The view from the Ross Bandstand before the audience gathered for our performance of Rock.  The show went very well and we, the three bits of rock on the stage, had a very good view of the imaginative and well choreographed scenes that were played out at ground level in the area that the council have christened the terrazzo (sic).

As you can see from the photo the weather was relatively benign as it was throughout the StagEHd festival, which is a mercy since the casts not lucky enough to have the shelter those of us on stage had could have been very uncomfortable.

Plans are already afoot for StagEHd 2023.  See the website.

The week before Rock went up I paid a visit to the Saturday market on Castle Terrace.  It's something I've been meaning to do for some time especially since the bus home from my Saturday morning sax lessons passes conveniently close.  But there always seems to have been something that got in the way.  Rain for example or some pressing engagement or just a desire to get home and put my feet up.  

Not a patch on the market held outside my flat in the Boulevard Auguste Blanqui twice a week.  Or was it thrice?  A poor cousin even to the market in Guéret but not bad for Scotland and the fare on offer was very good.  I loaded up my bag with a pig cheeks and black pudding lunch, dressed crab, venison in various forms and a loaf of tasty bread.

I'll go again but not on my way home from a sax lesson.  Rocio has decided to stop giving regular private lessons.  Mostly it's in response to her husband's change of job which means they are both working full time.  Quite a change after twelve years but I'm in no rush to find another teacher.  I can still have the occasional lesson with her or I may just settle into playing what I fancy when I can be bothered.

We had a sort of farewell Sunday lunch but being a Spanish lunch the invitation was for 4pm, later postponed to 5pm because of her nine year old's attendance at a cello workshop. (Her six year old declares loyalty to the sax but we shall see.) In the event it was 6pm when lunch was served.  I had a very pleasant few hours with them and it was really nice to spend some time with the kids whom I've only seen in the passing over the years.

I missed the RSNO's performance of the Symphonie Fantastique which was a shame since I like it but have never heard it played live.  I've forgotten why I didn't get there but I did get to their season ending concert the main work of which was Beethoven's 9th Symphony.  The last movement of it is great with the chorus giving it laldy but I'm not a great fan of the rest of it.  For me the piece of the evening was a brand new flute concerto by the young Scotttish composer Jay Capperauld.  The piece is called Our Gilded Veins and in essence begins in chaos which gradually over the twenty minutes it lasts resolves into order.  It was absolutely beautiful and I look forward to being able to get a recording sometime.  It's worth reading what Jay has to say about it so I've copied his programme note:

"Our Gilded Veins is inspired by the ancient Japanese art of kintsugi, the mending of broken objects in order not only to repair them but to highlight their previous damage in a special and positive way. If a plate is broken, instead of throwing it away it is glued together with gilded lacquer to emphasise and celebrate the break as part of the object's history.

Essentially, as a human concept, Our Gilded Veins is an honest reflection on damage, failure and scars, with the intention of embracing the necessity of life’s negatives while attempting to forge a positive existential outcome. The concept of cultivating a positive state of mental health is at the crux of the work’s  concerns. The most positive step forward in  recent years is the gradual societal change in  attitudes towards the stigma surrounding  mental health, particularly where mental  illness is concerned. As attitudes change, a  deeper understanding of more sophisticated  practical techniques that nurture positive  mental health has developed alongside a  collective empathy and desire to help others  (and ourselves) maintain a balanced state of  mind. 

Musicians know more than most that  music plays a demonstrably powerful role  in the recovery process as well as the  safeguarding of our mental health - to the  point where the phrase 'Music saved my life'  has become a recurring theme in the stories of  those who have faced the various harrowing  circumstances in their lives. As a composer I also have an avid interest in  psychology - to the point where I would have  pursued a career as a psychologist had my  path towards music failed - and I am  particularly intrigued by how our internal  worlds are shaped by and, conversely, reflected  in the external world around us. In this way, I  often think of my music as having its own  independent consciousness and psychological  agenda, which is representative of specific  emotional states that attempt not only to  portray 'how' certain psychologies manifest  themselves, but to explore and highlight 'why'  these states of mind develop and why the  music might 'act' in the way that it does.

Therefore, the concept of kintsugi acts as a  fitting metaphor for the human experience,  which is an undeniable reflection of how we  must interact with the external world as well  as how we negotiate the various knocks that  life throws our way. It is through this metaphor  that Our Gilded Veins attempts to explore,  highlight and champion the message of  positive mental health in a musical context, as  well as the idea that broken objects ought to  be celebrated and nurtured, not discarded." 

 © Jay Capperauld 

By coincidence mental health lies beneath the plot of The Scandal at Mayerling with which Scottish Ballet bestrode the Festival Theatre stage to great acclaim by the audience including myself.  Crown Prince Rudolph going nuts (syphilis?) as he spirals down through a torrent of sex, violence and alcohol to a dramatically conclusive murder/suicide with his besotted young lover.  Some very strenuous dancing by the principals and great ensemble work against a grandly imagined Hapsburg Empire set.  I loved it.

I've never been a great fan of the style of humour found in the days of the silent film which persisted through at least the early years of the "talkies".  Some of that features in Laurel and Hardy by Tom McGrath that the Lyceum has revived with the same cast who played in its world premiere in the same theatre 17 years ago.  They do those snippets very well and I found myself amused despite my reluctance.  The play though is not simply a recreation of their work but a presentation of the origins and development of their partnership and of aspects of their personal lives.  It's extremely well put together, staged and performed.  A treat for fans and non fans alike.

Andy Ellis, an erstwhile stalwart of the Grads and of the SCDA, with his wife Sue was on a visit to Edinburgh and I went with others to say hi at a meal at Pomegranate just up the road. It was a good evening with excellent Middle Eastern nosh.  I'd taken a bottle of wine but the restaurant is no longer a BYOB establishment so we forced to drink from their rather tasty list.

