Here's my printer nestling in its little lair where it has been for the last twelve years or so.  Printers can be temperamental and mine is no exception.  They require delicate handling but this week delicate morphed into desperate. It was not at all easily cajoled back from refusing to be recognised as a presence on my wifi network.  I spent two hours at it.  I climbed into the attic to search for a particular cable (later found to be in a more accessible location).  l unearthed the installation instructions and the installation CD.  Such a thing surely no longer exists.  I met obstacle after obstacle from PC and printer, deciding finally that I would just have to buy a new one when miraculously a panel appeared on my screen acknowledging the printer's presence but complaining about the absence of a driver.  That was easily remedied.

So now I was able to print off the 30 page script I'd been sent for the Arkle show I'm doing.  Somewhat galling then to learn a couple of days later that I will very soon be furnished with a printed copy in a natty ring binder.

The final Jazz Festival gig at St Brides was devoted to Miles Davis. A group led by the pianist David Patrick whose jazz version of The Rite of Spring was a much lauded success a few years ago gave us Davis after A Kind of Blue.  Not entirely to my taste but very well played.  Ewan Hastie who won the BBC Young Jazz Musician title recently was on double bass and Matt Carmichael who won all three of the RCS's jazz prizes in his final year played tenor sax. 

I heard Matt play in the Jazz Bar earlier in the week with a Norwegian trio led by the pianist Liv Hauge.  They'd met when Liv spent some time at the RCS.  It's a wonderful trio and the added sax only improved the gig. 

Another Norwegian, a saxophonist this time, whose gig at the Jazz Bar I enjoyed was Mona Krogstad.  The music I've linked to is great.

I was glad I hadn't gone to the Napier Jazz Summer School this year when I went to hear their concert that features as part of The Jazz Festival.  The five or six combos were brilliant and the sax players were all so much better than me.

There seems to be a flurry of interest in RB Cunninghame Graham with a number of books coming out.  I heard his great great nephew James Jauncey talk about him at the Book Festival a year or two back and I'm going to hear him again with the supposition that he's now managed to put pen to paper.  One who has is Lachlan Munro and I was at the National Library to hear him talk about his book and more generally about Cunninhame Graham in conversation with Alan Riach of Glasgow University.  The discussion was very interesting and well illustrated.  I flirted with the idea of buying the book but it looked a little to scholarly for my taste so I held back.  Jauncey's will I think be more jaunty.

Zambia's women failed to do much in the World Cup.  Disappointing after their performances in the Tokyo Olympics.  I don't mean in terms of winning matches.  I didn't expect that though they've still got Costa Rica to play; they might have a chance there.  Barbra Banda scored  hat-tricks against both China and the Netherlands in Japan but here she failed to shine.  I don't know whether that was excellent marking by the opposition or rampant failure by her own side.  Whichever, it was disappointing.

I went to my first Fringe show at The Traverse this week and it fair lifted the spirits in eager anticipation of a theatrical riot over the next few weeks.  The Grand Old Opera House Hotel was a really good fun show.  Very funny, impressively staged and performed - those lightning costume changes! And amusingly sung.  Yes sung. Opera doesn't just feature in the title.