For a while my camera had been giving me problems so that I was forever having to switch it off and on again, by which time the proposed subject had often moved on.  Enquiry established that a repair would cost me pretty well as much as the camera cost to buy so I screwed my courage to the sticking point and bought a new one.  New to me that is and a lens, also new to me.  It's the first time I've owned a replaceable lens camera and I can see that that feature could develop into being an expensive pain in the neck.

The still life above is the second picture I took with it.  The first is even less interesting.

With luck the photography course I'm doing this term will help build on what I learnt last term. I'd actually intended to do a course on the use of Photoshop but not enough people signed up so it was cancelled.  Rather than do nothing photographic I decided to do something similar to what I did last term.  

Music has been good so far this year.  

The Dunedin band got going again and we're on show at the Edinburgh Sci-Fi Con in February with a selection of tunes deemed appropriate to the genre.

I enjoyed a Big Blaw Sunday afternoon session.  I heard the RSNO's Viennese New Year concert well after New Year but who cares.  They were resplendent in their white jackets.  The men that is.  It's their summer outfit really but why not bring a bit of summer into Musselburgh in January.  The concert was in The Brunton and we had an excellent meal in The Gurkha  across the road.  Very good food and swift, impeccably polite and friendly service.  

I heard the RSNO again in their more regular setting of the Usher Hall where they played a brand new piece by a young Scottish composer, Lisa Robertson, celebrating the eagles of her home by the Sound of Mull.  Then we had Beethoven's 5th Piano Concerto with barnstorming encore (no idea what it was) and Brahms's 4th Symphony.  All super.

The SCO meanwhile featured Francois Leleux as conductor and oboist.  The orchestra played a symphony by Louise Farrenc, a name unknown to me but look her up - impressive. Then some of Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words arranged for oboe.  That was absolutely lovely. Then his Hebrides overture and finally Schubert's 4th Symphony.  All very nice but the oboe arrangement made it for me.

Tommy Smith brought his youth orchestra to the Roxy for an afternoon of really good jazz.  They're a talented bunch.  The personnel changes over time as the name implies but there seems to be no shortage of fresh talent as older members move on, many of them to become professional players.  Taking his first steps as a gigging musician and playing tenor for Tommy that afternoon was Sean Megaw, a young man I've bumped into from time to time, first when he played with the Edinburgh Schools jazz band and later at the Napier Summer Jazz School.  He has just graduated from the RCS and is a wonderful player.  Also wonderful that afternoon was a singer called Laura something or other.  I'm sure we'll see a lot more of her.

On Monday I thought all my Christmases had arrived at once when not only did the painters turn up to redecorate the common parts of my block with the carpet fitters promised on their heels but roofers were seen to climb the scaffolding that has languished unconquered against the building for six or seven weeks.  Alas they banged about briefly, and I hope productively, then vanished never to be seen since.  Please come back.

I've long thought that a gap existed in my reading where Samuel Pepys and his diaries should be.  So I borrowed The Shorter Pepys from the library.  It's brick sized while the complete Pepys is house sized.  But the preface assured me that it was not "the best of Pepys".  After struggling to enjoy the book for a while I wished it had been.  So back to the library it went and the gap is unplugged.

One thing I learnt in my brief encounter was that Pepys did a lot of dining and drinking which warmed me to him.  I'm sure I do less of both but I have eaten a couple of times recently.  I had lunch with Siobhan in the former public toilet at Canonmills now known as the Tollhouse.  It was an enjoyable and sociable lunch which lasted a while but I wasn't all that impressed by the food.  Not that it was bad, maybe it was just the very tough cabbage leaves in which my main course was wrapped that soured my enjoyment.  At Beirut on the other hand where I ate with Claire before going to The Studio to see this dance and multimedia show the grub was great.   

The show was billed as a take on the Hitchcock film Vertigo. I read Wikipedia's description of Vertigo when I went home but it would have been much better had I read it beforehand.  The show was, as the review says clever but Claire reckoned the show fell short on emotional engagement for her.  For me likewise.  Maybe it wasn't intended to move us.  Maybe that's a feature of the film as well.  I'll have to check that out some time.