Another rabies jag - another bus story, or rather storey since the most frequent bus in town is now a double decker. The tops have been chopped off others to provide this capacity, including the one I was waiting for amidst the confusion caused by the resumption of tram works on Leith Walk.

There are more cones and diversions than ever, leaving uninformed travellers and those who cannot read waiting anxiously at stops that are out of use or at which their bus will not call until the present flurry of hole digging is over.

LRT have slipped a fare increase into this maelstrom. They have clearly been listening to those economists who warn us that the current deflationary trend is a slippery slope to stagnation. As I understand it the theory holds that when prices are going down people don't buy things because they are waiting for them to get cheaper. So thing makers go out of business.

The converse of the theory surely implies that LRT will expand inexorably as people rush onto the buses to get their journey in before prices rise again. That must be why they've added a deck to the 22. Triple-deckers next?

This is a somewhat ironic picture. Plotting a route to the Western General for a rabies jab (I'm taking no chances with this Amazonian trip) I discovered that I can access real-time bus information on-line for any bus-stop in the city. So what you are looking at is the actual display you would see on the bustracker outside if it weren't for the fact that its head is still missing. (Plus some features you don't need when you are at the stop).

If you have the right sort of mobile phone you can access these displays wherever you are. So stranded in Newington late at night you can answer the question "Is it worth getting a 3 to Princes Street on the off-chance that I'll catch a 22 or should I just wait for a 7?". What a facility for the modern traveller.

I can see a game to rival Mornington Crescent being developed and played with this data.

I came away from the hospital with a box of malaria bills as well. They are for trying out. I had a long session being instructed on what anti-malarials are now available, which are recommended for what places and what their side effects are until my head rang.

Product X is taken weekly and is counter-indicated for various categories of person since they may experience depression, mood changes and god knows all what.

Product Y is taken daily and may increase the skin's sensitivity to light

Product Z is taken daily and is counter-indicated for anyone on a budget since the tablets cost an arm and a leg.

I'm trying out product Y so if you see me sitting on my verandah in my swimming trunks you'll know it's all in the name of medical research.

Leaving my local Tesco the other day I was accosted by a lady who wanted to interrogate me about my shopping experience. One of my friends tells me that he makes it a point of honour to lie wildly to market researchers and focus groupers whenever he gets the chance but I didn't have the brass neck for that.

However I seized upon the opportunity to complain about the lack of unsalted butter. Perhaps head office will pay attention since the local management didn't.

Or more probably they won't.

I noticed another weird pricing move in Tesco recently. They increased the price of a particular brand of muesli by 30 or 40 pence and a couple of days later brought it back to the previous level.

Presumably customers shunned it. I certainly did, but I bought it when the price fell back. Was that me falling prey to a cunning bit of shopping psychology?

Every so often I get up to date with what one of the groups I was involved with in Paris is doing. I've just had a look at their site. It's changed its address since I last looked and has added a rolling picture gallery feature that I must find out how to do. It would be great for the Grads.

It's a super little trick and none the worse for having my picture in it. See if you can spot me .

The puff for the Che Guevara bio-pic I saw today says "Soderbergh has recreated his life not in epic terms, but as a long, hard slog" - very true - a long hard slog for the filmgoer. From its totally hagiographic story-line I suspect that it may also be the first step on the long, hard slog to sainthood. I can't wait to give Che Part Two a bodyswerve.

This being twelfth night I have conscientiously taken down my Christmas cards. In previous years I have tended to keep them. Ancient cards still surface from time to time when I'm searching for something in the roof. This year though they have gone straight to the recycling bin.

I suppose I should honour the twelfth night tradition, or is it superstition, by deleting the e-cards I got as well. I'd better take no chances with lady luck and get rid of the website cards I created too.

If you are heading south for the New Year to escape our sub zero temperatures why not take a young gannet with you.

That's the appeal I heard this morning from the North Berwick Seabird Centre. Apparently a chick was deserted when the 150,000 or so gannets that breed on the Bass Rock left for warmer climes in October.

