Everyone has an internet problem from time to time and the Rambert dance company proved not to be immune when despite going through some tedious registration process I (and many more) was unable to access their show Draw from Within. 

Eventually, maybe the following evening, things were sorted out.  I think I quite enjoyed it but to be absolutely honest I can't recall a single detail.  I put that down to a limited ability to see pictures in my mind.

Anyway that preceded a Zoom snafu that angered me more because I could have prevented it. I've been secretary of my local residents association for more than a decade and decided it was time someone else had a shot at it.  I was looking forward to demitting office at our AGM.

The first annoyance was that it was postponed for three weeks.  Then there was what could be called a miscommunication.   Zoom details were sent out to committee members by our Chair.  Some weeks later a letter went to all owners from our factor containing different Zoom details.  Well, I thought, that must be because they have a business licence for Zoom so we won't be cut off after 40 minutes.  So I didn't query it.  My mistake.  On the night those trying to join using the factor's instructions could not get on.  A degree of chaos ensued and the meeting was abandoned and the AGM postponed yet again.  So I'm still the secretary and keeping my fingers crossed that nothing goes wrong on the new date.

This is one of the exhibits in a display called Chairs that filled the Lyceum's glass box foyer for the period during which in normal circumstances their first production of the season would have run.  It's the most poignant item in an interesting display.  During show times the foyer was theatrically lit and relevant ruminations were audible over external speakers.  

Latest news from the Lyceum is that they are building a stage extension that in essence replaces the stalls and will allow the setting out of cabaret tables that will accommodate socially distanced audience bubbles for a real live Christmas show.  Only four performances in vivo however out of twelve, the rest being streamed from a empty theatre.  Why?  I shall probably just watch a streaming leaving space for bigger bubbles than me myself alone.  Christmas itself should be fine for singles though, since I believe that smaller bubblyjocks are being reared for smaller dinners.

I saw Chairs on the evening that I made my second cinema excursion.  I went to Filmhouse to see La Haine.  The French classic about the tensions in the housing estates surrounding Paris between youths, mostly unemployed and mostly immigrants, and the police has appeared in a new print to celebrate its 25th anniversary.  I very much enjoyed the film and was surprised that there was a fair sprinkling of humour in it although the overall feeling is of tragedy.

Again at Filmhouse tragedy pervaded I Pugni in Tasca also.  Acclaimed in film circles as ".... astonishing 1965 debut from Marco Bellocchio....coolly assured style......a gleaming ice pick in the eye of bourgeois family values......continues to rank as one of the great achievements of Italian cinema". I'm not so enthusiastic.  Maybe in 1965 I would have been.  The original trailer certainly makes it look very exciting.

The City Art Centre was celebrating its 40th with a lovely, though brief, exhibition of a number of paintings from the City's collections.  Running for a distinctly longer period in the same venue is Bright Shadows: Scottish Art in the 1920s.  This again is well worth seeing with work by the likes of Peploe, Henry and Macintosh Patrick.  It runs till June so you have no excuse.

Let me put in a word for Mimi's Bakehouse who run the Centre's cafe.  A cappucino and a lump of their Scottish rocky road after seeing the paintings, yummy.

I didn't bother with a coffee after lunch at Valvona and Crolla, a lunch squeezed in the day before shutdown number two and very tasty too.  I look forward to lunching out again when restaurants are allowed to reopen.  I'm not so bothered about pubs being closed but I wouldn't like them to go out of business.

I've attended a couple of Zoom winetastings over the lockdown period and was at one recently.  It may seem an odd concept but the wine is delivered in little bottles like these

I suppose they hold about 175ml.  The wine expert joins the Zoom call and chats about the wines.  We swill, smell, sip and swallow.  Those who must pontificate.  I don't go much further than saying that I prefer A to B.  I don't you see smell all those notes of raspberries and tropical fruits or peanuts or whatever that more olfactory capable persons do.  Furthermore when pushed to comment on the taste I feel obliged to hide the fact that the overwhelming taste for me is one of wine, seldom more seldom less.  Tastebuds missing since birth.

The National Galleries are amongst the organisations whose emails I speed read and forget but I this week managed to watch one of the talks that they inform me about.  It was a look at David Wilkie's drawings.  Famous for his oils, unsurprisingly he was pretty hot stuff with the charcoal and the pencil as well.

