This imitation bird of prey has flown over a roof on the opposite side of Leith Walk for several years and last month was joined by a lion rampant.  I assumed this was in honour of Scotland's appearance in the world cup and that it's rapid disappearance shortly afterwards mirrored Scotland's.  But the bird of prey and the mast disappeared with it.  Was it all blown away or has the plastic eagle landed elsewhere?

I was myself an imitation at Napier University in June in the couple of simulation exercises that I've done there for the last several years.  I haven't committed to them for next year because of uncertainty about how my lung condition will progress.  So possibly my last time which is a shame because they are fun to do.

For weeks the news has been dominated by highly charged reports of record breaking high temperatures.  As is often the case this turns out to be a phenomenon experienced largely in southern parts of the UK.  I've experienced it second hand watching red-faced suncream daubed Wimbledon fans fanning themselves while I've slipped into a woolly cardigan for comfort.  The tennis was very good, though I'd have liked to see Djokovic succeed in his efforts to win a 25th Grand Slam title or perhaps even better to have seen him denied the prize in a final won by the British wunderkind Arthur Fery.  

We are not to be denied summery weather activities completely however.  Phil and Claire held a BBQ on a cloudy but warmish day and we've had a small number of really pleasant days when temperatures exerted them selves sufficiently to reach the middle 20s. On one of those I took a bus out into East Lothian and enjoyed a pleasant walk through fields from the main road to visit Preston Mill.  It's maintained by the National Trust and their guide gave an interesting tour through the building.

Preston Mill

To borrow a phrase from the Michelin Guides, it's worth a detour.

My other outing was with Siobhan to Inchcolm.  It was a trip we'd planned to do five years ago but in the event I went alone and didn't set foot on the island. I blogged about it here. 

This time we made it onto the island and had a very pleasant picnic in the sunshine and wandered around the abbey and dawdled about to the extent that we didn't have time in the end to leave the bay where we landed and follow the walks round the island.  That pleasure will have to await a return trip. 

Inchcolm Abbey

I've sadly neglected my window boxes for quite some time but have been encouraged by the good weather to plant out the ones that I still have. (I removed a row of them at one point because I'd never felt they were sufficiently firmly attached to guarantee that they wouldn't fall on top of a passerby.)  The fact that David and Sally are coming to stay next month also put a bit of pressure on me to smarten things up.  So I grabbed a few cheap plants at Aldi and a couple of dearer ones from my local florist and stuck them in.  I'm quite pleased by the results.

Indoor pursuits have not been neglected.  Arkle Theatre came to an end last year but a new group has been created by a number of Arkle stalwarts and presented its first show last month.  The group is called Union Theatre. 

Its first show was announced as Mary by Rona Munro.  This is the sixth instalment of Munro's James cycle of Scottish historical dramas and its appearance was heralded as quite a coup.  Alas it seems that as far as the performing rights were concerned the left hand and the right hand (agent, writer, publisher??) were not operating in concert and Union Theatre were obliged to drop the project.   

Instead they performed a fine piece by a fine writer in the form of  Shall Roger Casement Hang by Peter Arnott.  Critics were appreciative though I was less enthusiastic.  I put that down mostly to my position in the audience which gave me a poor view and made the dialogue a little hard to follow.  In contrast my companion that evening was up on her feet at the end clapping like billy-o as were many others. 

I got more satisfaction from the two dance shows that I went to.  Ballet Black are celebrating 25 years of life by touring the UK with two new pieces.  The Guardian called it a dazzling double bill and I heartily agree.  The first piece was a delightfully joyous dance of love and hope dressed in gorgeous autumnal shades while the second was a sombre portrait of a South African miners' strike.  Not you would have thought prime dance material but it was beautiful, moving and powerful; one of the best pieces of modern dance that I've ever seen.  There are a couple of beautiful pictures of that piece on this site.

Ballet Rambert has been going a fair bit longer than Ballet Black; they are celebrating their centenary with a fine programme some of which I'd seen before.  That's a crazily busy piece set in an airport departure hall.  It manages to combine humour and humanity in the chaos and stress of departures to faraway places.  There are lots of best wishes for the next 100 years in the various reviews of the show online.

