I've still got most of the souvenir bottle of rum that I bought in Cuba a couple of years ago (not to mention a bottle of Syrian arrack from a 1998 trip) so I resisted adding to my alcohol stocks when I visited The Rum Story  in Whitehaven.

This is the story of a local family who developed a rum business in Antigua. There's a lot to see including some grisly mementos of the slave trade that made the business possible.  The town has rather a lot of mementos of past glories compensating perhaps for the lack of present ones.  It's lost its place as a commercial harbour, as a centre of mining and as a fishing port of any importance.

Fishy Memento

Maritime Memento

Mining Memento

Military Memento

Further up the coast at Maryport there are mementos of a much earlier time in the Senhouse Roman Museum which has an extensive collection of material found in the area.  There's a Roman fort adjacent but you have to use your imagination to turn the grassy mound into an outpost of the empire or the handful of diggers straggling onto it after their lunch into a detachment of legionnaires.

After my few days exploring the Cumbrian coast I spent the weekend playing the saxophone in this stately pile turned adult education centre.  It was fun but emphasised again that I've a way to go.

 

Was it sensible then to go to the Queen's Hall immediately on my return to hear the SNJO and a saxophonist who was introduced by Tommy Smith as the greatest jazz improviser on the planet?

A quick run round the art college degree show today re-acquainted me with some of the costumes from their fashion show, introduced me to some lovely jewelery, intrigued with its graphic design and interior design projects, amazed with its voodoo inspired models, let me see the film I'm not yet in and amused me with these works filed under the heading of sculpture.

But what I didn't see were oil on canvas paintings.  Are they completely passé? 

The Traverse fringe programme was announced this morning and for once I'm ahead of the game.  Not only that but I'm saving money by booking preview performances.  However it does mean two marathon days.  Five plays on one day starting at 11 am finishing at 10pm and four on another starting at 10am finishing at 9.30pm. 

Since my record for Fringe shows is seven in a day it shouldn't be that overwhelming but don't expect me to remember much about them afterwards.    

It was a lovely afternoon yesterday and I set out enthusiastically to play golf.   My enthusiasm gradually wasted away as the number of golf balls in my bag decreased.  The last two ended up somewhere in the gorse lining the 18th fairway.

Making idle conversation whilst enjoying tonsorial attention the other day I offered the information that I was holidaying in the islands of Orkney and Shetland this summer.  "Is that near Stornoway?" I was asked.  On learning the true whereabouts of my holiday destination and being given as a bonus  the name of the island group sheltering Stornoway the barber lady generously absolved her geography teacher of responsibility crying mea culpa and swearing to peruse a map over her tea that evening.

I hope she did.

I was crying mea culpa myself as I left a performance of Sutra.  I chose to go, nobody forced me.  Did I think that I would get a lot out of 70 minutes of Kung Fu like prancing and grunting or what?  I grant you it looks lovely and it's very athletic and I'd never have thought you could do so much on a stage with a couple of dozen coffin sized boxes but it didn't float my boat.  Others thought much more highly of the work.

I felt similarly negative about This House.  Maybe I'd have enjoyed this story of the internecine battle between Labour and Tory whips in the period 74 to 79 if I'd seen it in the theatre rather than as a satellite transmission to a cinema, but I'm not sure.  I think the political and social changes that took place during that time are better deserving of a theatrical airing than the struggle to get members through the lobbies.  Others thought differently.

I shan't bother comparing my opinion of the RSNO's performance of Elijah with what anyone else thought because I know it was great, especially the off-stage children's choir.  Ethereal is the only word for that.

The costume design and construction students from Queen Margaret University have been showing off their creations.  It was marvellous stuff.  I think the girl who did our excellent Tempest costumes a few years ago came from that course.

Their Costume Showcase was held in the debating hall of what used to be the Men's Union but is now called Teviot Row House. The building had quite a few bars in my time but seems to have even more nowadays including this rooftop one which I'm sure wasn't there in the 60s.

It's been going since 1984 but 6 o'clock this morning was when I heard of it for the first time.  No doubt all my tweeting friends had already been up for hours celebrating international dawn chorus day.  I hope to hear some of them in the new BBC "Tweet of the day" series starting at 05.58 tomorrow.

Birds of a different feather were plentiful in a surprisingly interesting and moving film that I stumbled across yesterday.  I'd spent the better part of the day helping with the Forth Bridge paintingish task of clearing and tidying the Grads store in Home street and popped into the Cameo for a revivifying coffee.  I took it into The Look of Love which was just starting.  A biopic about Paul Raymond seems an unlikely cesspit in which to find a diamond but the performances were excellent, the evocation of the times masterly and the central drama of his relationship with his daughter altogether affecting.

Raymond may have been known as the king of smut but he's outdone on the screen this week by Almodovar's I'm So Excited.   Is it funny? Yesish, but it's like Frankie Howard with the innuendo replaced by direct action.  Those who suggest it's a metaphor for the state of the Spanish nation are over intellectualising a money making romp.

There was an unexpected amount of romping in Zinnie Harris's version of A Doll's House, a revival of which has replaced the play that featured in the Lyceum's brochure published almost a year ago.  It surprises me that such forward planning fails so infrequently but in this case the replacement is a very satisfactory show.  I enjoyed it a lot.

Chinese dumplings replaced pies in the A Play, a Pie and a Pint mini series that is currently running.  The two shows playing in Edinburgh are at the Bedlam and while the Traverse generally fills up for these lunchtime shows there could not have been more than 25 in the house to see Secrets, and most of them seemed to have a connection with the Confuscius Institute which is sponsoring the Edinburgh performances.  That's a shame because it was an intriguing little play in many ways.

Not least in that there seemed nothing particularly Chinese about it.  A man turns up at the house of a woman he had abandoned eighteen months earlier.  She is now married and has a child.  He thinks it might be his.  He suggests they go away together.  After an emotional struggle she agrees because she is still in love with him.  He then hums and haws, says he didn't really mean it and anyway he's getting married next week to his boss.  She throws him out and sits down in tears.  Chinese women have it as bad as any others, eh?

The only tears at the Grads' reading of Julius Caesar (to be performed in November) were tears of laughter.  Not particularly appropriate for a tragedy you'd think but due to the random allocation of roles made on the hoof amongst the inadequate number of people present.  At one point I could hardly read for the tears in my eyes as I grappled with a conversation amongst three characters all being played by me struggling to differentiate them with a range of funny voices.  At least I wasn't being addressed as "girl" as was one hefty male Grad.

All that indoor entertainment was balanced by a glorious summery day on the golf course.  Imagine, short sleeves at last, winter is over, the thump of willow on ball is in the air etc etc.  Alas for one day only.  Maybe it will come again next week or next month or .....

