There's always a certain amount of disruption when wintry weather strikes but in Edinburgh today the buses were doing their best to get around the city and most businesses seemed to be up and running.

I was disappointed to hear that tomorrow's celebrations in St Andrew's Square had been cancelled because of the wintry weather. That seemed a bit chicken-hearted to me but apparently "The snow has damaged two of the marquees, creating a potential public safety issue, " Well I don't want to be smothered by a collapsing marquee so I suppose I'll have to let them off for acting on the better safe than sorry principle.

The airport was closed at times and given the way my bus was sliding about at 15 miles an hour on a gritted road that was probably a sensible application of the better safe than sorry principle as well.

Why were the schools closed though? In rural areas where roads may well be impassable and people live quite far from their school you can see a reason for it. Who wants to be trapped overnight in a badly heated building with hundreds of kids and an inadequate handful of teachers. If ever there was a case for better safe than sorry then that's it.

But here in the city centre? I've had a look at the catchment area map for my local primary and the furthest point from the school can't be more than half an hour's walk even in snowy conditions. So the pupils could surely have got there. Travel problems for the teachers then, who may well live much further away. That hasn't stopped hundreds of other people getting to work. So what's at issue? Snowball fights in the playground endangering pupil safety? Greater potential for accidents? Something might go wrong so better safe than sorry and too bad for the parents who had to take a day off as a result?

But if we give the schools the benefit of the doubt we surely can't do the same for my local library, also closed because of adverse weather conditions according to a notice on its door. I am truly struggling to see how the weather impacts on a library. This one doesn't even open till 1pm on a Monday, so it's not as though overnight snow hadn't been totally cleared by the time the staff needed to set out from home.

It's the sort of mystery that give public services and public servants a bad name.

Looks like I've been well and truly had.

The consensus of those commenting on the royal wedding article that I posted about is that it's a spoof. They pick out a number of points that are giveaways for someone better acquainted with Marlborough College and/or popular culture than I am.

So hats off to i and The Independent. I may buy you again.

"Make no mistake, there is nothing grand about young Kate Middleton! Her parents may be multi-millionaires with a sprawling mansion in Berkshire, she may have been public school-educated, own her own London flat and take her holidays in Mustique but, beneath the surface, she is simply "our Kate", a modern girl like thousands of others."

I fear the paragraph above is not ironic. It is part of a wholly cringe inducing article that appears in the soi-disant new kind of newspaper i. You can read the whole nauseating piece in i's progenitor, The Independent.

I read it en route to a talk at the NLS by the author of Scott-land, a fascinating sounding book about Walter Scott. Much of the book I gather (in spite of the warm feelings aroused by the vino accompanying it's promotion I did not buy but shall wait till it's in the library before reading) is concerned with the remarkable influence that Scott has had culturally throughout the world over the last 180 years or so.

Part of his non-literary fame rests on his stage management of George IV's visit to Edinburgh in 1822 when he bigged up the king to the Scots and vice versa. I suspect the i's royal correspondent to be an acolyte of Scott in this respect if not in his prose style nor (hopefully) his cultural influence.

As you know I loved Disgo but there was another show at the Traverse this week that fear of the laws of libel prevented me from reviewing.

Joyce generously gives it two stars, thanks in all probability to the brownies which I agree were tasty.

She should come and see the Improbables who do improvisation a whole lot better.

As I sat at breakfast looking at the clear blue sky the radio declared that there would be rain in Scotland and that it would fall mostly in the east.

At lunchtime the weather forecast spoke again of rain in eastern Scotland. The sky was no longer predominantly blue but I had not yet seen rain.

At 5pm I was assured that the rain in eastern Scotland would ease in the course of the evening.

It is now after midnight and Edinburgh is as dry as a bone as it has been all day, though to be wholly truthful I cannot vouch for the period between 17.45 and 20.15 when I was at the cinema.

I draw no conclusions from this set of circumstances.

In these terror times we don't raise an eyebrow at an airport when asked to take off our shoes, but it is a little more unusual to be told - not even asked - to take off your shoes when about to take your seat in a theatre.

