Given the overpowering heat of the last weeks you'd suppose that I'd have welcomed the shower that accompanied my lunch in Dinant yesterday.  I didn't.  Nor was I very happy with the speed of the service.  Fortunately I had a book to hand so wasn't without a means of distraction.  The lunch was excellent by the way

I suppose you can't blame Dinant for making the most of their (only?) famous son but you can blame them for the somewhat underwhelming nature of La Maison de Monsieur Sax.

Just as you can blame or praise the European Parliament for their Parlementarium, a media mad exhibition that covers the development of the European movement from the early steps at Franco-German togetherness in the 50s to the present, excluding the Greek crisis I think.  I'm sure it's very good if you like that sort of thing.  You can even find your MEP and send them an email on the spot via one of the many pokeable screens.

That was one of the two spots where I hopped off the Hop On Hop Off open top tour of Brussels today.  I like to use those tours in an unknown city to get an overall impression and then maybe seek out whatever seemed interesting afterwards.  But as a onetime president of the Edinburgh University European Society I could hardly bypass the parliament.

 The other place I had to get out was the Atomium, and here I also broke my resolution not to bother taking pictures.

I remember how exciting and wonderful I thought it was when it was built for Expo58 and 57 years later seeing it in the flesh as it were it was no less exciting.  What an amazing structure allied as it was to the idea of atomic power as a force for peace and progress.  Ideals die hard.

 Anyway it was only supposed to last the length of the exhibition but was so popular with the public that it stayed.  It's been refurbished over the years and now the spheres are covered in stainless steel rather than aluminium so I guess it's even more shiny than the original.

A lift speeds you up to the top in 22 seconds where there's a great view and there are various interesting exhibitions in the different spheres.  On the final escalator descent the lights present a dazzling show and I just had to try a snap or two.

A large carpark near the conservatoire and its adjacent park had been turned into a Guinguette for the day and from dusk onwards an ever increasing crowd gathered there and enjoyed music, drink and dancing in anticipation of the fireworks. And at 10.30 they started.

 My phone camera worked overtime to capture the beautiful display but wasn't altogether up to the job.  This is one of its best.

Today is the last day of the congress and since it's also the 14th of July there is a lot of unconnected celebration going on.  I saw the military practising last night for a parade today and this evening there will be a fireworks display.

I saw the soldiers as I was en route to the last big main evening concert.  The first was a classical do (all modern and including three work premieres) featuring the Strasbourg Philharmonic and a dozen major sax players.  It was a great evening.  I particularly enjoyed hearing a Danish girl but never came across her again.  Maybe she did only one gig or maybe she played in one of the 410 gigs I didn't get to.

 The restaurateurs of Strasbourg had pulled out all the stops to provide wonderful and plentiful drink and nibbles afterwards.  I hope enough of the two thousand or so who were in the audience turned up later at their restaurants to make it worth their while.  I didn't, but there is still tonight.

Last night was a more eclectic affair, with classical improvisation, world music in the shape of a duo composed of tenor sax and an oriental stringed instrument, jazzmen of various sorts and a tremendous Brazilian big band.

This picture was taken just before the show started.  The people on stage are the team who organised the congress making various announcements and little speeches.  The pictures I took later of the big band etc need a bit of imagination to interpret but this one is not too bad.

This morning there was a meeting at which the international committee that looks after things was elected.  Then there was a presentation by a representative of the city that would like to host the next congress and Zagreb was approved with only a few dissenting votes and no FIFA style shenanigans.  I left my Croatian phrasebook with Fiona in Hvar.  Time to reclaim it.

After the business came food and drink picnic style in the lovely park that Napoleon Bonaparte laid out for Josephine.  A delightful day and it's not over yet. One final open air bash by Sax Assault featuring the sax players from Duran Duran and Supertramp.

Tomorrow I head for Brussels via the home town of who else but Adolphe Sax.

These saxophone congresses developed as get togethers of professional musicians, academics, music students and serious amateurs.  When Philippe Geiss put forward Strasbourg's offer to hold the event in 2015 he said that he wanted to extend the reach of the congress by incorporating a festival of saxophone music that would engage the less serious amateur and the general public.  Hence the name Saxopen, the range of events aimed at the man in the street, the social media presence, internet streaming etc.

Here's one example.  A group entertaining lunchers.  According to a guy who engaged me in conversation there M. Geiss's concept hit the spot.

The large crowds who queued up to get into the cathedral gig would seem to reinforce that opinion.  I got in myself last night.  It was a splendid spectacle but I wasn't entirely engaged by the music.  It started off well with the deep tones of the contra bass, grand daddy of the sax family, resounding through the building from far behind me, then the solemn procession of twenty six players along the nave who were disposed in various configurations as the piece progressed culminating as you see with most ranged on the steps leading up to the alter and a group on a high gallery behind.

There would have been no heads in the foreground by the way had it not been for the combination of a steward's shuffle, a missing husband and a woman in a wheelchair throwing a wobbly, but that's for another day.

 The music?  Ah yes. A bit too relentlessly solemn I thought.

Strasbourg is celebrating the 1000th anniversary of its cathedral.  Yes that's three zeros!  I don't know whether that's from the date they laid the foundation stone or when they topped it out but it's a very long time and merits much celebration.  Unlike many cathedrals one comes across in one's travels this one is not covered in scaffolding so you get a good view, and a crick in the neck because you can't get a long view thanks to the buildings crowding round.

As part of the celebrations there is a saxophone gig inside on three evenings.  Tonight was the second and although I queued for forty minutes I didn't get in, and this a building that holds many.  I'll have to get there earlier tomorrow. (I did manage to get to eight other gigs though in the course of the day).

However the evening was not entirely wasted.  I sat around eating ice cream things till another part of the celebration got going at 10.30.  This is a jolly amazing light show in which the sandstone carvings that adorn the building are at one stage coloured in and later appear as silhouettes. I didn't have a  camera with me but this tablet managed to capture the essence.

 I expect JGH will be able to tell me how it's done.  Terribly precise gels?

