were I on that desert island.

I believe that I first heard it in the Usher Hall under the baton of Gennadi Rozhdestvensky when I had a standing ticket at a daytime concert in the 60s.  Shostakovich himself was here in 1962 for the Festival and his music featured throughout the three weeks but such researches as I've made don't mention the Fifth.  Be that as it may there's a very interesting article about his visit here.

Leith Walk is chock a block with eating places and I keep promising myself an onslaught on them but it's a slow process because there so many nice places to eat in Edinburgh.  Some friends from my days in Zambia were here around Easter and I had a delicious dinner with them at Fishers on The Shore.  On Easter Sunday itself the sun came out and I had an open air lunch at the Pier Brasserie in Newhaven.  Proving how small a town Edinburgh is a fellow cast member from The Venetian Twins walking her dog stopped for a chat as I ate.  

But I have checked out one place in Leith Walk recently.  That's Knight's Kitchen which has a bit of an African flavour in the decor and on the menu with the odd word of Swahili here and there.  Lunch was fine but a major disappointment was that the Tusker lager listed on their menu wasn't available.  When I lived in Nairobi I often had a Tusker at the Agip petrol station with a chum on the way home after work on a Saturday morning and it was generally available at the meetings of the East African Computer Society held in the offices of Kenya Breweries.  I don't think it's passed my lips since I left Kenya.  No great loss really since I don't much care for beer these days.  Just nostalgia.

Perhaps it was nostalgia that caused me to buy a copy of The Ghosts of Happy Valley when I was browsing in Blackwells. I enjoyed the book which is to some degree a postscript to White Mischief but fortuitously it cleared up a linguistic query that has been with me for decades.  Living in Kenya I picked up bits and pieces of Swahili and I can still use the language to find where the toilet is or to buy a bottle of milk or express what have you been up to in the long time it is since we last met, but I only recall one word of Kikuyu.  That was "atirere", or so I thought.  Pronounced with a stretched penultimate "eeeeeeh" it punctuated the conversations between Kikuyu speakers in the office eager to get their point of view across. Thanks to this book I now know it is "utirere" and that it means "listen". 

Another book I bought on that occasion and have just finished was the much lauded Booker winner Shuggie Bain.  Leaving aside any judgement as to its literary worth it paints an absolutely horrific picture of growing up with an alcoholic mother in a community where narrow mindedness, religious prejudice, homophobia and downright nastiness rules the day. 

For horrific tales you'd have to go far to beat the story told at The Lyceum in The Meaning of Zong.   From the slaving ship Zong in the 18th century 132 slaves were thrown overboard to drown, allegedly out of "necessity" to save the ship and the remaining people on board from "the perils of the sea".  Those words are central to the subsequent litigation between the slavers and their insurers because apparently the loss of cargo jettisoned in those circumstances would have been covered by insurance.  The case didn't turn on the fact that those Africans were murdered.  Because in the eyes of the law they were cargo.  The argument was about "necessity".

The play is brilliantly staged and well performed but is not entirely successful.  Most reviews suggest that the play tries to do too much and that some of the more poetical passages tend towards over wordiness.  I agree but it's a very fine contribution to the reassessment of Britain's involvement in slavery.  We like to remember the abolitionists but gloss over what we did that needed to be abolished.

Thanks to my BFI subscription I saw a couple of great films.  First the Argentinian film Relatos Salvajes, translated as Wild Tales  which was nominated a few years ago for the Oscar's best foreign language film award.  There's a good review of it here so I'll save myself the effort of writing one and just recommend that you see it.  Then the Iranian film A Separation which I remember not managing to see in the cinema some years ago.  It's a fascinating insight into domestic life in Iran.  From the same reviewer as above here's an assessment. 

