We've now got a movie-maker in the family. Ewan has produced this charming little video starring some of my frequent summer visitors.

A package came through my letterbox a few days ago and by virtue of its timing has been declared a Christmas present and a most unusual one at that.

In the summer of 2006 Chus and Eduardo, Spanish friends of mine, came to France with a group of their friends for a fortnight's holiday in the Creuse. I spent a fair bit of time with them and recorded some highlights in my blog.

But Antonio went a lot further. He has produced 74 A4 pages of text and sketches celebrating those two weeks and that's what Chus has sent me. I may offer you extracts from time to time. For starters here are the drawing that decorates the cover and the paeon to the Creuse that opens the story.

UN PARAÍSO PERSONAL

Del explendor de un bosque,
de unas estacas hiladas,
de un mar de moras
y otro de hierba fresca.
Del explendor de un horizonte azul,
apenas despejado ante las nubes,
de las sinuosidades,
de las curvas del camino,
de aquel recodo de 180 grados
donde no pusieron la cruz
ni las señales amarillas.
Sí, todo da igual.
Pasamos nosotros
entre las piedras grandes,
comidas de musgo verde.

LA CREUSE

Alan came up from Manchester to help celebrate my birthday and stayed on for a couple of days. We visited various exhibitions together while he was here. The show of Joan Eardley's work at the RSA is wonderful. I love her paintings of Glasgow children. From the quick colourful chalk on sandpaper portraits of the faces of individuals to the much more elaborate groups in collages that incorporate elements of their environment you can feel their personalities bursting out.

It's fascinating too to look at the photographs of these kids in the east end of Glasgow that she used to help her portraiture. No wonder the city council wanted to raze those tenements to the ground and build decent homes for the post-war generation.

For something rather different we went down to the Botanic Gardens. In truth we went there to enjoy the gardens but there were a couple of exhibitions on in Inverleith House, the former home of the National Gallery's modern collection. They stick to a modern remit and currently are showing imitation girders mounted at decapitating height in a number of rooms. In the absence of attendants protecting the work (draw your own conclusions) I sneaked a picture.

The show in the basement was much more fun. It consisted of a small display case of odds and ends, a couple of posters and an excellent sequence of music videos inspired by and celebrating the works of a few contemporary artists including Peter Blake and Louise Bourgeois.

A songsheet was available so you could sing along with the video. In one mad moment Alan danced along as well. That may have been in the absence of other punters. We stayed a while but most punters did not dally. A man entered the room as we left it but still managed to catch the same lift as us back to the ground floor.

The Botanics have been familiar to me since we used to take the kids there in the sixties and I still think the best view of Edinburgh is from the lawn in front of Inverleith House. I've snapped it a number of times and did so again on Sunday. Playing with the picture in Photoshop I somewhat serendipitously produced the background image for the title of this blog. I'm rather pleased with it.

All that culture vulturing is hungry work and I'm glad to report that the cafes in the Portrait Gallery and in the Botanic Gardens provided us with excellent sustenance.

My birthday celebrations have always felt short-changed, falling as they do on the winter solstice. This year, the 65th in the series, their share of daylight was indeed short but they were particularly sweet after dark.

My very good friend Claire insisted that she should book a table for the small dinner party that I had planned. Clearly a giveaway that something was afoot since she has to fit things like that into interstices in the working day while I have the leisure to spend hours finding things to do to fill the self same hours.

Part of her plan was revealed when I set about arranging another dinner for a group of old school friends. They it turned out were destined to be surprise guests at the first dinner. Not that they spilled the beans - rather my sons decided that there was a danger of too many dinners spoiling the party.

So when I got to the advertised pre-dinner drinks at the Traverse it was no surprise to see the old school friends but a larger group of Edinburgh based friends had also been called up for service and that was unexpected.

The meal was good, the company was excellent and the surprise though not complete was sufficiently exciting to make this a birthday to remember.

Come out from under that hair Claire and take a bow.

This is one of my favourite walks: the Radical Road in Holyrood Park. It gains its name from association with the disturbances of 1820 that were as close to a revolution as we ever got before Walter Scott wheeled in George IV in his kilt and pink tights two years later effectively turning the spirit of insurrection into cheers for the tartan flavoured monarchy.