This is the conservatoire where most of the music iis taking place.  Thanks to the non-appearance of a group from Honduras I nipped across the road for an early lunch and wrote a long, engaging and exciting post about the congress so far.

Unfortunately technical problems lost it in the air.  Possibility joining the Honduran airliner and I have neither time nor energy to reproduce it just yet, if ever.  Suffice to say it's magic.

A few more meals and get togethers, another round of golf, a poke about in George Sand's little weekend hideaway and French trip phase one was over.  I had hoped that at free moments I'd be able to watch bit of Wimbledon but I've been reduced to following matches on The Guardian's text feed.  The French TV rights have been sold to a network that nobody seems to have. The BBC internet streams will not show themselves to a device that's outside the UK and even Radio 5 Live cut me off after half an hour with an endlessly repeated mantra about broadcast rights.

The sax congress starts tomorrow afternoon but since it's rather a long way from Gargilesse to Strasbourg I decided to do all but the last couple of hours today and finish the journey after a leisurely breakfast tomorrow.  So after a large dishwashing session resulting from last night's excellent and convivial farewell dinner I set off for Besancon and a long and uneventful drive later here I am.

Four years ago when we were clearing out Barbansais I gave some stuff away to friends and was also prevailed upon to remove for safe keeping some stuff that I had intended to leave in the barn for the new owners to do with as they saw fit.  These items ended up in one of Jean's outhouses.  One item was an old golf trolley that came in useful when I went back a year later and I used it again on this visit.

But Jean had clearly tired of having my junk cluttering up a shed that held such useful items as a broken pinball machine from the 50s, boxes of potentially useful objects and the like.  So I filled my boot to bursting point and popped into the dump as I passed by Gueret to dispose of two large golf bags, a set of ancient clubs, a trolley and a vast canvas bag one of a pair that carried my worldly goods from Paris to Barbansais in March 2002.

Yesterday was another opportunity to slog round a golf course in sweltering heat.  This time it was Les Dryades where I used to be a member.  They've cultivated the rough considerably since I was last there, much to the annoyance of many members whose pressure forced a cutback to a degree but it still remains a more challenging course than it was.

Fortunately I buy balls at a price level that allows me to dispense with the tedium of searching in long grass for the regulation five minutes.  Unfortunately many of my fellow players are assiduous retrievers of wayward balls however little they may have paid for them.

Anyway the first nine were followed by a relaxing lunch on the terrace before battle commenced again and a good time was had by all.  Despite their much vaunted culinary reputation in my experience there is nothing that the French golfer at least enjoys better than a nice steak and chips for his lunch.  It was only me who had something else.

Second only is fish and chips which were supplied at the Dutch run open air eatery and campsite where we ended up in the evening.  I joined in the fresh from the freezer, battered at at sea feast bemoaning only the lack of brown sauce.

 I had a walk this morning along one of those handily signposted country paths that the French go in for, ranging from a mile or two in length to the Grandes Randonnees that traverse half the country.  There are several around Gargilesse. The photo is of the castle that sits in the middle of the village.

Unsurprisingly I was at the shorter end of the scale. In this heat even in the shade of the woods it was hard going so I was glad when I hit civilisation again in the shape of a cafe with cold drinks galore.

You'll see from the photo below that Gargilesse is in mourning.  For why? Government proposes, as the sheets attached to the sign explain, to reduce the number of administrative units from their current 36,000 to something significantly less but the 36,000 mayors and their legions of councillors see forced amalgamations of communes as anti-democratic.

Decisions they maintain will be taken at levels and by people without local knowledge or respect for local needs and values.  Government sees streamlining leading to cost saving and efficiency.  We might agree with Sir Roger that there is much to be said on both sides but we know that the tide of history seldom flows in favour of the little people.

So they may as well leave the mourning bands in place since the funeral will surely follow.

Arriving at the Dartford crossing en route to Dover I was pleased to see that there were no toll booths but this was not indicative as I first thought of an absence of tolls. As I crossed the bridge I saw a big notice - DART CHARGE FIND US ONLINE and a couple of hundred yards later PAY BY MIDNIGHT TOMORROW.

So I stopped for a coffee and found them plus newspaper articles about how much dosh had been collected in fines from motorists for non payment in the short time this new number plate recognition has been in operation.

I didn't want to join their ranks so rang up and paid for the crossing and my return trip later this month. But how would I have fared without a smartphone and a coffee shop with WiFi?

The somewhat longer crossing to Dunkirk passed pleasantly and there was no sign of the rain that had followed me down from Edinburgh and I haven't seen any since.

On the contrary France is experiencing a heatwave. I've slugged down lots of water and smeared on factor 50 on the golfing outings that I've already had with chums from my summers spent at Barbansais to keep me safe and it seems to be working. It's not doing a lot for my game but I had a nice couple of pars this morning and some beautiful putts so I'm not discontent.

One of the features of film festivals is the opportunity to hear from the filmmakers at some screenings.  The directors were present and answering questions at all of the films I went to see and the Q&A sessions I attended were interesting.

I was sorry not to be able to wait to hear the director of Liza, the Fox Fairy. This was a weird surreal story of a girl who is haunted by a Japanese pop singing ghost and believes she is under a curse that will cause all men she comes in contact with romantically will die.  It sounds absurd and it was, somewhat in the theatrical sense of the term, and very very funny.

I was not sorry to miss Johnnie To and was even sorrier not to have missed his film Exiled.  Set in Macao it follows a set of gangsters through blood and mayhem for 110 tedious minutes.  Inevitably I was forced to compare my reaction to this with my much more favourable reaction to Tarantino's equally blood strewn films.  I think that, strange though it sounds, his work despite being splattered with gallons of tomato juice blood has a realism and features fully human characters that I didn't find in Exiled.

Maybe if I understood Chinese I'd have found more in the movie.

If I'd been asked who invented the moving picture I'd have answered "the Lumiere brothers", but a world premiere at the Film Festival sought to persuade me that it was a someone else, still a Frenchman but one working in Leeds.

