East Princes Street Gardens coming back to life after the depredations of the Christmas Market. Led by flower bed planting and to be followed soon we expect by the laying of turf.

But should we be planting grain given the supply problems promised by the war in Ukraine?  My agricultural skills wouldn't help here and since I don't know my way around an AK47 I'm reduced to donating to the humanitarian effort, in my case via the Red Cross, and I encourage all my readers to do likewise.  I'm also putting miniscule pressure on Russian gas exports by turning down my thermostat and dispensing with my gas hob. The latter move is entirely coincidental I must confess.

So what's been happening away from the battlefield?  Way back in March 2020 as rehearsals for The Venetian Twins reached their climax Covid struck and we had to cancel.  We've been back in business now for a few weeks with a production run scheduled to start on March 30th.  All has been going well but we've now temporarily (I hope) lost one cast member to the plague.  Will it sweep through the rest of us?  I hope not, both for the sake of the production and selfishly for my own wellbing.

On the musical side I've been affected by Covid as well.  This weekend I'm off to the north on a saxophone jaunt and Mike, one of the two tutors, has had to self isolate.  Quite a blow or I suppose in his case actually a no blow.  His colleague, Cat, has bravely taken the whole burden onto her shoulders.  

I've been to some excellent concerts in the last few weeks.  Saint Saens and Shostakovich's cello concertos, Fauré's Requiem (with the RSNO junior chorus), Pop, Rock and Soul from the SNJO and a super Sunday afternoon gig from the SCO.  I'd booked this one mainly because it featured Steve Reich's New York Counterpoint and I like Reich's stuff.  In the event the piece that swept me away was an exhilarating and exciting work for string quartet by Bryce Dessner called Aheym.  The link is to the Kronos Quartet playing it on Youtube.  Magic but even better in the concert hall.

The Traverse are running a Play, Pie and Pint series and I went to the first one. It was a two hander called Oscar.  Both actors were called upon to sing and play the piano which they did extremely well.  The story is about a composer (the eponymous Oscar) who has come to a remote Scottish island to write a piece in memory of his recently deceased brother who was his creative musical partner.  This review gave it a well deserved four stars.  You're too late to see it now but I won't be surprised to see it spring up again sometime, somewhere.

When I was looking for a pre-theatre eating spot a few months ago I came across a little restaurant called Left Field in what used to be a hot potato shop.  They couldn't accommodate us then but I've now been.  The food, service and vino were top notch.

There are from time to time various adaptations of Georges Simenon's Maigret novels but the daddy of them all is the BBC 1960-63 series starring Rupert Davies. Last year sometime I saw an ad for a newly refurbished or remasterd or renovated or however you like to describe it DVD set of the series.  I pre-ordered it and it came a few months later, all 52 episodes on 15 DVDs.  A few months later still, last night in fact I ripped off the shrink wrap and watched the first four epidodes.  Thoroughly enjoyable but I shall restrain the urge to binge on the whole set for fear of ennui setting in. 

No Langeweile set in as I finally unwrapped and watched Deutschland 86, a Christmas gift.  It's a good yarn however improbably full of coincidences and miraculous escapes etc and it has what I reckoned was a happy ending even if it was in the GDR.