The Venetian Twins eventually opened despite a couple of cast members coming down with Covid.  One struggled through but the other had to be replaced meaning that the role in question was undertaken by three actresses in all over the course of getting the play onto the stage.  The show was a great success and played to full houses.  One of my characters falls down a trapdoor behind a bar several times.  It's a very simple gag but audiences wet themselves laughing at it.

What's that picture got to do with the show?  Nothing, except that going to rehearsals  took me often into the vicinity of Newhaven Harbour.  I spent a lot of time trying to get a decent picture of the lighthouse, particularly because its lights were moving through a cycle of colours.  It was beautiful.  I failed to capture it successfully and this picture is the best of a bad bunch.

Away from the limelight I've been to the theatre several times.  The Lyceum's The Scent of Roses was a very good production but I didn't warm to it.  In fact I found it a bit boring.  Not so Stand By at the Roxy which follows the tedium and the drama of four police officers stuck in a van waiting to be called into action as a negotiator tries to defuse an ongoing incident.  One feature that pulled us into the action (or non-action) was being issued with earpieces through which we heard interchanges between the cops, bosses and controllers.  A really good piece that played originally in The Fringe about five years ago.  It was well worth reviving.

Mugabe, My Dad & Me was a deceptively gentle play at the Traverse in which the writer and performer Tonderai Munyevu talks about his identity as a member of the Zimbabwean diaspora growing up in the UK, his relationship with his father from whom his abused mother had fled with him and Mugabe the freedom fighter turned president turned dictator.  Britain's colonial history and its legacy is a twisted tale and perhaps no more twisted than in Zimbabwe.  This show intertwining personal and political history shines some light on that twisted tale.

Back at the Lyceum there was what they described as a live preview of a forthcoming audio drama called KELI.  It was the fact that the Whitburn Brass Band were part of the show that had encouraged me to join the outing to see it and what I heard of their music making was lovely, a velvet smooth tone flowing out from the stage.  I can't say as much for the spoken drama since we went to the theatre following a long and delightful lunch at Left Field which as the French delicately say had been bien arrosé so that a fair amount of eye resting occurred to the detriment of understanding what the piece was all about.

There have been a few more enjoyable social get togethers for one of which I made green borscht on my new induction hob and for another amaretti biscuits which came out of my new oven so evenly baked as to shame me for having persisted with the previous oven for so long.  Apropos the hob the literature about induction told me that if a magnet clung to the bottom of my pots and pans I would not need to invest in new induction friendly cookware.  Not true.

This week I've been to three concerts.  Rocio was conducting the Edinburgh College concert band in their end of term concert in the beautiful setting of the Canongate Kirk.  A number of other college groups played and sang but hers was certainly the most joyous in Tequila  in which maracas were replaced by cocktail shakers.

The following night I went to the Queen's Hall to hear Colin Currie play a new percussion concerto by Helen Grime with the SCO and thoroughly enjoyed the piece.

In contrast to both of those large ensembles came Fergus McCready's trio launching their latest album, Forest Floor.  One of my friends always refers to McCready (I don't know why) as the greatest pianist to have come from Strathpeffer.  I've no doubt he is.  He's one of a number of brilliant Scottish jazz pianists.  Brian Kellock, Euan Stevenson and Pete Johnstone spring to mind.  His music is flowing, melodic, wide ranging in emotional intensity and profoundly Scottish.  Check him out on Spotify.

I've started rehearsing Claire's new play Rock which will be presented at the Ross Bandstand in Princes Street Gardens as part of a festival of theatre produced by community groups in Edinburgh.  It's a poetically written thoughtful contribution to the climate change discussion.

As Covid restrictions fall slowly away but Covid doesn't I'm glad that I'm now quadruple jabbed.