I followed it for the first time in ages the other day to get a breath of fresh air. The views were superb, even in the dull conditions that prevailed. Here we are looking over the south side of the city with the Pentlands vaguely visible through the mist and cloud in the top half of the picture. I carried on along the tarmac road that goes up the hill and cut down above Duddingston Loch to the Sheep's Heid for a refreshment.Astute readers will have noticed that the advertised title of the pub has no apostrophe s but it's always added in speech, just as we talk of St. Andrew Square as if it belonged to him.

I had coffee with some friends the other day and collected a box of odds and ends belonging to me that has been cluttering up their house for the last several years. I had rather forgotten it but on being reminded remembered that it held such treasures as a PC keyboard with Arabic characters that I bought in Egypt when I was convinced that nothing much stood between me and mastery of the Arabic language. How wrong I was. It's beautiful, intriguing, fascinating; but I shall always be its slave rather than its master.

One treasure that I had never seen before was a set of six CDs being the second half of a twelve volume set of the songs of Robert Burns that I subscribed to a decade or so ago. The second half pitched up while I was abroad. I've been listening to them with great pleasure over the past couple of days. It was a splendid initiative of Linn records.

I decided at the beginning of the 21st century that physical Christmas cards were old hat and that henceforth I should send only ecards. I've not lived up 100% to this forward thinking decision but I try and have just finished creating this year's card. For those of my readers not in my email address book here it is:

The layout of Edinburgh's New Town incorporated communal gardens for the recreation of the proprietors of the buildings surrounding them. In many of these buildings private persons have long been replaced by office slaves and a good case can be made for making the gardens a more widely available recreational resource.

I was delighted to find that the hard-pressed council tax payer ably assisted by his alter ego the hard-pressed income tax payer has seen fit to apply a few millions to do just that to the gardens in St Andrew Square. The work proceeds apace and will include the obligatory refreshment outlet and what is called a reflective pool, though the capital's youngsters might have preferred a skate-park.

The work has been extended upwards of the gardens to tidy up the 4.2 metre high statue of Henry Dundas that sits atop the column. I understand that the stonework of the statue has suffered a bit from exposure, especially between its legs. We know what damage 179 years of an Edinburgh wind could do to a brass monkey so I shudder to think what condition poor old Henry is in.

The day I didn't have my camera two workers were jauntily perched on the lower levels of this scaffolding. I gazed in some admiration and wondered amongst other things how they got there. The answer is via the staircase in the column.

His mission may have been to crush the rebellious Scots, as I have lately learnt our national anthem enjoins us to do, or to populate the East India Company with his compatriots but pending catching a view when the covers come off the statue here's what the lifesize Henry looked like and for the truly historically minded or those who can't sleep here's a long and detailed article about him.

The latest news is that one of the office buildings in the square is to be converted into expensive flats. The owners, like Henry, will just have to put up with the democratisation of their garden.

Never go out without a camera. I can't bring you a picture of the two newspaper billboards that caught my eye side by side earlier today.
The Scotsman proclaimed "On the trail of eagle killers" while The Record reported "6 Week-old Alexis beaten to death"
Such different news values.

It's taken me a while to find a review in English of "I Do" (Prête-moi ta main) that echoed my enjoyment of the film.

The French reviewers were pleased that it matched what they think is the gold standard of romantic comedy - the British standard. Perhaps that's why they've held onto it for 12 months before letting us have a look.

But TimeOut found it "heavily contrived, undemanding" and deplored "the complacency of the film's subtextual sexual politics". (Whatever that means.) They did admit that it's "often funny" but that seems a criticism in the context of their review.

The Sydney Morning Herald (I never miss an issue) said "Old-fashioned doesn't really describe it: it's the kind of war-of-the-sexes premise that was popular in the '90s, and I mean the 1590s, when Shakespeare was starting to sharpen his quill." Shakespeare old fashioned? Tell that to the RSC.

Film 4 says " Of course I Do is total fluff and nonsense". But like me and unlike TimeOut they think it is bloody good fluff and nonsense and they suggest you see it now before "the inevitable US remake"; unless, they say, Charlotte Gainsbourg crosses the pond to reprise her role.

I'll leave the last word to Miss Marmite in Hamburg and other users of IMDb most of whom, but by no means all, liked it.

Recently the graffiti around here has displayed a degree of sophistication some levels above the "F. the Pope" standard.

One that caught my eye disfiguring a billboard, or enhancing it according to your lights, read "Be bad. Buy nothing new this Xmas."

Strong on combating spoil the planet wastefulness but short on current economic orthodoxy (do we want to return to being hunter gatherers and subsistence farmers?) let alone friendly feelings towards our nearest and dearest.

