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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are a few snaps from my few outings:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From The Royal Court; Cyprus Avenue.

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

From a pirate; Hamilton

From Curve Theatre; What the Butler Saw

From Northern Ballet; 1984

From the SCO; Various musical vignettes in a weekly email

From the RSNO; regular Friday night concerts

From the Berlin Philharmonic; free access to their archived recordings

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

From Mind the Gap; Zara

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wellnigh deserted Leith Walk

Closed All Hours

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And a closer view of part of the ruins,

and an attempt to get everything in the one shot.

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

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












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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is the set of The Stornoway Way which has been playing to packed houses at the Festival Theatre Studio.  I was there yesterday afternoon.  As well as being attractive to look at it was cleverly designed.  The slatted wooden structures were used to create variously a bed, a supermarket checkout, an Edinburgh pub and more.  The rear wall performed as a video screen from time to time.

All that was grand and maybe the second half was a revelation but I left at the interval since the first half consisted of not much more than three actors expatiating on the subject of drink.  They walked, they talked and they drank.  I won't deny that what they did they did well but I found the story less than riveting and it didn't inspire in me any curiousity about how the story would turn out.  I daresay the nickname of chicken for the Famous Grouse will stick with me though.

I've been a bit bored at two other shows recently - Black Men Walking at the Traverse and Solaris at the Lyceum, though I did watch them both all the way through.  I admired their sets too but neither their narratives nor their metaphors held my interest.  I fear I am out of step with critical opinion, not for the first time and surely not for the last so here's what the unbored thought about the latter and the former.

Shows I did enjoy were A Taste of Honey at The Kings and Clybourne Park at The Traverse.  Ewan came to the Kings with me.  He was here for a few days on his way back to Houston after his holiday jaunt around Europe which had given him many pleasures but one disppointment - no trace of a birth certificate for my father that could have supported an application for an Irish passport.

The film The Farewell about the overseas resident members of a Chinese family gathering in China ostensibly to celebrate a marriage of a couple of the younger members but in reality to say farewell to their matriarch from whom the knowledge that she is dying of cancer has been withheld was very good and quite funny in parts.  In our society we don't withhold such information and give no value to the idea that ignorance of an oncoming death may indeed be bliss but it's something to reflect on.

Based on what the credits called "an actual true lie" the final reveal was that the old lady lived on for another six years, a period untroubled we may suppose by thoughts of death.   

One of the first classical records that I ever owned was a recording of the Brandenburg Concertos and I heard Number 3 played by the SCO under the direction of the charismatic Pekka Kuusisto.  I enjoyed it but preferred a modern piece called Bach Materia by Hillborg.  It was inspired by the Brandenburg and if my ear were better tuned I might have caught the references.  It has a tremendous beginning.  The band start what appears to be tuning up but before you know where you are you realise that the piece is in full swing.  It was very much to my taste.

At Greyfriars I had the unusual opportunity of hearing three alpenhorns in a concert featuring  Edinburgh Concert Band and a visiting group called German Winds.  It was an excellent concert and the piece played by the three horns and an oboe was great.  Unfortunately I didn't manage to take a picture of the horns in action but I've pinched one of them at rest from the ECB Facebook page.

The German Winds conductor had written two pieces, Greyfriars Bobby and The Royal Mile.  The band played them and the scores were presented to the Lord Provost. 

The concert I've enjoyed most in the last couple of weeks was the SNJO with Bill Evans.  They played Evans' music in arrangements by different people including several SNJO members.  It was a fabulous evening of saxophone playing (there were other instruments I admit).  I absolutely loved Paul Towndrow's solo in a piece that he had arranged.  I'm delighted to see in this review of the gig that he's been nominated as best alto player for the British Jazz Awards.  I'll be hearing more from him next weekend at Gallus.

The rugby world cup - no comment.

My U3A Italian class is underway for the 2019/20 session.  Waitrose couldn't fit us in on the day we wanted so I've moved the thing to the McDonald Road library which couldn't be more convenient for me.  Not so handy for everyone else but tough.

The Play, Pie and Pint Autumn season has kicked off as well and I went to see the first offering, From Paisley to Paolo by Martin McCardie.  It was an amusing and sometimes moving piece about friendship whose plot turned on the fact that one of the three protagonists was obsessed by Paolo Nutini to the extent that he had developed a close but fantasy friendship with him based on having been acquainted with him at school.  His mates had gone along with this for years but at a musical festival where Nutrini is performing they decide to call his bluff.  Other falsehoods fall away and there's a neat twist at the end.

