In company with many hundreds of others I went up Calton Hill to the Beltane festival on the eve of Mayday.  I don't know if lingering till dawn to sink your face into the dew was part of the programme but I didn't linger.  Indeed I didn't even linger for the promised midnight bonfire, my feet being knackered with all the hanging about.  Nothing much happened before 9.30 but the publicity led me to think that more than wandering around people watching would be on offer from 8pm.  It wasn't.  Being unable to stand on the same spot, no matter the reward, for an hour and a half, by the time the main display got going I was at the back of the crowd as my picture shows.  But it was worth going.  Maybe not again though.

Before going to see Swan Lake with Claire we wondered whether we had seen this Scottish Ballet production before or not.  Within a few minutes of it starting I was sure we hadn't and she was sure we had.  When the black swan and four masked retainers came on I realised that we had seen it.  That was eight years ago mind and memories do dim.  Well mine certainly do and in any case I thought it was pretty forgettable then and my opinion didn't change on a second viewing.

The music's great though and I've heard some other great music from our orchestras in the last couple of weeks.  The RSNO and SNJO did a joint concert.  They gave us Ellington, Gershwin et al. The jazzers opened the show playing by themselves, then the two orchestras plus Makoto Ozone played together.  He straddles jazz and classical easily.  In the second half it was the RSNO only playing Bernstein's Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, to my mind the best part of the evening.

At other concerts the RSNO played Vaughan Williams including inevitably The Lark Ascending which is always worth hearing and the SCO finished off their season with Elijah by Mendelssohn.  I love big choral works and this was terrific.  The choir produced the most powerful and dramatic waves of music yet were able to draw back and sing softly and delicately as well.  The soloists were excellent, especially Roderick Williams who sang Elijah and Maxim Emelyanechev conducted with his trademark vigour and complete involvement.  This review says it all.

I had dinner with my friend Isabel and a chum of hers one Sunday evening.  They were setting off with Rabbies Tours to Lewis and Harris on the Monday morning and had flown up to spend the night here.  We had a fine dinner at Howies in Waterloo Place and chat and whatnot.  I reassured them that the long journey to Ullapool in a minibus would allow such an opportunity to see Scotland's wonderful scenery that it would be a joy.  I felt for them when Monday morning dawned in a blanket of solid rain. 

No such rain spoilt my outing with The Friends of the City Art Centre, in a bigger coach than Rabbies, to Cockenzie House and Marchmont House.  Cockenzie House is only a short bus ride away with a stop at the door but Marchmont is miles away and not on a bus route, though if you read the Wikipedia article you'll discover it had its own station.

That's not the only difference. The original owner of Cockenzie was a Seton who was out in the '15 and forfeited his lands as a consequence. The house's subsequent owners were associated with foreign trade and coal mining and salt production.  The battle of Prestonpans took place on its doorstep and it was used for storage by some of the forces involved. The house is not particularly grand. The fine rooms shown in this article must have been altered or be private since we didn't see them.  Marchmont on the other hand is a Palladian mansion set in enormous grounds with extraordinarily grand rooms.  Its owners wealth came from land.  Its tree lined entrance avenue is a mile long.  It's jammed full of artworks of all sorts, a bit like the Burrell Collection but perhaps less randomly collected.

I made my first ever 999 call the other day.  Heading for my back door with my shopping from Sainsbury's I found a body lodged between the paved pathway and the retaining wall of the parking area.  A young chap, maybe around thirty with a big bump on his forehead, a near empty bottle of whisky under his arm and a backpack nearby.  He was out for the count but breathing.  I couldn't rouse him.  An ambulance, in fact two, turned up very quickly.  They had a quick look at him, found that he had a wristband with his name on it and some sort of medical patch on his leg, a mystery to me, then declared that a wee trip to the Royal was indicated.  I didn't wait but continued up the path to my door.

The Grads are 70 this year.  Claire has written a show for the occasion which will be put on in December.  It's based very loosely around the Baba Yaga legend.  There was a reading of her draft at the weekend which everyone present enjoyed.  It should be fun.