This is the view from the house I shared with other members of the 4.48 Psychosis company in Kelso at the weekend. It's also where our hopes of taking the show on to Inverness ended up.

But there is life after death. Most of the company are already embarked on another show and I'm reading plays in anticipation of 2009.

For a full debrief on the SCDA theatrical high jinks at Kelso see Plaything.

An irritating beeping noise early in the morning is bad enough but on the morning that the clocks have gone forward it's an hour worse.

That Sunday at 05.00 GMT my smoke alarm started to beep, but not to protect me from death by burning. There was no cloud of smoke. There was not so much as a wisp in evidence.

Once the brain had cranked into gear I decided that the backup battery (it's a mains connected gadget) was exhausted. I got up on a chair and struggled with the cover while generating a major crick in the neck. It was only an hour or so later once Connor had been roused that I remembered I had a step-ladder, well two actually.

No way could I see how to get it open to get at the battery and stop the infernal beep.

We discussed breaking it apart with a sledgehammer. I'll wait until I can inspect some like it to try to work out how to open it up. It doesn't seem to have the same mechanism as the ones I installed in Mountcastle. Fortunately I was out a lot that day.

On Monday I unsuccessfully looked for a similar alarm but mercy me it didn't beep until just before the electrical shops closed at 5pm. It beeped all night.

Tuesday morning it got too much for me and I started to dismantle the beast and at an early stage snipped some wires to give blissful silence. Once in pieces it was clear how it fitted together.

The next challenge was to find exactly the same model so that the base plate still attached to the mains didn't need to be removed. A combination of internet search and telephone enquiry led me to one in Abbeyhill and in a jiffy all was fixed.

I haven't blogged for a while because I've been learning Pirate. Why not have a go yourself.

It seems that I was so disconcerted on Wednesday that I failed to register Act 1 Scene 2. Reading the play in the bus I see that there (in scene 2 that is not in the bus) Viola gets filled in on the goings on in Illyria including the Orsino/Olivia situation. So the audience is not denied that vital information after all. Now I'm asking myself what scene 1 is there for. Cut it Gordon, cut it.

Nor are the former patrons of Ndebele denied their biltong. I learn from a notice in the window of their vacant premises that Findlays of Portobello have added biltong and boerworst to their 101 things a butcher can do with dead animals.

Ben has gone off to the Himalayas for a wee walk and is keeping a travel log. I added a link to my list a couple of weeks ago but forgot to point that out. It's worth a click, especially for the pictures.

A week without a post disappoints at least one of my regular readers so just for her here are the highlights of my last seven days.

On Saturday I attended a concert in St Mary's Cathedral (the pisky one) in celebration of Ronald Stevenson's 80th birthday. The composer was there but not too many chums had turned out, or was I just fooled by the vastness of the space. Anyway he'd surely have been pleased by Murray McLachlan's playing of his Passacaglia on DSCH.

This is a pretty astonishing piece - solo piano without a pause for one hour and twenty minutes that grips the listener throughout. Apart from needing the stamina required to play for that length of time various other demands are made of the pianist. Perhaps the most entertaining for the spectator is when the page-turner, seated on the pianist's left gets up, knocks the music stand down flat and runs round to his right while the pianist, continuing to play with his right hand leans into the body of the piano and thumps the strings vigorously in various rhythms with his left hand for a page or two.

Sunday saw our second rehearsal for the reprise of 4.48 Psychosis and the eagerly awaited first episode of Mad Men. As so often happens the hype belied the quality of the product, for me at any rate. Since I'm not often faced with a surfeit of entertainment at 10pm on a Sunday evening I may watch it again. On the other hand The Westminster Hour can be a thrilling bundle of fun. No hype for 4.48. In Kelso crowds will roll up for that on the basis of a solid track record.

On Monday I bolted down Connor's delicious paneer pot au feu and rushed off to a residents' association meeting due to take place in a local cafe as a result of our previous meeting arrangements having been judged of a lesser priority than toon cooncil business. But alack and alas some cock-up with keys kept the cafe closed and we repaired to the chairman's kitchen for a rapid romp through parking schemes, lift malfunctions, vandalism, repainting funds, defective locks - the usual exciting ephemera.

Scott's great skill as a chairman is always to draw the meeting to a close bang on 7.30 which left me enough time to get to the Queen's Hall by half way through the first movement of Beethoven's string trio opus something or other. I managed to slip in while the crowd cleared its collective throat between movements one and two. The trio was elegant and was elegantly played but I was happier in the second half. A piano was added to beef up the strings for a rattling good chunk of Dvorak. I pass over Kurtag's little miniatures that never seem to go anywhere.

