The puff of smoke is in celebration of the Queen's 75th Jubilee.  I happened to be in Princes Street when a salute was fired from the castle.  I didn't count the bangs but I don't imagine there were 75 of them.  There's a strict protocol which I'm not familiar with about the number of bangs that any particular occasion/person merits.

There was no street party in Dicksonfield, not I am sure out of any disrespect for the monarch but rather as a symptom of the apathy and prevailing lack of community spirit here. Personally I enjoyed what I saw of the Trooping of the Colour but other aspects of the celebrations, or at least the coverage of them on the telly, I found cringeworthy.

That dinner with friends at Cafe Konj that I mentioned in my last post turned out to be somewhat fateful.  Of the five of us who were there four came down with Covid within a few days.  The fifth didn't but then he'd had it in the recent past.  I'm glad to say it didn't present as much more than a heavy cold.

I completed the recommended five days of self isolation (which I quite enjoyed by the way although I missed playing in my concert and attending a social engagement) just in time to honour a commitment to perform in some simulation role play at Napier University.  I was the father of a cerebral palsy afflicted daughter who had just had an operation to lengthen an Achilles tendon.  We were at a hospital discharge meeting with a group composed of Physio, Occupational Therapist and Social Worker discussing after care.  We did it with six different groups of students over the course of the morning.  It was good fun.  The daughter was cast as an awkward uncooperative besom and me as a long-suffering dad.  I bumped into one of the students at the bus-stop on my way home and she reported that it felt really authentic so I guess we fulfilled our mandate.

I was most impressed by the set up for simulation.  They have what looks to me exactly like a small hospital ward, an intensive care unit (with a dummy at death's door in situ) and a "house" with kitchen bathroom etc.  It may seem daft but NASA came to mind when I saw all this.  It's just that at Napier they're not simulating zero gravity.  At least not in that department.

Before I knew I was stricken with Covid (the day after the fateful dinner in fact) I went to Edinburgh's Hidden Door festival.  This annual event started a few years ago.  The idea is they take over disused premises (in this case the old Royal High School on Calton Hill whose history of possible re-use is novel length but that's another story) and run music, theatre, dance and art events etc over a couple of weeks.  They didn't take up the offer of Rock, the play about climate change that I'd been in in Princes Street Gardens in May, which would have suited both the site and their ethical outlook but there was a lot of good stuff.  I saw a particularly good piece by two young women which like so much good theatre started off all fun and laughter before subtly letting its serious intent reveal itself.  How do you find the right thing to say to help a friend with misfortune, in this case miscarriage.

The art on display was, as I find is often the case, a mixture of the baffling and the beautiful.  The music similarly didn't always appeal to me but it would be remarkable if it did.  A poetry session in one of the building's most beautiful rooms was excellent.  The poets (I'd be surprised if any of them was a day over twenty-five) were drawn from a number of ethnic and geographic backgrounds and the focus of the work was on celebrating the generations that had gone before.  Mind you one young man's poem revealed a less than celebratory relationship with his father.  You felt for him.  What more could you ask from poetry.

 

The other older festivals will be with us shortly.  Boo to the Film Festival for having reverted to August thus adding to the clash conundrum.  Tomorrow I'll be booking Book Festival events.  I've got a little list that has been carefully checked against commitments already made.