Then there was the cinema.  I went to see The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie which I was sure I must have seen before and indeed I had.  It's a very amusing surrealist movie and a joy to watch.  Not so A Private Life which I saw on the same day.  Not that it's bad just that it's not awfully entertaining or so I felt.

Another less than A1 mark in my scoring system would go to The Fall of Sir Douglas Weatherford.  I went to see this because it purports to be a Scottish film.  Indeed it has a Scottish writer/director, lots of Scottish people in it including Peter Mullan and it was shot in Scotland.  I imagine the money came from elsewhere though. The story too is Scottish but I found it a bit weak, could have done with more drama, more jeopardy.  The Guardian reviews it well. 

Amongst the cast is an actor whose name I've forgotten who iks appearing in Claire's Fringe show so hee's my first plug for Shinjuku.  

I've noticed recently something of a fashion for shops and cafes to retain the old name of the premises when it's uncovered during refurbishment and repainting of the exterior.  This is the first example I've seen of the fashion being applied to residential premises.  Seems a bit odd to me.

Nothing very odd has cropped up in my activities though you might consider my enrolling in exercise classes a trifle uncharacteristic.  And you would be right but it's a follow on from the pulmonary rehabilitation classes I've completed. The physios recommend continuing to exercise as a help to counter breathing difficulties and with the best will in the world finding the motivation to do so on my own at home is likely to be tricky.  Hence the discipline of going to a class.

Edinburgh Leisure run lots of classes aimed at helping older people maintain a degree of fitness.  The first one I tried was called Active Life but it was just too active for me so I moved on to Strength and Balance which is a closer fit to my degree of (un)fitness though one of them, run by an enthusiastic dancer is pretty vigorous.  I'm also doing Sing to Breathe run by a group called The Cheyne Gang, named for the street in Stockbridge where they started rather than the homophonic length of metal links.  Even when my lungs were in A1 nick I couldn't sing for toffee but fortunately they're not looking for choral excellence.

Unlike the RSNO Chorus who performed Beethoven's Ode to Joy in the orchestra's final concert of the season. There was a full house made slightly fuller by Ewan's presence. He was in the UK to attend a conference in Aberdeen and as well as visiting his mum and his brothers managed to spend three weekends in Edinburgh. 

Ewan is a fervent rugby enthusiast and the weekend he arrived in the UK we enjoyed a rugby 7s tournament at Raeburn Place. He then went south and got back from those visits too late the following Friday to join me at Lounge 33 to hear Haftor Medboe and Konrad Wiszniewski perform in the Leith Jazz and Blues Festival or at the Usher Hall to hear Elgar's Cello Concerto. The following day he went unaccompanied to watch more rugby, this time at Murrayfield.  I'd planned for more jazz that evening but I'd had a cold building up for a few days so stayed at home wrapped around a hot toddy while Ewan got ready to go to Aberdeen.

After Aberdeen, as well as the Ode to Joy concert we spent time on Leith Links at the Leith Festival Gala Day and went to the Lyceum to see Sweat, a fine play about the decline of American manufacturing and the damage it wrought in people's lives and relationship. 

The Gala Day featured lots of different stalls and included a number of musical entertainments including a set by Buskin' Sharks starring several of my saxophone chums. 

I learnt that money from the famous not yet implemented visitor levy has been pledged to two Leith projects.  One is the redevelopment by the council of the disused bowling greens on the Links to provide various facilities such as a skate park.  There are already tennis courts run by the LTA who presumably financed them.

The other is the bringing back to life of Leith Theatre which I heartily applaud. The lottery fund is also dipping its hands into its pocket for that and I imagine is a major contributor.  The public can help the cause by donating.  Follow the Support Us link.

Theatre doesn't always need purpose built premises and to prove that point as it were The Lyceum currently has four short pieces being performed in people's houses. Friends of mine hosted one in their flat in Fountainbridge and I was invited along.  It was an entertaining one man work as much a story telling as a play. These pieces are all to be performed in the Lyceum itself on three evenings next week. I think the one I saw may be a little lost on the Lyceum stage although it's not a particularly large theatre.  Unfortunately I'm not free on any of those evenings so I shan't see how it fares. 