Today they are painting out a slogan on Tesco's wall. At the moment you can still make it out underneath the fresh paint. It says something like "we've had enough of this red white and blue". I thought at first it was an anti-unionist cry but realised later that those are Tesco's colours so it was probably aimed at them.

I don't suppose Mr Tesco will lose much sleep and it won't be long before another slogan hits the wall. Let's hope it's amusing.

Hot on the heels of Litter Lunatic came Telephone Tosser.

Ring ring
Hello.
Who's that? (foreign accent)
It's Connor.
Oh yea, James tell me about you. You like bit of fun.
Sorry, you must have the wrong number.
No, no. He tell me you like play with your wife while other people watch. (or maybe it was the other way round)
You've got the wrong number.
Hang up
Ring ring
Brian picks up
Hey Connor, why you cut me off?
You have got the wrong number.
Tell me name your wife I tell you if is wrong number.
I don't have a wife.
Can I come play with you?
No, and if you call me again I'll get the police to you.
What the police do with this?
Hang up
Ring 1471
The caller withheld their number (surprise, surprise)
Ring ring
Brian picks up
Hello.
Employs recommended nuisance caller procedure by remaining silent then hanging up
Ring ring
Brian picks up
Hello. (different voice but still a species of johnny foreigner)
Same tactic employed, no further calls.

I hope my mobile never rings while I'm in the lift.

From what was found in the lift yesterday it appears that our Litter Lunatic is truly a nutcase. Even I hesitate to put a picture of a blood-stained towel and a condom draped artistically on the lift floor into public view so you will just have to imagine it.

It's a new one on the factor, used as he is to the odd goings on in common stairs, but pro tem I'm keeping a watch and he's considering how to approach the matter.

Connor suggested it might be a disgruntled ex hassling their former partner. But if so I and many others in the stair, not to mention visiting clergymen, are suffering collateral damage.

The Litter Lunatic has been at work again. I came home tonight from seeing a play (The Persian Revolution) to find this in the lift.

To add to the effrontery it contained some liquid so after I had removed it here's what was left on the floor.

It's hard to know what to do but I think I will have to engage the factor and the residents' association in reviewing possibilities.

The impossibility I personally favour can't be described on a family blog but would be familiar to Persian revolutionaries.

That our civil liberties are being unduly curtailed was the proposition put forward by Helena Kennedy in a debate in the form of a mock trial at the Royal Society of Edinburgh last night. The audience jury agreed with her in the proportion of two to one despite a well argued defence of Labour's record and intentions by Tony's old flatmate Charlie Falconer.

The debate was lively, at times fierce, but even though the topic is on the serious side all the speakers managed a wee joke from time to time.

One of the concerns put forward by David Blunkett whom I heard speak on Sunday fits quite nicely into the curtailment of liberties scenario. He said what we all know; that fewer and fewer people are voting.

He went on to say that those who will continue to vote are the older members of society, that they vote in their own interests (who doesn't?) and are likely to bring into power more authoritarian governments. He meant non-labour governments of course but labour or tory the fear is that the politicians will bow to the greybeards' desire to bring back flogging and send yobs to the saltmines.

So be warned.

Wild Honey opened on Wednesday to a pretty good house and was well received by the audience. The press was there in the shape of Thom Dibdin from The Evening News and he was slightly less enthusiastic but two stars after all are better than none. The News print alongside their review the opinions of three punters (not included on-line) and all of them praised the show.

I ended up having a late night.

The second night was typically a bit less sharp and we had an entertaining few minutes early on when we skipped a page or two and then fought our way back to fill in the blanks. Two down two to go.

Filling in time in the dressing room with a newspaper I came across an article about face morphing software developed at the psychology department of St Andrews university. Here's what it turned me into when I chose to be Afro-Caribbean.
Try it yourself here.

I had an "X wants you to be their friend" email from Facebook the other day. It wasn't a name that meant much to me straightaway but I have since realised who it is. I think she must have let Facebook run through her email contacts and fire off invitations to all and sundry. I just haven't been deleted from the list during the last five years; some people never tidy things up.

It was a pleasant reminder of life in Paris though so I have been gracious enough to accept. But does she really know who I am?