The SNJO pitched a video of part of a gig they did with Kurt Elling in 2014 in one of their emails.  It features a brilliant interchange between Tommy Smith and Elling. Try it.  Music of a different kind got underway when the RSNO started their new season.  It's all via streaming  of course but it's only £10 a gig or £90 for the season and you don't have to go out in the rain and you're not stuck with a particular performance date because all the concerts are available from first showing to end of season.  What's not to like?  Sound quality you may think.  Not necessarily.  I bluetoothed the first concert from my laptop to my hifi.  Great sound.

Apollo 13 : The Dark Side of the Moon was the show that a number of us watched on Thursday past.  This was the mission that went wrong.  The three astronauts had to abandon the mother ship, crawl into the lunar module and whip round the moon to get a gravity assisted return flight to Earth.  I found that the show lacked tension.  Obviously we know they get back safely so there's no holding your breath moment.  Even so the developing sequence of problems should build up some sort of feeling of danger.  Maybe it was just me.

Shrapnel, the Zoom play I'm appearing in is now in rehearsal.  Tickets are available here.  It's an intriguing proposition to do a show live on Zoom.  The audience, that's you I hope, will be on the same call which is about as close as you can get to being in a theatre watching living beings perform while the coronavirus rules our lives.

I was delighted to find in the course of rehearsing that the latest update to Zoom means that I can now use the virtual background feature.  My hardware didn't use to support it but these clever people have got round that.  So I've had some fun.  Here's one of my efforts:

 My U3A Italian group is up and running again on Zoom.  A few people decided not to continue from dislike of Zoom or other reasons so I've cleared my waiting list and have slightly improved the diversity index by now having a third man in the group.  I've unfortunately had to discipline two of the three new members but I'll say no more.

Work on Claire's Zoom play has got underway and an outline schedule for the rebirth of The Venetian Twins established.  That was before the recent retightening of Covid restrictions with the fear that they may go on for six months. If that happens the Twins will be dealt another and possibly final body blow.

I was at the Edinburgh SCDA AGM via Zoom and that was a sad sort of meeting.  Festival cancellations done in 2020 and the likelihood of at least the February dates going the same way in 2021.  No replacement for the wonderful Susan Wales in the secretary's chair and someone needed to take over the website.

One tightening has already affected me.  My sax lessons have moved back from Polwarth to Skype.  I don't really mind too much.  It means I don't have to go out in the cold and wet.

Forcing their way through the cold and wet were a couple of lovely days last week and I took full advantage of them.  I had a nice stroll in Comely Bank one day and did a good deed while I was there by donating my old sax to the City of Edinburgh Music School.  It was becoming an embarrassment lying around to no real purpose so I'm glad to have passed it on.  I intend for my other instruments to go there in the fullness of time.  

On the second lovely day I went to Stirling where I believe it was even lovelier than it was in Edinburgh thanks no doubt to being beyond the influence of the North Sea.  I had booked a ticket to visit Stirling Castle, which to my shame I had never been to before.  Not every apartment in the castle was open to visitors, not having been yet made Covid safe but there was enough to see to keep me busy for over two hours.  The castle rises magnificently out of the surrounding countryside so there are splendid views as well, and refreshment was on hand in the café.  I steered clear of the gift shop.

The town too has some interesting buildings so I passed a while wandering around before getting a bus home.  I'd normally go to Stirling by train but because of the Union Canal having burst its banks in the recent bad weather the train service had been disrupted.  A benefit of the bus ride is that it gives you pretty good views of the Forth for part of the journey.  Had I been in a car there was one spot where I'd have drawn up to admire the bridges with the Queensferry Crossing in the foreground, an aspect I don't believe I've ever seen before.  It's beautiful.  I also spotted a couple of very fine old villas in Bo'ness that lie by the river and speak to past industrial wealth.  And on the M9 you pass the wonderful Kelpies.

When I got back to Edinburgh I headed straight to the Filmhouse for my first taste of Covid safe movie-going.  Only one entrance open and a lady at a little desk behind a perspex shield confronting you as you enter.  I guess one of her jobs is to throw you if you've arrived before the arrival time specified on your ticket, which you have of course purchased in advance although there were other perspex protected staff at the usual counter so perhaps you can turn up on spec.  No lingering in the bar though without a reservation.

My film was in Screen 3 and yet another perspex shielded deskman checked my ticket and advised me that I must sit in the seat prescribed on my ticket.

You can get an idea of how it's set out from this photo.  Screen 3 has 77 seats but only 15 of them were available to sit in.  You can't pay many perspex shielded employees with that revenue and on that particular occasion not all 15 were occupied.