The SCO dress code is all black with jackets optional, and ties whose absence looks as though it might be obligatory.  The classical player's need to show that he and his music are not as stuffy as they are thought to be, is it?

The music at the Britten centenary concert that I hadn't planned on going to was anything but stuffy.  The Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings by Britten himself was simply divine. It was preceded by two pieces that I suppose might be described as challenging, i.e. modern.

In introducing Harrison Birtwhistle's Carmen Arcadiae Mechanicae Perpetuum the conductor pointed out that it was written when Monty Python was all the rage and that it probably needed to be listened to with a sense of humour.  You could believe having heard it that if you wanted to translate the Python anarchic style into sound you'd very likely end up with something like this.

Martin Suckling's Storm, Rose, Tiger saw the light of day as recently as 2011 and the 32 year old composer was there to enjoy it with us.  He was also giving a talk before the concert which had it not been for a craving for food I'd have gone to.  I should have had a bigger lunch.

Unusually for me I bought a programme - I thought I should at least know what words the tenor was singing.  Apart from that benefit I was able to read plenty about all the music.  Thanks to my saxophone studies I understand the words in those descriptions better than I used to but in the end it all boils down to whether the music you hear pleases you.  Storm, Rose, Tiger pleased me so it doesn't much matter that Suckling talks about "intervals that fall in the gaps - a semi-tone and a half for example, or the interval between a major third and a minor third - that give the harmony a special and often (to my[i.e. his] mind ) radiant quality".

Unusually for me also I sat upstairs.  It must be years since I was upstairs in the Queen's Hall and I was pleased to see that the pews have had their hard bench seating replaced by fold down seats something like the strapontins in the Paris metro, only more comfy, since I plan to sit upstairs next season. 

The second half was given over to Mozart's Symphony No. 40. It was lovely but I preferred the modern stuff.

Coming back to what the musicians wear I'm conscious that I haven't mentioned the women.  The SNJO doesn't have any and in the RSNO and the SCO the women wear a variety of little black numbers.  Let's leave it like that.  Enough attention is paid to women's wear.  Let's see the boys glamming up for a change.

The jazzmen's suits were Hawaian extravaganza compared to the white tie and tails worn by the RSNO's saxophonist the following evening.  I suppose the appearance of a saxophonist in a symphony orchestra is rare enough that not to have had him wear the 200 year old uniform would have seemed doubly indecorous.

Not that wearing the tie and tails outfit is uniformly applauded.  This item from Toronto (from whence the RSNO's current music director came) muses on how long it may last and includes a little video showing that I'm not the first person to have thought of enlisting the talents of students to rethink musical uniforms.

The saxophonist was there to play in Copland's Piano Concerto which uses stylistic elements associated with jazz. While it's unusual to see a sax at a symphony concert it is probably even more unusual to have two piano concertos on the bill.  In the first half of the programme Xiayin Wang played Barber's Piano Concerto.  I enjoyed both pieces but the Barber wins hands down in terms of  bravura and excitement.

That excitement means the orchestra and the pianist have to go like the clappers a lot of the time and it's not surprising, aesthetic reasons apart, that Xiayin should have changed her iridescent gold dress at the interval for a similarly iridescent blue one to tackle the Copland in.  Harder to tell if the string players changed one white shirt for another but given the sweat they must have worked up in those tailcoats I shouldn't be at all surprised.

The McEwan Hall is used to fancy dress in the form of academic gowns and mortarboards but today the students of the Edinburgh College of Art (but lately fully incorporated into the university) were holding their fashion show there.

For an absolutely delightful hour and a half we were treated to a parade of imaginative, colourful and beautiful work.  Especially interesting I thought were the performance costumes.  It all sped past so fast that I'm treating myself to a DVD of the event if I can get the website to accept my money.

Here's just a few tasters from the snaps I managed to take.

   

The members of the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra could benefit from a word with some of those students. They produced a great concert of big band music this evening but in their grey suits, white shirts and conservative ties they looked a little dull. Something to do with the jazz musician's need to have his music taken seriously is it?

In this neck of the woods when you want to know what an experienced critic thought of a show you've seen you turn to Joyce McMillan, unless it is an amateur show, because Joyce does not (as she told me once) have enough time to include them.

Fortunately we have another critic who does find the time, and wondering whether my thoughts about A Boston Marriage were a little ungenerous I turned to see what Thom Dibdin had made of it.  I found my opinion expressed rather more cogently than several hours labour on my part would have produced. 

I had a little excursion out to the Falkirk Wheel recently and would recommend it.  I'd even recommend getting into the wrong lane on the M9 and seeing a bit more of the countryside than is strictly necessary.

One of the bonuses of going there is that you can take in the Antonine Wall as well although I don't think we came across it.  But then you probably need the eyes of an archeologist to be sure since what's left is mostly just bumpy ground.

I happened to pick up a magazine in Italy last month that featured articles about the edges of the Roman Empire and it includes this picture that I thought at first was the Antonine but is in fact Hadrian's wall which is in a much better state although the picture still has something of a photoshop air to it.

They do admit that this picture of a Roman lavvy is an imagining but declare it to be based on structures that are still well preserved.  Elsewhere perhaps.  I have seen them in Ostia but not in West Lothian where the Wheel's facilities were bang up to date.

200 years before the wall was built Julius Caesar was strutting his stuff in ancient Rome, inspiring Shakespeare's play which in turn inspired some of the criminals taking part in a production of it to lead better lives on their release.

So said the docudrama Cesare Deve Morire which follows the inmates of a high security prison as they put the play together.  You can see that it's all about parallels in the lives of the prisoners and the characters but despite some interesting moments I found it disappointing.  The reason is I think that I expected more docu than drama.  There is for example a scene in which a scene between Caesar and Metellus(?) is being rehearsed.  The dialogue between the characters turns into a personal argument between the prisoners based on the similarity of the dynamics between Shakespeare's pair and the dynamics between the  two prisoners.  It came over to me as wholly staged.  Now that's not necessarily a bad thing but it meant I had little faith in much of the documentary truth being shown.

On the other hand the joy of the cast after they took their call at the end of the show seemed 100% heartfelt as did the words (scripted or not) of the prisoner being locked up afterwards - "since I discovered art this cell has become a prison".

Being locked up or rather, in the expression that has come from Boston this week, in lock down, was one of the alternatives offered to the participants in Deadinburgh.  This great fun show doesn't need my description.  Read Claire's.

There were lots of questions to be answered in Deadinburgh and asking questions to get at the truth is at the heart of Rob Drummond's Quiz Show.  I caught the penultimate performance and am glad I did.