When we invaded Iraq in 2003 I was living in Spain and the news that broke at the same time about whistleblowing at GCHQ passed me by or I quickly forgot it and I don't recall the prosecution of Katherine Gun, the whistleblower, who went to court in February 2004 probably because by then I was living in Italy.  It's an astonishing tale of the machinations of the UK and USA to obtain support for the invasion, the Kafkaesque workings of the official secrets act and the duplicity of the UK government who dropped charges against her rather than be forced into revealing details of their legal advice about starting the war.  A revelation that would have clearly shown a supine U-turn under American pressure.  All this and more is laid out in a great film, Official Secrets, in which one of my favourite actresses, Keira Knightley, plays Katherine Gun.  The Guardian reviews it well.

 The Venetian Twins eventually opened despite a couple of cast members coming down with Covid.  One struggled through but the other had to be replaced meaning that the role in question was undertaken by three actresses in all over the course of getting the play onto the stage.  The show was a great success and played to full houses.  One of my characters falls down a trapdoor behind a bar several times.  It's a very simple gag but audiences wet themselves laughing at it.

What's that picture got to do with the show?  Nothing, except that going to rehearsals  took me often into the vicinity of Newhaven Harbour.  I spent a lot of time trying to get a decent picture of the lighthouse, particularly because its lights were moving through a cycle of colours.  It was beautiful.  I failed to capture it successfully and this picture is the best of a bad bunch.

Away from the limelight I've been to the theatre several times.  The Lyceum's The Scent of Roses was a very good production but I didn't warm to it.  In fact I found it a bit boring.  Not so Stand By at the Roxy which follows the tedium and the drama of four police officers stuck in a van waiting to be called into action as a negotiator tries to defuse an ongoing incident.  One feature that pulled us into the action (or non-action) was being issued with earpieces through which we heard interchanges between the cops, bosses and controllers.  A really good piece that played originally in The Fringe about five years ago.  It was well worth reviving.

Mugabe, My Dad & Me was a deceptively gentle play at the Traverse in which the writer and performer Tonderai Munyevu talks about his identity as a member of the Zimbabwean diaspora growing up in the UK, his relationship with his father from whom his abused mother had fled with him and Mugabe the freedom fighter turned president turned dictator.  Britain's colonial history and its legacy is a twisted tale and perhaps no more twisted than in Zimbabwe.  This show intertwining personal and political history shines some light on that twisted tale.

Back at the Lyceum there was what they described as a live preview of a forthcoming audio drama called KELI.  It was the fact that the Whitburn Brass Band were part of the show that had encouraged me to join the outing to see it and what I heard of their music making was lovely, a velvet smooth tone flowing out from the stage.  I can't say as much for the spoken drama since we went to the theatre following a long and delightful lunch at Left Field which as the French delicately say had been bien arrosé so that a fair amount of eye resting occurred to the detriment of understanding what the piece was all about.

There have been a few more enjoyable social get togethers for one of which I made green borscht on my new induction hob and for another amaretti biscuits which came out of my new oven so evenly baked as to shame me for having persisted with the previous oven for so long.  Apropos the hob the literature about induction told me that if a magnet clung to the bottom of my pots and pans I would not need to invest in new induction friendly cookware.  Not true.

This week I've been to three concerts.  Rocio was conducting the Edinburgh College concert band in their end of term concert in the beautiful setting of the Canongate Kirk.  A number of other college groups played and sang but hers was certainly the most joyous in Tequila  in which maracas were replaced by cocktail shakers.

The following night I went to the Queen's Hall to hear Colin Currie play a new percussion concerto by Helen Grime with the SCO and thoroughly enjoyed the piece.

In contrast to both of those large ensembles came Fergus McCready's trio launching their latest album, Forest Floor.  One of my friends always refers to McCready (I don't know why) as the greatest pianist to have come from Strathpeffer.  I've no doubt he is.  He's one of a number of brilliant Scottish jazz pianists.  Brian Kellock, Euan Stevenson and Pete Johnstone spring to mind.  His music is flowing, melodic, wide ranging in emotional intensity and profoundly Scottish.  Check him out on Spotify.