He was rescued from the rock a few weeks ago as you can see in the video but according to this report he now needs a lift at least as far as Gibraltar to have a chance of growing up so if there's room in your executive jet give the Centre a ring.

I thought my electronic Christmas card was pretty neat but swelled with pride on learning from my webhost on Christmas Eve that my bandwidth allowance for the month had been exceeded and the site would be off-line until 1st January.

Goodness me! The original recipients must have been so impressed that they had to share the pleasure with all their contacts, who in turn......until bingo - hits of google like proportions forced my site off the road.

An apologetic email arrived on Boxing Day. Turns out to have been a flaw in the bandwidth usage checking program. It's easily done. I once caused lots of grief by coding > instead of >= or maybe the other way around. In any event the supply of certain plastic oddments to Woolworths was thrown into disarray, but I don't believe that to have contributed materially to their demise.

Edinburgh readers will recognise this as a bus tracker. They have been sprouting up beside our bus stops over the last couple of years and tell you how long it will be until the next bus arrives.

They are a lot more useful than a printed timetable displayed in an awkward corner of an unlit bus shelter. But bus trackers have not reached all parts of the city.

I was out at the Western General the other day getting a yellow fever jag and arrived at the stop for my return journey. No tracker, so I peered at the timetable. According to that I had arrived one minute before the single solitary bus that passes that stop was due.

After eight minutes shivering in the wind and rain, the shelter was against vertical weather only - my bald head would have been protected from sunstroke , I gave up and set off on foot. You've guessed the rest; I had not gone 50 yards when the 42 swept past.

Now that was annoying but less so than the recurrence of lift lunatic activity. Here is yesterday's
find. What is to be done?

And much less annoying than having a mouse run up your leg inside your jeans as you sit peacefully at the table. But it won't do it again. I just hope that's a warning to any of its little friends who may be lurking around. Photographs of the corpse are available on request.

Christmas cards are starting to arrive. I really want to abandon physical cards entirely in favour of wholly electronic greetings but I may have to send one or two. I shan't be able to send one to whoever forgot to sign their card so I hope they also read my blog and get pleasure from these, which I offer to all my readers with best wishes for the festive season and its aftermath.

Iain Heggie's "A Wholly Healthy Glasgow" was a Fringe (or maybe even EIF) hit that I saw and thoroughly enjoyed sometime in the 80s. I hadn't seen anything else of his since - a fact I regret especially since his biog tells me that he has adapted Marivaux, a big fav of mine - until last night.

"The Tobacco Merchant's Lawyer" is also a Glasgow based piece but very different. It's a fairly gentle, even whimsical story set in the 18th century whose running gag is its protagonist's astonishment at a medium's forecasts of what's to be in the Glasgow of the future - horseless carriages, a receptacle box containing a five inch high town crier in every drawing-room (the same town crier what's more), water closets even for the poor, and so forth. It was a script that raised laughter in other ways as well.

A friend I met in the bar decried the fact that much of the humour sprang from local references and maintained that even if the references had been to his home town of Dundee he would have held the same opinion. I suppose it may seem a slightly cheap way of getting an audience on side, although one might question to what extent an Edinburgh audience would be sympathetic to weegie allusions or vice versa but I for one enjoyed that aspect, as well as the humour that he drew from more universal themes - father/daughter, modern/old-fashioned, wealthy old man/poor young suitor, tricky businessman/naive investor.

Now this was a one man show ably and impressively performed but what impressed me even more was the fact that in addition to actor and director the programme credits no less than fourteen people as having a hand in the production and another eleven individuals or institutions are thanked for their help.

Would that that ratio might be replicated for my show.

Tattie Shaws is an excellent vegetable shop up the road that I try to patronise rather than weakly add pre-packed veggies to my Tesco basket.

In there this morning for a head of garlic. Isn't it an annoying habit of supermarkets to sell them in packs of three - what non-Transylvanian one person household can get through three heads before they go rotten? I spotted this delicacy and thought I'd better try it. Tattie, or is it Shaw?, assured me that I'd love it and he was right. It's a stotter.