When the play opens we are the studio audience in a TV quiz show.  The floor manager puts us through our applauding paces and then the contestants enter and the quizmaster bounces on.  The questioning starts and it's all a very light-hearted and funny parody of just such a quiz.  But as the play goes on it gets darker and darker until all the truth comes out, the play ends and the audience sit in silence.

No floor manager could have made us applaud at that moment but when the lights came up and the cast came on stage to take a bow the applause was deservedly generous.

The run is over but there's bound to be a revival.  Until then avoid reviews and hope that those who saw it will keep shtum.

That's a lot of percussion lined up in front of me at the Queen's Hall but it turned out that not all of it was active at the same time and much of the banging was quite restrained.  Indeed the tubular bells were struck ever so gently and infrequently in an ethereal sounding piece by Arvo Pärt.  On the other hand there was some really loud, lusty and athletic double bass work in Britten's Prelude and Fugue for Strings.

The SCO are celebrating Britten's centenary with three concerts and this one, apart from Pärt's Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten, was a mixture of Britten and Purcell and it's one of the most enjoyable that I've been to in their entire season.  So much so that I'm going to go to one of the other three which I had not intended to do.

The hall was packed (the empty seats in the photo were for the chorus) in contrast to the Brunton Theatre where a small and doubtless select band watched four Victorian one-act farces the previous evening.  The staging had a raggedy church youth group air to it and although the three actors pumped hard at the chests of these old gems I think they need to accept that if not already dead then they are terminally feeble and will soon expire.

If I were a twit I'd have been tweeting to the world with joy this morning as I made my way homewards from Summerhall in deliciously almost warm Spring sunshine.  Has winter gone at last?

I'd been to Summerhall to hear Owen Dudley Edwards expatiate on Conan Doyle; not as the writer of Sherlock Holmes although that creation popped up frequently, but as a historical novelist.  Dudley Edwards spoke at a rate of knots for an hour without referring to a single note and in the couple of extracts he read performed with gusto, endowing the various characters with appropriate voices.  He has clearly been a loss to the stage.

This talk was part of the latest addition to Edinburgh's bouquet of festivals - the Historical Fiction Festival.  Yesterday I enjoyed some enlightening words on Walter Scott in a celebration of the completion of the Edinburgh edition of his novels.  All 29 volumes available at the special discounted festival price of £1300.  Perhaps they will be remaindered before I run the chance of bumping into Sir Walter and I will be able to profit from the scholarship that makes them preferable to the cheapo editions that have passed through my hands over the years.  I was a bit surprised to realise in the course of the talk that I have read quite a bit of Scott; not recently it's true but one of the speakers maintained that his omission from the current school curriculum is no bad thing since in her opinion it's better to encounter his work as an adult, so maybe it's time for a second exposure.

I was also surprised later in the day how scenes from The Leopard came back to me as they were mentioned in the discussion between Alan Massie and Joe Farrell of Lampedusa's superb tale of the transition from aristocratic hegemony to bourgeois thralldom in 19th century Sicily.  Thanks to the generosity of Valvona and Croalla the hour between the end of the discussion and the screening of Visconti's film of the novel was enlivened by a glass or three of Nero d'Avola.

In the course of this quaffing I was approached by two chaps one of whom said that surely I was Ken somebody or other.  I didn't catch the surname but surmised from his slightly shy manner that this Ken was a public person, whether a historical novelist or an academic commentator I know not.  My reply was simply no and that it is very easy to mistake one bearded bald headed old man for another.  But the three of us had a jolly chat for quarter of an hour so thanks to Ken X for that.

Unlike most book festivals this is not primarily a shop window for authors exposing their new works for sale.  Admittedly in the cases of Scott, Lampedusa and Conan Doyle that would be tricky but so uncommercial is it that the Summerhall bookshop has only a few books by some of the living authors who feature and now that I have bought their one copy of Conan Doyle's The Exploits and Adventures of Brigadier Gerard they have nothing at all by the dead ones.

There will soon be lots of books in Summerhall since the SCDA have found space there for their script library, having had to move from the council premises they currently occupy.  I don't want to claim all the credit but when they appealed for a new home in November last year I suggested they try there. 

Twits will no doubt have been exchanging 140 character bursts of applause over the Grads' production of Jerusalem which earned itself a five star review this week.  Last night is tonight so you still have time to see it - Adam House at 19.30.  It's a great show.

I suppose you can characterise anything that has men and women dancing in close proximity one to the other as being about love so Labyrinth of Love is a pretty good title for the piece that Ballet Rambert open their current tour with.  It was lovely to look at, had some gorgeous leaping around, staggeringly athletic lifts and a very impressive giant whose bottom half had to gyrate, run and swoop in the blindness of an enfolding skirt.  There's a glimpse of that in this video.  I loved the music, the singer and the background projections so that was a very satisfactory start to the evening for me.

The second piece which also had live music was less exciting.  It was beautifully done, pretty to look at etc but unmemorable.

Now for both of these pieces there was a deaf interpreter on-stage.  Since there was a singer in Labyrinth of Love you can see the point of that to pass on the words but it doesn't seem to me to add anything to make violin movements or whatever in a piece without words.  Indeed if you subscribe to the idea that dance is music made flesh it doesn't show much faith in the choreographer.

For the third and fourth items both the band and the interpreter headed for the hills and we were left in the one case with some mercifully brief shouting of recorded nonsense words and in the other some electronic tooting and scraping.

Now I don't object to electronic music.  Indeed I commissioned some for a theatre production I did but this was electronic music best appreciated by the deaf.

The Winter's Tale is not a play that I knew anything about so the RSC production visiting Edinburgh this week was welcome on that count alone.  The theatre was full on opening night as well it might have been for the production was splendid.

The story is pretty daft.  Leontes, King of Sicilia, is convinced on the flimsiest of evidence that his wife is pregnant by his best chum Polixenes, King of Bohemia.  P, who is visiting L, escapes with the help of L's right-hand man Camillo who doesn't want to carry out the orders he has to murder him.  The Queen, Hermione, is delivered of a girl child.  L is restrained from dispatching her to Hades and instead has her sent off to be abandoned on a distant shore.  Luckily for the plot that turns out to be Bohemia where she is found by a passing shepherd.

Hermione is pronounced dead and L's son comes down with a heavy dose of something that finishes him off too.  L then learns from the Delphic Oracle that he had the wrong end of the stick all the time.  His late Queen was innocent.  Weeping he is hoist aloft by a wonderful piece of stage machinery where he spends the rest of the first half and most of the second.

Years pass and Perdita (the abandoned Princess) grows up and attracts the attention of Prince Florizel (son of P).  Of course F and P are ignorant of her royal blood.  F doesn't care but P is livid that his son should be dallying with a shepherd's daughter.  I couldn't be sure from her accent on which side of the Pennines the sheep were grazing but it was one or t'other.  There is a lot of singing and dancing and Shakespearean horsing around before the young lovers flee pursued by P.