I've started rehearsing Claire's new play Rock which will be presented at the Ross Bandstand in Princes Street Gardens as part of a festival of theatre produced by community groups in Edinburgh.  It's a poetically written thoughtful contribution to the climate change discussion.

As Covid restrictions fall slowly away but Covid doesn't I'm glad that I'm now quadruple jabbed.

East Princes Street Gardens coming back to life after the depredations of the Christmas Market. Led by flower bed planting and to be followed soon we expect by the laying of turf.

But should we be planting grain given the supply problems promised by the war in Ukraine?  My agricultural skills wouldn't help here and since I don't know my way around an AK47 I'm reduced to donating to the humanitarian effort, in my case via the Red Cross, and I encourage all my readers to do likewise.  I'm also putting miniscule pressure on Russian gas exports by turning down my thermostat and dispensing with my gas hob. The latter move is entirely coincidental I must confess.

So what's been happening away from the battlefield?  Way back in March 2020 as rehearsals for The Venetian Twins reached their climax Covid struck and we had to cancel.  We've been back in business now for a few weeks with a production run scheduled to start on March 30th.  All has been going well but we've now temporarily (I hope) lost one cast member to the plague.  Will it sweep through the rest of us?  I hope not, both for the sake of the production and selfishly for my own wellbing.

On the musical side I've been affected by Covid as well.  This weekend I'm off to the north on a saxophone jaunt and Mike, one of the two tutors, has had to self isolate.  Quite a blow or I suppose in his case actually a no blow.  His colleague, Cat, has bravely taken the whole burden onto her shoulders.  

I've been to some excellent concerts in the last few weeks.  Saint Saens and Shostakovich's cello concertos, Fauré's Requiem (with the RSNO junior chorus), Pop, Rock and Soul from the SNJO and a super Sunday afternoon gig from the SCO.  I'd booked this one mainly because it featured Steve Reich's New York Counterpoint and I like Reich's stuff.  In the event the piece that swept me away was an exhilarating and exciting work for string quartet by Bryce Dessner called Aheym.  The link is to the Kronos Quartet playing it on Youtube.  Magic but even better in the concert hall.

The Traverse are running a Play, Pie and Pint series and I went to the first one. It was a two hander called Oscar.  Both actors were called upon to sing and play the piano which they did extremely well.  The story is about a composer (the eponymous Oscar) who has come to a remote Scottish island to write a piece in memory of his recently deceased brother who was his creative musical partner.  This review gave it a well deserved four stars.  You're too late to see it now but I won't be surprised to see it spring up again sometime, somewhere.

When I was looking for a pre-theatre eating spot a few months ago I came across a little restaurant called Left Field in what used to be a hot potato shop.  They couldn't accommodate us then but I've now been.  The food, service and vino were top notch.

There are from time to time various adaptations of Georges Simenon's Maigret novels but the daddy of them all is the BBC 1960-63 series starring Rupert Davies. Last year sometime I saw an ad for a newly refurbished or remasterd or renovated or however you like to describe it DVD set of the series.  I pre-ordered it and it came a few months later, all 52 episodes on 15 DVDs.  A few months later still, last night in fact I ripped off the shrink wrap and watched the first four epidodes.  Thoroughly enjoyable but I shall restrain the urge to binge on the whole set for fear of ennui setting in. 

No Langeweile set in as I finally unwrapped and watched Deutschland 86, a Christmas gift.  It's a good yarn however improbably full of coincidences and miraculous escapes etc and it has what I reckoned was a happy ending even if it was in the GDR.

I'm not sure if this is an art installation or a public service announcement by the galleries doing their bit to soothe the Covid stricken populace.  When I snapped it I had not been visiting that gallery, but Modern 2 its sibling across the road.

I had gone to see the Ray Harryhausen exhibition.  The man's name meant nothing to me before this exhibition popped up and I rather doubt that I've seen any of the large number of films that he worked on, given that monster movies, sci-fi and fantasy have never much appealed to me.  However the publicity piqued my curiosity so I went along.