Now Nutini as well as being a Paisley buddie is one of the many Scottish Italians whose roots are in Barga where according to Wikipedia 40% of the population have Scottish relatives.  John Bellany (not a Scottish Italian) had a home there.  Its jazz festival is pencilled into my mental diary for some future trip.

I've seen bits and pieces of the very popular TV show Fleabag and went along with Claire to see a cinecast of the original one woman Edinburgh Fringe show on which the series was based.  It was a very accomplished performance but I was no more excited by it than I have been by the TV show.  However because of some building work that was going on close to the screen in which it was showing Cineworld dished out compensatory free tickets so I've the chance of going to see something more to my taste at a future date.

Portobello has been blessed with a new bookshop which I browsed around when I went down on Saturday to the Porty Art Walk.  I wish the shop all success but refrained from buying a book on the grounds that I've got too many waiting to be read and on order from the library.  When I do need to buy a book I've promised myself I'll go down to Porty to get it.

This window wasn't part of the art offering but I think it deserves to be.

I had a good wander around but the only arty thing I lingered over was the showing of a film in what had been the site of the Victory cinema.  I was familiar with the art deco George cinema in Bath Street which was in operation until 1974 and whose slightly battered building is still there but didn't know that there had been another cinema further down the street.

According to the artist running the screening she had modified (artistically) a copy of the last film shown there.  Called John and Julie it was about two kids running off to see the coronation in 1953.  The modifications involved superimposing images, splitting the screen, distorting faces, changing voices and so on.  I don't feel competent to judge their artistic value but I did enjoy the pukka 50's accents and the appearances of various well known actors including Sid James, who was not sporting a cut glass accent.

There was a large crowd on the beach made up of supporters of the half dozen or more teams from  off-shore rowing clubs having an end of season regatta.  It had been going on all day but I only caught the tail-end.  Here's the North Berwick boat hitting the beach ahead of the fleet

Unfortunately for them their cox had to run up the beach, collect a wellington boot and run back to his boat to seal victory and someone ran faster than him.  It all looked great fun.  I loved the slogan on the back of one girl's hoodie

PS I came across this feasibility study for turning the George into a culrural event space.  I suspect that with the community takeover of Bellfield the likelihood of renovating the George is not high.

It was a lovely weekend at The Burn in Edzell with the Scottish Saxophone Academy.  There were a few more of us than usual.  Indeed one or two had to sleep in the lodge rather than in the main house.  We played a good variety of music from Bach to Bernstein, enjoyed the food, had a few drinks and basked in the warm September sunshine as the saltire wafted in the light breeze.

A busy ten days in France started in the middle of the night when the N22 took me handily from my door to the airport.  I was in central Paris by mid morning.  The sun shone brightly.  It was warm.

I had time on my hands so set off to do some saxophone browsing but this was August and the chosen shop was still closed for the holidays.  Getting there had involved climbing the 140 steps (some claim 200) of the decorated staircase from platform to pavement of the Abbesses metro station that brings you out into one of the most gorgeous corners of Montmartre.  It has all the beauty and none of the tat of the area around Sacre Coeur.

Those steps had fair worn me out so I had a coffee and then moved on to the Jardin des Plantes where I relaxed with a newspaper in the sunshine till it was time to cross the road to Austerlitz to catch my train.

Someone else relaxing in the Jardin des Plantes

Patrick and Isabelle collected me at Chateauroux.  He's moved since I left France and the new house is a stone's throw from George Sand's historic home of Nohant.  It's a converted farmhouse set in a large plot studded with trees.  There's a pool which was very welcome, no more so than when returning from 18 holes played at the Dryades at 36 degrees centigrade.  There were 36 people playing in the Sunday competition.  I knew 18 of them so a lot hasn't changed in the seven years  since I was a member.  I won two bottles of wine but with no space for them in my little bag I left them with my hosts.

Other weekend treats included visits to La Chatre market  







and to an agricultural show where for the first and probably only time in my life I saw a combine harvester race and more prosaically and not for the first time a ploughing competition.

The combine F1

Ploughshares at the ready

 After that delighful weekend I headed for Lyon.  Thanks to a late running train and a degree of denseness on my part I missed a connection and had to spend a night in Vierson.  Annoying but not fatal.  I stayed in a cheap and comfy little hotel whose cheery and chatty proprietor was fun to talk to.  I had a pleasant stroll in the evening sunshine by the river and a lovely salad and plonk in a busy outdoor restaurant.  A happy mischance.