They get to Sicilia as do their pursuers et al, where thanks to the shepherd's revelations of how he found the girl and the trinkets left with her L realises she is his daughter.  There is a lot of rejoicing and relief on P's part that she's fit to marry his son after all (just need to tidy up that accent).

Even more rejoicing ensues when that nifty stage machinery is found to conceal a statue of Hermione that comes to life.  Everyone is very happy and no-one spoils the party by mentioning L's dead son.

The happy youngsters lead off a final dance that eventually involves the entire cast.  If you have ever tried to get co-ordinated movement from two or more actors you will know just how marvellous a piece of work this is.

Great show.  

Safely back from my first ski trip in ten years.

There wasn't a great deal of the hoped for Spring sunshine and blue skies but two days in the middle of the week were quite pleasant and I took my camera out.  Before that there had been mist and drizzly snow to add an extra layer of discomfort to the pain and suffering that my thighs were undergoing.

It didn't take very long to get the mechanics of skiing going again although I wasn't skiing with a great deal of confidence for the first  two or three days and I kept away from anything too steep or too narrow for the entire week.  That didn't ensure that I stayed on my feet all the time though. 

The week started off with a last minute cancellation of band practice because of fears that should the conductor get into town from the snow stricken wastes of West Lothian she might not get home again.

So I went to the pictures.  I had a choice between Shell and Side Effects, chose the latter and wished I'd tried the former.  Not that it was bad but it didn't live up to the hype in the programme (do they ever?) and it wasn't any more cheerful than Shell promised to be from what I had heard of it.

That was followed by a much more enjoyable evening at a Scottish Dance Theatre show.  Not many people were there which is a crying shame.  The evening started with our being told about technical problems delaying things.  I was quite taken in and launched into conversation to fill the gap but was summarily and sharply cut down by my more streetwise companion who knew that this was a wee spoof and the show was actually under way.  There was some great crowd forming and menacing stage crossing that I've marked down as just the ticket for conspirators approaching their assassination target and a brilliant trio duel (can you have a three person duel?) in which each dancer took charge by performing an action that caused their piece of music to be played instead of someone else's.  It was like playing three dimensional scissors, paper, stone to music.

The second half of the bill was a tongue in cheek Scandinavian/Russian angstfest with a hint of Greek tragedy in which dead birds were thrown around and a stag (also dead) was dragged across the stage. Blood dripped into a bucket, a woman with a blood-soaked bandage where her eyes should be wandered around, shots were heard and various melodramatic scenes were athletically danced.

The story of Novecento the baby found on a transatlantic liner who grew up on board and played the piano as it crossed and recrossed the Atlantic seemed almost normal in comparison.  A French translation of this Italian play was presented by a Belgian duo at the French Institute.  Although they were two one was a non-speaking pianist.  This is actually a monologue, very hard to do well and this actor was very good.  He moved convincingly between his role as the narrator (a trumpet player on board the liner) and other characters and did a great job evoking a storm.

It's been a popular play over the years and has been made into a film but critical reaction has varied from those who think it's drivel to those who think it's transcendental art.  I've seen it twice and am somewhere in between.

Ma Vlast is probably given the transcendental tag by Czech nationalists if by no-one else and I thought I liked it but was underwhelmed by hearing it tonight complemented by giant images of Czech countryside, townscapes, woods, concentration camp inmates and other things  projected onto screens above the orchestra.  These were said to be illustrative of the feeling of the music rather than directly programmatic but I found them by and large distracting.  

The last of the current pie, play and a pint season was written by a stand-up comedian, whose first play it is.  Well done for a first effort I guess would be my verdict on this comedy with a serious message in which a drunken Glaswegian painter spars with his posh art dealer.  The message is to do with the waste of life in war and I shan't spoil anyone's enjoyment by giving away what happens.    

The concert went pretty well on Friday and afterwards some friends came back to the flat for a drink.  I'd laid in some nibbles in anticipation of this.  Amongst them was a packet of crisps that proved surplus to requirements and on Saturday I thought I'd munch through them while watching the rugby.

Now one of my frequent moans is that the food industry can't leave well alone.  No sooner, for example, had the British public developed a taste for meusli than the industry started mucking about with it.  There are shelf-fulls of variations; with chocolate chips, with tropical fruit, crisp and crunchy etc.  You are lucky to find a straightforward bag of oats with some nuts and raisins and sultanas mixed in.

The same is true and even worse with crisps.  A good honest plain crisp is hard to find.  Dashing along the supermarket aisle scanning the packets, rejecting tomato and beef, barbecue, mexican chilli and so on and so on my eyes alighted on pepper and salt.  I grabbed it as likely to be the closest to plain that I would find without spending half an hour on the job.

My scan had unfortunately missed the adjective "popped".  I had never heard of a popped crisp.  They are apparently not baked, not fried, just popped.  On examination you can see bubbles on the surface and they are thicker than normal crisps.  They have a sort of woolly texture in the mouth.

They do not taste at all like potato crisps, unless crisps that have popped their clogs.  This is not surprising when you see that the principal ingredients are "potato flake (??), rice flour and salt".

Unfortunately we have not yet received our promised food waste recycling facility so these have gone to landfill.

So far this winter I have been exceptionally lucky and have avoided the least suspicion of a cold. This Friday however I'll have a red nose and be wheezing away.

Yesterday's snow has made a mess of my primulas and pansies but didn't get through the window to damage this beauty

I thought my Spring plantings were looking rather pretty in the good weather at the weekend

High Society is the complete antithesis of Werther; though just as we know from the start that Werther will top himself for love we know Cole Porter's heroine Tracy will end up back with her ex-husband Dexter.  Not even a bit of skinny dipping with Mike on the eve of her projected wedding with George will get in the way.

It's a brilliant product of the American musical theatre, although it started life on film, and this touring production rattles along merrily from the razzle dazzle of the opening title number where the numerous flunkies in the Lord household strut their stuff and Tracy dances through an extraordinary number of lightning fast costume changes, to the final happy curtain.

On the way endearing Uncle Willie sings a song in praise of gin and does as much inappropriate bottom pinching as he can get away with . The young Bolshevik writer sings Who Wants to be a Millionaire without a trace of irony while relaxing with a glass of champagne. Younger sister Dinah gets into the action whenever she can and with the help of a glass or three Tracy is reconciled to her reprobate father and dull old George eventually does the decent thing.

What a swell party they have and how we all enjoyed sharing it.