There is indeed a blue plaque there telling the world about Louis Le Prince.

So all of Yorkshire accepts him as the man who is ultimately to blame for The Terminator franchise and worse but not many outside that county have even heard of him.

This is a situation that David Nicholas Wilkinson has tried for over thirty years to rectify and The First Film is the documentary fruits of his labour.  It was screened for the first time at the Odeon last night.

(In parenthesis I note that I probably haven't been in the Odeon since it stopped being the ABC.  It is now a pizzeria with four screens in the basement rather than the big cinema that I vaguely remember.)

The film is quite interesting though long-winded, and I'm not sure that it matters very much which of the various pioneering groups and individuals working in the field in the late 19th century was first.

The main reason that we haven't heard more about Le Prince is that his work (of which only a few minutes has been found) stopped when he boarded a train in Dijon where he had been visiting his brother and was never seen or heard from again.

Not many German films make it to our screens so it was with interest that I went to Who Am I, Kein System ist sicher in the Film Festival, skirting the red carpet at Cineworld.  Not that there were any stars on it that I could see but it seemed only good manners.

I was a mite underwhelmed.  It's a decent enough story about a shy young man who happens to be a whizz kid on the computer keyboard and teams up with three other guys to form a humorous hacking gang who engage in daring, amusing, satirical but harmless exploits.  Then things turn sour.  They earn the wrath of some baddie hackers, get into the bad books of the authorities as well and go through various convoluted plot twists and turns to a happy ending.  Yawn.

No yawning at the Jazz Bar where The Scottish Sax Ensemble were trailing and trialing the presentation they will be giving next month at the World Saxophone Congress for which I myself am bound. It was an excellent gig of contemporary and in some cases brand spanking new jazzish stuff played terribly well.  Sue, who leads the group, told me that they will be playing in the open air in Strasbourg so if it rains I'll be glad I heard it here.

Robert Carlyle's The Legend of Barney Thomson opened the film festival but didn't get terribly good reviews so I'm quite glad I wasn't in time to fork out for a ticket.  I have bought tickets for seven of the two hundred or so being screened.  That doesn't seem many but in percentage terms it's probably orders of magnitude more than I'll manage on the Fringe.

First up was a set of four short documentaries.  I love the short format.  It must suit my attention span.  These were absorbing, from the story of a welder turned poet to a wild looking old Bulgarian living in the midst of the debris of his life.  Then another wonderful full length documentary in which the director dug under the surface of her family to unearth unusual goings on.  The Closer We Get is a moving and compassionate portrait of complicated relationships that unveils like a novel.  Excellent.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is a title I've been familiar with for years.  I knew it was a classic and I knew vaguely that it had something to do with trains but until today I had never seen it. It's a thoroughly enjoyable thriller about a gang who hijack a New York subway train and the cop who is pitted against them.  There are great performances, not least from Walter Mathau as the laid-back cop and Robert Shaw as the ice-cold gang leader.

A month without posts has gone by without raising a murmur from my readership.  There have been no concerned communications expressing the hope that my health has not deteriorated.  There have been no anguished cries that on-line literature is the lesser for my absence.

Is it worth taking up the keyboard once again I ask myself, and resoundingly answer YES.  My brain's already full of things I've forgotten so the blog is a handy memory bank.  Unless I ultimately  forget how to use a browser.

My last shot of it

When I left you my pigeon was still growing and the balcony was getting more and more messy.  Then blow me did the parents not produce two more eggs.  Well I had to harden my heart against that so I swept them and the ramshackle nest to oblivion.  That left the chick a wee bit in the lurch because the adults kept away mostly.  But it could fly a bit by that time and with it has to be admitted a mite of encouragement from me it eventually buggered off and I was able to reclaim my balcony, scrub it up and freshen up plantings for the summer.

 But I have not spent all my time fretting over pigeons.

I fretted a bit I suppose over the French Open Tennis championships but watching Murray was less stressful than it's been in the past.  He seemed to play much more confidently even when things were not going his way.  As well as his games I enjoyed many others and managed to watch in Croatia and in Northumberland as well as at home.

To get to Croatia I hauled myself to Glasgow airport at four in the morning where, much to my surprise the place was going like the proverbial fair and I was able to buy the couple of plug adaptors that my hostess had asked for which I had thought to be a lost cause.

Mountain view from Split harbour

The island of Hvar is a couple of hours from Split and because of the infrequent ferries outside of the high season I had to spend several hours there both going and coming.  That was no hardship.  The weather was fine and the place is lovely.

On Hvar itself peace and tranquility reigned though I can imagine that in July and August it is stowed out with tourists, especially Hvar town which advertises itself as the Saint Tropez of Croatia.

Hvar Town from the hills

Island view

Local lace on sale

I was staying in the small and pretty town of Stari Grad but don't seem to have much of a photographic record.  The few days I spent there involved mostly eating and drinking and in Stari Grad one is well served for both.  I didn't have time to sample many restaurants but I'd go back to Jurin Podrum - very tasty.  As for the fulled bodied Plavac Mali red wine, moreish in the extreme.

My Morgan?

Despite the licence plate this sweet little motor spotted on the Split
harbourside on my way home has nothing to do with me but it could be mine (or anyone's) for the immodest sum of 250 euros a day.

Likewise despite its name you won't be within a thousand miles of Kirkcaldy if you eat here.

Somewhat nearer Kirkcaldy is this novelty recently erected outside the Assembly Rooms.

It's beds are full of herbs and fruits claimed to be just the thing for making the cocktails whose recipes are also on display.  I'm looking forward to some demonstrations and tastings.

Another eating and drinking opportunity took me to Northumberland where Claire had invited friends and family to spend a weekend celebrating her 40th birthday.  A party of around ten adults, four children and a dog gathered in a lovely little spot near Bamburgh.  Healthy walks were enjoyed by some, model aeroplanes were flown, homework was done, much food was cooked and fun was had.

My little contribution to the fun was this Karaoke video made with help from Siobhan and Miriam.  You need to be a bit of a Grads nerd to understand all the allusions I'm afraid.  The repetitive sax riff between verses was played live at the viewing. 