The place I'm going this evening, the unique Konj Cafe, also provides Middle Eastern food, in their case specifically Iranian.  The food is lovely and this time the bottle I take won't come home with me because they are still BYOB.

Summer seems a long time coming to Edinburgh this year.  We had a few nice days in March, fewer in April and it seems to me almost none in May.  The last day of May wasn't too bad and got better as morning turned to afternoon so I determined to make a little excursion and set off along the East Lothian coast.  Not very far along because I got off the bus at Fisherrow and walked along the sands to the mouth of the Esk and then upriver to Musselburgh town centre and a bus home.  But it was a beautiful walk and I clicked away with my camera.  I leave you with one of my artistic shots - Inchkeith and the coast of Fife glimpsed through gorse.

The Burrell Collection was reopened to the public after several years of refurbishment to the building housing it in Pollock Park and Andrew and I were amongst those who visited in the first few weeks of its reopening.

Weatherwise it was a lovely day, so lovely in fact that Andrew got slightly sunstroked as we drank our after lunch coffee out on the terrace.  He's got substantially more hair than me but not enough to keep the sun entirely at bay.

The collection itself is a vast, rambling selection of the world's treasures.  Not so much a selection perhaps.  More a case of "look at that, it's lovely, I'll have it."  Not that Burrell himself chose every item.  He had agents.

Nonetheless it's a brilliant place to wander around in and admire and wonder at what's on display.  Upstairs there's a set of galleries each focussing on a craft form; metalwork, ceramics, glassworking and so on.  I found that most interesting. 

To get to Pollock Park we'd taken a train to Pollockshaws West which according to a blue plaque on the wall there is the oldest Glasgow station still in use, having been opened in 1848. 

I've been busy with Rock but have managed to fit in some more acting as a pretend COPD patient being interviewed by trainee physiotherapists.  It was quite fun and I've agreed to suffer some other malady for the benefit of more students in June.

I've seen two productions since I last posted. Red Ellen at The Lyceum. Ellen Wilkinson was a pint-sized firebrand active in socialist politics before and during the Second World War when she served as a cabinet minister. She worked and played hard, living life at a hectic pace and the production mirrors this in a rapid succession of episodes and locations. I'm not sure that I'd have much liked Ellen had I known her but I found the story interesting though I was only emotionally involved towards the end.

With Hay Fever I wasn't emotionally involved at all but nor should I have been.  It's an amusing and mildly satirical comedy of imagined pre-war middle class life in the household of a grande dame of the theatre, Judith Bliss, recently retired from the stage.  She, her novelist husband and her two self-indulgent children have all independently and without giving notice to the others invited a guest for the weekend. In essence they all have fun at the guests' expense who seize the opportunity on the Sunday morning to sneak away leaving the family squabbling enjoyably amongst themselves.

The Grads' production is efficiently and intelligently staged, lit and directed. The costuming is first class. For my money the cast were all up to the mark although here and there a bit more Lady Bracknell would not have gone amiss.  The production like many others was on, off and on again because of Covid but persistence paid off. It was worth the wait.

The SCO concert season reached its end with a brilliant evening in the Usher Hall.  Russian born Alina Ibragimova came on stage in a vivid red dress and gave us a performance of Prokoviev's 1st Violin Concerto full of fire and colour to match. It's wonderful music and she did more than justice to it.  In the second half more fire, or indeed firewoks from the orchestra in Stravinsky's ballet suite The Firebird. Maxim Emelyanychev conducted with his trademark enthusiasm and energy, dancing his way through the piece. It was written for the ballet after all.

In the same hall the following evening the RSNO under the baton of another lively young conductor, Tabita Berglund, performed Sibelius's 5th Symphony and with Torlief Thedéen as soloist Dvorak's Cello Concerto.  I love the intensity and melancholy of the Dvorak.  The Sibelius was less my thing but I do have sympathy with the guy who said "It makes me want to go home to Finland, and I'm not even Finnish." 

Our third great orchestra, the SNJO, presented Tommy Smith's latest work, Tales of the Tribe which the Scotsman's reviewer declared to be "a triumph" and I wouldn't contradict him. It was an excellent fusion of jazz, folk and poetry.  Here's what the critic had to say.

I was checking up on my vaccination status in anticipation of going on holiday this summer and much as I expected found that my tetanus and whatnot were out of date.  So I phoned the surgery only to be told that GPs no longer do these jags.  I would have to go to the travel clinic at the Western.  Thanks to the staff there calling me back after several fruitless efforts to get through on my part I got an appointment and went to the building site that is the hospital.  It rather reminded me of the construction project that is Leith Walk.

Cherry blossom is making its brief annual appearance in Princes Street and elsewhere in the city.  The fact that the weather is windy, cold and grey rather takes the edge off it but that's global warming for you.

I hope that when Claire's play on that subject, Rock, gets to the Ross Bandstand, a stone's throw from where this picture was taken the weather will have improved.  To get into the mood we've held several rehearsals outdoors, not in all weathers but on occasion distinctly chilly.

In my last post I mentioned Peter Johnstone as one of our excellent jazz pianists and I had the pleasure of hearing him play with Helena Kay's trio this week.  Helena was young Scottish jazz musician of the year in 2015.  I've seen her play with the Tommy Smith Youth Orchestra and with the SNJO but this is the first time I've seen her play as leader and I'd never heard her speak before.  It goes without saying that she's a superb sax player but In addition her compositions which I hadn't heard before are beautiful; graceful and melodic, eschewing the frenetic runs up and down the instrument favoured by many players.