Last summer a couple of Spanish friends made a brief visit to Edinburgh.  They said that they hoped to come again this summer but for a longer period.  In anticipation of the possibility of long conversations I decided to give my very rusty Spanish a brush up and enrolled on a short City of Edinburgh adult education course.  Imagine my surprise when I turned up at Craigentinny community centre not a ten minute busride away to find this imposing castle.  The classrooms are actually in a single level extension but the community council meets on the top floor.  For the building's history visit this site.   The class unfortunately is not as imposing as its setting.  I comfort myself with the thought that you can always learn something.

The girls at Grangewood School learn lessons for life in the Grads production of Daisy Pulls It Off.  This is a delightful parody of  the boarding school genre of children's fiction exemplified by the Chalet School series, The Jennings books, Billy Bunter, the Malory Towers series and so on.  Our local critic found much to admire as did I.  Another company are doing it in the Fringe this year but you'll have to get up early to see it, start time 09.25.

At the more civilized 19.30 I saw two shows recently.  Windrush at The Lyceum is about the palm tree that had to be cut down prior to the renovation of the plant houses at the Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh.  An unusual subject but presented delicately (some critics said elegiacally) in speech and song by Karine Polwart.  

Baby Mash-up, What Are You Doing at the Traverse was mystifying.  The presentation was super and the performances were excellent but what was it all about?  An absurdist view of  one person's life in Northern Ireland?  If I'd stayed for the post show discussion and asked piercing questions I might have found out but I left Claire and Ross to do that and so far they haven't enlightened me.

I was recommended the film L'Etranger, a new adaptation of Camus' novel and liked it a lot. It happened to be on at Filmhouse and I happened to see it on the first of May and happened to pick up a copy of what was on over the month  The reult was a lot of visits to the cinema but I'm only going to mention three.

According to the British Film Institute Akira is "One of the most influential anime films ever made, Katsuhiro Otomo’s dystopian cyberpunk film introduced the western world to the cinematic spectacle that anime has to offer."  After 40 years or so this cult masterpiece is back with us.  I missed it the first time round and only wish I'd missed it this time as well. To be fair I suppose the look and feel of the film is impressive but for me outweighed by my total inability to follow the plot.  Lots of people rushing around shooting other people for incomprehensible reasons.

A Japanese film much more to my liking was Kokuho.  It's a somewhat melodramatic story about two men who are both colleagues and rivals in the world of kabuki where they are "onnagata", men playing female parts.  One is the son of a famous kabuki actor and the other the son of a murdered gangster who is taken in by the actor and brought up and trained with his own son.  The film features several kabuki scenes which are ravishingly beautiful. 

The Guardian called Eagles of the Republic a seductive thriller.  It both seduced and thrilled me.  The story concerns an Egyptian actor, an idol to his public, who is persuaded/bullied into taking a role in a presidential vanity biopic project.  Things go awry in a number of ways and our hero sees heads roll and fears for his own.  Gripping stuff. I read that it's the third part of a trilogy so I must try to see the two earlier films.

The world of nature is well covered on TV but while the inimitable David Attenborough still thriving at 100 is a brilliant presenter and programme creator there is an army of fine cameramen who merit our attention as well.  One of these is Gordon Buchanan who gave a talk at the museum this month. In introducing his talk he said he'd been inspired by another Scottish cinematographer, Doug Allen, and like him aspired to work underwater but in the event became closely associated with big cats.  They were the main focus of his talk.  He showed many fine slides and video clips of his work.  Much of the talk was a repetition of material I'd seen on TV which was a bit disappointing but it was good to hear the man in the flesh.

The U3A organised a talk this month by an Edinburgh history teacher about the First World War actions in Africa.  It's not an aspect of the war that is terribly well known. The speaker had a wealth of detail and commentary and his talk was well illustrated with photos and maps.  Many of the latter from German sources.  Two intrtiguing facts to take away from the talk were that the first shots of the war were fired in west Africa and that the war finally ended with the surrender of General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck on November 25th 1918 at what is now Mbala in Zambia. 