More music on Tuesday - at lunchtime I went to one of the university's extremely good value concerts - is there better value than free? An engaging short piece by Janacek was followed by a stomping rendition of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. The orchestrated versions are all very well but the original for piano alone doesn't need any help at all. It's one of my desert island discs.

My language sensibilities were intrigued by the fact that it was billed as Pictures IN rather than Pictures AT which is how I've always known it so I googled them both. AT wins hands down for the Mussorgsky piece but there is an IN, to wit Pictures in an exhibition by Death Cab for Cutie which is a very different kettle of fish. Listen to it and groan. There is also an AT by Emerson Lake and Palmer that is a rock version of Mussorksky's music with lyrics added. It's horrid.

I popped into the City Art Centre afterwards and admired Ansell Adams photographs, many of which I've been exposed to through the medium of calendars winging their way to me from the USA during Connor's sojourn there. There is an exhibition of political cartoons on as well that had me laughing out loud. My very particular favourite that might even be worth the £295 asking price features East Fife football strip burkas. I shan't spoil your fun by explaining why. Just go and see it.

Another very different kettle of fish cropped up that evening when I went with a number of Grads to Edinburgh Music Theatre's production of A Chorus Line. For some in the audience this was a chance to re-experience a well loved show/film but it was my first time. I shan't rush to re-experience. As a story it failed to interest, engage, move or excite me on any level and the music was musak.

The company however did a great job. They did the best they could to make it look interesting - hard with all that standing around in a long line in front of black drapes - and I failed to see the logic in sometimes having the practice "mirrors" visible and sometimes not but they got a good variety of groupings and interesting lighting effects. There was a lot of red but I don't really think I was grumpy about it. (see Play Thing).

The characterisations were all well judged. The acting was confident and sincere. None of the accents faltered even slightly. The costumes were excellent (notwithstanding the gents' baggy trousers in the finale which some people didn't like but which I didn't notice because I was concentrating on the girls). I loved the dancing, especially the finale and not being a pitch perfectionist the singing passed my muster without a stain on its character.

Choose a more interesting show next time please.

On Wednesday the Grads held their monthly meeting with the carrot of a reading of Twelfth Night (the autumn production to be) to encourage people to put up with the boring business stuff. Claire shares with Scott the desire to shoot through the agenda and despite a barely controlled bout of corpsing brought on by notification of an SCDA opportunity for younger people had it done and dusted just after eight.

Those with previous engagements bade farewell and we started the read. Fifteen lines into Act 1 Scene 1 Gordon interrupted to say we'll cut there and go on to scene 2. I confess to having been disconcerted. Was that just for this reading or does he intend to play it that way? If he does then the audience will not be told that Orsino is in love with Olivia and that she has rejected his overtures, a central element of the plot. Ah well!

After the reading I went home to sup on Connor's second culinary concoction of the week which had not matured (those pesky spuds) in time for me to eat before going out.

I had decided a while ago to go to the Citizen's production of Waiting for Godot and on Thursday set off to see the matinee performance. This was scheduled to be a cheap day out since I can travel to Glasgow by bus for nothing and the Citz charge only £6 for their matinees.

The bus I intended to catch pulled out dead on time, if not early, when I was about 50 yards short of its stance. No hassle, another will be along in 15 minutes. But that one was 15 minutes late so I arrived in Glasgow with so little time to spare that I decided I'd have to get a taxi - cost £5.20. I got to the theatre with ten minutes to spare to learn that the matinee had been cancelled. Should I just go away? Seems a shame having got here so I bought a ticket for the evening performance. That's £9 even for a wee concessionary like me so I'm now 135% over budget and naturally if I'm here all day I'll have to have some lunch.

I had in fact a very pleasant lunch (now 386% over budget) and did a bit of tourism. For the first time in my life I went into the cathedral. It's an absolutely splendid building and at least it is still there unlike many of the historic relics featured in a little tourist trail leaflet that I followed. I gazed in awe at the former sites of past wonders. What destructive planning ideologue allowed Britain's first music-hall to be torn down without even a brass plaque to mark the spot let alone a decent photograph and a recording of Harry Lauder singing "Stop yer ticklin jock"?

Back to the Gorbals for a coffee (413% over budget) and a great show. Gerry Mulgrew played one of the tramps and the play was even funnier than I remembered. I guess Glasgow accents and personalities are just that bit funnier than we are over here in the east.