She's a slightly built shy looking young woman who seems almost too small to hold never mind play the tenor.  But she's not shy at all.  She spoke confidently and a delightfully cheerful and happy personality came out to charm the audience.

Another young saxophonist with a strong and confident personality is Jess Gillam who I heard playing with the Scottish National Youth Orchestras Symphony Orchestra.  She'd been due to play with the SCO in a concert that was Covid cancelled so I was pleased that she'd made it to Edinburgh.  The whole concert was excellent.  They played Respighi's Fountains of Rome and Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony while Jess played a super piece by John Harle called Briggflatts after a poem by Basil Bunting.  It was written for her and she premiered it in 2019.  The last movement of the concerto is available on Spotify here. It goes like the clappers.

There's been something of a Shostakovich-fest recently.  In March Sheku Kanneh-Mason played his Cello Concerto with the RSNO, then a couple of weeks later came the Tenth Symphony with the NYOS Symphony Orchestra and just last week the RSNO gave us extracts from Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, the Second Piano Concerto and the Fifth Symphony.  The latter is a strong contender for the disc I'd rescue from the waves were I on that desert island.

I believe that I first heard it in the Usher Hall under the baton of Gennadi Rozhdestvensky when I had a standing ticket at a daytime concert in the 60s.  Shostakovich himself was here in 1962 for the Festival and his music featured throughout the three weeks but such researches as I've made don't mention the Fifth.  Be that as it may there's a very interesting article about his visit here.

Leith Walk is chock a block with eating places and I keep promising myself an onslaught on them but it's a slow process because there so many nice places to eat in Edinburgh.  Some friends from my days in Zambia were here around Easter and I had a delicious dinner with them at Fishers on The Shore.  On Easter Sunday itself the sun came out and I had an open air lunch at the Pier Brasserie in Newhaven.  Proving how small a town Edinburgh is a fellow cast member from The Venetian Twins walking her dog stopped for a chat as I ate.  

But I have checked out one place in Leith Walk recently.  That's Knight's Kitchen which has a bit of an African flavour in the decor and on the menu with the odd word of Swahili here and there.  Lunch was fine but a major disappointment was that the Tusker lager listed on their menu wasn't available.  When I lived in Nairobi I often had a Tusker at the Agip petrol station with a chum on the way home after work on a Saturday morning and it was generally available at the meetings of the East African Computer Society held in the offices of Kenya Breweries.  I don't think it's passed my lips since I left Kenya.  No great loss really since I don't much care for beer these days.  Just nostalgia.

Perhaps it was nostalgia that caused me to buy a copy of The Ghosts of Happy Valley when I was browsing in Blackwells. I enjoyed the book which is to some degree a postscript to White Mischief but fortuitously it cleared up a linguistic query that has been with me for decades.  Living in Kenya I picked up bits and pieces of Swahili and I can still use the language to find where the toilet is or to buy a bottle of milk or express what have you been up to in the long time it is since we last met, but I only recall one word of Kikuyu.  That was "atirere", or so I thought.  Pronounced with a stretched penultimate "eeeeeeh" it punctuated the conversations between Kikuyu speakers in the office eager to get their point of view across. Thanks to this book I now know it is "utirere" and that it means "listen". 

Another book I bought on that occasion and have just finished was the much lauded Booker winner Shuggie Bain.  Leaving aside any judgement as to its literary worth it paints an absolutely horrific picture of growing up with an alcoholic mother in a community where narrow mindedness, religious prejudice, homophobia and downright nastiness rules the day. 

For horrific tales you'd have to go far to beat the story told at The Lyceum in The Meaning of Zong.   From the slaving ship Zong in the 18th century 132 slaves were thrown overboard to drown, allegedly out of "necessity" to save the ship and the remaining people on board from "the perils of the sea".  Those words are central to the subsequent litigation between the slavers and their insurers because apparently the loss of cargo jettisoned in those circumstances would have been covered by insurance.  The case didn't turn on the fact that those Africans were murdered.  Because in the eyes of the law they were cargo.  The argument was about "necessity".

The play is brilliantly staged and well performed but is not entirely successful.  Most reviews suggest that the play tries to do too much and that some of the more poetical passages tend towards over wordiness.  I agree but it's a very fine contribution to the reassessment of Britain's involvement in slavery.  We like to remember the abolitionists but gloss over what we did that needed to be abolished.

Thanks to my BFI subscription I saw a couple of great films.  First the Argentinian film Relatos Salvajes, translated as Wild Tales  which was nominated a few years ago for the Oscar's best foreign language film award.  There's a good review of it here so I'll save myself the effort of writing one and just recommend that you see it.  Then the Iranian film A Separation which I remember not managing to see in the cinema some years ago.  It's a fascinating insight into domestic life in Iran.  From the same reviewer as above here's an assessment. 

When we invaded Iraq in 2003 I was living in Spain and the news that broke at the same time about whistleblowing at GCHQ passed me by or I quickly forgot it and I don't recall the prosecution of Katherine Gun, the whistleblower, who went to court in February 2004 probably because by then I was living in Italy.  It's an astonishing tale of the machinations of the UK and USA to obtain support for the invasion, the Kafkaesque workings of the official secrets act and the duplicity of the UK government who dropped charges against her rather than be forced into revealing details of their legal advice about starting the war.  A revelation that would have clearly shown a supine U-turn under American pressure.  All this and more is laid out in a great film, Official Secrets, in which one of my favourite actresses, Keira Knightley, plays Katherine Gun.  The Guardian reviews it well.