My pigeon is growing.  The adults leave it alone most of the time now.  I suppose they are off looking for worms to stuff down its gullet.

Amazon it seems to me used always to send stuff to me by Royal Mail but this week they used something called Amazon Logistics.  I think that's just an umbrella term they use to conceal the actual carrier.  Anyway the one who came to me must have applied the logic in the name to his task and decided that although the two little packages he had would have passed easily through the letterbox they were not letters.  So he put a card through my letterbox (stretching the definition a bit) and left my packages with a neighbour.  My neighbours are not usually in at 1pm but this chap works shifts and was at home.   I was also at home in fact so either I'm getting deafer with time or he knocked very quietly.

I complained to Amazon about the stupidity of the affair and got an email that gave every sign of having been written by a human being who had read my missive.  Either that or they've got hold of some very clever email analysis software, perhaps from GCHQ.

The Lyceum finished their season with a sparkling production of a play by Goldoni and having just been the Teatro Goldoni (not to the show that was on, it sounded dire) and the Goldoni Museum (hardly worth the 5 euros entry) I felt I couldn't miss it and I'm glad I didn't.

In The Venetian Twins the eponymous duo arrive independently and unknown to one another in Verona, one fleeing from justice and the other to marry a lady he has never met.  The other characters, who aren't aware either that there are twins around continually find themselves in situations in which they believe they are dealing with one twin when it is in fact the other.  Much confusion and entertainment results.  

The adaptation into very Scottish English abounds with humour of the seaside postcard variety,  but also has some keenly satirical fun with early feminism and male pomposity.  There's slapstick and the engagement of the audience in pantomime fashion (less the community singing I'm glad to say).  It all adds up to a splendid entertainment.

The SCO and chorus gave a totally different but equally splendid entertainment in the presentation of Haydn's Creation.  I hadn't realised before that this is a relatively lighthearted work, far away in spirit from the serious religiosity of the cantatas of Bach for example.  It was sung in English and sung very clearly by both chorus and soloists so there was no barrier to understanding and the soloists made the most of the elements of humour in the piece.  I'd heard it once before as music behind a ballet in Rio but I don't recall a feeling of lightheartedness in the dance or the music.  I expect that was a failing of sensitivity on my part.  If it's not spelt out in bold caps I'll miss it.      

The Traverse had a very good play on last week. By a Quebecois writer Right Now is the story of a young couple who appear to have lost a child and whose lives are taken over by a rather odd family living next door. Despite dealing with loss it was very amusing, terribly well performed and at the end left us wondering what was real and what was imaginary.

Two extremely bloodthirsty families are at odds in Titus Andronicus which the Grads have just presented.  I suppose the play could be considered as a 16th century precursor of Hammer horror movies and treated on that level it's quite fun but I think Shakespeare was wise to abandon the genre and move on to much more interesting stuff.

It was done in the round in what's a new venue for us, Assembly Roxy.  It's a great space and the staging in the desert was excellent. ( It took two hours for a substantial team of which I was a puny member to move that sand out on Saturday night.)  In general I enjoyed the show, all the cast were convincing and some performances such as SJ's Lavinia who is beaten, raped, has her hands cut off and her tongue torn out were truly excellent.  But what a lot of tosh.  

The Roxy set up for Titus (photo by Gordon Hughes) and how it looked less than 24 hours afterwards during a recital by Sue Mckenzie and Ingrid Sawers. Saxophone and piano make a great combination.

Minimalist music is not everyone's cup of tea but I'm a fan so went hotfoot to The Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow this weekend to enjoy a plethora of fascinating pieces from Steve Reich's monumental Music for 18 Musicians that runs non stop for an hour and demands super competent players to the same composer's Clapping Music, a five minute piece for two but which was performed by a group of school children on this occasion.

I didn't make it on Friday to hear Philip Glass's big concert nor did I grace the midnight to three art college gig and I gave the three hour Sunday morning session for kids a body swerve but I still managed to hear about ten hours of music plus a very entertaining session with Reich in conversation with Colin Currie.

It was not the first time I'd set foot in the concert hall building but it was the first time I'd attended an event there.  The auditorium is splendid and there were plenty of other good spaces for the free concerts that took place in the afternoons and for Saturday night when the RSNO were also in action in the building.

It was the first time I'd heard any of this music live with the possible exception of Chasing Sheep is Best Left to Shepherds which I think Michael Nyman's band played on a visit to Edinburgh a long time ago.  It confirmed my conviction that recorded music is a poor second best to live performance.

Hard to pick a favourite from around twenty-five disparate pieces but maybe Horses of Instruction by Steve Martland did it for me.  But I'd happily hear them all again.

During a break on Saturday I popped round to see the Theatre Royal's new front door and foyer.  It's very smart and there's a lovely staircase spiralling its way heavenwards that I couldn't resist snapping.

There are a number of displays in the foyer including a wonderful video that compresses the two day set up of an opera into two minutes and fifty five seconds by running at breakneck speed.  Here are a few stills from it.

There are dozens of international days for this or that recognised by the United Nations.  They are listed here.

One of them is International Jazz Day which falls today.  It's been going for four years and is being celebrated with concerts throughout the world, including at the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow.  But the epicentre this year is in Paris where there are multiple events taking place. France holds a very special place in the history of jazz, having welcomed many black American jazzmen who were discriminated against in their own country and given them a space in which to work freely.

The main gig is being held in the Unesco building and is being streamed live over the internet.  I am watching it as I write.  Herbie Hancock has just announced that next year's gig will be hosted by Barack Obama in the White House.  It would be nice to be there but I rather think I'll have to be content with the internet.

A glimpse or two of the amazing city of Venice where I've recently spent a week.  It's narrow winding streets many of which don't seem to lead anywhere are daunting at first and it's easy to lose your way, even for the ultra modern traveller equipped with GPS, but before long you can move around the town like a native.