I went to a wine tasting last night.  It was very sociable but it confirmed the pointlessness of my going to these events because the floral notes and all that stuff escape me.  I can't tell one wine from another.

 

On a delightfully sunny and warm Friday afternoon the Meadows were as busy as I've ever seen them and the cherry trees were in full bloom. I've recently read a book about Collingwood Ingram, an Englishman who was instrumental in saving cherry varieties from extinction and in promoting the cultivation of cherry trees both in Japan and worldwide. It's a very good read. In an appendix the Meadows are listed as one of the best places in the UK to admire cherry trees in bloom. 

Not to be outdone the Friends of Starbank Park hosted a Cherry Blossom Picnic on Sunday which had all the hallmarks of Japanes hanami celebrations.  I bumped into Hilda who used to play trumpet with Dunedin but who was at Starbank to play with the Edinburgh Brass Band.  Here's a snap of the event and of the brass band.

Continuing in a Japanese vein I went to a U3A talk on Japan in which the speaker focused on the co-existence of traditional and modern features in the country.  I think those in the audience who had not been to Japan would have gained more knowledge and enjoyment from it than I did. 

I enjoyed a Japanese meal with Sarah at Harajuku, an Italian meal with Connor at Vittoria's, a Persian meal with Ross, Claire and Siobhan at Konj.  I also celebrated Ross's birthday at Sotto where I know I had a delicious meal and even more delicious wine but can't for the life of me remember what I had though it must have been Italian in spirit.  Not content with eating out in restaurants I was liberally fed by both Siobhan and Claire in their homes.  A good month for digestive diversions.

Cultural diversions include a Stabat Mater by a Belgian group La Chapelle Sauvage at Easter in the Queen's Hall and again in the Queen's Hall from the SCO a concert of Czech music including a wonderful piece I'd never heard before, Martinu's 2nd Violin concerto.  I absolutely loved it.  My own musical activities were limited to a Sunday afternoon Big Blaw where I had a great deal of trouble getting anything out of my sax in such contrast to the weekend at Stirling University last month.  Maybe time to put the instrument away.

I was at the pictures twice though once was to see an NT Live cast of All My Sons.  It's oe of my favourite plays.  This was what we used to call a very Brechtian production, i.e. no set or almost none. In this case they had a backcloth with a door shaped hole and above the hole a large round aperture which acted as a window into the house.  The forestage held a large tree which we saw collapse in a storm in the opening scene. So it all depended on the performances which were splendid.  I particulary liked Marianne Jean-Baptiste who played the mother clinging on to the fiction that her son will return now the war is over despite his aircraft having been reported missing three years earlier for fear of having to face the part his father played in the deaths of American airmen.   Altogether an excellent production which Esther who was with me also enjoyed.

Two Prosecutors was the film I saw.  Set in Stalin's Russia The Guardian called it petrifying in this 5 star review.  It certainly makes you thank your lucky stars for our albeit imperfect society.

The only live drama I've seen recently was Vanishing Point's What I'm Here For, a collaboration with a Danish theatre company performed in a mixture of Danish and English with surtitles in both languages. From what little I know of the Danes they probably understood the English dialogue without having recourse to the surtitles.  We knew Danes in Nairobi who chatting away happily amongst themselves in Danish would immediately switch to English when we hove into sight. 

I liked the presentation but wasn't all that impressed by the play.  It deals with the pressures on over-stretched staff in a hospital, the mistakes and oversights that can lead to etc.  It doesn't offer any solution nor does it tell us anything we don't already know, except perhaps that Denmark has similar problems to us.    

However my recent experience with the NHS has been very positive and continues to be so.  Having dealt with my bowel cancer they have turned back to checking out my lungs.  I saw a consultant who like my bowel surgeon is an Irishman and he gave me the lowdown on my condition.  Although I have emphesema it's apparently limited and not of much consequence. My main problem is progressive pulmonary fibrosis.  He said that what I would find when I googled it was that I had less than five years to live but stressed that mine was a slightly different flavour.  "What you've got is not good" he said "but it's not that."