 The Venetian Twins eventually opened despite a couple of cast members coming down with Covid.  One struggled through but the other had to be replaced meaning that the role in question was undertaken by three actresses in all over the course of getting the play onto the stage.  The show was a great success and played to full houses.  One of my characters falls down a trapdoor behind a bar several times.  It's a very simple gag but audiences wet themselves laughing at it.

What's that picture got to do with the show?  Nothing, except that going to rehearsals  took me often into the vicinity of Newhaven Harbour.  I spent a lot of time trying to get a decent picture of the lighthouse, particularly because its lights were moving through a cycle of colours.  It was beautiful.  I failed to capture it successfully and this picture is the best of a bad bunch.

Away from the limelight I've been to the theatre several times.  The Lyceum's The Scent of Roses was a very good production but I didn't warm to it.  In fact I found it a bit boring.  Not so Stand By at the Roxy which follows the tedium and the drama of four police officers stuck in a van waiting to be called into action as a negotiator tries to defuse an ongoing incident.  One feature that pulled us into the action (or non-action) was being issued with earpieces through which we heard interchanges between the cops, bosses and controllers.  A really good piece that played originally in The Fringe about five years ago.  It was well worth reviving.

Mugabe, My Dad & Me was a deceptively gentle play at the Traverse in which the writer and performer Tonderai Munyevu talks about his identity as a member of the Zimbabwean diaspora growing up in the UK, his relationship with his father from whom his abused mother had fled with him and Mugabe the freedom fighter turned president turned dictator.  Britain's colonial history and its legacy is a twisted tale and perhaps no more twisted than in Zimbabwe.  This show intertwining personal and political history shines some light on that twisted tale.

Back at the Lyceum there was what they described as a live preview of a forthcoming audio drama called KELI.  It was the fact that the Whitburn Brass Band were part of the show that had encouraged me to join the outing to see it and what I heard of their music making was lovely, a velvet smooth tone flowing out from the stage.  I can't say as much for the spoken drama since we went to the theatre following a long and delightful lunch at Left Field which as the French delicately say had been bien arrosé so that a fair amount of eye resting occurred to the detriment of understanding what the piece was all about.

There have been a few more enjoyable social get togethers for one of which I made green borscht on my new induction hob and for another amaretti biscuits which came out of my new oven so evenly baked as to shame me for having persisted with the previous oven for so long.  Apropos the hob the literature about induction told me that if a magnet clung to the bottom of my pots and pans I would not need to invest in new induction friendly cookware.  Not true.

This week I've been to three concerts.  Rocio was conducting the Edinburgh College concert band in their end of term concert in the beautiful setting of the Canongate Kirk.  A number of other college groups played and sang but hers was certainly the most joyous in Tequila  in which maracas were replaced by cocktail shakers.

The following night I went to the Queen's Hall to hear Colin Currie play a new percussion concerto by Helen Grime with the SCO and thoroughly enjoyed the piece.

In contrast to both of those large ensembles came Fergus McCready's trio launching their latest album, Forest Floor.  One of my friends always refers to McCready (I don't know why) as the greatest pianist to have come from Strathpeffer.  I've no doubt he is.  He's one of a number of brilliant Scottish jazz pianists.  Brian Kellock, Euan Stevenson and Pete Johnstone spring to mind.  His music is flowing, melodic, wide ranging in emotional intensity and profoundly Scottish.  Check him out on Spotify.

I've started rehearsing Claire's new play Rock which will be presented at the Ross Bandstand in Princes Street Gardens as part of a festival of theatre produced by community groups in Edinburgh.  It's a poetically written thoughtful contribution to the climate change discussion.

As Covid restrictions fall slowly away but Covid doesn't I'm glad that I'm now quadruple jabbed.

East Princes Street Gardens coming back to life after the depredations of the Christmas Market. Led by flower bed planting and to be followed soon we expect by the laying of turf.

But should we be planting grain given the supply problems promised by the war in Ukraine?  My agricultural skills wouldn't help here and since I don't know my way around an AK47 I'm reduced to donating to the humanitarian effort, in my case via the Red Cross, and I encourage all my readers to do likewise.  I'm also putting miniscule pressure on Russian gas exports by turning down my thermostat and dispensing with my gas hob. The latter move is entirely coincidental I must confess.

So what's been happening away from the battlefield?  Way back in March 2020 as rehearsals for The Venetian Twins reached their climax Covid struck and we had to cancel.  We've been back in business now for a few weeks with a production run scheduled to start on March 30th.  All has been going well but we've now temporarily (I hope) lost one cast member to the plague.  Will it sweep through the rest of us?  I hope not, both for the sake of the production and selfishly for my own wellbing.

On the musical side I've been affected by Covid as well.  This weekend I'm off to the north on a saxophone jaunt and Mike, one of the two tutors, has had to self isolate.  Quite a blow or I suppose in his case actually a no blow.  His colleague, Cat, has bravely taken the whole burden onto her shoulders.  

I've been to some excellent concerts in the last few weeks.  Saint Saens and Shostakovich's cello concertos, Fauré's Requiem (with the RSNO junior chorus), Pop, Rock and Soul from the SNJO and a super Sunday afternoon gig from the SCO.  I'd booked this one mainly because it featured Steve Reich's New York Counterpoint and I like Reich's stuff.  In the event the piece that swept me away was an exhilarating and exciting work for string quartet by Bryce Dessner called Aheym.  The link is to the Kronos Quartet playing it on Youtube.  Magic but even better in the concert hall.

The Traverse are running a Play, Pie and Pint series and I went to the first one. It was a two hander called Oscar.  Both actors were called upon to sing and play the piano which they did extremely well.  The story is about a composer (the eponymous Oscar) who has come to a remote Scottish island to write a piece in memory of his recently deceased brother who was his creative musical partner.  This review gave it a well deserved four stars.  You're too late to see it now but I won't be surprised to see it spring up again sometime, somewhere.