On to Lyon in the morning where I was met at the station by my Air B&B hostess who escorted me through the metro to a little studio flat in the heart of the old part of the city.

A corner of the Vieux Lyon

I took an open top bus tour that afternoon to get a general idea of the place and grabbed some generally unsatisfactory snaps as it went along  Here's one taken as the bus drove along the banks of the Rhone, or maybe it was theSaône.

A rather better one I took when on foot the following day shows how the city hugs its rivers.

What you can't get away from is the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière which stands on the highest point of the city.  You see it in the far distance in this shot from the Opera House.

and in close up from the same spot with St Michael visible between the front two spires

and more obviously here.

There's a Roman theatre on the hill just a few hundred yards from the Basilica.  It was just too hot to contemplate clambering around it so I went into the museum that nestles into the hillside beside the theatre.  It's a super museum, certainly one of the largest collections of Roman material that I've come across.  You can enter it from either the top or the bottom of the theatre and inside are two large windows from which you can view the theatre.  This shot is taken through one of them.

The other museum that I visited was the Lumière brothers museum.  Credited with the invention of the cinematograph and consequently regarded as the fathers of cinema the useum is housed in what was their rather grand house.  Not short of a bob or two because they were owners of a thriving photographic paper and plates manufacturing business started by their father.

Their portraits hang either side of the fireplace in this fine room

and this is a model of their mansion.  It's no wee but and ben.

It's typical I suppose of the houses built by the monied bourgeois of the 19th century when the manufacture of silk amongst other industries made Lyon a wealthy spot where fine public buildings sprang up as well.

Town Hall

One rather cute facet of the town is that a number of buidings are covered in murals.  Here's part of one where the figures on the balconies are various kenspeckle worthies including the Lumiere brothers.

 In the 21st century a number of previously industrial or slum areas have been razed to the ground and modern buidlings have sprung up in their place, some cultural, some commercial and some residential.  A few snaps-

Eurosnews HQ

Museum

Blocks of flats

Shopping centre

My hostess turned up trumps again when I left by driving me to the station the Paris train leaves from and in a couple of hours I was back in Paris and at my friend Sylviane's flat.

In the few days I was there we went to one play, two jazz concerts and several exhibitions.  The play was in one of the many little theatres that abound in Paris.  I didn't know this one.  It was a only a few minutes walk from Sylviane's.  The play, Le Porteur d'histoire, by Alexis Michalik is a complicated story of a family mystery that I enjoyed more because of the production and performances than because of the play itself, but then I found it a bit hard to follow in detail.  It won two Molières (think Oliviers) in 2014 and has been on the bill somewhere since.

The jazz was at La Villette, ancient area of abattoirs and other messy activities which has been a cultural centre for many years.  Its latest addition is the Philharmonie concert hall and one of the gigs was there.  I was thrilled to be in the building which is claimed to have the best acoustic in Paris. 

Ultramoderrn interior

Ultramodern exterior

The jazz was good too.  Two groups - the Benoît Delbecq Quartet that I've never heard but who were pretty good and Joshua Redman and his band whom I have heard of and who were even prettier good.  This was an afternoon gig and in the evening we went to one that promised three bands in the Grand Halle.  Lots of atmosphere but no air conditioning.  The first band led by drummer Tony Allen gave us an excellent 45 minutes entertainment.  They were followed by Kenny Garrett whose band played for too long and too repetitively and with too much time spent getting the audience to sing bah, bah, bah, bah along with Kenny.  As a result of the heat and the boredom we decided to forget about the third band which was a bit of a shame.

Of the exhibitions the pick were Berthe Morisot at the Museé d'Orsay and Paris Romantique at the Petit Palais.  Morisot was an impressionist I'd never heard of but I liked her portraits (it was mostly portraits) very much.  The Paris Romantique exhibition surveys the art and culture of Paris between the fall of Napoleon in 1815 and the revolution of 1848.  It's stuffed full of all sorts.  I snapped a couple of things related to Claire's recent production of The Lark.

Here's a pair of Fragonard vases showing Charles VII and his mistress Agnes Sorel

and here is a sculpture by Marie d'Orleans of Joan of Arc greetin at the sight of a wounded English sodger.  A soft-hearted warrior she was.

After a visit to an exhibition of the photography of the American Sally Mann (worth seeing) we set off to have lunch and ended up near Les Halles.  The roof has apparently been replaced recently for no good reason according to Sylviane and not to her taste but I rather liked it.

Then we lunched here.

I recommend the food thoroughly and the wine, but I'd check the wine price before ordering.  I didn't alas, but I managed to smile as I paid the bill.