So that's six of the last seven days. Today I finished reading "Utopia & other places" by Richard Eyre. It's an enjoyable read with good stories of his time at The Lyceum and at the Nottingham Playhouse. The book contains many thoughtful and useful aperçus for the actor and director.

And of course I wrote this post.

Coming home from a lovely meal at Telford College's Zero One restaurant the other night, made even lovelier by it being Nick's treat, I greeted an Indian gentleman who was leaving the ground floor for the basement as I approached the lift.

This is what met my eyes when the lift door opened. I stepped in and snapped then stepped back out of the lift whether to snap it from another angle or to ask the chap if he hadn't perhaps forgotten his chapattis I am not sure but the door closed and lift and contents vanished from view.

I jabbed at the button but the lift did not respond. It whirred on a journey up and down the shaft ignoring my persistent finger.

I could hear male and female sub-continental voices exchange incomprehensible remarks until silence fell broken by a descending whirr and a final clunk as the lift came to rest revealing only a trace of its former burden.


25kg of chapatti flour had disappeared in a mechanised form of Indian rope trick.

Collage of a happy holiday weekend near Cupar.

One gets used to miles of traffic cones on motorways with nothing very much in evidence to explain why they are there. Now this phenomenon has spread to the pavement in Princes Street.

Watch this space.

The team who swept to victory with 4.48 Psychosis on Saturday night. Does this garment belong to one of them or to one of their followers or has the litter lunatic penetrated as far as my bathroom?

Ndebele has closed down.

Ag pleez Deddy where will we get our biltong now? (with apologies to Jeremy Taylor).

This is the mini demo that met my eyes when I went to the City Chambers to sit in on the planning committee deliberations on the Caltongate development.

There has been a great deal of polemic over these plans. You can read the rosy view of the developers (don't miss the amazing movie) or the black views of the protestors or in search of undoubtedly partial but less visceral plaints see what the Cockburn Association has had to say.

Whatever you do you'll find it hard to make up your mind. Most of it is being built on the ground previously occupied by a bus depot. No loss there methinks. Some of it entails the demolition of existing buildings. This will go.
Built as an infant school in 1901 I wonder if there were protests about what had to be done away with to allow its construction? It's not a school now and I believe that provision is being made for its current functions to be carried on elsewhere in the area but still you'd like to think it might have been incorporated somewhere.

One of the more bizarre complaints I read in the comments in the on-line Scotsman was that Scotland's northern latitude dictated the need for wide streets and low buildings. Not I think a characteristic of Edinburgh's Old Town. Sydney Goodsir Smith called the Canongate a canyon not a boulevard.

In the three hours I attended there was a lot of discussion and some highly vocal protests from the public benches. "Money grabbing gits" or some similar remark met the approval of the sub-division of the planning application relating to the hotel.

The planning committee as a whole however had few doubts and voted most of it through. Next stop is referral to the Scottish Executive. What with Trump's golf course and this they'll be brought down to earth after yesterday's budget triumph.

Personally I like the overall ideas and the layout of the various elements but I'm not too keen on the look of the buildings. If we are going modern I'd prefer them to be more exciting, more daring, mould breaking - more Scottish Parliament than Victoria Quay.

Maybe they'll grow on me, if they ever get built.

Passing through a close off the Royal Mile the other day I came across three winos chewing the fat and overheard one declare "thae effin Poles are takin aw the guid pitches".

Now as we all know the recent wave of Polish immigration is composed entirely of hard-working and charming young people of good character whose presence has revitalised the Scottish economy and reinvigorated the Catholic church.

I understand that it's thae effin Romanians who are spoiling things for our industrious indigenous beggars, or is it the other way around?

For some time I've been laboriously scanning and cleaning up a batch of photographs that I took on holiday in Morocco in 1989. I've finished them at last and have linked the album to my Life of Brian website but they are also accessible from here:

Morocco89

Over the last several months these machines have been appearing at bus-stops throughout the city and now one has made it to my stop.
According to the Lothian Buses website they have been a great success and are very popular but so far I have not seen a solitary soul make use of them. I don't find that surprising given the list of things this machine does not do. It does not:

• take credit or debit cards
• take banknotes
• give change
• allow you to overpay by more than 20p
• dispense more than one ticket per transaction
• give a ticket for tomorrow or even much later today - get aboard in 40 minutes or else

Now I'm all in favour of off bus ticketing but it has to be a bit more sophisticated than this. Think of a family of four having a day out in Edinburgh. Currently that's nine quid but to get those tickets they have to assemble a bucketful of coins and conduct four transactions. Have the bus bosses never set foot on the continent?

Just wait till you are 60 folks, no problem then.