When I was looking for a pre-theatre eating spot a few months ago I came across a little restaurant called Left Field in what used to be a hot potato shop.  They couldn't accommodate us then but I've now been.  The food, service and vino were top notch.

There are from time to time various adaptations of Georges Simenon's Maigret novels but the daddy of them all is the BBC 1960-63 series starring Rupert Davies. Last year sometime I saw an ad for a newly refurbished or remasterd or renovated or however you like to describe it DVD set of the series.  I pre-ordered it and it came a few months later, all 52 episodes on 15 DVDs.  A few months later still, last night in fact I ripped off the shrink wrap and watched the first four epidodes.  Thoroughly enjoyable but I shall restrain the urge to binge on the whole set for fear of ennui setting in. 

No Langeweile set in as I finally unwrapped and watched Deutschland 86, a Christmas gift.  It's a good yarn however improbably full of coincidences and miraculous escapes etc and it has what I reckoned was a happy ending even if it was in the GDR.

I'm not sure if this is an art installation or a public service announcement by the galleries doing their bit to soothe the Covid stricken populace.  When I snapped it I had not been visiting that gallery, but Modern 2 its sibling across the road.

I had gone to see the Ray Harryhausen exhibition.  The man's name meant nothing to me before this exhibition popped up and I rather doubt that I've seen any of the large number of films that he worked on, given that monster movies, sci-fi and fantasy have never much appealed to me.  However the publicity piqued my curiosity so I went along.

The exhibition demonstrates his tremendous contribution to film-making.  He deployed and indeed invented many of the techniques used to combine stop motion animation and live action over a 30 plus year career that ended with The Clash of the Titans in 1981.  By then special effects techniques like CGI and motion capture suits were beginning to replace Harryhausen's methods though the basic principles persist.

Taking pictures was allowed.  I took very few but here are two.

I've been to a couple of concerts and a few films (more Truffaut) in recent weeks but the only live theatre I've seen has come courtesy of transmissions from afar.  Tom Stoppard's Leopoldstadt was beamed to my local picture palace from a theatre in London.  It's an absorbing family saga that draws its inspiration from Stoppard's Jewish roots and spirals down from the family's affluence and contentment in late 19th century Vienna to the poverty and anguish of the holocaust.  Not a bundle of laughs.

The other show did provoke lots of laughs and that most unexpectedly.  I had not thought that a play about a tussle between parents at the Childrens' Panel would be other than serious and well meaning.  CMF Wood's Prism via Zoom defied my expectations. Hugh Simpson's review is more severe on the production that I would be (I loved it) but he makes a lot of good points.

I was on Zoom myself one morning for theatrical purposes.  This was a reading of a play it is proposed to put on as part of a weekend theatre fest in late May. The reading was to give the author, none other than the aforementioned CMF Wood, an idea of how it might sound.  I used all my guile to snatch a look or two at the Australian Tennis Open men's final (which I had been watching before the reading) while keeping my place in the script.  Afterwards I went off for an afternoon of sax playing casting a glance at the tennis score whenever I could because I had sadly had to leave before Rafa clinched the match.

Siobhan was very interested in a letter written by Mary Queen of Scots that went up for auction this month. She suggested I went along to curb her enthusiasm should she be tempted to allocate her all to its acquisition.  This I gladly did preceded by a tasty lunch of fish and chips in the Barony and a white wine in the Theatre Royal, and followed by a G&T or two in Mather's.  What a pleasant afternoon it was.  I hope the buyer of the letter enjoyed the afternoon too.

And what a pleasant evening was a Burns supper at which I recited as I often do (at Burns suppers that is) his Ode to the Haggis.  It was not one of my finest renditions.  Indeed I think in future I'll just play my Youtube version.

Back in November I became aware that a new law was to be introduced concerning the installation of inter-linked smoke and heat alarms so I bought them straightaway but only managed to get around to installing them 24 hours before the law came into force on 1st February.  Will anyone ever check I wonder.

This week I finished putting my website back together after its mysterious disappearance some months ago.  It was a tedious job but I enjoyed revisiting old productions and holidays. I'm now having a look at some of the other websites that I created in the past, for example to advertise the sale of the Barbansais house and one I did for the Grads.  I'm amazed at my now long lost skills.

I have something of a predilection for trees in their winter glory.  I daresay had Burns turned his mind to it he could have written a rare poem in praise of them which I'd have been delighted to quote in this blog post that's being published on his birthday. In recompense my picture tips its hat to another poet worthy of a supper in his name.

January has sped past without very much happening in the little pool that I inhabit.  Ewan went home early on.  The band got back into action, joined last night by Esther who got me into thinking about the saxophone in Barbansais about fifteen years ago.  She and husband Andy have just returned to Edinburgh after some ten years in Munich.  We lunched together in Henderson's the veggie restaurant run I understand by descendants of the Henderson who opened one of Edinburgh's earliest veggie places in the New Town years ago. I had an aubergine dish that was ok but didn't measure up to the stuffed aubegine I made myself at lunchtime today. 

I had another meal out at L'Escargot Bleu where my tasty rabbit was washed down with conviviality.  I haven't had a home cooked rabbit to compare it with yet.

I was cited for jury service but as in the only other time this has happened to me I didn't have to serve.  I'm of an age where I have the right to be excused but I didn't exercise that right; not entirely from a sense of civic duty but mostly in the hope it would be interesting. 

There is a celebration of the work of Francois Truffaut on currently and I've enjoyed a handful of films from it so far.  I went to the cinema to see Les 400 Coups which despite its fame I don't believe I'd seen before.  It's a good film but quite a hard watch dealing as it does with the harsh childhood of its protagonist, Antoine Doinel, who is modeled on Truffaut himself.  