Expatriates upset at being denied their say in next year's referendum may find a small degree of solace by joining residents in participating in Edinburgh's consultation on its transport strategy.  I am sure that the views of occasional visitors would be welcome too.

The review of Scottish Opera's production of Werther that best approximates my reaction to it comes from The Scottish Mail On Sunday -

" this new production makes for a wonderful , albeit wonderfully miserable, evening out, with the downbeat storyline offset by memorable vocal performances and dazzling playing by an orchestra (conducted by Francesco Corti) at the height of its powers…"

Fair enough to be gutted that your love is not (apparently) returned and then when you realise it is but cannot be fulfilled, to be even more gutted but suicide is a bit extreme.  However you could see he was making such a meal of the whole damned thing throughout that he wasn't going to pull himself together and look for another fish in the sea.

It didn't make for a jolly show and I would have preferred a bit of light relief after the dose of contemporary music I had taken in the afternoon. My sax teacher had organised a course at Stevenson College on up to the minute crash, bang wallop saxophone and piano playing and there was a little public concert in association with it so I thought I should show some solidarity and go along. 

It was all very new music and although I try to listen to everything with an open mind it can be quite hard to appreciate this sort of stuff.  Here's a taste.  I enjoyed this piece.  It was played on the tenor rather than the bass so the sound is a bit heavier here.  If you listen carefully you may spot the occasional almost tuneful little riff and you'll notice that the pianist never leans inside the piano to whack the strings or the case which was a feature of a number of the pieces they played.

     

In the depths of Englandshire last weekend I crossed a narrow hump-backed bridge and realised as I passed a skinny sentry box containing a little old man that it was a toll bridge.  Not wishing to run the risk of ending up in a foreign jail I stopped and walked back a hundred yards to regularise my situation.

The little old man thanked me profusely for my upright conduct and I paid the 5p toll.  Can there be a heavy enough stream of traffic going over this bridge to make that economic or it is maintained by a jolly band of volunteers who form Ye Olde Toll Bridge Preservation Society?  Whichever it is they probably don't have number plate recognition cameras so I could have sped off with impunity and spent the 5p elsewhere though I can't think of many things you can get for 5p.

I had another interesting financial moment when I proffered a Clydesdale Bank tenner in a branch of Tesco.  The cashier expressed doubts as to the acceptability of the note and summoned a supervisor.  She said oh yes, as long as it has sterling on it it's fine.  So there's what to do with any old notes from faraway places that linger in your holiday clothes.  Overprint STERLING in nice bold letters and nip down south to a remote branch of Tesco.

I had been away to play the saxophone in the company of others in two different places.  One I had been to before is a local authority institution where all sorts of courses are run year round and where there is a full catering staff.  There were about 30 of us and I played in groups from two in number to the full strength and played a great variety of music.  In our last session for example we played music ranging from a Glen Miller medley to the finale of Dvorak's New World Symphony.

The other place was a large farmhouse rented by the couple running the course.  They do the same thing in other parts of the country and abroad and not only do the music but the catering as well.  That seems to me quite a challenge which they managed successfully, so the dozen or so participants were well fed in both regards.  There was more of an emphasis on individual performance here so you spent a certain amount of time preparing something to play in front of the others.  That helped the organizers get on with the domestic side I guess.

The others in this case were not all saxophonists. There was a flute contingent and one clarinettist who floated between the saxes and the flutes.  

Now in between these two courses I had a weekend and rather than bounce up and down I stayed in the area, did a bit of tourism, went to the theatre and visited some friends whom I hadn't seen for some time, in one case for over 20 years.  In preparation for all this whizzing about to places I'd never been or hadn't been to for decades I bought a sat-nav, something I've resisted for years.  But it proved very useful, to the extent that on leaving a multi-storey car-park in Northampton in the dark I didn't even bother to think whether I should turn right or left but just went with the flow and let it sort me out.  Its one weakness would seem to be a failure to issue warnings on approaching 5p toll bridges. 

Dance events at The Festival Theatre are usually well attended so the management must have been disappointed at the feeble turn-out tonight. I doubt if there were 100 in the house.

Admittedly a satellite screening rather than a show in the flesh is a new departure for this theatre but the Cameo seems to have no problem rounding up a good crowd for screenings of opera, drama and dance so maybe it will catch on here as well.

I think dance fans missed a real treat not coming to see this production of Notre Dame de Paris from La Scala. Maybe if they had billed it as The Hunchback of Notre Dame it would have brought in the crowds who, like me, have an abiding memory of Quasimodo swinging down on a rope to rescue the lovely Maureen O'Hara. Here's that scene from the 1939 movie, way before my time so goodness knows when and where I saw it but it was burnt on my memory.
Now it doesn't happen quite like that in Roland Petit's ballet but the whole ballet in a French production from 1996 is on Youtube in half a dozen chunks and here's the bit that has the rescue in it. You get a good idea of the terrific costumes and staging and the general style of the piece from this. It's well worth going onto Youtube and watching the other sections, unless you'd rather see it live in Milan where it's running for another few weeks.  I'd certainly prefer to see shows in the flesh but satellite transmissions are a good substitute especially when you can see world class performers.

One of the little things I like about them is the feeling you get of almost being in the venue and this was very much the case tonight.  They are differently styled as theatres but recognisably of the same spirit and share a dark red, cream and gold colour scheme so that the walls of La Scala seemed to merge into the Festival Theatre's as they approached the proscenium and the laurel wreath above ours replaced the shield above theirs.  Quite spooky.

Ever since I saw Nixon in China at the festival in 1980something I've been a fan of John Adams but have very seldom heard his music live so it was with great interest that I went to the Usher Hall last night to hear the RSNO play Harmonielehre under their new musical director Peter Oundjian.

Oundjian isn't as foreign as his name suggests and indeed has a Scottish granny and can do the accent when he wants to raise a smile.  He's carrying on Stéphane Denève's practice of chatting to the audience about the music and throwing in little personal anecdotes.  It's a practice I thoroughly applaud.  (It saves me buying a programme for one thing which is a consideration when a G&T at half-time sets you back a fiver).

He told us that the inspiration for Harmonielehre came when Adams, after months of trying vainly to come up with a commissioned symphonic piece, dreamt that he saw a huge tanker in San Francisco bay rise out of the water and take off like a rocket.  That's just how this music starts.  I guess you could also compare it to the Big Bang. It gets much more thoughtful and lyrical later on which is maybe not what you would expect from a minimalist but in the final movement (again inspired by a dream this time about his unborn daughter riding through space on the shoulders of a medieval mystic) the characteristic forward drive of minimalist repetition returns and sweeps us to the climax and rather sudden ending when perhaps the baby falls off.

