This is Sailors Walk in Kirkcaldy.  It's looking a bit sad so no surprise to find it on the Buildings at Risk Register.  When I go to Kirkcaldy I often walk by it for old times sake.  You see when I left school I took a summer job with a firm of blacksmiths and one of the exciting jobs I did with them was to install a spiral staircase in this building.  It was sort of in its heyday then, having been taken over and restored by the National Trust for Scotland in the 50s.  They still own it and according to this website page about an open day they were using it only last year but it seemed pretty well closed and shuttered last Tuesday.

The other exciting blacksmithing jobs I had that summer were installing railings on steps to houses in Cumberauld and lying on my back screwing steel mesh onto the ceiling of the armoury at Redford Barracks.  They qualified as exciting when compared with filing off jagged bits from galvanised iron railings that I would spend all day doing in the yard back in Kirkcaldy.

Cumbernauld was in its heyday then as well.  It had expanded from its designation as a new town in the mid 50s and was celebrated for its modern architecture, especially its town centre building.  Times have changed of course and North Lanarkshire Council wants to knock down and rebuild.  This Guardian article is an interesting discussion of the situation and there are a number of extremely good videos on Youtube, one explaining the architecture and raising the question of reuse, one talking about what went wrong.   This one celebrates the life of the town and this one its countryside.  My own further acquaintance with the town has been limited to one trip to the theatre there to see a great production of Edwin Morgan's translation of Cyrano de Bergerac.

I've got a bit sidetracked.  I'd come to Kirkcaldy to see another old building, the Abbotshall Hotel which my grandfather, my father and then briefly myself had managed.  Over the years a friend I made in Zambia but who had been brought up a couple of hundred yards away from me in Kirkcaldy had kept me posted about the hotel's changing fortunes.  He told me earlier this year that it had recovered from the misfortunes that had affected it in recent years and was now quite a good spot for lunch.  So I entered the building for the first time in 60 years and had a very pleasant lunch with Gordon.  There have been multiple alterations to the buiding over the years.  Unlike Cumbernauld's town centre it would not be a case of removing cosmetic changes to restore it to its former glory.  But to be fair its present glory is not too bad.

The team behind Britain's America's Cup challenge managed to end a 60 year wait by winning the subsidiary competition and earning the right to compete against the holder.  But they were thrashed 7 races to 2.  I didn't watch many of those races but one I did see I thought the British, having made a great start, threw away in one unwise tack.  The sort of thing I'd have done in my Enterprise.

The sponsor of their challenge, sponsored I believe to the tune of around £100million. was Jim Ratcliffe the billionaire head honcho of petrochemicals giant Ineos and part owner of Manchester United.  I listened to a programme about him in an interesting series about billionaires where the presenters score the subject for aspects of their business lives.  He did well on how he built up his empire and so on but had a few points deducted for going off to tax free Monaco and lauding Brexit but taking his Grenadier vehicle business out of Britain.  Reminded me of Dyson moving his vacuum business to Singapore.     

I went with Claire to see A Chorus Line which I thought to be one of the oddest musicals I've ever seen.  Joyce Macmillan our local authority on theatre matters gave it 5 stars and Claire liked it a lot.  I was less impressed mainly because it doesn't really tell a story.  The dancing and singing and whatnot is all very accomplished but nothing much happens.  I suppose you can say that about Godot but strangely in that case it works for me.

Dangerous Corner by JB Priestley was the Grads Autumn offering.  Nothing much happens in that either.  People sit around talking and the veneer of friendship and happy coupledom that it starts with gets sandpapered off.  Staging and so on was excellent.  Performances were good. I'd pick out Cari Silver in particular.  So it was well done, but was it worth doing?  In 1932 I'm sure it was but today maybe not.

In my last post I reported on the opening film of the Edinburgh Spanish Film Festival and this time I can tell you about the other films I saw.  The closing film which I went to last night was terrific, intense, gripping, moving, beautifully performed and directed and despite being the story of something that happened twenty years ago bang up to date.  Soy Nevenka (I am Nevenka) tells the story of a young town councillor who takes the town's mayor to court for sexual harassment.  The dire effect the harassment had on her, the complexity of the political and personal relationships in the council and in the town, the strength it took to bring the charges, the stress of the court case, the opprobrium she suffered afterwards were all important elements brought to life by the filmmaker who though Spanish actually lives in Edinburgh.  It chimes so well with the recent revelations about Mohammed AlFayed.