Thanks to my BFI subscription I've been able to watch the four subsequent films that follow  Antoine through adolescence, marriage and divorce.  Truffaut made the first film in 1959 and the last in the series in 1979.  In all of them Doinel was played by the same actor, Jean-Pierre Léaud.  Apart from Les 400 Coups they are all comedies and very funny.

There are another half dozen films unrelated to Doinel being shown in cinemas and I intend to see them all and indeed have already seen two, L'Argent de Poche and La Nuit Americaine.  I'd seen the latter before but remembered nothing about it other than the title and its meaning which I will leave you to discover for yourselves.  It's a light-hearted look at film making.  Jean-Pierre Léaud appears in it and plays a character very like Doinel.

So 2022 has arrived, not before time given all the crap that 2020 and 2021 have dealt out.  According to something I heard on the radio recently the human brain has a built in optimism bias.  80% of us when asked proclaim that things are going to get better,  So there.  I fall within the 80% and hope you do too.

After the heady excitement of my trip to the Highland Widlife Park life got back to normal with an online reading of a play about witchcraft. and Ewan's arrival from the States for Christmas.  Neither of these is actually normal but in these pandemic times anything untainted by Covid seems normal.

The following weekend I watched rugby at Goldenacre and via the telly the Abu Dhabi F1 Grand Prix.  I don't normally find F1 racing terribly interesting but I enjoyed this race a lot and as a knife edge finish to the season it could hardly have been bettered.  Mercedes were very grumpy but Hamilton although clearly disappointed was not at all backward in congratulating Verstappen.  If all the races were like that I might watch more often.

The pantomime at the Gaiety theatre in Ayr was streamed to the world and some of last year's Thursday Theatre group watched it.  I enjoyed it and straightway recommended to Andrew that being a resident of Ayr he attend in real life.  It turned out that he indeed planned to go with family including his young grandson but Covid cancellation scuppered the plan.

We, that is the Dunedin Wind Band, managed to hold a Christmas concert.  We had strict free from Covid entry criteria for both band and audience.  Despite my sending out around 120 emails advertising the gig the only friends who turned up were those I already knew were coming plus Steve the fireman who generally makes it.  Sarah Naish who founded the band and who was our musical director till early last year played percussion and her husband Johnny was there with his tuba.  It gave us an opportunity, denied by the pandemic at the time Sarah left, to make a little presentation and thank them both for all their work over the years.  Afterwards said friends repaired to Siobhan's for fizz and festive chat.

A couple of days later I went to the Queen's Hall to a SNJO concert.  The music was good and Tommy Smith was his usual entertaining self and we all got a free CD of Christmas jazz as we left.  Shame the audience was so sparse.

Then I went down to Keswick for a week of Christmas fun and games.  We did actually play a board game one evening that was rather fun.  Cranium involved, inter alia, drawing with your eyes shut and sculpting plasticine.  I visited the pencil museum for the first time and recommend it highly. 

I did some limited walking about, making my first ever visit to the far side of the lake but not venturing down past the theatre to the spot on the lake where I usually go.  We had an outing to Hebden Bridge where Ben has recently bought a house with a great view though thanks to the mist we weren't able to enjoy it.  But it looks great in photos.  We had a festive feast in a jam-packed unmasked restaurant in the town with various Blincoes.  We were 13 at table but thankfully no misadventure arose.

As soon as I got back I was eating again.  This time in the tiny Cafe Konj under Scotland's stricter rules.  To comply with the spirit of those I fitted in a lateral flow test in the brief interal between getting off the train and hitting the cafe.  Persian grub, friendly service and convivial company providing a splendid welcome home.

The Cairngorms seen from the Highland Wildlife Park where I'd gone to see the macaques before my adopter status runs out.  I travelled up in a bus from Edinburgh that drops you at the end of the entrance road.  Because it comes off the A9 here and there the journey turns into a bit of a bus tour.  I was most impressed at how it arrived at every stop bang on the time listed in the timetable, rivalling Japanese railways.  The driver surely knew that Japanese macaques were my objective.

This is their playground but when I arrived it was close to empty.  There are some monkeys on the far side more or less invisible to the naked eye so I decided to look round the park and come back later.  First I took a picture of the heron on that little island.

On the way into the park I'd passed a clump or two of resting Bactrian camels and a cat that

was the spitting image of the cat that lived in Fiona's house sixty years ago.  It probably does a lot of spitting when provoked because it's a Scottish wildcat.  These animals are in danger of disappearing because they and domestic cats are making whoopee together so there's a project to save them presumably by restricting their sexual opportunities.

I managed to take out of focus pictures of tigers and polar bears and of arctic foxes with fence lines across their faces but better pics of a lynx and a snow leopard 

before coming back to the macaques now out in strength where I managed to take lots of out of focus pictures.  My camera liked to focus on the fence instead of the animals behind it and although it has a manual focus feature I'd no idea how to use it.  So it was a bit frustrating but now I've read the manual so may do better next time.  But I don't want to deprive you of the monkeys so feast your eyes.  They're not all out of focus.

 

There was more and there were more animals but eventually I left the park and caught a local bus to Kingussie to catch a train home.  I was the only human being in the station and was treated to a variety of pre-programmed announcements about time table changes, warnings to "see it, say it, sort it" etc including an announcement that the next train arriving at platform 1 was the 16.08 to Edinburgh.  Fortunately I had been pre-warned by the signalman who came out of his box and shouted to me that it would in fact be departing from platform 2 so I wasn't left in the wrong place gazing at a missed train.

