So festivals over for another year, including this one across the road which labelled itself the Fake Fringe.  Various artistic events were held here over the weekend; none of them seemed in any way fake to me. 

I stopped here on my way home from hearing a sub-set of the Festival Chorus present a short programme of rounds ranging from "Sumer is a icumin in" to Pachelbel's well known canon arranged by their director Aidan Oliver.  His light-hearted introductions and the choir's superb singing made for a pleasant, relaxed Sunday afternoon.

Kirsty Heggie, who was performing her own songs when I arrived had a lovely bright clear voice which it was a delight to listen to.

I can't say the same for the Laura Mvula gig that I went to in the evening.  I'd heard her sing on the radio, probably in a jazz programme and was struck by the individuality of her voice and the clarity of her delivery. At the EIF gig however the sound from the band (especially a loud unrelenting beat from the bass drum) was overwhelming, making it impossible (for me at any rate) to focus on and enjoy her singing.

On the evening that I saw 1902 in the railway Arches near the bottom of Leith Walk the heid bummer from Broadway Baby presented the show with a wee statuette of Greyfriars Bobby, this being a tribute to a show which in his opinion merited far more than 5 stars.  Other critics have also enthused over this story of the travails of a quartet of ardent Hibees whose desire to get to the 2016 Scottish Cup Final lands their leader in very hot water and his brother in a hole in the ground.

There's no faulting the energy and commitment shown by the cast as they rush up and down, in and out and around and about narrowly avoiding the audience squeezed tightly into the venue. Nor are their interactions any less intense.  Faces up close they scream at one another. The fights are realistic.  Musical contributions are excellent. There's even humour and the narration of the cup final conveys all the highs and lows that float over to my flat from Easter Road when there's a big match on.

All the same it's largely a sequence of; the baddie comes in, there's a shouting match (not conducive to clear articulation), the baddie leaves.  Repeat until a death occurs. Cuts could only improve the show.

I really love short films for their concision and focus.  Usually shown in a programme of half a dozen or more the good ones hit the spot and the duds don't last long.  Not that there were any duds in the Nightpiece Film Festival programme (one of five) that I saw.  They've been coming to the Fringe for some years apparently but this is the first time I've been aware.  That was thanks to the fact that a friend's grandaughter's boyfriend had directed one of those chosen by the organisers this year.  The granddaughter's mother, father and little sister came up from England to see it and I met them before the screening.

Ben the boyfriend's film was first up.  The Ark was a well crafted piece about the eponymous  mysterious organisation that had apparently sent a couple to assasinate a woman.  I'm not sure I understood all the twists and turns that led to would be assasin number one seemingly being eliminated by assasin two at the behest of The Ark but still.

The programmes and their films are listed here.  I saw the Hearts of Darkness programme.  I wish I'd seen them all.

In the opening remarks to a Book Festival event the presenter told us "my pronouns are her and she".  She went on to tell us that one of her guests (who it transpired used the same pronouns) had written a book of contemporary feminist ghost stories.

Two thoughts crossed my mind.  One - this is surely going to be too woke for me.  Two - why have I chosen to come to this event?

Well it wasn't intrusively woke and the ghost stories didn't feature.  Two books about words were under discussion and what's more one of them was about Japanese words.  So I knew why I was there.

Eley Williams' The Liar's Dictionary is an entertaining novel (I've read it since) about a 19th century lexicographer who inserts mountweazels into the fictional Swansby's New Encyclopaedic Dictionary and the 21st century young woman who is employed to root them out in preparation for digitisation of the dictionary.

Polly Barton's Fifty Sounds, which I have not yet read, is a memoir of sorts of time lived in Japan each of whose fifty chapters is a Japanese mimetic word. Japanese is it seems second only to Korean in the extent to which words like our miaou, woof and bang-bang pepper the language.  Barton studied philosophy then taught English in Japan and ended up as a literary translator from Japanese to English.  I'll tell you what I think when I've read it.  Don't hold your breath.

Back at the EIF I went to an event consisting of two string quartets numbered 13 played by the Gringolts Quartet.  In the delightful setting of the Old Quad pavilion Mozart's String Quartet 13 strikes a sombre note.  It's not the jolly sort of stuff that he mostly wrote but has a touch of his requiem to come about it.  Dvorak's similarly numbered work however was jolly and so it should have been given that he wrote it when he had returned to Europe from three none too happy years in America.  

One of the joys of this summer has been to frequent the various outdoor drinking and eating spots that have proliferated partly but not entirely in response to Covid.  While there have been plenty of visitors in town they have not flooded us out so it's been easier to find a space.  I particularly enjoyed time spent in the Pleasance and Summerhall courtyards.

Nearly forgot.  The Grads Fringe involvement this year was online, a trio of plays.  Ripe for Improvement was an amusing encounter between a couple looking to buy a house and a seller intent on putting them off.  Guilty Animals starts with a firefighter under investigation over a fire at his ex-partners home, a fire in which she died.  The story works its way backwards through time to a point that clinches what we already are sure of.  He did it.  Going backwards can be dangerous but this play carried it off well.  The Report, clearly inspired by Grenfell interrogates the architect, the builder, the council official whose names feature in the report of some incident.  The same three actors take the parts of interrogator, note taker and interrogatee in turn. Under questioning each one presents cogent reasons why no responsibility attaches to them for the outcome of the identified failures in their area of involvement.  A clever play superbly presented and with a sting in the tail for the buck passers.