The film was Il Traditore, a dramatised treatment of the life of Tommaso Buscetta, a Sicilian mafioso whose testimony for the state at trials in 1986/7 led to the conviction of his former associates.  The magistrate Giovanni Falcone who led the drive against the Mafia at that time and with whom Buscetta collaborated paid for his work with his life but Buscetta lived on in the States as a protected witness and died in his bed as he had wished.  It was a good film.

With the Thursday evening theatre watching group I saw Missing People again and enjoyed it just as much.  Everyone else admired it too so I'm glad to have suggested it. With the same group I watched User Not Found from the Traverse.  It was an online version of a play they did in a café a festival or so ago.  A man is sitting in a cafe staring at his phone thinking about his late partner, or rather former partner - they had split a couple of years before, who had appointed him his "online legacy executor".  His responsibility is to decide how to deal with all the digital traces of his partner: Facebook posts, Tweets, Instagram pics etc etc.  He has the help of an organisation called Fidelis Legacy Solutions who have the partner's passwords and will organise the deletion or leaving alone of his digital traces.  He ruminates on the relationship and going through the digital assets brings back memories good and bad.

It was a good show and I think that Fidelis is a brilliant idea.  You were instructed to watch it on a smartphone wearing headphones which I did.  But that was really more of a gimmick than anything else. I watched it again on a laptop without headphones.  It was much better.

Two more screen entertainments.  The Elephant's Graveyard is a true story of how the elephant from a travelling circus was lynched in Tennessee in 1916.  It turns out there was a reason for the lynching though cooler heads would surely have thought better of taking out on the elephant the thoughtless act of a human being.

Anyway the play based on the incident was quite entertaining. It was really a series of monologues from all the circus people and town residents involved.  It was nicely presented with the actors in sepia tones and period costumes filmed against black and white period location photographs. 

Us I saw on iplayer.  It's a four part dramatisation of a novel by David Nicholls.  A couple are about to see their son leave home to go to college.  A family holiday has been planned for the three of them to tour Europe, their last holiday together before the family changes.  The mother reveals to unsuspecting husband that she thinks it's about time she left as well.  They decide nonetheless to go ahead with the holiday.

Of course things don't go smoothly.  Truth to tell things have not gone terribly smoothly between father and son as he grew up.  Anyway lots of things happen.  It's a clever mixture of comedy and seriousness with flashbacks to the beginnings of the couple's relationship and points within the family's history.  Entertaing and moving and with a happy ending and lots of lovely cityscapes in Paris, Amsterdam, Venice, Sienna, Barcelona and Sitges.

Made me think of happy travelling times.

By and large the weather in August was not very pleasant but thanks to there being no festival events to go to in person I didn't have to expose myself to the elements.

The last day of the month on the other hand dawned bright and sunny so I betook myself to North Berwick on the train for a little summer holiday.

I strolled about, on the beach, around the harbour and in the town, drank coffee, licked ice-cream and took a number of photos.

Back home my sax lessons have moved from Skype to Polwarth, from where I hope not to be driven away by tighter coronavirus restrictions.  

Andy and Esther were over from Munich and we had lunch together on Victoria Terrace.  Although it's a lovely sunny spot we decided to eat indoors having doubts about the staying power of the sunshine.  As it turned out the sun displayed remarkable stamina unlike later in the week when it didn't even display itself before, during or after my coffee date with Siobhan which morphed into lunch.  On another day Mary was celebrating the 15th anniversary of her move to Scotland by having a Covid restricted gathering which was very jolly.

When the cinemas opened I was momentarily enthusiastic but the mood passed so I'm still having all my entertainment needs satisfied online. And well satisfied I am.  Declan from the Traverse was a film version of a play called Mouthpiece that I saw there a while ago.  Joyce Macmillan suggested at the time that  the play might work better as a monologu which is more or less how the film was organised   She was right.  I enjoyed Declan much more than Mouthpiece.

Among the great Russian novels that I have not read is Anna Karenina.  I can continue not to read it with an easy conscience thanks to a radio dramatisation that kept me enthralled over its four episodes.  I felt sorry for all the characters whose lives could have ended much more happily had just a smidgeon of compassion and common sense been allowed to prevail.

No fear of a tragic ending I hope in Claire's new play Schrapnel to be performed live on Zoom some time in November.  I'm in the cast with the challenge of being Australian.  Arkle are gathering forces to revive The Venetian Twins so cruelly disrupted by lockdown so I'm going to be kept busy over the next few months.