Puan is an entertaining comedy from Argentina set in a university where the sudden death of the head of the philosphy department gives rise to the return from Europe of an aspirant for the post.  He is portrayed as the bright up and coming modernist in contrast to the home team's somewhat plodding and conservative candidate.  If you are Argentinian you can probably enjoy satirical swipes that bypassed me.

La piel mas timida is a drama dealing with a young woman's discovery on her return to Peru to sell some property from her mother's side of the family that her father who deserted her and her mother when she was a child is alive and in jail having been sentenced for his participation in a terrorist organisation.  He doesn't want to know and his mother is suspicious of her but in the course of the film she develops a close relationship with her paternal grandmother.  She goes back to Sweden strengthened by the experience.

La estrella azul is about a Spanish musician called Mauricio Aznar.  I don't know how accurate the story is but it's about him kicking a drug habit (not too successfully because he died from an overdose) and going to Latin America to find himself.  He befriends an old musician steeped in folk musical traditions and author of numerous songs who has fallen on hard times.  Working with him he heals himself I guess and goes back to Spain a better man.

I had lunch here recently with a couple of friends who came over from Burntisland.  Because of its association with Kidnapped I've been aware of The Hawes Inn since I was a young and eager reader but I'd never been in it despite having visited South Queensferry often.

I'd taken the bus and got out at Dalmeny to enjoy a walk down through the woods more or less under the rail bridge and spent some time taking photographs of the bridges.  The weather was quite pleasant and the town was deserted in contrast to the summer when it's generally teaming with visitors.  Had the Manna House bakery not been closed I might have come home with a Donker, the loaf I used to buy when they had a branch in Easter Road and which I sorely miss.

It was a good lunch too.

At Ewan's prompting I've been watching some of the Louis Vuitton Cup yacht racing in Barcelona.  Available freely and live on Youtube it's a competition whose winner earns the right to challenge the current holder for the America's Cup.  Over the last couple of weeks the boats have been whittled down to two, one British and one Italian.  The competition is won by the first boat to win 7 races.  As I write Britain leads Italy 6 to 4.

The yachts are giant beasts with a crew of eight that roar along on hydrofoils like low-flying aircraft at speeds upwards of 40 knots.  When I was racing in an Enterprise dinghy on Mindola dam my speed would have been closer to 4 knots.  All the same being in a pack of dinghies jockeying for position as they bore down on a turning mark when we had decent winds would , pardon the pun, put the wind up you.

The concert season has got underway.  The SCO started with an all Dvorak programme and mighty fine it was.  The ebullient Maxim Emelyanychev excelled himself in the jumping around stakes and responded to the audience's enthusiastic applause by launching the orchestra into a rousing repeat of the tumultuous ending of the 8th symphony as an encore.  The RSNO starts tonight with Mahler.

On a smaller scale I heard Helena Kay the tenor sax player at the Queen's Hall.  She's curating a handful of concerts there over the next year.  This was the first and featured the Nathan Somevi Trio (guitar, drums and sax), the pianist Zoe Rahman and Helena herself. A good gig.

I've been enjoying playing the sax myself with the Dunedin Wind Band autumn term starting up.  We've had to move since Craigmillar Park Church's congregation is merging with others and the building is being sold.  We haven't moved far, just a few streets away to Mayfield Salisbury Church.  Same bus, different stop.  However I'll be taking a break shortly because I've been cast in a Grads show in which unusually I'll be required to rehearse on Mondays from later this month.

I was at the opening night of the Edinburgh Spanish Film Festival where I saw a really interesting film called Justicia Artificial.  The story deals with the lead up to a referendum on whether human judges should, in the name of more efficient and rapid settlement of court cases, be replaced by arificial intelligence.  It's a well thought out though no doubt limited discussion of the pros and cons with a helping of skullduggery thrown in.  It is fiction after all; but could it become fact?