Nevertheless they can't cure it, can't repair the damage already done and can't stop it destroying more of my lung tissue.  What they can do is slow down the progression but the side effects of the two alternative treatments he described are not attractive.  I've been left to ponder and in the meantime I'm on a pulmonary rehabilitation course.  That's basically a set of six weekly exercise classes aimed at improving my breathing and getting oxygen into my muscles. I've also got contacts for choirs for the breathless thanks to my meeting Hilda at Starbank park.  We'll see how they can fit in a non-singer like me.

On a cheerier note I picked the horse that came second in the Grand National.  Pity I hadn't gone the length of putting money on it.  I enjoyed Scotland's women's rugby team's victory over Wales and lamented the thrashing they got from England.  I didn't subject myself to more pain by avoiding their Italian defeat.

But Scotland so far has come out tops in snooker's world championship with a couple of superb matches from John Higgins.  How he recovered from being five frames behind Ronnie O'Sullivan to beat him 13-12 was awe-inspiring.

The National Galleries of Scotland talks are popular and the one on Art Deco in Scotland was sold out when I was booking but happily it was also available to stream which I did and which I found very worth watching.  Given by Bruce Peter from Glasgow School of Art he traced art deco's precursors in 19th century decorative arts, discussed how art deco became significant in Scotland between the wars and gave a potted insight into the contents of his book Art Deco Scotland:Design and Architecture in the Jazz Age.

The whole talk was beautifully illustrated by lovely slides including many of ocean liner interiors, mostly Clyde built.  He admits to a fascination with ocean liners which I share.  I saw an excellent exhibition relating to design within ocean liners in Genoa some years ago.

The Japan Foundation annually sends a number of films to a number of places around the country.  This year there were 26 films and 34 places.  I don't know how they decide which places get which films but 8 came to Edinburgh and I saw 6 of them, those in the picture above.  I can't say that I thought any of them were particularly memorable though I didn't actively dislike them.

As a break from the diet of Japanese films I went to see Tasters. This is about a group of women forced to taste Hitler's food before he ate in case it would disagree with him, possibly fatally.  That at least appears to be true but the filmmakers erected a story of sorts about the relationships between the women, a romance between one of them and the top man in the German squad guarding them and the uncovering of a Jewess amonst them. It was ok.

Rather more than ok were a couple of SCO concerts.  At one Jess Gillam played a number of saxophone pieces.  I enjoyed them all, particularly Rant, written for her by John Harle.  She played a concerto written for her by Dani Howard that I enjoyed less because the balance between orchestra and soloist seemed to me to be too much in favour of the orchestra.  Perhaps it was just where I was sitting.  My former sax teacher Rocio was at the concert with one of her daughters.  I had a good catch up chat with her.

That concert had opened with Sound and Fury, a beautiful piece by Anna Clyne. 

The SCO produced another sparkling concert featuring the world premiere of a fabulous choral work by Jay Capercauld, libretto by Niall Campbell, called The Language of Eden. The SCO chorus and soloist Roderick Williams were magnificent.  Both Capercauld and Campbell were there and were given enthusiastic applause.  They looked very pleased as well they might.  

The RSNO in their turn presented us with a world premiere - Elena Langer's new work, The Lives of Birds, for Soprano and Orchestra.  Very different but great stuff.

Another RSNO concert presented even more different stuff.  Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue played by young Scottish pianist and composer Ethan Loch.   So far so normal.  The second half saw some of the RSNO's Youth Chorus on stage clothed conventionally in black but all in short sleeves, their bare arms all hanging vertically like flesh coloured saplings.  In front of them were a motley crew in a variety of costumes; a squirrel, a frog, a tree, a flame and so forth centred on a youth in short trousers and a newsboy cap.  This was the cast for Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges.   The youth we find is a naughty child, scolded by his mother and being a nuisance to the various characters. But later he redeems himself by tending to the squirrel's injuries and the animals help him find his mum.  A rum piece but pleasant enough.

Very different too was Raw Material's take on Shaw's St Joan at the Traverse. I wasn't as taken with it as the Guardian's critic but my companions liked it and would applaud his allocation of four stars.