Come what may I've got to find space to run my U3A Italian group and keep my Japanese going.  I might have said keep it on track for the World Saxophone Congress in Japan next year but that's just been postponed to 2022.  Fortunately I'm deeply enough dug into learning that the congress postponement is no demotivator.

Unusually, online drama pandered to my interest last week in the shape of a joint production between Leeds Playhouse and a Japanese company.  Missing People was cancelled on its press night in Leeds in March but had already been presented in Japan and a video of one of those performances was made available online.

An English chap goes with his Japanese fiancée (and his mum) to Japan to meet her family.  It's soon evident that all is not well.  The reasons are revealed as the family dynamics, both Japanese and English, oscillate one way then another.  The show is played in a mixture of Japanese and English with appropriate subtitles in a simple set that with its moving pillars setting scenes reminded me of a similar strategy employed in shows I've been involved with.

It's a good and interesting script that's brought vividly to life by an excellent team.  I particulary enjoyed Natsumi Nanase as Chiyo the Japanese mother. 

 

The festivals have to a greater or lesser degree all gone online this year and this slightly fuzzy picture is one I snatched from my screen.  It was part of the Zoo venue's online presence and is a show called Correction that I saw there in 2015.  Here's what I said then:

  "  Always something different on the Fringe.  Can you imagine enjoying a show where seven people stand in a line having had their footwear nailed to the floor and sway about very athletically, indeed dance, while four clarinetists play behind them?

No?  Well it's surprisingly entertaining.  I went with some of my clarinet class to see Correction last night and enjoyed it though not quite as much as the hollering, whooping crowd of supporters behind us did. "

This was a film of the 2015 show to which my reaction remained the same but there was a seven minute bonus coda for 2020.  The coda was provided by the Czech company doing similar acrobatics individually in lockdown isolation.  I particularly enjoyed the girl who shimmied about with her feet stuck in her kids' sandpit.

Other than that I've seen very little EIF or Fringe action but quite a lot of the Book Festival.  The format of two people sitting chatting about a book works pretty well online though like everything else it's the atmosphere that one misses and that buzz in the streets that makes Edinburgh such an exciting place to be in August.

Claire reminded us in her blog that this year is the tenth anniversary of her production of The Tempest on a barge in the Water of Leith.  That's a prime example of how much fun taking part in a Fringe show can be. A wonderful venue and crew, fine set of actors and musicians, enthusiastic audiences and lots of after show socialising.

So back in the wilderness of the 2020 festivals I've had to be content with at home viewing though I've had some socialising.  Lunch out twice, once at The Ivy.  I was very pleased to eat there, even though I was a backup companion for someone who couldn't make it.  There was quite a buzz when the place opened and tables were hard to get.  I don't know how long that has lasted but last Monday it was very busy, thanks in part I'm sure to the Chancellor's ten quid contribution.  Not that that goes far at The Ivy.  The food was excellent though.

This weekend I've enjoyed a sumptuous barbecue and during the week there was a Book Festival event called Scran and Stories that involved food.  The company producing the event provided free meals for some and recipes for others, the idea being to eat the food while listening to stories, mostly poems in fact, from people based in North Edinburgh and Musselburgh.

I got the recipes and made a cauliflower and lentils dish which I did eat while I watched and listened. The poems were a mixed bag.  Our Thursday online theatre going group watched and shared opinions afterwards. Agreement was not universal.

This week we are due to watch Declan at Traverse 3 which is what they are calling their online space.  It's a version of a play called Mouthpiece which played at The Traverse in 2018.  I was not all that enthusiastic about it then so we'll see.

Just before I expand on the Book Festival let me mention Albion by Mike Bartlett.  Reviewers will tell you this is all to do with Brexit but you needn't worry about that.  It's fun on its own account as a story of wishes unfulfilled, an attempt to recover or recreate a real or imagined past, mother daughter dynamics and various other things.  It's superbly well acted in a simple garden setting around which flowers are planted as spirits and ambitions rise and then taken off as the dream drifts away.

So books. I'm just going to list everything with a brief comment as an aide memoire for my dotage.

The Edwin Morgan Poetry Award -  Twenty thousand smackers and a lesser runner up prize for poets under 30 working in Scotland.  I liked the winner's poems (Alysia Pirmohamed) and I loved the delight with which she learnt the news but my preference was for the runner up (Colin Bramwell).