This concert was billed as an American Festival and the first half featured Bernstein and Gershwin, two composers who illustrate that most interesting aspect of American musicians, both of them successful on Broadway as well as on the concert platform.

They're putting out the red carpet for another great minimalist, Steve Reich, in Glasgow tonight. I shall have to squeeze onto a returning rugby fans train if I go.  The last time I did that Claire, Siobhan and I unknowingly breached an alcohol ban but by the time the ticket man got to us the bottle of fizz was empty so no criminal proceedings ensued.

In 1985 the Fife village of Freuchie played in and won the final of the national village cricket championship at Lords.  Many years before I had slept (I think at Hogmanay) in their pavilion, which at that time was being used by the family of a schoolfriend of mine as a holiday home.

Perhaps the club bolstered their finances by renting the place out in the off season.  I never knew the details of the arrangement and I never stayed there again.  Since Freuchie bestrides a main road I've passed through many times but I don't believe I had tarried until Sunday past when I attended a Fife Jazz Festival gig there.

The festival has produced a great weekend of jazz these past few years that I've been going.  They have always put together an attractive programme of excellent musicians from both home and abroad.  What did I see this year?

From the home of jazz a blues band featuring the son of the legendary Muddy Waters, a quartet headed by a tall saxophonist and a short trumpeter and in Freuchie a charming pianist and singer from Oklahoma in company with a wizard on sax and clarinet plus an interloper from Australia on guitar. 

From the frozen north an accomplished big band set the feet tapping with an evening of Mingus compositions and a lively lady gave it laldy on a number of sparky electric guitars.

From much closer to home The Inverkeithing Community Big Band filled the ballroom of the Bay Hotel in Kinghorn on a beautiful Saturday afternoon with the swinging sounds of Porter, Gershwin and the like.  They were led by one of the organisers of the World Saxophone Congress that took place in St Andrews in July and two more of the WSC executive committee played as guest artists so they didn't lack for a professional helping hand instrumentally.  One of the tenor players did some singing but the vocal star was a glamorous lady of a certain age from Kirkcaldy.  Where was she when I lived there? 

It was not only the jazz festival that lit up my week musically.  The SCO gave a great concert with James Macmillan's Oboe Concerto sandwiched between Stravinsky and Mendelssohn.  Modern classical music is not everyone's cup of tea and it's not always mine but this energetic piece has a sparkle and a liveliness to delight the ear of the least receptive.

No need to worry about TV coverage of the Africa Cup anymore.  Zambia are out.  Last year's cupwinners they may be and may have featured in the later stages of the competition for over twenty years but this year it's OUT.

I was disappointed that Murray didn't do better yesterday but one good thing about the result was that he didn't seem too upset by it himself.

I missed most of the third set because I went off to play golf, but despite the snow having disappeared the course was still closed.  That was disappointing although I was then able to watch much of the rest of the tennis live.

Things come in threes and a third disappointment lay in wait.  That was Lincoln.  It's up for all sorts of Oscars but I found its pious goody two-shoes tone tedious, its shadow strewn cinematography unenlightening and its exposition confusing.  Now I'm totally ignorant of the history of the period so perhaps the latter is my fault but I was hard-pressed to tell one bewhiskered gentleman from another or to distinguish the niceties of their various positions.

When I got home I had a trawl through the reviews to try to understand the error of my ways.  The Guardian with its five stars didn't convince me nor did The Telegraph's four.  Happily I found that I was not the only doubter of the film's excellence and according to The Daily Mail its history was pretty much bunk as well. 

Since their reviewer, a Mr Tookey, so well echoed my reaction to Lincoln I broke my rule about not reading reviews in advance and took a peek at what he had to say about Zero Dark Thirty.  On that basis if I go it will only be for the free coffee on a Tuesday afternoon. 

Unlike the set of Django Unchained the Rod Laver arena was not splattered in blood when the battle was over but the struggle to come out the winner was just as intense and engaging for the spectator.

Just as you thought Murray had it sewn up in the fourth set Federer pulled a rabbit out of the hat and forced him into a final final showdown but found himself being blasted away.  Remarkably similar to the twists and turns of Tarantino's plot.

It was a great match and oh boy I loved the movie.  It's a good strong story beautifully filmed and naturally the effects (all that blood) are terrific.  There is tension throughout and it's full of cleverly (not to say over-) drawn characters brought to life by an accomplished cast.  I particularly liked Leonardo Dicaprio's nasty plantation owner. That's a part to die for, not from real bullets of course.

Well the BBC has dipped into its piggy-bank and added Murray's semi-final match against Federer to its miserly coverage of the Australian Open.  I expect they had that up their sleeve all the time.

Anyway it's good reason to get up before sunrise on Friday, otherwise why would you if you didn't have to.

Hard on the heels of my disappointment that there is no free to view screening of Australian Open Tennis matches other than the women's and men's singles finals came the news that Zambia will need to either win or come second in their Africa Cup group before I can see them play.

That's not entirely true in that I've seen two or three minutes of highlights from their drawn game against Ethiopia complete with Arabic commentary on some obscure website.  That was almost as unsatisfactory as listening to a Radio 5 commentary on an Andy Murray match in the wee small hours.

Anyone using Buchanan Street bus station in Glasgow is familiar with the work of the sculptor George Wylie whether they know it or not since the running man clock that they pass on the way out or in is his work. 

Although he had a sense of humour I don't think he intended the different faces to show different times.  That's somebody's poor maintenance.  As someone who travels by bus between Glasgow and Edinburgh relatively often I have noticed that the clocks on the buses seldom show the right time.  Not important in itself but it does make you wonder if the same lack of attention is paid to the bits that keep the bus functioning safely.

But that is by way of a digression or a little moan on the side.

A while ago I went to Glasgow to see an exhibition of Wylie's work but a gang of four lunch morphed seamlessly into an afternoon of conviviality and I never got to it.  Yesterday there were but two of us and we were determined on the exhibition.  Not so determined mind you as to remain in the first restaurant we picked on discovering that it didn't serve alcohol.

We went round the corner and enjoyed a responsible modicum of vino with, in my case, crispy pork belly on noodles with mango and chilli.  The noodles were stone cold but on enquiry I discovered they were meant to be.  It was a variation on sweet and sour I suppose.  But notwithstanding it was delicious and the chilli brought my belly up to the same temperature as the pig's.

The exhibition was excellent.  His sense of humour was well displayed with items like this rock music:

and his skill in bending metal as in this pipe band:

There was a lot about the straw locomotive and the paper boat that brought the social consciousness of much of his work to wide public attention in the 80s.  The exhibition runs until February 2nd and I recommend it but if you can't make it, go to Glasgow anyway just for the pleasure of gazing at the ceiling in the Mitchell Library.  It's magnificent.

