I had lunch here recently with a couple of friends who came over from Burntisland.  Because of its association with Kidnapped I've been aware of The Hawes Inn since I was a young and eager reader but I'd never been in it despite having visited South Queensferry often.

I'd taken the bus and got out at Dalmeny to enjoy a walk down through the woods more or less under the rail bridge and spent some time taking photographs of the bridges.  The weather was quite pleasant and the town was deserted in contrast to the summer when it's generally teaming with visitors.  Had the Manna House bakery not been closed I might have come home with a Donker, the loaf I used to buy when they had a branch in Easter Road and which I sorely miss.

It was a good lunch too.

At Ewan's prompting I've been watching some of the Louis Vuitton Cup yacht racing in Barcelona.  Available freely and live on Youtube it's a competition whose winner earns the right to challenge the current holder for the America's Cup.  Over the last couple of weeks the boats have been whittled down to two, one British and one Italian.  The competition is won by the first boat to win 7 races.  As I write Britain leads Italy 6 to 4.

The yachts are giant beasts with a crew of eight that roar along on hydrofoils like low-flying aircraft at speeds upwards of 40 knots.  When I was racing in an Enterprise dinghy on Mindola dam my speed would have been closer to 4 knots.  All the same being in a pack of dinghies jockeying for position as they bore down on a turning mark when we had decent winds would , pardon the pun, put the wind up you.

The concert season has got underway.  The SCO started with an all Dvorak programme and mighty fine it was.  The ebullient Maxim Emelyanychev excelled himself in the jumping around stakes and responded to the audience's enthusiastic applause by launching the orchestra into a rousing repeat of the tumultuous ending of the 8th symphony as an encore.  The RSNO starts tonight with Mahler.

On a smaller scale I heard Helena Kay the tenor sax player at the Queen's Hall.  She's curating a handful of concerts there over the next year.  This was the first and featured the Nathan Somevi Trio (guitar, drums and sax), the pianist Zoe Rahman and Helena herself. A good gig.

I've been enjoying playing the sax myself with the Dunedin Wind Band autumn term starting up.  We've had to move since Craigmillar Park Church's congregation is merging with others and the building is being sold.  We haven't moved far, just a few streets away to Mayfield Salisbury Church.  Same bus, different stop.  However I'll be taking a break shortly because I've been cast in a Grads show in which unusually I'll be required to rehearse on Mondays from later this month.

I was at the opening night of the Edinburgh Spanish Film Festival where I saw a really interesting film called Justicia Artificial.  The story deals with the lead up to a referendum on whether human judges should, in the name of more efficient and rapid settlement of court cases, be replaced by arificial intelligence.  It's a well thought out though no doubt limited discussion of the pros and cons with a helping of skullduggery thrown in.  It is fiction after all; but could it become fact?

One of the radio programmes that I enjoy is More or Less which takes a keen look at statistics, numbers and suchlike that crop up in the news or that listeners ask about.  A very brief item that appealed to me a week or so ago dealt with the well known fact that it takes forever to turn an oil tanker.  Your bog standard oil tanker can actually be turned through 180 degrees in four and a half minutes.

On a final nautical point I've just watched the British team win their 7th race and thus the Louis Vuitton Cup.  They'll be up against New Zealand in The America's Cup in a week or so.  It claims to be the oldest international sporting competition, having started in the Isle of Wight in 1851.  Britain has never won it and indeed last qualified to challenge for it quite a while ago - 1964.  So a degree of excitement, what!