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell - Shakespeare had a son called Hamnet who died young.  The novel deals with the family situation, the plague world of the time and especially his mother Agnes.

The Windrush Betrayal by Amelia Gentleman - Could anything be more disgraceful than the bureaucratic nightmare that led to people settled in the UK for decades being thrown out after being dismissed from jobs, refused medical treatment and otherwise maltreated.  Perhaps only the treatment of asylum seekers exemplified by the recent death of Mercy Baguma in Glasgow.  Where has British compassion gone?

The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by Shokoofeh Azar - Iran is another example of a once great civilization gone astray.  The novel traces the history of a family against the background of the decade following the 1979 revolution.  The author found asylum in Australia and found a translator who remains anonymous for fear of reprisals.

The First Woman by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi -  The story of a headstrong young Ugandan woman finding her place in the world according to the festival blurb. I'm sure I enjoyed the discussion but I'll need to watch it again or maybe just cut to the chase and read the book.

The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste -  Historical fiction based on real family fact about Ethiopian resistance to the Italian invasion in 1935. It focuses in particular on the part played by women in the actual fighting.  The discussion was illustrated by various great photos of the fighting ladies, some from the author's family if I remember rightly.

The Advetures of China Iron by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara -  It's a buddy road trip novel in which the buddies are the neglected wife of Martin Hierro ( hero of the gaucho foundation myth) and a Scots girl called Liz.  They travel and roister together in an Argentina never colonised politically by the British but in which British business held the upper hand.  The translators told us how difficult but how much fun it had been tackling the lesbian sex scenes.

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa - My current interest in Japan led me to this but I was delayed in getting to it then diverted from it and unfortunately it's not on their "Watch Again" list so had I been waiting impatiently for ten years for the translation to appear I'd be slitting my wrists. Fortunately I'm unharmed by the loss.

On the Road by James Naughtie - A really stimulating discussion between Alan Little and Naughtie about his memoir of US politics from Reagan to Trump.

Suzanne Bonnar and Joy Harjo with Jackie Kay -  Not a book focussed event but a chat and and some poetry reading between Scotland's Makar and America's poet laureate with a song or two from Suzanne thrown in.  Very lively on Jackie's part but not hugely memorable.

James Tait Black Prizes - I missed this and it's not on "Watch Again" but the results are here.

Scabby Queen by Kirstin Innes -  A memoir of a fictional Glasgow singer looking back from her suicide at her life against the background of the last fifty years of life in Scotland.  It sounds an essential and an entertaining read.

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo - Three thousand people tuned in to hear Nicola Sturgeon talking to Evaristo about her book. Joint winner of the Booker prize in 2019 her novel has been described as essential to the understanding of modern Britain so I suppose I'd better read it though despite the interest aroused by the discussion I'm not sure that it's quite my thing.

Actress by Anne Enwright -  Recently serialised on Radio 4 this novel is about Katherine O'Dell a larger than life Irish actress and her relationship with her daughter Norah. A thoroughly good read judging by the exerpts I heard on the radio.

Livewired: The Inside Story of the Ever-changing Brain by David Eagleman - I've long been fascinated by the workings of the brain and by dreaming in particular.  In this book Eagleman puts forward the theory that dreaming is designed to keep those parts of the brain concerned with visual perception from being cannibalised by other parts of the brain while we are asleep.  This is a theory I've never heard before. It seemed to make sense as he spoke about it but I'm sure it needs further investigation.

Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart -  A book about a sensitive boy growing up in Glasgow with an alcoholic mother, it's been hailed as a great new Scottish novel by the critics. Stuart's first book but ten or more years in the making.  The discussion he had with Damian Barr about it and about the childhood experiences that lay behind it was lively, moving and instructive.  Barr himself is no stranger to a difficult childhood which made the exchange even more powerful.

The Death of Comrade President by Alain Mabanckou - A Congolese writer I knew nothing of who works in the States as so many African writers have done though he's perhaps unusual in coming from francophone Africa.  I didn't learn much about the novel other than that it's very likely an addition to what we migh call post colonial disappointment literature.  On the other hand I learnt a fair bit about Mabanckou and his literary influences and determined that I must read again Camara Laye's delightful story of an African childhood, L'Enfant Noir.

Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami - Another Japanese novelist's first appearance in English. Japanese society retains a reputation for being stuck in patriarchy mode and this novel undercuts that.  Its heroines are intent on claiming rights for themselves in modern Japanese society.