The final talk in the National Gallery's series about the conservation and restoration of buildings was no less interesting than the others.  Dr Anne Galastro delivered another fine talk focused this time on the reuse of buildings, starting with the transformation of the old Royal Infirmary into the Edinburgh Futures Institute.  She then covered the Reichstag and the peculiar case of the Humboldt Forum.  This latter started life as a royal palace ceturies ago, was severely knocked about during the second world war. It was knocked down by the DDR who built a steel and glass parliamentary and cultural centre in its place.  After reunification that in its turn was knocked down and after years of dithering the Humboldt Forum took its place.  The building has a facade that is a faithful reproduction of the old royal palace but is all decoration free concrete round the back and art friendly open spaces inside.  Wikipedia has a lot to say about it.  

She finished off by rerminding us that since it suffered its second fire the Macintosh School of Art has languished in limbo.  What's to become of it?

The old Infirmary Street Baths didn't feature in that talk but they were transformed some years ago into the Dovecot Studios and have flourished since.  Currently they have an exhibition about Biba, one of the stars of the fashion revolution that was the swinging sixties.  It's a super exhibition.  Here's a picture to whet your appetite

There are a number of talks associated with the exhibition and I went to one yesterday, one of very few men amongst a lively and interested audience of women not all of whom were of an age to remember Biba. It was an excellent talk by someone fully involved in her subject.  I learnt a lot.  

The Glasgow Film Festival red carpet devoid of stars and unfortunately under surveillance by a security guard otherwise I'd have slipped on to it for a selfie.

One of the strands in the festival celebrated the centenary of Marilyn Monroe's birth with a screening of a number of her films.  I met up with Andrew for one of our irregular lunch dates and we went to see The Prince and the Showgirl. It's famous or perhaps notorious for its pairing of her with Laurence Olivier and for the difficulties that she brought to the production.  I was seeing it for the first time and thought it was a super film, a very amusing comedy with excellent performances from the entire cast.  I wouldn't altogether agree with the lady who introduced the film's judgement that Monroe acted Olivier off the set but she was very very good and I'm sure suited the part better than Vivien Leigh who performed with Olivier in the stage version. 

I was disappointed though with the other festival film that I saw, The Wizard of the Kremlin.  Partly that's because I'd misunderstood the publicity I'd seen.  I thought it was a dramatised documentary about Putin (think Mr Bates and the Post Office) but while backgrounded by real events and people it was in fact a wholly fictional account of a wholly fictional right-hand man to Putin. Also it was not very good as looking at the Reception section of the Wikipedia article I've linked will show you.

An amusing sidebar to the festival was that included with the usual request about mobile phone use screened before the film was the information that in the fight against movie piracy cinema staff might observe us through night vision goggles.

Observation is the name of the game for documentary filmmakers.  Some fine examples of the genre were on show at The Outhouse last week thanks to DOCo.  There was a period some ten or fifteen years ago when I performed in a number of student films and occasionally I come across the work of some of the then students who are now fully fledged filmmakers.  One of them is Duncan Cowles and I went to The Outhouse to see his recent short film Neil Armstrong and the Langholmites.  Langholm is the centre of the border area which is the ancestral home of the Armstrongs and Neil visited it a few years after his moon landing in 1969 and was made a feeman of the town.  The film includes some archive footage of his visit but the bulk of this quietly humorous essay consists of interviews with townspeople who were there 50 odd years ago and the town's commemoration of the event.  The film gives us a lovely warm slice of humanity.

There were a number of other fine short documentaries screened that evening and one of the organisers of the event, Lucas Kao, was another man from my student film past.

It's a book;  It's a film;  It's a TV series: as we say when playing charades.  One Day has been all of these and I haven't seen/read any of them but now it's also a musical play which I have seen and which is TERRIFIC as Trump would surely post were he to drop into the Lyceum over the next two or three weeks.

Brilliant staging, super performances, a profoundly moving show.  You couldn't ask for more.  I was at a preview.  It's official opening is tonight.  It can only be better.

I rarely express an opinion on how a piece of music is played because I don't have either the ears or the knowledge but I did hear a performance of Beethoven's Violin Concerto at the Usher Hall recently that I found rather bland in comparison to more muscular and vigorous performances I've heard, notably from Nicola Benedetti.  At the Usher Hall also I heard Strauss's Horn Concerto which I haven't heard often enough to have any sort of opinion on.  The wonder of the performance was that the player played the horn with his foot.