But that's how we were treated at the Traverse last night. Full of bonhomie engendered by the drink that had been liberally served at what the Trav luvvies called their wassail before the show, we the audience cheerfully complied. As the lights dimmed we were cajoled out of our seats onto the black performance space, ducking under the blue fluorescent light bearing bars that surrounded it as we went. For the ensuing hour or so a performance took place around, amongst and with us. We were cleverly marshalled here and there at times and at others were free to roam and frequently had to move smartly out of the way as a body slithered along the floor or gyrated across the space. We were incorporated into the performance when for example a dancer curled herself around a spectator's leg, leant on a shoulder or took two people by their waists and whisked them adroitly from one side to another through the crowd crying touch me, touch me to the rest of us. Some of the dancers were clearly identifiable as such by their clothes and where they appeared from at the start but others had been seated in the auditorium dressed normally so it wasn't always obvious who was performer and who was spectator. The show culminated with the audience grouped together in the centre of the acting area waving their arms in the air while the performers looked on.

It was great fun. Clearly about removing barriers between audience and performer Disgo didn't just breach the fourth wall but consigned it to oblivion along with the other three. I can't imagine how the job could be better done.

I know almost nothing about video games and I care even less. But that may be about to change for I am lending my voice to a video game modding project.

The little I do know about these games is that they seem to consist of trying to get from A to B while running about shooting, wielding swords, slicing the heads off people, fighting weird creatures, indulging in various sorts of derring do, and all to a deafening soundtrack.

This game, Dragon Age, looks to be from that mould since players are said to "engage in bone-crushing, visceral combat against massive and terrifying creatures". But there is perhaps something more subtle involved since they also "experience complex moral decisions".

I'm not sure if they make them or suffer the consequences of them. Both probably. Judging by the brief I have been given about my character he'll be in the thick of the moral decision making side of the game, but not above slicing off the odd head.

Here tis:

1. Ruggieri (Roo-jerry)

2. Character Acting Style:

Ruggieri is always concentrating and pondering. He has a warriors posture and resolve coupled with the wisdom and experience of his age. As such, he always stands with his chest out but is never too forceful in his posture. His face is always calm and dictating. He uses soft and short physical movements when walking or making gestures.

3. Number of lines: To be determined

4. Character Role:

Ruggieri is sort of the father Farinata never had. He loved her mother very much and acts as a guardian for Farinata and Neona due to the death of both their parents. Ruggieri often helps calm Farinata’s rage and embues (sic) her with a sense of morality and understanding throughout troubled times.

5. Male, 44, Dalish. Calmly spoken, always encouraging.

6. Character Personality:

Ruggieri has a warm dismeanor (sic) that makes him very approachable. He’s dealt with a lot of pain in his life but somehow still came out an optimist.

7. Character Voice:

Ruggieri has a warm and calming voice. He can generally talk someone out of any rage induced fit. He thinks before speaking so his comments are always calm and concise.

8. Character Background:

Ruggieri was desperately in love with Farinata’s mother before the sisters were born. Farinata’s mother chose a human male instead and it ate away at Ruggieri over the years. Since then, he has had to care for the sisters from nearly toddlers and is constantly reminded of his loss in love for their mother. While he doesn’t tell them about these things, he knows Farinata is at least somewhat aware of the past.

9. Character Story Arc:

Ruggieri is taking care of Neona throughout the entirety of the game until the end when they are attacked by the Darkspawn and Neona is killed. He then relates the news to Farinata which triggers the last event, rage-filled Farinata slaughters the Darkspawn at Hunter Fell.

10. Dialogue Samples:

“Farinata, this war is going to be more costly than you can imagine. Are you sure you want to seek out the Grey Wardens?”

Delivery: Concerned comment, worrisome/concerned

Situation: Ruggieri asking Farinata to reconsider searching out the Grey Wardens to fight the Darkspawn.

“The Grey Wardens need your skills Farinata, no one can conquer the Darkspawn alone.”

Delivery: Debate on the issue of humans handling their own problems. Encouraging/steadfast

Situation: Ruggieri relates the importance of everyone working together despite racial differences in order to survive.