The exhibition demonstrates his tremendous contribution to film-making.  He deployed and indeed invented many of the techniques used to combine stop motion animation and live action over a 30 plus year career that ended with The Clash of the Titans in 1981.  By then special effects techniques like CGI and motion capture suits were beginning to replace Harryhausen's methods though the basic principles persist.

Taking pictures was allowed.  I took very few but here are two.

I've been to a couple of concerts and a few films (more Truffaut) in recent weeks but the only live theatre I've seen has come courtesy of transmissions from afar.  Tom Stoppard's Leopoldstadt was beamed to my local picture palace from a theatre in London.  It's an absorbing family saga that draws its inspiration from Stoppard's Jewish roots and spirals down from the family's affluence and contentment in late 19th century Vienna to the poverty and anguish of the holocaust.  Not a bundle of laughs.

The other show did provoke lots of laughs and that most unexpectedly.  I had not thought that a play about a tussle between parents at the Childrens' Panel would be other than serious and well meaning.  CMF Wood's Prism via Zoom defied my expectations. Hugh Simpson's review is more severe on the production that I would be (I loved it) but he makes a lot of good points.

I was on Zoom myself one morning for theatrical purposes.  This was a reading of a play it is proposed to put on as part of a weekend theatre fest in late May. The reading was to give the author, none other than the aforementioned CMF Wood, an idea of how it might sound.  I used all my guile to snatch a look or two at the Australian Tennis Open men's final (which I had been watching before the reading) while keeping my place in the script.  Afterwards I went off for an afternoon of sax playing casting a glance at the tennis score whenever I could because I had sadly had to leave before Rafa clinched the match.

Siobhan was very interested in a letter written by Mary Queen of Scots that went up for auction this month. She suggested I went along to curb her enthusiasm should she be tempted to allocate her all to its acquisition.  This I gladly did preceded by a tasty lunch of fish and chips in the Barony and a white wine in the Theatre Royal, and followed by a G&T or two in Mather's.  What a pleasant afternoon it was.  I hope the buyer of the letter enjoyed the afternoon too.

And what a pleasant evening was a Burns supper at which I recited as I often do (at Burns suppers that is) his Ode to the Haggis.  It was not one of my finest renditions.  Indeed I think in future I'll just play my Youtube version.

Back in November I became aware that a new law was to be introduced concerning the installation of inter-linked smoke and heat alarms so I bought them straightaway but only managed to get around to installing them 24 hours before the law came into force on 1st February.  Will anyone ever check I wonder.

This week I finished putting my website back together after its mysterious disappearance some months ago.  It was a tedious job but I enjoyed revisiting old productions and holidays. I'm now having a look at some of the other websites that I created in the past, for example to advertise the sale of the Barbansais house and one I did for the Grads.  I'm amazed at my now long lost skills.

I have something of a predilection for trees in their winter glory.  I daresay had Burns turned his mind to it he could have written a rare poem in praise of them which I'd have been delighted to quote in this blog post that's being published on his birthday. In recompense my picture tips its hat to another poet worthy of a supper in his name.

January has sped past without very much happening in the little pool that I inhabit.  Ewan went home early on.  The band got back into action, joined last night by Esther who got me into thinking about the saxophone in Barbansais about fifteen years ago.  She and husband Andy have just returned to Edinburgh after some ten years in Munich.  We lunched together in Henderson's the veggie restaurant run I understand by descendants of the Henderson who opened one of Edinburgh's earliest veggie places in the New Town years ago. I had an aubergine dish that was ok but didn't measure up to the stuffed aubegine I made myself at lunchtime today. 

I had another meal out at L'Escargot Bleu where my tasty rabbit was washed down with conviviality.  I haven't had a home cooked rabbit to compare it with yet.

I was cited for jury service but as in the only other time this has happened to me I didn't have to serve.  I'm of an age where I have the right to be excused but I didn't exercise that right; not entirely from a sense of civic duty but mostly in the hope it would be interesting. 