One of the radio programmes that I enjoy is More or Less which takes a keen look at statistics, numbers and suchlike that crop up in the news or that listeners ask about.  A very brief item that appealed to me a week or so ago dealt with the well known fact that it takes forever to turn an oil tanker.  Your bog standard oil tanker can actually be turned through 180 degrees in four and a half minutes.

On a final nautical point I've just watched the British team win their 7th race and thus the Louis Vuitton Cup.  They'll be up against New Zealand in The America's Cup in a week or so.  It claims to be the oldest international sporting competition, having started in the Isle of Wight in 1851.  Britain has never won it and indeed last qualified to challenge for it quite a while ago - 1964.  So a degree of excitement, what! 

Bus time indicators like these started to appear on our streets last winter replacing the previous style like steam taking over from horsepower.  They were welcomed enthusiastically until it was realised they did not tell you the very thing you want to know when you arrive at a bus-stop, "how long do I have to wait for my bus".  Instead they told you when according to the timetable your bus was due.  Now with the best will in the world buses don't always run to time and when the decreed time arrived your bus would disappear from the screen whether it had arrived or not. 

It was all the fault of technical problems they said and would be sorted out.  Now, more or less a year later, it has been.  Three small cheers.

For some years I've been going to a spot near Edzell for a twice yearly saxophone weekend but the one I went to this month is likely to prove the last.  The venue needs to make more money so we are being priced out.  With luck a new venue will be found.

I've been involved with old things recently.  There was a film based on a novel called Georgy Girl that was a hit that passed me by in the 60s.  A radio version, itself not in the first flush of youth, surfaced on Radio 4 Extra the other week and entertained me mightily.  As has done the TV series Line of Duty.  I did know about that one by reputation but had never seen it.  By chance I caught a screening of its very first episode and subsequently launched into binge watching it.  I've seen and thoroughly enjoyed five of the six series.

Quite a long time ago as their financial fortunes waned The Scotsman vacated their fine premises on the North Bridge.  They became a hotel with a restaurant called The Grand Cafe occupying what had been in my time the place you went to place an advert in the paper.  It has been on my target list of places to eat ever since and now I've eaten there.

It's a magnificent setting and Siobhan and I had a very pleasant lunch there.  The scallops balanced on top of strips of pork belly were gorgeous though not cheap.  But as is the way with lunches what starts out as a cheap, or lets say a value for money fixed price lunch doubles in price when you add on a glass of wine, a coffee and a tip or service charge.  Thus I found, not for the first time, when I lunched with Andrew in Glasgow this week.  It was a good lunch and a decent glass of wine and we had a good natter and the sun shone and all was well with the world.

We think of Australia as a place where the sun always shines, wrongly I'm sure but at their farewell party sunny enthusiasm surrounded Penny, one of Claire's girls, and her partner Zak who are setting off there in a few weeks taking with them nursing and IT skills respectively.  

We contemplated emigrating there at one time ourselves but went back to Africa instead.  Now it's not even very high on my list of places to visit.

The scene at the end of Hamlet from the International Festival at The Lyceum when the Peruvian cast persuaded a large number of audience members to get up on stage and dance with them.  They had earlier employed audience members in the play within the play scene to good effect.  It was a refreshingly different production that mixed and matched the lives of the actors, all of whom have Down's Syndrome, and the characters they played.  It helped if you knew the play though.

I found Cyrano on the Fringe an equally enjoyable treatment of the original play.  It veered a lot further away from the original than Hamlet did but it still added to the fun if you knew the original.

I saw two other plays from the EIF.  The Outrun, which is also enjoying a film treatment at present, was the story of a girl brought up in Orkney who wants to get out and see the world.  She heads off to London, gets involved in drink and drugs and ultimately returns to Orkney for redemption.  A fine production in many ways but I found it a bit boring.

The Fifth Step on the other hand was certainly not boring.  In my shallow way I enjoyed the humour leaving The Guardian to point out its more serious elements. 

The Fringe plays I saw other than Cyrano were The Sound Inside, My English/Persian Kitchen, Around the World in 80 Days, How I Learned to Drive, So Young, Conspiracy and Precious Cargo,  They were all of some interest as drama and were in general good quality productions.  No downright duds but I can't be bothered to write them up.  Reviews are available if you google them.