“We were attacked again at Kal-Sharok....their (sic) were too many Fari...I’m....I’m sorry.”

Delivery: Emotional breakdown, nearly crying/ashamed

Situation: Ruggieri reveals to Farinata that her only living family is dead.

I can't wait to get that armour on and stick my chest out.

I saw an interesting programme on the box this evening tracing the history of Donald Trump's campaign to build "the greatest golf course in the world", not to mention a hotel, apartment blocks and hundreds of houses on the coastal dunes just north of Aberdeen.

It's taken four years but he's overcome almost all obstacles and work has started. I say almost because there are still two pieces of land that he wants but which the owners refuse to sell. The threat of compulsory purchase hangs over them and I have little doubt that Trump will ultimately prevail.

The glimpses inside his Manhattan apartment and private jet afforded by the programme indicate something of a Louis 14th lifestyle and three wives suggests a nod towards Henry the 8th but he seemed a nice enough chap and by all accounts he loved his teuchter mum from Stornoway. So it's a combination of big businessman ambition and sentiment that's the driving force behind the project. Your guess as to the proportions of each.

A small golf course could maybe have nestled in there without doing much damage but I think the scale of the development will completely spoil the area. The saving grace may be that, as an Aberdeenshire friend of mine said, no-one will be mad enough, given the climate, to live in the place.

The solemnity of a day like remembrance Sunday can cause one’s thoughts to get a bit mixed up and words to come slightly out of order.

I’m sure that must have happened to the lady whose email arrived just after the two minutes silence. Going by the name of 2HotRebecca she invited me to visit her on a website. She assured me that access was free of charge but cautioned that “They make you join to verify your age.”

Verification of my age is I think assured by the fact that I didn’t take up the little poppet's invitation.

In my earliest days at primary school an essential tool for writing and drawing was a slate. These were much in evidence when on Friday I visited Scotland Street school, one of Rennie Mackintosh's fine buildings that is now a museum showing the school life of yesteryear.

I went round the museum with an object in my hands that was extraordinarily like a slate and which had writing and drawings on it. But this was an Ipad and I was participating in a site specific theatrical presentation called Alma Mater developed by Fish and Game and presented as part of a get together of the International network for contemporary performing arts.

The drawings were technically speaking a video, and I was led around the building by a series of children who appeared on the screen. It was a bit weird to walk along a corridor following a child who was in the video image of the corridor but wasn't in the real corridor and to encounter other members of the virtual school community in various situations.

It was entertaining and enjoyable, but keeping an eye on the screen and on the real world at the same time (to avoid tripping on the stairs for example) meant that I didn't think much about what it was all in aid of, i.e. its artistic purpose!

Fortunately I had a handout that I read afterwards that spelt it all out. It's quite long so I'll just quote wee bits of it:

"....Alma Mater follows children learning how to behave, resisting their own playful, carnal desires and submitting to the world of adults. ......Mackintosh employed images of growth up through the vertical levels of the school......the film echoes this growth both in the size of the children's bodies and in the accumulation of knowledge gained on the journey through the school...."

At the Traverse earlier in the week Wedekind's Spring Awakening also put slates to good use but here the children were not resisting their playful, carnal desires and the poor dears paid the price.

The Guardian review gave it four stars and I will admit to having admired the staging (apart from the tedious back and fro of the big blackboard) and the capabilities of the actors but I just didn't engage with the piece at all, probably because whatever adolescent angst I experienced has vanished into the mists of time and the shock value of the play along with it.

Maybe the rock musical version would have got me scribbling on my slate with more enthusiasm.

The other day I moaned about the distribution of The Edge of Dreaming. The film-maker has contacted me to let me know that it is showing at the Eden Court in Inverness this weekend.

Unfortunately I am not free to attend but others may be, especially since after seeing the film on Saturday you can take part in a dream workshop on Sunday. Here is the description from the Eden Court website:

"The director is offering a special space for people to engage with film in a new and personal way. The Edge of Dreaming is a documentary that takes us into the dreams of an ordinary woman, a rational, busy mother of three who doesn't have time to remember her dreams. But when they come, shockingly, true, she begins to explore the interface between dreams and neuroscience. The results are startling and profound.