There is a celebration of the work of Francois Truffaut on currently and I've enjoyed a handful of films from it so far.  I went to the cinema to see Les 400 Coups which despite its fame I don't believe I'd seen before.  It's a good film but quite a hard watch dealing as it does with the harsh childhood of its protagonist, Antoine Doinel, who is modeled on Truffaut himself.  

Thanks to my BFI subscription I've been able to watch the four subsequent films that follow  Antoine through adolescence, marriage and divorce.  Truffaut made the first film in 1959 and the last in the series in 1979.  In all of them Doinel was played by the same actor, Jean-Pierre Léaud.  Apart from Les 400 Coups they are all comedies and very funny.

There are another half dozen films unrelated to Doinel being shown in cinemas and I intend to see them all and indeed have already seen two, L'Argent de Poche and La Nuit Americaine.  I'd seen the latter before but remembered nothing about it other than the title and its meaning which I will leave you to discover for yourselves.  It's a light-hearted look at film making.  Jean-Pierre Léaud appears in it and plays a character very like Doinel.

So 2022 has arrived, not before time given all the crap that 2020 and 2021 have dealt out.  According to something I heard on the radio recently the human brain has a built in optimism bias.  80% of us when asked proclaim that things are going to get better,  So there.  I fall within the 80% and hope you do too.

After the heady excitement of my trip to the Highland Widlife Park life got back to normal with an online reading of a play about witchcraft. and Ewan's arrival from the States for Christmas.  Neither of these is actually normal but in these pandemic times anything untainted by Covid seems normal.

The following weekend I watched rugby at Goldenacre and via the telly the Abu Dhabi F1 Grand Prix.  I don't normally find F1 racing terribly interesting but I enjoyed this race a lot and as a knife edge finish to the season it could hardly have been bettered.  Mercedes were very grumpy but Hamilton although clearly disappointed was not at all backward in congratulating Verstappen.  If all the races were like that I might watch more often.

The pantomime at the Gaiety theatre in Ayr was streamed to the world and some of last year's Thursday Theatre group watched it.  I enjoyed it and straightway recommended to Andrew that being a resident of Ayr he attend in real life.  It turned out that he indeed planned to go with family including his young grandson but Covid cancellation scuppered the plan.

We, that is the Dunedin Wind Band, managed to hold a Christmas concert.  We had strict free from Covid entry criteria for both band and audience.  Despite my sending out around 120 emails advertising the gig the only friends who turned up were those I already knew were coming plus Steve the fireman who generally makes it.  Sarah Naish who founded the band and who was our musical director till early last year played percussion and her husband Johnny was there with his tuba.  It gave us an opportunity, denied by the pandemic at the time Sarah left, to make a little presentation and thank them both for all their work over the years.  Afterwards said friends repaired to Siobhan's for fizz and festive chat.

A couple of days later I went to the Queen's Hall to a SNJO concert.  The music was good and Tommy Smith was his usual entertaining self and we all got a free CD of Christmas jazz as we left.  Shame the audience was so sparse.

Then I went down to Keswick for a week of Christmas fun and games.  We did actually play a board game one evening that was rather fun.  Cranium involved, inter alia, drawing with your eyes shut and sculpting plasticine.  I visited the pencil museum for the first time and recommend it highly. 

I did some limited walking about, making my first ever visit to the far side of the lake but not venturing down past the theatre to the spot on the lake where I usually go.  We had an outing to Hebden Bridge where Ben has recently bought a house with a great view though thanks to the mist we weren't able to enjoy it.  But it looks great in photos.  We had a festive feast in a jam-packed unmasked restaurant in the town with various Blincoes.  We were 13 at table but thankfully no misadventure arose.

As soon as I got back I was eating again.  This time in the tiny Cafe Konj under Scotland's stricter rules.  To comply with the spirit of those I fitted in a lateral flow test in the brief interal between getting off the train and hitting the cafe.  Persian grub, friendly service and convivial company providing a splendid welcome home.