My irises came out, stood tall and looked lovely for a while until the summer winds and rain did for them.  I think size and numbers may be the answer so this autumn I'll plant a lot of the small ones as well as more tall ones.

Casting a look back to the Beltane celebrations on Calton Hill here's a group who'd gone to the trouble of dressing up for the event.

To celebrate a number of big birthdays (80/60/40) there was a family gathering for a week in a big house on Anglesey.  The picture below hung on the wall in the first floor kitchen/dining room.  It's a fair representation of the landscape visible from there but fortunately not of the weather we experienced.  We had very little rain but there was rather a cold wind most of the time.  Ironically not on the day we left when there was not a breath of wind and a warm sun shone from dawn onwards.  Also visible from that window were the railway line to Holyhead and an RAF airfield so it was a fine spot for train/plane spotters but a noisy one as jets and turboprops roared over the house on allday training activities.

 

Mostly we ate in (others cooked) but had two good meals out.  I'd especially recommend Ocean's Edge in Holyhead if you are down that way. 

Other members of the group were more active than me but I did have a little walk or two and visited a beach.  I spent more time reading and watching tennis from the French Open.  I read an Alexander McCall Smith book. The first of his I think that I have read in its entirety; pleasant, relaxing, somewhat whimsical.  It didn't however inspire me particularly to dive into his immense oeuvre.  A more riveting read was The Saddled Cow by Anne McElvoy about the last days of the GDR and the first couple of years of the reunited Germany.  She studied German at university and enterprisingly spend her year abroad in East Berlin rather than in the rarefied air of Heidelberg or the cake heaven of Vienna.  She then returned after graduation as a correpondent for The Times. 

I visited many of the North Wales beauty spots when I was a kid thanks to visits to my aunt in Liverpool but had never visited Anglesey.  It's an attractive spot where I'd be happy to go again.  

Before the trip I saw the Grads production of The Fastest Clock in the Universe which I enjoyed.  Thom Dibdin gave it a very complimentary review which it thoroughly deserved.  The Blue Remembered Hills from Leith Theatre was also enjoyable but friends I went with felt it lacked the killer edge they associated with earlier productions they had seen.  As it happens BBC4 has just shown the original TV play by Dennis Potter.  I hope to watch it via iPlayer for the sake of comparison.

The Cameo screened a documentary about what they grandly titled Billy Connolly's tour of Ireland in 1975.  Good on him for braving Belfast at that time but two shows there and one in Dublin hardly adds up to much of a tour.  I much prefer Billy in 1975 to Billy in his later years and I enjoyed it though I’d have liked more of his actual performances rather than backstage chitchat.  The credits held a name I hadn’t heard for a long time, not someone I knew but the former partner of a girl I knew in Zambia.