As delicious tasting as it was beautifully presented this was the pudding of the Christmas menu I chose on a trip to Glasgow yesterday.  The restaurant was Ardnamurchan in Hope Street.  The tables were laid out with Christmas crackers so it seemed only fair to choose from the Christmas menu.  I don't suppose a haggis bonbon starter could be decribed as traditional Christmas fare but the turkey and trimmings and Christmas pud that followed them certainly can.

I was in Glasgow to go to a production of Merrily We Roll Along at the RCS.  Ardnamurchan was handily just around the corner for lunch beforehand.  I accompanied my turkey with a couple of glasses of South African Shiraz.  That proved slightly unwise because I drifted off at one point and missed part of act 1 from what was a really excellent production.  The student cast were marvellous as was the band, set design, stage management, you name it.  If I were forced to pick a fault I'd say the lighting was occasionally misdirected, or maybe the actors didn't find the light.

The Grads production of A Christmas Carol was not up to that standard but it had some good things in it.  I liked the choir, the costumes, most of the acting and much of the movement.  The staging was let down by a too insistent elaboration of settings.  Did we need those fireplaces moving on and off?  The setting of the Cratchit's Christmas dinner seemed odd to me; squeezed into a corner when it should surely have been centre stage.

The last out and about session of my photography course saw us paradoxically indoors at the City Art Centre where there were three distinctly different photographic exhibitions on show.  Glean is a collection of the work of fourteen women photographers/filmmakers active in Scotland in the early 20th century.  It's a fascinating look at the ways of life that have vanished since then, an important historical record.

Ron O'Donnell's set of Edinburgh interiors was also a record of what has vanished.  This time I was familiar with some of the places he had photographed.  It was quite odd to look at the interior of the former Crawford's North Bridge tearoom empty of people (as were all his pictures) then glance through the gallery window to your left and see from the outside a couple of the windows that featured in the photograph.

The third exhibition was at least partly about what has vanished.  It contained pictures taken by Paul Duke on a return to his roots in Muirhouse.  Much of the environment in which he grew up had gone but not all of it.  He talks about the project here .

I was back in the City Art Centre a couple of days later and although I revisited those exhibitions I was focussed on Auld Reekie Retold which is a brilliant display of objects held in the city's various venues and uncovered in an extensive inventory and cataloguing project that has been going on for several years. I'll be back again before the exhibition closes in February and recommend it to those of my readers who can get there.  For those who can't here's a video about it. 

Arkle held their annual "evening" for the first time since Covid struck.  Mulled wine was consumed, chitchat occurred and Michael announced the programme for 2023.  I don't think I'm likely to take part in any of them but we'll see.  The Grads did likewise the following evening but I wasn't free to go.  There's a chance there may be an opportunity for me in one of their Fringe shows. 

I cooked for Ukraine and my holubtsi were eaten.  I hope with pleasure.  I quite enjoyed the bits I ate but I'm generally keen on my own cooking.  A few days ago I made what I consider to be a very tasty soup.  Oddly it was done as part of a Japanese class exercise though none of my classmates got to eat any of it.

I've been to a couple of concerts and next week I'll be playing in this one.