I'm on safer ground saying whether I enjoyed a piece or not and the SCO gave me a great deal of pleasure with their performanc of Schnittke's Gogol Suite.  Lot's of lovely smash, bang, wallop in that one.  It's on Spotify though not their performance.

Most of us have come across the Japanese print The Great Wave off Kanagawa at some time.  Scottish Opera with Japanese partners have now created The Great Wave, an opera that deals with the life and work of the artist Hokusai and his daughter.  It was performed at the Festival Theatre and I went with Claire and Phil who are not that long back from Japan and of course I have an interest in the country.  None of us are particularly opera fans but we enjoyed the show and agree with the critics that it was visually striking, ambitious and beautifully produced but a bit short on drama.

The National Gallery of Scotland is running a short series of talks on the renovation and conservation of historice buildings.  The first one dealt with the recovery of Notre Dame cathedral after the tremendous fire a few years ago.  It was very interesting and explored the history of the building and its various additions and changes over the centuries.  The question in such circumstances always arises as to what should be restored or conserved. The interior of the cathedral looks sparkling new but should the grime of ages have been left as it was?  Towards the end of the talk there was a comparison with the approach to Coventry cathedral's restoration and to the restoration of the Frauenkirche in Dresden.  The former retained part of the ruins and added on a brand new modern design while the latter rebuilt the whole church incorporating much of the original fabric.

I spent this past weekend at Stirling university on a saxophone weekend.  Given the state of my lungs, the fact that I haven't done any regular playing for eight months and my recent stay in hospital I was very pleased at how well I coped.  I'm encouraged to do a bit more playing again but not going out on wet and cold nights to play in draughty unheated churches.

The Winter Olympics are in full swing but this picture is of an international match played at Murrayfield just a few days before the Olympics started.  Poland, Slovenia, Ukraine and Great Britain fought it out over three days in front of enthusiastic crowds. I had a ticket for the first day which entitled me to see two matches but I saw only one, Slovenia versus Poland.  That match finished before 4pm leaving a long gap before the evening match.  I spent the gap at home and couldn't find the energy to go out into the rain again when it came to it.  I enjoyed what I did see though and it whetted my appetite for the Olympic ice hockey games.

I've been glued to the TV's excellent all day coverage of every conceivable event including ice hockey.  A number of British athletes who were hyped up before the games haven't managed to deliver while coming creditably close but at today's date GB has had three successes and more may follow. 

Crans Montana where they had that dreadful fire at New Year is where I learnt to ski and Cortina, the Olympic venue, is the last place I skiied, the year before Covid hit us.  I can't say that I recognised any of Crans Montana in the reporting but I did recognise the centre of Cortina and even a couple of the rock formations on the slopes.  The mountain views there and at the other centres were gorgeous.  I grabbed a couple of pictures from my TV screen.

View of Cortina as seen from the BBC Olympic studio

     

Olympic flame in Cortina

The opening ceremony was fun and was very cleverly orchestrated between Milan, Cortina and other event venues.

I had to do a bit of channel hopping to keep an eye on the six nations rugby competition.  I saw France comprehensively demolish Ireland and Scotland battle unsuccessfully in a continuous downpour against Italy only to triumph a week later in the Calcutta Cup. 

Carlos Acosta's ballet company brought their Cuban flavoured Nutcracker to the Festival Theatre. The blend of classical dance and music with Cuban sounds and movements made for an enjoyable evening but as the review I've linked says, the Cuban element was dropped in the second half to the detriment of the production.  

Much of the figure skating on display at the Olympics is essentialy ballet on ice.  The lifts and throws that the skaters achieve evoke even more admiration and wonder than does the athleticism of the stage performers.

The weather on St Valentines's Day broke the pattern of miserable, cold and wet weather that has persisted for some weeks.  Instead we had blue skies and crisp air.  So I went out for an excursion and in the garden of Inveresk Lodge came across a tree with this appropriate formation.