Made I assume by the guy whose flavoured porridge stall you see around from time to time. It may look like solidified porridge but it's not. It's made from the oats and he does a range of flavours. They contain butter but I'm pleased to report that it's unsalted, another improvement on Tesco.

I did a little bit of catching up with Little Dorrit via the BBC's wonderful Iplayer before watching this week's episode last night. So many sites that offer video streaming would do well to find out how the BBC do it.

Anyway that aside I am so much enjoying LD. Of course to start with the material is first class. Dickens' imagination and character drawing are superb. He can give us caricatures of villains as evil as evil can be and of goody goodies too sweet to be true, but more rounded portraits too. I'm particularly intrigued by Fanny Dorrit at the moment as she shows a sensitivity and vulnerability at odds with what we gleaned of her character earlier.

That in part is tribute to her acting. Not only the girl who plays Fanny but every single player is magnificent. The adaptation (not that I've read the book so my appreciation is of the TV drama that Davies has created), the direction, the camera work, the costumes - the whole shebang is a triumph.

I'd love to see Walter Scott's novels get the same treatment.

I was tempted out to the golf course by yesterday's bright sunshine and flashed my old codger's card in the expectation of 18 holes for next to nothing. Alas I should have been like Cinderella and kept my eye on the clock. At midnight on Fridays my magic card turns to dust and for 48 hours I have to pay the full whack.

I went for it just the same because it was a lovely day and after 9 holes had scored 46 which, had it not been for one duff shot would have been 44. So I went into the back 9 full of confidence that I had an excellent chance of reaching and perhaps breaching my hitherto barrier of 92.

Now Craigentinny is not a long course nor a particularly tricky course but it had enough up its sleeve yesterday to thwart me, indeed to annihilate me, a lost ball on the 17th just turning the knife in the wound.

Cinders got her Prince in the end. Will I eventually score?

As well as having all those handy buses (minus the 13) I'm surrounded by shops and practically have to walk through Tesco to get anywhere.

Last week Scot Mid revamped their store that lies some 300 paces further from my door and passing it last night on my way back from earning an easy 30 quid giving my input to an ad focus group I popped in.

It's just another supermarket of course so hardly exciting, but they have rejigged the layout and seem to have conjured up enough space to display a greater range of foods than before, including an uncountable number of butter substitutes and what's more to the point three brands of unsalted butter.

I've recently had words with Tesco over their piles of salted butter and nary an unsalted pack but they have failed to heed me. Scot Mid used to be as bad but now that they have turned over a new leaf I may abandon Tesco in their favour.

Can I remember the old Co-op number to get the divi as well?

I'm very fond of boasting about how well bussed I am in this part of town so you can imagine my distress when I went out to catch a 13 the other day on discovering that it no longer runs past my door.

Now it's not a bus I use often, being one of those that run at long intervals and never on a Sunday, but meandering as it does through the New Town I had it marked as perhaps being of future use when Ewan eventually finds his nest. And it's a blow to art lovers from Lochend to Leith Walk since they now have no direct connection to the Gallery of Modern Art.

On this occasion that's where I was headed - to see the Charles Avery exhibition. If you like Giles cartoons you'll enjoy Avery's drawings. Many of them feature a bent old creature who reminded me strongly of the Giles Granny figure, even though this one sports a triangular coolie style hat. Fans of Tolkien and that sort of made-up universe will enjoy the fantasy texts accompanying the work. And according to the chap who introduced the exhibition (who did not dwell on, nor even mention, the Giles connection) this is art world beating stuff so rush to see it.

My distress at the semi demise of the 13 was nothing as to my distress on finding a beanie hat on the floor of the lift when I came home. Connor had assured me that there had been no lift lunatic incidents during my absence. Has he struck again or is this simply the case of a lift user warmed by coming in from the cold removing his hat and failing to stuff it into his pocket?

A more sinister explanation occurs to me. If lift lunatic incidents have only broken out afresh since I got back could it be some modern Jeckyll and Hyde phenomenon? Does this inoffensive pensioner turn into the lift lunatic at certain conjunctures of the planets, or perhaps when he's had one too many?