The National Theatre's production of The Magistrate by Pinero was sent bouncing round the world tonight and I was lucky enough to be in the Cameo to catch it.

As befits a farce the action was fast and furious and the acting highly physical.  It hovered deliciously on the edge of going over the top and every now and then did so joyously, but miraculously managed to retain reality and truthfulness throughout.

The plotting is very clever.  I loved bits where the audience realised what was coming just before the characters were allowed to. There's lots of witty Wildean dialogue and the production team have added snappy G&Slike patter songs which are delivered by an enchantingly imagined Victorian minstrel troupe.

It goes without saying that costumes, make-up, music, sound and lighting are all wonderful but the pièce de résistance is the set - an astonishing pop-up book whose pages unfold to deliver complete rooms.

By Jove it's great. 

When I opened my diary this morning I read "11 a.m. Usher Hall".  Ah, I thought.  That'll be the  Sax Ecosse concert in the Emerging Artists series.  I've been looking forward to that.

So I got to the hall in good time, bought my ticket (only three quid), got myself a coffee (an extortionate two quid) and sat down to peruse the Traverse and Filmhouse brochures that I'd picked up on the way.

After a bit I glanced at my ticket.  It said "Jemma Brown".

I was nonplussed.  Who is she and what does she do?

From the free programme that I was handed as I went in I learnt that she was a mezzo soprano and that I was about to experience a recital of Russian, German and American songs.

For these morning concerts unless you are in a wheelchair you sit in the organ gallery so that the performers are not looking out onto a vast and thinly populated auditorium.  It would seem almost impossible in such a big venue but that orientation creates quite an intimate atmosphere and even a small crowd (which it usually is) gives body to the event.

I took my preferred position centre stage in the front row, read the blurb. contemplated the grand piano and waited for the emerging artists to emerge; they duly did and the show started with half a dozen Spanish songs set to music by Shostakovich and sung in Russian.

There was a teacher in Perugia who liked to declaim to we foreigners stumbling roughly through some simple utterance - "L'Italiano non è una lingua, è una musica."  I think Russian is the same, albeit in a darker and more melancholy register.  The songs and the singing of them, and don't let's forget the piano accompaniment, were lovely.

Then we had a Schumann setting of  My Love Is Like A Red Red Rose, some Brahms and a group of songs by Korngold.  The texts of those were by various people on the subject of parting and apparently when he wrote the music Korngold was being kept away from the girl he eventually married because of the disapproval of the proposed match by both families.  So they were not cheerful ditties unlike the three American songs celebrating flowers and the Spring that closed the programme.

I would not have chosen to go to this concert, and indeed I didn't, but I'm very glad I was there.  I enjoyed it thoroughly.

And Sax Ecosse?  They played last Tuesday.  A simple diary malfunction.   

Somehow or other I got the idea into my head that Gangster Squad would be worth going to see.  I must have misread or misheard or someone miswrote or misspoke because it's garbage.

I'll save my late night energy and let you read what Rolling Stone has to say about it, to which I will add a fervent hear hear.

This is better

The Diceman is a book that very much tickled my imagination.  The hero decides that his life should be governed by the throw of the dice.  The story is a little bit black since he tends to set up decisions of the type - "If I throw a six I'll kill my wife, otherwise I won't".

On New Year's Day we had a less unpleasant opportunity to let the dice guide us through a series of entertainments over the course of the afternoon.

You turned up at the museum, where incidentally I caught sight of an actor friend kitted out in as a druid or an Egyptian priest helping the public to take part in a moving about chanting activity wholly unrelated to the Lucky Day jolly that I was there for, were issued a pair of dice and threw them to determine where your first activity would take place.

I was despatched to Greyfriars where a ceilidh was in progress.  I didn't dance but watched and listened for a bit before throwing again to determine my next destination.  So it went on until I got to the Roxy where the queue to throw was so long that I abandoned the exercise and went back to the museum to drink coffee and people watch until heading for Buccleuch where Les Plasticiens Volants were to do their stuff and give us their version of the BIG BANG.

Thank God there was no wind and no rain so the event went off well and strange creatures floated through the sky and swooped down on the crowd.  An earlier post has some pics.  The show had a musical backing and an intermittent commentary in pseuds corner style that probably would have sounded better in French especially for those who didn't understand the language.

I've experimented with Youtube to create a little video listing all the things I did but it's pretty hopeless.  I may be able to do better but in the meantime:      

The mist over the Ribble valley has been my view for the past few days while I've been away with my saxophone in deepest Lancashire.  There were around 25 of us, some who had been playing for over sixty years and me the fresh-faced beginner with only three notches on his horn.  The host in between included a former clergyman who goes busking.

We had four sessions of music making a day interrupted by eating and drinking opportunities. Those anxious for fresh air had enough free time to take country walks in the afternoons but I held my fire in that respect making up for it today with a grand 18 hole hike on the side of the Pentlands.

The music varied from fast and furious to slow and stately and the ensembles from trios to massed choir.  I was all out of puff by the end of it but loved it all. 

Some Lucky Day visitors to Buccleuch Place last night.

You have to assume that at the full price if not the discounted one they fly you to Brazil to do your hair.

It's that time again.   
But now I've turned the sound off.   

When is a biscuit not a biscuit?  When it's a cracker according to Tesco, who thus freed themselves from the obligation to honour my 40p off voucher.

Well there are plenty of dictionaries that will tell you that a cracker is a biscuit and vice-versa and had there not been a pressing queue behind me I might have engaged the cashier in a discussion of the Jaffa Cake case.

You will recall that McVities were anxious to have Jaffa Cakes classed as cakes rather than biscuits because chocolate covered cakes don't attract VAT while chocolate covered biscuits do.  The clinching argument of the eleven grounds on which the matter was judged was that cakes start out soft but go hard when stale whereas the life of a biscuit (as long as it's not eaten) follows the opposite direction.

Crackers go soft.  I rest my case.

According to my diary I'm going to a concert tonight but I can't find a ticket for it amongst those that adorn my fridge.

I think I'll just enjoy an evening at home and perhaps tune in to France Musique's tribute to the now late Dave Brubeck.  He's one of the musicians who led my jazz taste away from New Orleans towards the cool and the modern.  He's renowned for having recorded one of the best selling jazz tracks of all time in the annus mirabilis of 1959.  Take Five was written by his saxophonist Paul Desmond, so now that I'm trying to play sax I feel even more indebted to him.

I might also muse on The Arthur Conan Doyle Appreciation Society which appears to be the Traverse's answer to panto.  It's an odd piece with more than a hint of The Art of Coarse Acting about it.  It's beautifully performed by three actors who flip between presenting an illustrated lecture about Conan Doyle and spiritualism, living the relationships amongst that trio and being various people associated with Doyle and Doyle himself.  It's all at one and the same time deliciously tongue in cheek and heart feelingly serious.