Unless you can walk on water you're also very likely to use the vaporetti, the wonderful water-buses that go up and down the Grand Canal and serve the various islands that make up the city.  They're expensive but fun.  You even get to the airport by boat. 

Venice's most famous boat is of course the gondola and dozens serve the tourists at a not inconsiderable profit to their owners.  In theory there are also special gondolas that act as ferries from one side of the Grand Canal to the other (useful given that there are few bridges along its 4km length) but I never saw any in action.

There's stacks of art in galleries and churches but the city itself was enough of an open air art gallery for me on this trip so I only went indoors for food, drink and music.  Vivaldi's Four Season's is everywhere.  Much though I like it you can get too much of a good thing so I avoided it.  I had hoped that there would be an opera on at the famous La Fenice.  There wasn't but I went just the same, mainly to see the inside of the building, and the concert of renaissance madrigals that I attended was very appropriate for the architectural style.  It's famous for having burnt down and about a dozen firemen were on duty throughout the evening, something I've never seen anywhere before.  There were also lots of usher type people and a souvenir shop in operation but not a coffee or an ice-cream, let alone a drink to be had.

I went to some other reasonably enjoyable musical events though I found the electronic clarinet gig hard to warm to.  At least it was free. 

The bottom right photo above is where I was staying.  Fans of the novels of Dona Leon will be excited to learn that it's in the very palazzo in which il commissario Brunetti has his flat albeit on a different floor.  My friends (who have written guides to Venice focusing on locations associated with the Brunetti books) were very excited but I took it in my stride.

I'm no pigeon fancier but I felt bad this morning when I chased a pigeon off my balcony only to discover that she had made a nest in the corner and produced a couple of eggs.

 Was my action destined to kill two chicks before they were even born?  Maybe not, mum is back on the job.

When I arrived in Obertauern for a skiing holiday this year I was relieved to find that I had just missed a week of celebrations of the town's fifteen minutes of fame - the visit of the Beatles in 1965 to shoot some snow scenes for the film Help!

As well as holding a week of jollity they have erected this permanent memorial and other installations that I take to be temporary but you never know to what lengths fans in combination with tourist offices will go.  Wogblog tells the full exciting story of the fab four's visit.

The weather was not the unrelieved blue sky and sunshine of my last visit so I took one day off to visit Saltzburg which celebrates its connection with another musician of renown.  Arguably Mozart has been memorialised in a less dignified manner than the Beatles by the invention of Mozart Balls and the opening of shops devoted to their sale.

You know you are someplace swanky when the lemon to squeeze on your pork comes in a little yellow muslin bag tied up with a ribbon.

For the people who know these things today's eclipse had been in their diaries for centuries but I only heard about it last night.  So as the day dawned bright and cloudless I was unequipped to take advantage of the fine eclipse viewing conditions.

I risked my sight to cast a few brief screwed up glances heavenward with little success.  I found my ski goggles provided no protection.  I looked at the sun through a bottle of red wine seeing only a Rorschach ink blot that revealed nothing.  I tried the sun's reflection in my dirty window panes but that was too bright.  I poked my camera towards the sky thinking that I could at least get a photo but all I got was an ill defined but very bright blob.

I got very excited when the circle of light cast through the pinhole device that I created had a dark bite taken out of it till I realised this was not the moon but one of those undescended chards made famous in an American vote count some years ago.

So I gave up and watched it on the telly.

However, after it was past its peak and the moon's retreat was underway the sky clouded over and every so often for ten minutes or so as the cloud cover varied there was just the right degree of veiling for me to see the crescent shadow on the sun without going blind.  A result.

The A Play, A Pie and A Pint season started this week and Siobhan and I went to the first offering at lunchtime.  After the half dozen concerts I've been to this month it was nice to be led back into drama by the mellifluous Welsh voices of the three woman cast of Leviathan.  Especially given the lovely text that Matthew Trevannion, the author, had given them.

Set in a council house garden on a fine sunny day we met Mavis, who described herself at one point as having been a functioning alcoholic, her daughter Karen who slumps in an armchair eyes closed most of the time, stirring every so often to deliver coherent but disturbing monologues and Hannah, Karen's daughter, who has narrowed down the potential father of her unborn child to a list of three.

There is a fourth character whom we never see.  This is a murderous moggie who is busy wiping out the birds that visit the garden.  I'm sure that's very important and that Mavis taking an injured but still breathing bird into the house towards the end of the play with the stated intention of nursing it back to health is crucial to our understanding of the work.

But I didn't understand anything by it.  On the other hand there's a great deal of humour and I loved the cut and thrust of the dialogue between Mavis and Hannah.  They argue over Hannah's way of life.  They argue over semantics - gypos versus travellers.  "Travellers!" says Hannah "I went to school with most of them."  They argue over Karen.  Hannah screaming that the woman needs her mental health sorted out while Mavis maintains she only needs to rest.

What's it all in aid of?  Who knows but it's very well done and mightily entertaining.  

GB's victory huddle after Andy Murray saw off John Isner in straight sets to seal the tie.  Mind you he made it difficult for himself.  He was a bit shaky early in the match and at points throughout but managed to pull rabbits out of hats when he had to.  I guess he was feeling the pressure of both the expectation and the necessity of a win.  Isner in turn clearly was desperate to redeem himself from his failure on Friday and tried too hard at times.

Fortunately Murray's less than flawless first serves were matched by Isner's surprising difficulty in coping with Murray's second serves. 

GB now play France in July and given the wealth of French tennis talent that will be a tough one.

James Ward came on court at The Emirates Arena in Glasgow yesterday after Andy Murray had comfortably beaten Douglas Young in a couple of hours in the Davis Cup tie between GB and USA.

James ranks a full 90 places below John Isner, who is a one-time top ten player so I for one didn't expect to be late home but how wrong I was.  It was a gargantuan battle from the start.  The players were never more than a point or two apart in the entire five hours of play.

Ward stayed with Isner through the first set to force a tie-break that he narrowly lost and again lost the second set by a slender margin.  He got a second wind in the third set and came out a winner at 6-3.  The fourth set ended in a second tie-break but this time Ward won it with points to spare.

