My favourite tree in a corner of the grounds at Gartmore House where I spent a very pleasant Easter playing the saxophone with other enthusiasts.  There were breaks to enjoy the sunshine and even one session playing out of doors but the main business was some twenty hours of blowing indoors in various groups from duos to our full complement of over twenty players.  It was great.

A quick rundown of activities between Cortina and Gartmore to remind me when dementia strikes.

Ross's birthday lunch at Aurora, a lovely little restaurant in Great Junction Street the most unexpected of locations.

Big Band Divas at the Queen's Hall which thanks to the birthday lunch wine I dozed through.

Another saxophone afternoon at the Big Blaw after which I went to Glasgow with Rory to hear Bob Reynolds.  The music was super but it was standing room only in the tiny cellar venue with an hour cooling our heels before the band turned up.

It's only taken ten years but I've at last had a light installed in my hall cupboard and a few more electrical improvements such as replacing the jet turbine extractor fan in my bathroom with a quieter model.

A lovely piece of modern music by Anna Clyne was the filling in a sandwich of two Mozart violin concertos played by Nicola Benedetti and the SCO.

I loved Pepperland, Mark Morris's tribute to the Beatles Sergeant Pepper album on its 50th birthday.  The score was not a straightforward rendition of the album but what the Guardian called "an idiosyncratic reinvention".  The costumes were bright as a bunch of Spring flowers and the dancing as buzzy as swarm of bees.

Connor took a few hours off from mountain biking in the borders to come up to Edinburgh and take me out to eat at the ever tasty Vittoria's.

Another excellent SCO gig whose centre piece was Ravel's Piano Concerto in G.  That and Variaciones Concertantes by Ginastera put Beethoven's Symphony No. 4,  somewhat in the shade for me and I count myself a Beethoven fan.

The Grads did a show called Hand to God which must be one of the best productions I've ever seen them do or been involved in myself.  The review points to inadequacies in the script which I must say I didn't really pick up on entirely because of the superlative quality of the production.

One of the Grads longtime members, indeed I think she was a founder member, died recently.  Joyce had been living for the last few years with her son down south but he organised a memorial service for her here and quite a few of us attended.  I liked her a lot and was in a number of shows with her.  The service was not a particularly sad occasion (she'd made it to 89 after all) but rather a good opportunity to meet up with people I hadn't seen for some years.

Heat and Dust is one of the wonderful Merchant Ivory movies that I've enjoyed over the years of their partnership.  It's based on a novel of the same name which earned Ruth Pawer Jhabvala the Booker prize.  The screenplay brought her a Bafta in 1984.  The film is set in India both in the present day (1970/80s) and in the 1920s and handles two intertwined romantic dramas.  The Guardian like me admired its reappearance in cinemas and found perhaps even more depth than in the first time around.

Cora Bisset is a consummate theatrical and what's more she went to school in Kirkcaldy.  Her play What Girls Are Made Of was a hit at last year's Fringe.  I regretted missing it so was keen to see the revival currently touring.  I was I have to say a little disappointed.  Maybe it's just that I never had ambitions to be a pop star despite my washboard playing at the YWCA circa 1956 or that the popular music of the 1980s was not all that popular with me.  It's a slick show terribly well performed and the events portrayed were clearly seminal for her so I'm not knocking it.  I just wasn't personally much engaged by it.