I have just received my first dollop of state pension. My old auntie, and many like her, enjoyed the thrill of going down to the post office every Thursday clutching her pension book to collect a sheaf of notes and a handful of shining shillings then running the gauntlet of muggers who hung about waiting to snatch the handbags of defenceless old ladies until she reached the safety of her council flat where she would stash the dough in a tin box hidden in the cupboard under the sink. Every so often she would grudgingly peel off a fiver or two and totter along to the gas board or whoever to pay a bill.

The gas board office has gone and it seems that the post office will not be far behind so it's just as well that I'm a fully paid up member of the electronic banking community. The pension will dribble into my account every four weeks and the gas bill will debit its way directly out.

Now along with the notification of first payment came a little leaflet (BR2215 12/05 for those who like precision) with an injunction to read it carefully. Naturally, not having a job to go to, I found time to do so.

Mostly it tells you about circumstances which you must report to big brother Brown's pension police. Now, although I suppose I might get married it seems unlikely that I will go into foster care. (I'm too old for that surely?). I'm happy to tell them if I have a transplant especially if it means I get the donor's pension added to mine, though if I end up in residential care I'll let the sods who put me there handle the admin.

But the leaflet also says:

Tell your Pension Centre if.......
you leave the United Kingdom(UK) for 3 months or more
The UK is England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland

elsewhere it says:

Tell your Pension Centre if.......
you intend to leave Great Britain for more than 4 weeks
Great Britain is England, Scotland and Wales

So I can't live it up in Belfast for 29 days without letting on. Strange restriction in a free country.

Why do they want to know anyway? You kind of suspect an ulterior motive, like not giving you any money. So I sought clarification in the FAQ of the Pension Service website.

To quote (I've left out some of the fine detail) :

What happens if......

I go to live abroad or visit?
Contact The Pension Service as soon as you can to let us know you are going abroad.

You can continue to get your State Pension anywhere in the world. (deletions)

I go abroad for 3 months or less
If you have your State Pension paid into an account, this can continue. (deletions)

I go abroad for between 6 and 12 months
If you have your State Pension paid into an account, this can continue. (deletions)

I go abroad for 12 months or permanently
We can pay your State Pension straight into your overseas account in some countries. If this is not possible or if you prefer, we can pay your State Pension into a UK account (deletions)

So nothing changes then, unless it's in the Bermuda triangle between 3 and 6 months.

I suspect I shall save myself the expense of a stamp next time I set off for France.

Here's what you may feel is an unsympathetic review of two plays that I suffered through on Friday but believe me the guy is bending over backwards to be polite.

Unconvincing works fail to break the ice

A good news litter report for a change.

I came in the other afternoon through a heap of litter at the back door and made a mental note to clear it up when I went out in the evening. So a couple of hours later, armed with a plastic bag I headed out.

To my astonishment and delight the litter had gone.

After the festive season back to life with a bang yesterday at Scottish Ballet's Sleeping Beauty.

I thoroughly enjoyed the show. Apart from anything else the music and the costumes are both gorgeous. I was puzzled at the end of Act 1 that bows and arrows were being destroyed, but, dozy me, had forgotten and, dozier me, had failed to pick up from the action that Sleeping Beauty falls asleep in the first instance because the bad fairy's curse exposes her to danger from pricks. Plus ça change.

In the Rose Adagio Ashley Page's choreography makes things easier on the ballerina than the twirling on one point that I saw Darcey Bussell do on the tele recently and according to the Guardian review gives it the air of a brothel scene. None the worse for that say I.

Today I enjoyed recognising Edinburgh locations in Hallam Foe and I was entertained by the film as well, though it's an odd little tale that doesn't seem sure whether it's a psychological thriller or a romantic comedy. Perhaps it's two for the price of one.

After the film I rushed off to rehearse 4.48 Psychosis. This was our second rehearsal but the first to set out the blocking. Claire has devised an intriguing presentation combining classical statuary, clinical detachment and brooding menace. I hope we can find a way to deliver the text that lives up to her imagination. Speaking for myself "The hair might go but the dream remains".

I'm used to finding all sorts of litter when I come home but this is a bit out of the usual. Admittedly it's New Year. I'd just come from an excellent party given by Claire and Russell where we had fêted the season unrestrainedly and loosed rockets of terrifying beauty from Portobello beach into the upper regions of our lovely planet.

This was potentially a pain in the neck - ambulances, police, whatever. I checked his breathing - regular and as normal as you'd expect from someone asleep. I tried valiantly to wake him without success. I decided he was in a drunken stupor rather than on the point of death and left nature to take her course.