Then came the marathon fifth.  Thankfully it didn't quite reach the extremes of Isner's match against Nicolas Mahut at Wimbledon a couple of years ago otherwise I'd still be there but it ran on until Isner finally fell to Ward 13-15.

The crowd was delighted and not a little astonished.  The pleasure of the victory mitigated to some degree my trudge through the rain all the way to Queen St station where I caught the ten o'clock home.

I got home a few hours earlier today having witnessed another excellent five set match in which the world's best doubles players, the Bryan brothers were mightily discomfited and very nearly dislodged from their perch by Jamie Murray and Dominic Inglot who took them to 9-7 in the final set. 

GB need to win only one match out of two tomorrow to progress to the quarter finals and I'll be there rooting for them.

Waiting for play to start

The Toss

Serried Snappers

Cheese figures too in The Caucasian Chalk Circle when Azdak, sheltering the fleeing Grand Duke (though he doesn't know it) gives him a lump of cheese and advises him to "look at it mournfully - because it's already disappearing - like all good things".  But at least he gets to eat it.

Azdak is one of the parts I've most enjoyed playing and seeing the Lyceum's fine production in the company of other veterans of The Grads 2006 production brought back pleasant memories.  My memory wasn't perfect because I only remembered that I'd also played another role when I saw the character on stage and I signally failed to remember another one even when he appeared and had to be reminded of it afterwards.

There was lots of lively music in CCC and for an entirely different but equally spirited genre I was back in the same theatre the following evening for a wonderful concert organised by Jazz Scotland  featuring Ravi Coltrane, son of the great John, and his quartet. They were preceded by New Focus, a Scottish quartet led by Konrad Wiszniewski and Euan Stevenson. 

Jazz is a very broad church with many styles.  Ragtime, dixieland, swing, hard bop, acid jazz, fusion and free are amongst the plethora of sub-genre names that rear their heads in writing on the subject.  I don't rightly know what to call what I heard from those players but it was very much today's jazz from both groups.  Perhaps with a sweeter more contemplative accent from the Scots compared to a grungier more urgent tone from the Americans but that's a broad characterisation denied by examples from either side. The best thing is to listen to it and not bother about the taxonomy.

Joe Temperley and Brian Kellock will undoubtedly provide equally wonderful music tomorrow but it will be more firmly linked to the former's long and distinguished career with the great bands of the 60s and his sojourn in the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.   

"Later we'll go next door where we can sample some cheeses and see how a number of different wines combine with them."

Those were approximately the words of the chap leading the wine tasting at the French Institute which we had been led to believe would last from 6 to 8.  So as the slides slid past and his mellifluous tones led us through the geology, the climate and the agronomy of the Loire valley in heart stoppingly beautiful French our estimate of when that cheese and wine nirvana would arrive which at 6 had been comfortably positioned around 7 moved uncomfortably closer to 8.

Having genteelly sipped our way through one glass of a Muscadet and one of a Menetou-Salon over nearly two hours were we destined to a rapid swallow of the promised five remaining wines and a pig-like gorging of bread and cheese in the last quarter?

Well no quarter was given for the release to hit the next door feast came at ten past eight.  No good for those with an 8.30 dinner reservation in a restaurant on the other side of the city.  Caveat vinoamator next time.

A chalet from Billy Butlin's first holiday camp opened in Skegness in 1936 and its 2015 equivalent at Whinfell Forest.


I've just spent a few days there.  Apart from a day visit to Butlin's Ayr camp in the 50s I'd never been to a holiday camp before and was greatly impressed by this one. It has a beautiful setting that with its groups of wooden houses set in the forest reminded me strongly of Colorado.

It struck me as a super place for family holidays.  There are lots of outdoor activities to suit both adults and children and luckily, given our climate, just as many indoor ones.

When you've had enough of self catering, grazing and sluicing are well provided for in the various restaurants and bars.  I'm told the swimming pool (or sub-tropical paradise as it prefers to be known) is wonderful.  I didn't try it and since my friends had to leave the pool and stand around shivering while a fire alarm was investigated I don't feel I missed out.  I did enjoy table tennis and ten pin bowling and snooker and pool and archery and "the segway experience".

PS It's not cheap.

 

A thoroughly enjoyable toe-tapping evening in the Queen's Hall last night at the farewell concert of Fat Sam's jump jive and swing band.  Although they've been active on the Edinburgh scene throughout the  thirty years of their existence it's probably twenty years since I last heard them play, something I'm now beginning to regret.  But they wouldn't be the first band to have more than one farewell concert so I'll keep my ear to the ground.

Pictures from The Burn

On my way home from a saxophone weekend at The Burn near Edzell I went to a couple of Fife Jazz Festival gigs in St Andrews.

I was intrigued by the idea of a saxophone and tuba duo and was blown away by the resulting music from Marius Neset and Daniel Herskedal.  A lot of noise can and did come out of those instruments, but interestingly one of the refrains of the weekend had been the importance of dynamic contrast and this pair gave a master class on the subject.  From thunder to barely audible in a heartbeat. As for technique, the sounds they got, their speed and dexterity; all were marvellous and underpinned a fascinating sound world.

A really nice Italian meal later I was in the totally different sound world of Dixieland.  Although Dixieland and other varieties of traditional jazz no longer hold my interest to the extent they once did you can't help but enjoy its infectious rhythms and bright colours.  These guys were good, particularly the harmonica player.  I had a chromatic harmonica at one time as a kid but could never produce anything other than an overall mush.  How anyone can direct air through particular sets of those little holes I'll never understand. 

By the interval I'd enjoyed about much as I was likely to and was thinking of those "lang scots miles, the mosses, watters, slaps and stiles" and decided to forego the second half in favour of  getting home for bedtime.  And I'm so glad I did.

