When I got back from the North I headed for Muirfield on the last practice day of the Open Championship.  It's a good day to be there.  The crowds are much smaller.  You can get near to the play and the golfers are mostly pretty relaxed.  Some are even accompanied by wives, girlfriends or children as they go round and don't mind exchanging a few words with the spectators.  The weather was excellent as well so it was a nice day out.

For the competition days I sprawled out on a settee getting the best possible view from the telly.  I kept the balcony door open so as not to miss entirely the fine weather and did a bit of whooping, hollering and clapping to replicate the atmosphere.  Saturday was in my opinion the best day.  There was more tension and excitement than on the final day when Westwood's slide seemed pre-ordained as did Tiger's failure to catch up.

With the golf over I managed to get up and about a bit just in time to enjoy some treats from the Jazz Festival.  A new venue they've brought into use this year is the Tron Kirk.  It's an excellent space well laid out with a little stage in a corner, a bar along one wall and tables and chairs spread about.  The back door leads onto a little outdoor seating, smoking, drinking area perched handily on top of the Hunter Square public toilets.  You can judge how handy that is when I tell you there are no toilets inside the venue itself.

There are conventional gigs there in the evenings but an innovation is that you can lounge there all day supping a beer and nibbling on a pizza and enjoy four one hour sets from different artists all for a mere tenner.  The variety of music on the day I did that was great; big band, boogie woogie/ragtime  piano, vocalist singing standards with piano backing and a guitar double bass duo in the singer songwriter mould.

Looking forward to more of that and to seeing what the Free Fringe will put on there.