For the show I was in, The Kelpie, the Loch and the Water of Life, however I'll do the googling for you. Here it is.

I enjoyed Richard Demarco, Roger McGough, Zeinab Badawi and Kathleen Jamie at The Book Festival.  I missed another couple of people through misadventure, such as being delayed by the need to clear up the mess I made when I spilt the ice-cream I was making all over much of my kitchen and the inside of my freezer.

The Song of the Bulbul and Assembly Hall were two wildly different dance shows in the EIF that entertained without exciting me.  Oedipus Rex at the Museum was billed as a promenade performance but in fact I never moved from the spot.  Sheku Kanneh-Mason on cello and his mucker Harry Baker on piano filled the Queen's Hall with a varied programme that was either echt Bach or Bachlike and a cello (Alastair Savage) with a fiddle (Alice Allen) at St Cuthberts  served up an hour or so of Scottish fare.  

My 11 year old great nieces and their parents were here for the last week of the festivals.  They stayed at the hostel up the road while their grandparents stayed with me.  I saw more of them than I have done over the last eleven years and it was fun.  I think the fact that the door of my washing machine now won't close may have something to do with them but that's a small price to pay for the pleasure of their company. 

Onboard and leaving Ajaccio for the continent.  Not a bad overnight trip.  I had quite a decent dinner, much better than the grub available on the ferry to Olbia.  My one complaint would be that it was impossible to get away from musack in lounge areas after dinner.  It mingled with and indeed mangled the Olympic's commentary on TV.  I could have withstood one but not both so retired relatively early.

It was lovely up on deck as we approached Marseille in the early morning.

Technically this was my second visit to Marseille but the first, fifty years ago, involved only getting off the boat, bundling family and luggage into and on top of an old 404 dockside taxi and heading for the station where we despatched the topside luggage to London and boarded a train for Paris. 

No dockside taxis now but what must have been a fifteen minute bus ride crammed in with my fellow foot passengers to a gate leading to the outside world.  A few streets away I found a patisserie where I had breakfast and whiled away some time.  I had lots of time to while away because I couldn't get into my accommodation till early afternoon.  So I whiled and whiled keeping as best I could to the shade for the temperature rose as the hours passed.

The "aparthotel" where I stayed could not have been more strategically placed.  It was practically inside the station beside which was the bus station and under which was the metro.  It was run by the same group who have one in Edinburgh and I suppose you could have prepared meals there to save on the expense of eating out.  No mean expense.  But while there were pots and pans and crockery etc and two electric rings, there was no food preparation surface or place to allow washed utensils to dry.  I limited myself to laying in breakfast materials.

I did the usual hop on hop off bus tour to get the lay of the land.  I hopped off only once, at the church on top of the hill, Notre Dame de la Garde.  It was still a bit of hike from the bus stop up flights of steps tastefully marked out (one couldn't really say decorated!) with the stations of the cross to the building.  There are beautiful views in all directions.  I even caught a glimpse of some sailing action.  That's what I was here for after all.  Get your magnifier out and have a look.  I'll give you a clue, it's windsurfing.

The place like the rest of Marseille was mobbed.  I decided not to join the queue of basilica entrants and contented myself with admiring the outside of the building while hunting for shade.

Hunting for shade was quite the theme of my week in Marseille.  Norman Foster had provided rather a jolly parasol in the heart of the city at the Vieux Port

It's a large rectangular canopy whose underside is highly polished metal so everything under it is reflected.  If memory serves the little crowd with a banner in this picture are rallying in support of freeing Paul Watson.

So after a few days of sightseeing and shade seeking I set off for my first day at the sailing competition.  Now I didn't expect to see any of the races except on a screen and my main criticism of the organisation is that they provided lamentably little shade in which one could stand, sit or lie away from the blazing sun to watch action on any of the screens that had been set up.  Oh had they borrowed Foster's canopy instead of a few paltry Coca-Cola parasols!  Not a practical suggestion but they could have erected the sort of tent-like structures we deployed at the Festival when Covid was rife.