There's a delightful scene in which the two male actors play the little girls whose mocked up photos of fairies had Doyle fooled.  I enjoyed it a lot (unlike Plaything) and am still wondering whether an actor really fell from the roof or was that trickery along similar lines.

It was a beautiful weekend weatherwise, possibly my favourite combination of bright sunshine, frosty ground and crispy air.  Had I played golf on the southern slopes of the Pentlands I'd have basked in that bright sunshine all afternoon but like the skiiers on the new slope I had to be content with frost and crisp.

The winter sharpness served to set off Peploe's warmth and Bellany's intense colours on view respectively at Modern Two and at the National Gallery.  Both exhibitions are must sees.

In an echo of Bellany's student exhibitions on the Playfair Steps railings the gallery has installed panels on their Mound railings.  I spent ages trying to make a grand panorama of them but failed miserably so here's just a taste

     

Sorting through the myriad brochures and flyers that cover my coffee table I discovered that the nationwide French film festival that started on November 8th finished today.  Of the 40 or so screenings in Edinburgh I saw precisely none which for a devout francophile deserves a rap over the knuckles.

Will I do better with the Catalan film festival?  I can surely improve on a score of zero but it's not certain.  I'm not free to see anything before their grand finale screening and subsequent party at La Tasca on the 16th.

That's probably booked solid by now but they have thoughtfully scheduled a post grand finale screening the following day.  Is this a coda or a confusion?  Given that its title is Die Stille vor Bach I suppose it could be either.

But there was a little miracle at the concert - I managed to play one piece without getting lost and I got all the notes right and in pretty much the right place.  Pity about the others but it's progress.

This is the university blowing its own trumpet while renovating a large bit of Chamber's Street.  One of the more curious boasts is that it won more Olympic medals than any other university. 

Richard The Third is over at last and here's a pretty picture of the cast to celebrate the fact.

I enjoyed my first Sunday night off for months by going to a splendid concert given by the Edinburgh University Chamber Orchestra.  This group is made up not of music students but of students who happen to play an instrument and I thought their playing was magnificent.

They had the benefit of professional musicians as conductors and soloists but the 40 odd players rose to the challenge of working with them without putting a foot wrong as far as I could tell.  The Reid Hall was the perfect venue and was filled with wonderful sound from the opening bars of Beethoven's First Piano Concerto to the closing notes of his Seventh Symphony. There were some particularly lovely moments from the wind section and the girl who played first flute was deservedly singled out by the conductor at the end.

Earlier in the day I'd been to another concert given by wind soloists from the SCO.  As an aspiring woodwind player I feel I should have enjoyed that more than I did but, pleasant as it was, the six players, quite naturally, couldn't summon up the enveloping mass of sound that the orchestra did.

I'll be trying to summon up a bit of sound myself shortly in the Dunedin Wind Band's St Andrew's Day concert.  Do come. 

The amdram talent contest I was in last year finally started its run on Sky Arts this week.  Not being a Sky subscriber I didn't see it but I am told we featured briefly and will also appear in further episodes.  Someone is recording it so fingers crossed the cast will get together at a future date, crack open a bottle or two and enjoy the experience again round a tv set.

In the meantime I have to be contented with my photo in the Edinburgh Evening News.

I had some friends from Belgium staying for a week.

They had a great time.  They did the obvious things like the Castle and Holyrood Palace and being keen sailors they also fitted in the royal yacht.  I sent them to a Scottish music and dance show at the St James hotel.  I wasn't able to go myself but I've seen it (or rather a previous version because it's probably 30 or 40 years since I was there).   They loved it, as well they might.

I was in fact at another dance show which was wonderful, despite the demonstrating crowds outside the theatre and the slogan shouters who popped up inside from time to time.  More about that later perhaps.

We also caught some warlocks and witches in a dance, which was the only part of the Beltaine Fire Society's Samhuinn Festival that I could make head or tail of as I strained on tiptoe to see what was going on in Parliament Square on a bitterly cold Wednesday night.  I thought I was going to lose my nose to frostbite but happily managed to get to a Laphroig relief point in the nick of time.

On a superbly sunny day we went off on an excursion.  We stopped first in South Queensferry to admire the bridges and indeed the town.  The main street is lovely.  Then we drove through Fife to St Andrews where, both being keen golfers, a stroll over the Old Course was a great treat. 

We had visited Lower Largo en route to admire Alexander Selkirk.  Patrick was not only familiar with Treasure Island from childhood but had trodden the soil of the Juan Fernandez islands where Selkirk was marooned.  Anstruther was another stop on the way but we didn't have time to fit in a visit to the fisheries museum as I had hoped to do.

One of the things that pleased me most about their visit was how complimentary they were about the various restaurant meals they had.  Continentals can be a bit snooty about British cuisine so it was nice to know that a favourable impression will be going back across the Channel.

I've often wondered whyThe Mousetrap continues to pull in the punters (it's now been going for 60 years) and having finally seen it in a packed King's theatre this week I'm still wondering.  It pulled me in out of curiosity about that longevity but surely the vast majority of the audience were there because they expected to be right royally entertained. 

I'd suggest that if they wanted to see a show about a number of people trapped by inclement weather in a country house waiting for one of them to be murdered by one of the others they'd be much better off  petitioning the management of the King's to bring to town Tom Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound.     

It's not that The Mousetrap is bad exactly.  It's just that it's bland, unexciting and creakingly old-fashioned.

By contrast The Cone Gatherers, a play drawn from a novel written in the 50s and which deals with landowners, their almost feudal relationship with their servants and the disdain both feel towards the lowest class of society didn't feel in the least old-fashioned. It received an excellent production and first class performances.  It's a long time since I read the novel so I'd forgotten the plot completely.  Thanks to Maurice Lindsay's History of Scottish Literature I can tell you that the play doesn't end in quite the same way as the novel but I don't think it traduces the author's intentions.  

It deserved a much larger house than it got, as did The Artist Man and The Mother Woman. The story of a mother's boy art teacher who decides he must find a wifie (that's not a mis-spelt communications network by the way) is billed as a black comedy and the description is well justified.  It's very well performed and has some very funny lines though they are a bit too ripe to reproduce here.

That was at The Traverse.  The Lyceum's current offering is A Midsummer Night's Dream,  You'd have thought that after 400 years all possible changes must have been rung on this well loved comedy.  But you'd be wrong.  For a start this production sets the action in the winter.

It's a lovely production, brim full of clever touches.  I've seen the play often and I'll probably see it many more times but I'll be surprised if I see a version that's more imaginative.