The A92 was closed off east of Kirkcaldy so I drove through the top of the town (not without an accidental and unwished for diversion through a housing estate) to find that it was still closed west of Kirkcaldy.  That meant going into the town and onto the Dunfermline road to get to the bridge.  Well blow me but the bridge was closed so I had an extra 50 miles to drive via Kincardine.  Had I stayed to the end of the concert it would have been half past midnight till I got home.

There was a bit of a silver lining though.  That diversion took me past the beautiful Kelpies glowing red and silver in the dark.  Tam O'Shanter would have loved them.

It was suggested to me this morning that choosing to walk up the stairs nine times out of ten instead of using the lift might not be quite enough preparation for my skiing holiday next month.

With that and inspired by the fitness displayed on court in Melbourne I decided on a vigorous walk to Modern Two this afternoon to see the Two Roberts exhibition.  Well, after a post prandial relaxation session I had to get the bus most of the way for fear of being too late to get round the show.  It would have been well worth walking all the way though, super stuff.

Happily I found on leaving the gallery that the Water of Leith pathway which had been partially closed for months because of a landslip was fully open again so I got my vigorous walk after all.

I stopped halfway for a coffee in Stockbridge and was served by a young woman I recognised as having been a fellow attendee at a salsa class some time ago.  I didn't let the fact that she didn't remember me get me down. I saw it instead as an endorsement of the character actor's ability to melt into the crowd when playing himself.

At Canonmills I passed a couple of pubs that used to be spit and sawdust establishments but are now smart, comfortably furnished, attractive bars where you can eat or just have a coffee rather than down a pint leaning against peeling wallpaper.  It's a wonderful social revolution, and no smoke to boot.

An exciting closely fought tussle that didn't last.  Murray faded away in the third set and was obliterated in the fourth.  It must be excruciating for the loser to stand listening to the various platitudinous speeches at the end and then have to make his own but Murray stood up to that test manfully.

At least the match finished in good time for me to prepare lunch.

A good week of tennis viewing culminating in Murray's victory over Dimitrov in an absolutely gripping match this morning.

As well as the two streams corresponding to its TV channels  Eurosport broadcasts additional streams and it has been possible on occasion (it's a bit hit and miss I don't know why) to watch a match on one of them without either commercial breaks or commentary.  That's such a bonus since much of the time the commentators contribute very little to enjoyment of the game.  I generally don't need to be told that a good shot has been played and remarks such as "..he grabs the ball with his racquet and returns it full of meaning..." simply annoy me.  I am indebted though to one commentator for sharing with me the knowledge that Sharapova never wears sweat bands and seldom calls for a towel between points.

Again more or less by accident I caught Zambia's second group match.  They played Tunisia and were all over them, mounting attack after attack, swarming around their goal, banging away but only managed to get a ball in the net after 60 minutes.  Tunisia got an excellent equaliser ten minutes later.  That seemed to put fire in their bellies and in the dying minutes they scored a winner.  Such a shame. 

Perhaps the new president will take a day off to nip up to Equatorial Guinea to encourage them, or maybe Guy Scott will since he looks likely to have time on his hands.

I enjoyed The Merry Widow very much.  Unlike the Daily Telegraph I found lots of wit and sparkle in it; the book and lyrics in particular, by Jeremy Sands, were a treat to the ear.  The sumptuous set and costumes were lovely, the can-can dancers spirited and the principals incarnated their characters well although I will agree with the Telegraph to the extent that I found some of the delivery of the text a wee bit clumsy.  I also understood the business with the fan very easily which I didn't the last time I saw the show.  Mind you that was done in Hungarian so I didn't stand much of a chance.

The Australian Open Tennis grand slam is upon us and I have purchased a month's subscription to Eurosport to watch it since neither BBC nor ITV have much coverage to offer.  It's a streaming service so I can watch on a PC or even a telephone but the device of choice will be my smart TV.

It's remarkably cheap (provided I don't rack up some excess broadband usage charge and I remember not to let it be automatically renewed).  As a bonus I got it in time to watch Zambia's first match in the African Cup of Nations.  They scored a great goal just outside of 60 seconds after the kick-off and spent the rest of the game gamely trying to get another but gave the ball away rather too often to their opponents, the Democratic Republic of Congo.  They were the better team overall but only managed to get through the Zambian defence once so the match ended in a draw.

The time difference between here and Melbourne is such that the daytime matches start at about midnight our time.  I shan't see many of them.  I did try to stay up last night to watch Murray's first match but tiredness got the better of me.  The evening matches on the other hand start at breakfast time, to be honest a bit before my usual breakfast time but I may make an effort to get up earlier for the next two weeks.  

Throughout 2014 I was sure that I was going to fit in a visit to Belgium to enjoy some of the celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Adolphe Sax, whose invention I've been learning to play for the last several years.  Dinant where he was born looks worth a visit even when it's not bedecked with saxes but I didn't make it there nor to Brussels where he was brought up, studied music and became an instrument maker in his father's business and which has been hosting a large Sax exhibition.

The French have a great claim on Adolphe since it was to Paris, a much more important musical centre than Brussels, that he moved in 1842; where he set up a workshop and over the following years developed the saxophone to a form recognisable to us today.

So it's not surprising that as part of the inaugural activities at their new concert hall, which opened on Wednesday, they are devoting Saturday afternoon to the saxophone.  I was tempted and if Easyjet had had a Saturday morning flight I might have succumbed to temptation, but I'm going to the Met instead, not actually to New York but to it's satcast manifestation in the Cameo where I'm standing in for a sick friend and accompanying his wife to The Merry Widow.

Although the sax was initially taken up by military bands and used by a number of classical composers, it has flourished in the world of jazz and nowhere more so than in the USA.  Now thanks to my favourite jazz programme I know that the Met (museum not opera) is running a sax exhibition till the end of April.  I've never been to New York and would quite like to visit so maybe......    

"You don't do the lottery surely" said the man on the train as we stood side by side in the corridor.

This was in response to my doubly unlucky dose of travel trouble.  I had gone down to London on Saturday when, thanks to engineering tardiness at Kings Cross, my train spent an hour standing in Stevenage and then a second hour tantalisingly close to Finsbury Park station, then crawled in and released us.