Anyway here's a few pictures of boats

Crowd watching dinghies assembled on the beach

470s being towed out to race (they didn't)

ILCAs (Lasers that were) on the beach

Nacras getting ready to race (they didn't)

Kites hoping to race (they didn't)

The programme that wasn't

Sailing obviously depends on the wind and you can't blame the Olympic authorities if there is insufficient wind on any particular day.  I don't know about the earlier days but on the three days I was there the wind was not good.  It perked up a bit on the afternoon of my last day which I'll come to later.

In the picture of the provisional programme shown above there are 14 races scheduled only 2 of which took place and even then they had to shorten the course blah, blah.  To be ultra fair to the Olympics they are actually refunding the entry fee to spectators for that particular day.

In the way that runners are introduced to spectators as they stand ready to race the sailors were lined up in a beauty parade prior to racing.  Unlike runners though they don't immediately jump into their boats and race off.  In the case of the 470 crews I think it was the day before their medal race that the line up happened.

Since there was a lot of dead time activities like that helped relieve boredom but in a bizarre bit of scheduling which I defy anyone to explain they announced a time for the lineup of the female kitesurfers and stuck to it despite having to interrupt the big screen coverage and commentary of the 470s medal race to do so.  We had been waiting more than 24 hours for that race to take place.  It was I think three or perhaps four hours after the lineup that the kite race took place.  My flabber remains gasted to this day. 

But that race or rather races was/were excellent.  We had a bit of wind and in contrast to the dinghies the kite races involve a greater degree of jeopardy.  I won't explain the scoring systems here you can look them up if you like.  The important point is that in kite racing you have to win on the water.

When their final finally got going the French girl was one win in front but the English girl beat her.  That meant there had to be another race and in a super bit of manouevring at the windward mark the English girl got to the front, won the race and hence the gold medal.

My first attempts at photographing a medal ceremony gave me pictures like this one

so I went back to the big screen and here's GB's triumph

That was a very satisfying end to my three days sail watching and I'm really glad I went despite whatever shortcomings there might have been.  When I got off the plane in Edinburgh the following afternoon it was pleasantly warm and there was a good strong breeze. Just the conditions that would have made the racing in Marseille so much better. 

This is the most exciting photo I took in Oristano.  It was a mistake to go there, or at least half a mistake.  I wanted to take a trip out of Olbia to see a bit more of the island.  At first I planned to take the train down to Cagliari the capital, where incidentally I once applied for a TEFL job back in the day, but that seemed too long a trip so I decided on Oristano halfway down the west coast.  Sadly I didn’t investigate a bit further.

The trip down was pleasant with a variety of scenery, vineyards, olive trees even evidence of cereal crops.  Maybe that’s for their Sardinian whisky.  I saw bottles on sale but didn’t buy nor try.

The town though was disappointing.  On the coast it may have been but actually a wee bit inland and the beaches according to Google were an hour away by bus.  Google also told me that a bus was expected any minute in the piazza that I was in.  I looked around for a bus stop, couldn’t see one, so asked a couple of locals who were idling in the shade.

They declared that the stop was down a street off the piazza and argued about which street.  Eventually they reached a consensus and I set off down the street eyes peeled.  As I peered up an even sider side street the whoosh of a bus came from behind.  I’d missed it.

Well my spirits flagged.  I wandered about a bit.  There didn’t seem to be any town centre to this place and no signs pointing anywhere.  There was incessant vehicle traffic but no pedestrians.  I found a little café and had an uninspiring tuna sandwich on plastic bread and a coffee.

I decided to cut my losses and get the next train back and headed for the station.  It was now breakfast time in Houston so I gave Ewan a ring to say Happy Birthday.  As a consequence of having returned to employment  he was at that moment driving to his office poor chap.

Next day was moving day.  After a fair amount of palaver and hanging about I got on a bus heading for Santa Teresa Gallura.  It was a lovely trip, beautiful coastal scenery, blue skies and seas strewn with little islands.  The Aga Khan had taste as well as money and business acumen when he fixed on this part of north eastern Sardinia.  Pictures snatched through dirty bus windows wouldn't have given you the proper impression.  So no pics sadly. 