I saw a brilliant show at the Traverse last night. Described as a dark comedy it was certainly funny and the audience, many of whom it turned out were friends or relatives of the performers, thoroughly enjoyed the humour. In contrast it seems to the previous night's audience, who it was decided in the post-show discussion must all have been Edinbuggers.

I suspect that equally oppressive and destructive family environments exist here but that the eastern response to seeing it displayed is to feel uncomfortable rather than to laugh. This comedy you see concerns a west of Scotland Catholic family headed by a drunken, posturing bully of a father whose sins are visited on his children. Founded on his own experience it took Paul Higgins five years to write and you have to hope that it was a thoroughly cathartic process for no-one would want to carry baggage like that around with them in later life.

In response to a question he said that while he could watch the play relatively dispassionately and indeed laugh at the humour, none of his immediate family had seen it and that he thought they would find it hard.

The father is a brilliantly drawn character, a drunken bully as I said but with a cutting and sardonic wit and deep down a loathing of what he has become. Gary Lewis brings him vigorously to life in a superb performance. It was evident from what he said after the show that his portrayal was grounded in a very sensitive understanding.

"Nobody Will Ever Forgive Us" runs at the Traverse till Saturday and I'll be surprised if it doesn't get another outing very soon.

I don't imagine that Noel Coward would have been any happier with the film version of Easy Virtue than we were though many other members of the audience laughed a lot. Unfortunately the director hadn't put any effort into the coruscating bitterness with which Coward counterpoints his bons mots.

My own virtue came under strain on Sunday night when I found myself realising just after leaving Tesco that I was carrying 12 bottles of wine but had been charged for only 6. I had to go back and own up. At two quid a bottle for a quite delicious Australian plonk on extra special offer they were a bargain that didn't merit being sullied by theft. Even though the theft would have been unintentional. Had it been a branch that I don't use daily maybe I'd have been tempted.

Even without the excitement of the wine it was a notable weekend. Ewan was around sussing out the New Town's possibilities for his projected relocation to Scotland later in the year and Fiona was here preparing the way for attacking the fringe with her prizewinning production of The Island.

An additional excitement hit my inbox this morning. A sailing friend offered me a berth on his yacht for a leg of the Rallye des isles du soleil. I'll join Caramel at Santarem on the Amazon in April, sail downriver to the mouth at Afua and then on to Cayenne and Trinidad. I said yes before I had a chance to confuse myself with the pros and cons.

Yes the internet could come to my rescue. Exactly the diary I want is available directly from Collins' site. However I found a diary of the size I want for 79 pence so if I can just discipline myself to carry a pencil around with me I can do the business and save a fiver.

Apart from searching for diaries I've been processing photos of my holiday in India in 1984. I've put the whole lot, turkeys included, on Picasa and a choice few accompanied by such travel diary notes as I made before running out of steam onto my personal website.

An old friend has kindly sent me scans of an NKAS programme to fill a gap in my corpus. This is a show Ewan was in. I thought it was one in which Connor also took part, playing in the orchestra, but it isn't. However Alan (the friend) has a programme for that show too and has promised to scan it for me. That would fill the final NKAS gap but it took 18 months for the first one to reach me so I'm not holding my breath.

I'm just back from Portugal where the sky really was as blue as appears in this photo of the castle in Lisbon. It was that way for the whole week.

Our rented flat was very well positioned for getting around the city, being near a metro station. It's disadvantages were its eccentric room layout, its collapsing bed, its limited supply of food preparation tools (one blunt bread-knife) and by the time we left its broken teapot. Oh, and one of the keys.

We saw the principal sights, ate the principal dishes, drank the principal beverages and escaped the attentions of the principal felons, said to be pickpockets.

So it's back to the frustrations of ordinary life. What has happened to the supply of small, cheap diaries with a pencil in the spine? Have Collins and Letts, those giants of Scottish diary production, decided that small is ugly and that pencils in the spine are potential deadly weapons?

A visit to six shops uncovered nothing. Will the internet come to my rescue?