Finsbury Park is a handy ten minute bus ride from David's flat but when I designated Kings Cross as the station at which I would activate my Oyster top-up that was in expectation of the train fulfilling its normal destiny.  So I accepted a free tube ride and added another half hour or so to my late running journey.

Returning to Kings Cross yesterday to come home I found that the 13.00 to Edinburgh was not going past Newcastle thanks to an electrical problem on the line further north.  No problem, a speedy connection with a local train to Berwick and onwards in a fleet of what were no doubt luxury coaches had been arranged said the station staff.  The fact that the train guard still thought we were going all the way to Edinburgh was a communication failure soon put right.  And anyway said she optimistically it may be fixed by the time we get to Newcastle.

It wasn't.

But only 40 minutes to wait so I had a coffee and a biscuit in the warmest corner I could find in Costa's little cafe.  For Newcastle is a drafty station.

As time grew closer to 16.30 and there was no sign of the Berwick train, confidently still declaring itself to be On Time on the departure board, some degree of doubt crept into my mind.  At this point a shortly due Aberdeen train was mentioned and rumoured to be going across country to Carlisle and then on to Edinburgh.  Could our train not have done that I thought.

At about 16.40 still claiming to be On Time the Berwick train trundled in but kept its doors shut for ten minutes or.  Before they opened passengers for points north were entreated not to board it but to wait for the Aberdeen train.  Half a dozen people got on leaving several hundred on the platform.

At about 16.59 there was much whistling, waving of arms and striding up and down by station staff but the by now admitting to not being on time 16.30 to Berwick didn't move.  Every so often over the next half hour they tried again but the train sat still like a reluctant sheepdog.  To cheer us up at some point it was announced that the Aberdeen train was outside the station waiting for a platform.  Unfortunately it seemed that the stationary Berwick train was occupying the required platform.  It was then redundantly announced that the Berwick train had a technical problem.

I judged at 17.30 that I could risk going to the gents and in the few minutes I was away the Berwick train disappeared but the Aberdeen one didn't arrive.  After a while it did but as everyone tried to pile onto a clearly already packed train we were tempted with the announcement that another Edinburgh train was due in less than half an hour.

Fearing that it might be a long half hour I got aboard as did pretty well everybody and a bit before 18.00 we were underway and it appeared that the electrical problem had been sorted for there was no further talk of Carlisle.

Half an hour or so into the journey a passenger was asked over the train intercom to return to the foodbar as the buffet car is now known.  The girl concerned heard her name but didn't catch the message.  Hard enough for anyone but doubly hard for an American as she was.

"I've just come from there."  "You must have left something."

She had of course, a passport I think.  Now this train was so crowded that she chose to wait till we got to Berwick then jump off the train and run down the platform to the foodbar rather than fight her way through the standing passengers.

The driver hurtled the train along and we got to Edinburgh about 19.20.  I got through the scrum of disembarking and embarking voyagers and up the steps happy with the thought of slipping across Princes Street and onto a 22.  The street was empty of buses and full of torchlight processors so I had to set off down Leith Walk on foot.  As I got closer to home I decided that a Tailend fish supper would just hit the spot.

The food would clearly have been fresh given the crowd waiting for it to appear from the fryer but I had had enough waiting for one day so raided my deep freeze instead.

The silver lining is that I can probably claim a free return trip to London under East Coast's delay compensation scheme.  But do I want to risk it?  Maybe I should try the lottery instead.

A nail-biting finish to the snooker last night for Ronnie O'Sullivan supporters as Judd Trump fought  back with determination and skill from 9-4 down to 9 all to force a deciding frame.  But even with a broken ankle O'Sullivan is a hard man to beat and a perfectly played snooker behind the green put paid to Trump's challenge.  It was a great match.

Something put paid to my bus pass a week or two ago.  It lasted about two years I think and would have been due for replacement sometime next year.  My new one must be made of sterner stuff.  The machine on the bus tells me that it expires on 9/11/41. It's good to know that the City of Edinburgh expects me to last that long.

The reading material in most barber's shops around here tends to be The Sun or The Daily Record so I was pleasantly surprised when I went to get rid of my Festen grandfather beard to find The Herald, The i and the new pro independence paper, The National, to browse while I waited.

That excitement aside it has been a musical week.  First up was Judith Bingham's choral work The Christmas Truce.  Famously German and Allied troops briefly laid aside their weapons in favour of football and fraternisation at Christmas 1914 and this work deals with that.  The singers made all sorts of whooshing and whistling noises to represent the mayhem of bombardments and during the truce section the male singers split into "Germans" and "Tommies" and sang respectively Oh Tannenbaum and Still the Night, did a bit of male bonding hugging and then went back to war.  I'm told by someone I know in the choir that it's a really good sing and I have to say I thought it was a really good listen.

Following that was the SCO and Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto.   I first heard it in the Festival Hall in London in 1967 and it's been one of my desert island discs ever since.  Later in the week the RSNO performed Shostakovitch's Second Piano Concerto.  That's another favourite but of a totally different character, energetic and jaunty while the Beethoven is poetic and lyrical.

Earlier in the week I dashed from a DORA quarterly meeting to the final Dunedin Wind Band rehearsal before our participation in the Scottish Concert Band Festival.  That happened today in Livingston where over the weekend about 30 bands from the central belt ranging from primary 7 kids through youth bands to our category of community bands are doing their thing under the watchful ears of an adjudicating team of two who award certificates of greater or lesser excellence.

We took part for the first time last year although I wasn't able to be there and were awarded a silver certificate.  This year with my participation we won gold.  Just a coincidence no doubt.  It's not as impressive as it sounds because gold plus and platinum are obtainable so it's a bronze in Olympic terms.  However it does qualify us to play in the National Finals in Perth Concert Hall in March. I can't be there unfortunately because I'll be away ski-ing but I expect they'll struggle through.

Next up is our Christmas concert 

 Despite Festen being over and done with I didn't get away from theatre altogether. I auditioned for the Grads next production, Titus Andronicus.