How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division by Elif Shafak -  I attended this event because I had read and enjoyed Shafak's novel The Bastard of Istanbul.  The book under discussion however is not a novel but an extended essay on the problems of our age. She's an obviously articulate, intelligent and perceptive thinker whose reflections I would recommend to our political masters and from which all of us might gain.

Lockdown has been easing and my face to face socialising has increased a bit.  I spent an afternoon in a Portobello garden, an afternoon in a Musselburgh garden and an hour or two at a cafe table (outdoors) in George Street.

All very pleasant and no virus symptoms have appeared as yet.  Musselburgh was particularly interesting because although the garden stretched the length of three or four blocks of flats, typical low level local authority tenements, it was sub-divided without any physical barriers into sections for each of the 20 odd properties.  I grew up with such a back garden organisation but hadn't sat in one like it for a long time.  It's a good way of encouraging togetherness while allowing individuality. 

We retired indoors to eat and that must constitute my first indoor association sanctioned by the current government guidance.  A second was to have followed this weekend in a restaurant but a combination of work, concern that we might be stretching the rules and a general unease saw the gig cancelled.

On-line gigs though have gone from strength to strength.  With the weekly theatre crowd I've seen three shows:  Miraculous from  Borderline Theatre/Ayr Gaiety, a reasonably entertaining play about a one-time on the brink of success Ayrshire pop band; The Black Veil from The Theatre Royal Nottingham, a soi-disant thriller based on a Dickens story over which I prefer to draw a veil and The Tempest from The Globe.

Based on my one and only visit, when I saw A Midsummer Night's Dream, I think the Globe is wonderful but I wasn't wildly enthusiastic about seeing this production.  However, the opening storm scene apart, I really enjoyed it.  Excellent performances from 99% of the cast.  Does it surprise you to learn that I wasn't entirely happy with the King of Naples?

Miranda was played by Jessie Buckley who by coincidence I had just seen in Chernobyl, the drama mini series about the 1986 nuclear accident.  She was excellent in that too.  I remember the concerns about radioactivity from the accident drifting our way and the restrictions on the sale of sheep, especially those raised in Wales but Scotland was affected too.  Ten years after the accident Welsh sheep were still failing radioactivity tests so weren't allowed to enter the food chain.

The show was very interesting and very well done although this fascinating review in the New Yorker claims (no doubt correctly) that the reality of the political, industrial and judicial working of the Soviet Union were sacrificed for the sake of the drama.

I nipped out the other day to buy a replacement under kitchen cupboard neon tube in one of the many individual shops that we are lucky to have in Leith Walk.  Individual and cash only - my first cash transaction since lockdown started.  It was a sunny afternoon so I decided I'd have a bit of a stroll.  I wandered along Balfour Street admiring its trees.  I've often wondered why that's the only street off the Walk that is so blessed.

I found out, and indeed the walk turned out to be a voyage of discovery.  The street leads to Pilrig park.  Despite it being so near home I'd never been into the park which is why I was going that way. A board by the entrance to the park explains that the street used to be an avenue graced by trees that led to Pilrig House.

I assumed that Pilrig House was no more so was astonished when I continued into the park and there it was, not only in existence but clearly in use.  5 star self catering apartments I have since learnt.

A board by the house gives some historical information, when it was built etc., notes that Robert Louis Stevenson's grandfather was born there and that the Balfour family owned it for centuries (hence the street name).

I really was amazed, not only at the house but at the extent and tranquil gracefulness of the park.  How have I managed not to visit it till now?

I wanted to know more so when I got home I pulled from the most hard to get to corner of my bookshelves my copy of Cassell's Old and New Edinburgh published in three volumes in 1880, my copy however being bound into six books.

I don't remember when I bought them, probably in the 60s.  They are full of fascinating details and beautiful engravings but I haven't done more than rifle through them very occasionally and not at all since I moved to Leith Walk.

Disappointingly there is only the briefest mention of Pilrig House.  I found a lot more on the internet, notably in Wikipedia. and in a family history of the Balfours.

But I browsed the neighbouring pages and found some fascinating stuff.  I've patched together an extract about Leith Walk.  I'm particularly pleased to see the reference to an underground railway since I've long maintained that we should have one in Edinburgh.  I wonder too if we could encourage one of the poor souls who sit outside our shops to imitate Commodore O'Brien?

 

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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.