The Eden Court Theatre in Inverness.  This was the only Scottish venue visited by Mathew Bourne's new ballet The Midnight Bell on its UK tour.  A few of us decided to make the trip.  Illness cut the group down to two so Claire and I took the bus north one Saturday morning, got there early afternoon, checked in to a hotel, visited the museum (small but full of good stuff and with a pleasant cafe to boot), had a tasty early dinner and saw the show.  Very good it was too.  Beautifully staged,lit, costumed and danced. Athough I disagree with their opinion of the lip synced thirties numbers this review is well worth reading and has excellent pictures of the action.  

After a substantial and delicious breakfast, (I was tempted to stray beyond my usual limited regime and am glad I gave in), we pottered about the town wondering at the number of churches flanking the river till it was time to take the bus home.  A most enjoyable trip and I came away with a new bunnet as a souvenir.

I've never considered myself a G&S fan although I've enjoyed those of their shows that I've seen and had a thoroughly enjoyable evening as a reviewer's plus one at Scottish Opera's production of The Gondoliers.  It's a very funny feel good show and some of its 19th century satirical references were replaced to good effect by digs at our current public figures.

In the world of straight theatre there was a super production of Jo Clifford's version of Calderon de la Barca's Life is a Dream at The Lyceum.  The stage had been extended to cover the entire stalls area and give a space for the play to be done in the round, although there was a little upstage directional emphasis to allow for the fact that a proportion of the audience were in the circle rather than on stage where I was. It's a story of honour besmirched and revenge sought and what we might now call preventive detention whereby Segismundo, crown prince of Poland, is imprisoned at birth because of astrological forecasts that he will grow to be a tyranical king.  Temporarily freed to test the waters he does indeed behave badly and is put back in his box.  Meanwhile Rosaura is looking for the man who knocked her up then left.  She has revenge in mind and knife in hand.  There's lots of Shakespearean cross dressing, coincidence and cunning plotting.  Finally, again as is common in Shakespeare all is revealed and the the appropriate matches are made.    

The performances were first class.  In particular Lorn Macdonald as Segismundo turns in a tour de force.

I saw a much smaller scale but very interesting and accomplished production at The Kings.  This was The Signalman, a one man play by Peter Arnott. It's a reminiscence in later life by the man who staffed the last signalbox before the Tay Bridge on the night of the disaster and who in fact waved the train on to its fatal rails.  A very fine performance and staging.

I've heard a lot of music this month, some old tuneful favourites like Sheherazade and The New World symphony, new to me Brahm's Piano Concerto Number 1, and two more profound pieces.  Both of those were at SCO concerts. 

Shostakovich is a composer whose work I regard highly and his 14th Symphony is a dark and thought provoking piece.  Consisting of 11 songs about death linked together it could hardly be otherwise but it's a wonderful listen.

A more difficult listen was Berg's Chamber Concerto for Violin and Piano with 13 Wind Instruments.  This was the second and strongly contrasting half of a concert in which sweet romantic music from Mahler's happy days had pleased but not stirred. I couldn't call it insipid but it didn't move me that much.  Whereas I actually jumped at one point in the Berg as the pianist pounded the left hand end of the instrument. Friends said to me later that they hadn't rushed to stream it on Spotify when they got home.  Neither did I but I would like to hear it again.

Some friends are great fans of the food and wines of Turkey, the Caucasas and Iran and such like places.  They organised a meal at a tiny place in Tollcross run by an Iranian lady.  It's really a little cafe that closes its doors about 5pm and serves a party of up to eight people a selection of dishes from the region. It was lovely food and I particularly loved the way she did the rice.  I could have eaten that alone and left well satisfied.

I happened to eat alone at Rollo in Broughton Street one day because my lunch companion couldn't make it at the last minute. Lovely lunch and great service. 

The Zambia Society Trust held their AGM on Zoom again this year.  After the business of minutes, financial report etc there were two most interesting presentations.  One about the development of the Medical Licentiate programme bringing trained personnel to a large number of rural district hospitals.  We had a talk on the way ML training is being done as well as a report on a study into the lessons being learnt from the programme.  Then a presentation about Flyspec which is a flying doctor service active in the country.  Both of these as well as the Zambia Scciety itself are good organisations to help you use up your spare cash.  Just click on the links above.

I occasionally watch foreign TV channels (as much as one can given regional restrictions) and one of the best is TV5Monde.  They've been showing some films recently starring Yves Montand, either because of the centenary of his birth or the thirtieth anniversary of his death. I've watched a couple and after one I lingered on to watch a fascinating documentary.

This was about Dominique Strauss-Kahn, known to his friends (and I imagine to his enemies) as DSK.  Head honcho of the IMF until he fell from grace over some sexual shenanigans the programme sought to answer the question "what's he being doing since?".  The answer is making lots of money and paying very few taxes.  All within the law, as befits a former socialist finance minister.

 

This is one of the many, many monkeys to be found in Edinburgh zoo.  The fact that he's got himself slightly out of focus by hiding in a tree doesn't hide the fact that he's not the monkey I had gone to the zoo to see.  The Japanese macaque whose adoptive father I have been for ten months courtesy of a Christmas gift is it turns out domiciled at the zoo's Highland premises. 

Notwithstanding that disappointment we had a lovely afternoon, seeing the famous pandas and the zoo's newest acquistion, half a dozen giraffes as well as those old favourites the penguins.

 

 

 

 

 We finished off the day with platters and wine at Nótt.

The RSNO held their first Usher Hall concert since the pandemic struck.  The audience were very enthusiastic even though spread out socially thinly and masked; to the extent that the opening announcement was drowned out by applause.  