I don't think you could call the film I saw this afternoon pleasant but it was French and I enjoyed it thoroughly - a cracking thriller called The Serpent. There were only five of us in the house, all supping our free coffee supplied as part of the Cameo's Silver Screen offering. They can't make money that way but I suppose the cinema is open anyway. When you add their Wednesday Specials and their Cheap Mondays you arrive at help the aged in cinemascope and surround sound. It's pure dead brilliant.

Because of the Wild Honey schedule, today was my last chance to see Brian Friel's Living Quarters at the Lyceum and I took it. I'm never sure that it's a good idea to go to a matinee. Almost invariably there is a sweetie paper rustler somewhere and today she sat next to me. That old wifie was almost as distracting as the young lady who flashed her fashionably skimpy underwear periodically as she leant forward to get a better view.

However I managed to keep enough of my attention on the stage to be able to state categorically that it is an excellent production: super set, very good acting and magisterial direction. It's also apparently the play's UK premiere although it was written 30 years ago. I remember reading it in Kitwe with a view to putting it on there. I don't remember why we didn't

The play is structured in such a way that there is a narrator character who interacts with the others, bringing them periodically out of a fictional space that excludes him into one that includes him. He also addresses explanations to the audience and like a Greek Chorus foretells, or at least hints at, the tragedy to come. Well that may have whipped up the ancient Greeks but it didn't work for me. I admired it but resented having my emotional involvement in the drama interrupted. The Guardian's critic suggests that may be why the play has been neglected here for so long.

I shall have to get to the Citz to see if Desire Under The Elms suits me better. It is after all the same myth - as explained fully in this somewhat dry article.

I dashed out as soon as the show ended and distributed Wild Honey flyers to the audience as they emerged. I did the same thing this evening but chose the audience leaving a production of The Crucible on the grounds that as it was an amateur production the audience might be a better target for us. However the Lyceum audience seemed much more interested. God knows if it will bring anyone in. How to attract an audience is the great unsolved theatrical mystery.

It could have been an ABC Minors session circa 1950. There was the same incessant chatter drowning out the ads, the same clapping and cheering as the hero appeared on screen, the same whoops of appreciation during action sequences. Only the slightly raunchy comments revealed that these were adult cinemagoers, almost exclusively female who were letting their fantasies fly free at a late night screening of Dirty Dancing.

I should have had a big girl along to look after me but I didn’t know.

The next time I go swimming I'll wear a hat; not in the pool you understand but to keep my head warm on the walk home.

Leith Victoria just down the road is one of the numerous pools built here over a hundred years ago. I don't know whether the idea was leisure or cleanliness but given that most of them were originally referred to as public baths you'd have to suspect the latter. However it's all leisure nowadays and this one is in the throes of redevelopment. The pool has already been refurbished; there's a gym and a sauna and they are building an extension to accommodate aerobics and the like. They even have a creche where little non-swimmers can be dumped at certain times.

At the time the pool was built Leith was a separate entity from Edinburgh but was absorbed in 1920 much to the disgust of many of the citizenry, and to this day Leithers regard themselves as a race apart. As usual Wikipedia is a good source of information (I used it to check on the date of the merger) and it even led me to the explanation for the street sign I noticed recently declaring Leith to be twinned with Rio de Janiero.

I haven't noticed Rio's samba dancers around but Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly were magnificent in the 1949 film version of Bernstein's On The Town showing this week and the Indian A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Kings had some splendid dance routines which you can get a taste of here.

Capping both of those though was Matthew Bourne's The Car Man. It's a steamy tale of lust and murder set in a car repair shop somewhere in the endless plains of the mid-west danced to Bizet's music for Carmen by a brilliant cast who throw themselves around and bend their bodies into seemingly impossible but beautiful shapes.

If I do catch a cold through my hatless walk home I should, on the evidence of Michael Moore's Sicko, thank my lucky stars that it was in Leith Scotland and not Leith North Dakota. For the film paints a pretty black picture of healthcare in the USA. Of course Moore is a polemicist who gives no quarter so there is no attempt at balance. All the same when you see it (and I insist you do because it is an excellent and superbly crafted movie) you will come out giving three rousing cheers for the NHS despite its inadequacies. I don't think Rudi Giuliano can have seen it.

You could be forgiven for thinking that these artistically arranged objects were an installation in a gallery, labelled provocatively "A Good Night Out".

But no; this is the sight that met my eyes when I summoned the lift to take me to the top floor at twenty to four this afternoon. I hadn't been in the lift for twenty-four hours so I suppose they could have been there since last night but it couldn't have been that much of a good night out because the condom was empty.

Thank God for small mercies.