From where the bus stopped in a rudimentary bus station, ie a bit of a carpark I walked down a very steep hill towards the ferry port thanking my lucky stars that I wasn’t walking up.  Why doesn’t the bus go down there?

Now I was a few hours before my appointed ferry but there was one from a different company on the point of leaving so I abandoned my already paid for crossing and stumped up 30 euros rather than hang around, there being nothing of interest to hang around for.

It's a short trip across to Bonifacio and the entry into the port is spectacular.  Steep rugged cliffs and a narrow seaway,

then what doesn’t seem more than a creek packed with boats.

When you disembark a sign points up a near vertical hill saying Haute Ville. There’s no bus-stop (not room), a taxi space (empty) and cardiac arrest waiting for me if I tried to drag my bag up the hill.

So I struck out through the forest of bars and restaurants that lined the creek which was obviously the marina., packed as it was with super-yachts, motor cruisers and the occasional sailboat.  I looked one of them up later; yours to rent for $196,000 a week plus expenses.

At the end of the line of commerce and riches (what a contrast to the one small bar and a diving school on the Santa Teresa waterfront) there was a bus-stop, a taxi stand and a little tourist train but no buses taxis or trains. 

Eventually a chap put me on the road to my hotel, fortunately almost entirely flat and only a short walk away.

The receptionist was very helpful, in the first instance by giving me a nice cool glass of water to ease my obviously knackered state.  Then he spent some time checking out buses to Ajaccio for the next day.  This had proved ambiguous back in Edinburgh.   He began with something of a tale of woe.  There aren’t usually buses on a Sunday and one of the bus companies has been in difficulty and various other unpromising bits of information.  But in the end he seemed satisfied that there would be a bus the following morning at 10.00, and so it proved.

It was a bit of a struggle up to the second floor with my bags, no lift.  But like rock climbing I inched my way up one hold at a time.

After some rest I had an enjoyable evening stroll through the marina and a nice bit of fish.

It took about four hours in the bus to get to Ajaccio.  We passed through beautiful mountain scenery.  The French don’t call Corsica l'Île de Beauté without good reason.  It’s impressive.

My hotel was minutes away from the bus station and indeed from the train station and from the port and the market and everything else.  The town centre is crowded along the gulf.  In the evening I strolled and watched and ate.

The following day I did an open top bus tour around the town centre and along a stretch of coast where as well as residential blocks there are also hotels and beaches and so on, including a large deserted plot in which stands Tino Rossi’s equally deserted villa.  You’d think that since after Napoleon he’s probably Ajaccio’s most famous denizen they’d have made it into a museum of popular song or something.   In the evening I escaped the heat in a little park where I enjoyed the sort of lounging chairs that they have in the Luxembourg gardens in Paris.

Another thing I’ve been able to do here is catch up on the Olympics on TV.  Naturally the focus is on French competitors but I saw the British win the men’s relay in the pool and with my coffee this morning watched Duncan Scott beat the French star Leon Marchand in a swimming heat.  Not sure what it was for but maybe I’ll catch the final on the boat to Marseille tonight.

Yesterday I had a much more satisfactory outing by train than my trip in Sardinia.  I went to Corsi which is in the middle of the island.  It was a major place, indeed at one time the capital given its position at the intersection of north to south and east to west routes way back when.

You had to be tough in those days or just stay where you were born because the island is very mountainous and heavily forested.  They’ve got a special forest fire brigade which I’m sure has its work cut out when misfortune strikes.

Corti itself was lovely.  It’s quite small but is a university town where 4000 students take courses so it probably gets quite lively.  The station is a couple of hundred metres below the old town and the citadel that was so important in the past.  Fortunately one of those little tourist trains is available to take you up and even bring you down again.  I took it up but walked down.  While I was up I had lunch in a restaurant with a misting system so I was periodically gently sprayed with water.  And welcome it was.  Now I’m whiling away time in the shade waiting for my boat to the continent.

Speaking of boats I made some unsuccessful attempts to go on a wee cruise.  They were either full up or too early in the morning or focused on snorkelling or just not the relaxed activity I was after.