The main work was Stravinsky's Firebird ballet music and before the interval we heard some lovely cello playing in Tchaikovsky's Rococco Variations preceded by the very cheerful Festive Overture by Shostakovich and a short and appropriately celebratory fanfare called The Isle is Full of Noises by Scottish composer Mathew Rooke.

You can't beat a full symphony orchestra giving it laldy and we loved it.  It's a bit comical seeing the conductor's mask going on and off as he takes his calls but heh that's pandemics for you.

I also enjoyed another SCO concert, at the Queen's Hall this time.  Again we were all socially distanced and masked, though as at the Usher Hall the bar was open and there was an interval in which to patronise it unlike earlier more tentative gigs I've been to.

They played Bach, Mozart and Haydn which was all very fine but the piece that caught my ear was Die Schöne Melusine by Mendelssohn. Wikipedia tells me that 

The piece was written in 1834 as a birthday gift for Mendelssohn's sister Fanny In a letter to her of 7 April 1834, he explains that he had picked on the subject after seeing Conradin Kreuzer's opera Melusina the previous year in Berlin. Kreutzer's overture, writes Mendelssohn "was encored, and I disliked it exceedingly, and the whole opera quite as much: but not [the singer] Mlle. Hähnel, who was very fascinating, especially in one scene when she appeared as a mermaid combing her hair; this inspired me with the wish to write an overture which the people might not encore, but which would cause them more solid pleasure."[

Well I haven't heard Kreutzer's overture but I'm happy to take Mendelssohn's word for it since I enjoyed his so much.

There was more good music at Scottish Ballet's Starstruck, albeit recorded. This was a reworking of Pas de Dieux, a ballet that Gene Kelly choreographed for the Paris Opera in 1960.  It was a lovely thing to watch and seemed to me rather like a Broadway musical without the songs.  I didn't follow the plot other than realising that two chaps were squabbling over a girl - Broadway musical again.  Later consultation of the programme online enlightened me.  It was all about Aphrodite, Eros and Zeus.  Who'd have known.

There was an interesting post show chat with Kelly's widow and members of Scottish Ballet including their artistic director Christopher Hampton who choreographed Starstruck. 

Another stage work I've seen recently was The Enemy by The National Theatre of Scotland.  This again was a retelling, this time of Ibsen's An Enemy of the People.  

I very much enjoyed the presentation of the show, the combination of video and on-stage acting, the clever take off of publicity material, the twitter storm moments and more.  But I was less enthralled by the quality of some of the acting, a lack of dramatic tension and more importantly I'm not sure what the point of putting on the play was.

How exactly did they recast the play for the modern age?  They added a whiff of sexual misdemeanours and cast women as the main characters but I can't think of much else.  So was it just to point out that plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose?  Maybe it was and maybe that's a good enough reason.

 

We fortified ourselves before the show by eating at Ong Gie.  Korean food was new to me.  Unsurpringly it bears a resemblance to Chinese.  The meal was delicious but when they say "spicy" be warned, they mean it.

On a lovely sunny day I went out for a walk in the West Lothian countryside and this is one of the things I saw.  An unusual sight you might think but not in that particular corner of West Lothian.  I was in Jupiter Artland which as well as having beautiful woods, fine views and a magnificent country house is also home to works of art such as this.

I ventured to Modern One for some more visual art, a much praised video installation about Frederick Douglass the American slave who gained his freedom and campaigned thereafter for abolition.  He was famed for his writing and his oratory and spent a couple of years based in Scotland.  The ten screen video installation was pleasant to look at but if I hadn't already known about Douglass or watched the "making of" video next door I don't think I'd have learnt much.  Does that matter?

Back to an art form I'm more at home with I went to the Traverse to enjoy their brief Play, Pie and Pint season.  Two of the three shows were excellent.  First Rose, about Rose Reilly.  Who she you ask.  As did I.  Played  international football for both Scotland and Italy,  named female world fooballer of the year, banned by the SFA who eventually saw the error of their ways.  It's a fascinating story and was brilliantly dramatised and performed.  Then A New Life which was a sparkling musical comedy with a tap dancing baby and a serious strand about post natal depression.  The third, which I saw first was called Celestial Body.  I thought it was mildly entertaing but the story of the entrapment of a gym going washing machine engineer by the parents of a child who had died in an accident caused (?) by him failed to set my dramatic sensitivites alight.

Musically the SNJO gave their first post lockdown concert, a celebration for their 25th birthday which treated us to a selection of pieces from their extensive repertoire over those years with a series of first class solos from a number of players, not least Tommy Smith himself. 

The SCO likewise presented their first post lockdown concert in which they played two suitably upbeat and exhilarating pieces, Beethoven's 5th Piano Concerto and Mendelssohn's Scottish Symphony.

Although the music has a Scottish feel to it none of it is scored for the pipes but I had the pleasure of visiting the National Piping Centre in Glasgow where the sound of the pipes is ever present in their little museum.  Not in their restaurant though where Andrew and I had an excellent lunch.  My traditional battered fish and chips was one of the best I've ever had and was washed down with a very tasty white Rioja.

I've had two more eating out experiences since I last posted.  Claire and Phil treated us to an end of summer barbeque leg of lamb of exceptional tastiness.  The taste lingered but not as long as the smell of woodsmoke has persisted in my jersey.  In a less domestic setting I had lunch in The Lookout on Calton Hill.  This is an offshoot of The Gardener's Cottage down below.  The views are of course superb.  The food was excellent.  The wines were winsome enough to encourage the opening of a second bottle.  The prices were outstanding.

After lunch I wandered down to the Mound Precinct where the Homeless World Cup had been being played and where the crowd were being entertained by the Fun Lovin' Crime Writers Band with Val McDermid on vocals.