The film has a lot of space for the audience to bring in their own perspective and this workshop is an opportunity to bring your own experiences to understanding gained through the film. There are a maximum of twelve places for people to take part in this 2 hour workshop the day after the screening as a group, we will work with your own dreams, fears and life experience, engaging with it further through story. "

This would be just the ticket for a blogging friend of mine who has been going on about her dreams a lot recently.

One of my dreams when I'm awake is that one day I will be a good golfer. The nightmare is that the summer has shown, as did the previous summer, that I am just getting worse. I have decided to take matters in hand this winter. Normally I eschew the practice range but there is a deal in town where senior lads and lassies get a basket of balls, a cup of coffee, a plate of biscuits and some tuition on a Thursday morning for only 50p more than the cost of the balls themselves.

I tried it out this morning. The other oldies were a cheerful group and the coffee and biscuits were excellent. What's more, and after watching me for only a couple of minutes, the pro made a small change to my swing that gave a much better result. So I'll be back. Had it not been raining I'd have played nine holes on the adjacent course but you have to draw the athletic line somewhere.

On the way home I passed an LRT bus vaunting an improved exhaust system with the cheerful and imaginative slogan that I might make my own - "auld but not reekie".

Homework for my Spanish class was to prepare something about national stereotypes so being a thoroughly modern schoolboy I turned to the internet for inspiration and information.

I found this amusing set of maps showing how the world looks from different points of view.

I was very dismissive of Inception, mostly because it was little more than lots of people running about in various places shooting at one another, but partly because of its absurd premise about infiltrating people's dreams.

Nonetheless I find dreams and dreaming intriguing so I was very interested to hear the other day about a film documenting the film-maker's experience of dreaming that she was going to die and subsequently falling ill and coming within an inch or two of fulfilling the dream. It's a Scottish film by a local film-maker and it premiered at the Edinburgh Film Festival in June, although I wasn't aware of it then, so it is not a little annoying to find that a DVD is available in the USA but not here. To find further that one can watch the film on-line but not with a Scottish IP address adds to that annoyance.

No doubt it is all to do with money. I would feel more charitable towards Amy Hardie's escape from death if the film had been made available here before it went on to rake in the dollars. But it is about to be released in cinemas in the UK and I very much hope that it will return to the city of its birth so that I can see The Edge of Dreaming.

I must have been on the edge of dreaming this evening when at Fort Kinnaird I found myself going frenchwise round a roundabout. I blame the complicated layout of those commercial centres.

Two weeks ago tonight I was enjoying a delicious roast dinner with friends in Northumberland en route home from France. My time there was lovely but apart from the square bottomed pepper and salt mills that I forgot to pack I'm not missing anything so far, thanks to having been much diverted here by theatre, cinema, live music and suchlike cultural outings, none of which figured in my six pleasant and peaceful weeks in the French countryside.

Have no fear I'm not going to list them all but will report that I enjoyed the very entertaining and up to date Tamara Drewe coupled with the ten years older equally entertaining but quite different Amélie at the Cameo today. The contrast in styles was an entertainment in itself.

When the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in Scotland comes along I'm sure there will be much celebration, very douce in nature of course and even a little dour, but if like me you can't wait another 50 years pop along to the National Library and marvel at the small display of contemporaneous books and documents commemorating the 450th anniversary. These include an Act of the Scottish Parliament abolishing the Pope's authority in Scotland. I hope they kept that discreetly out of sight when Benedict was in Edinburgh last month.

The big man of our restoration was of course John Knox and much of the work here is his including the order of service he put together for the new church. The copy on display is open at Psalm 23 with a very different first verse from the one I learnt at my mother's knee.

The Lord is onely my fupporte
and he that doeth me fede.
How can I then lack any thing
whereof I ftand in need?

There's a tune as well which is undoubtedly not Crimond but I didn't manage to copy it down.

If recreation rather than restoration is your bag then daunder further to their brilliant exhibition on the history of golf.

Scotland claims pantomime as well as golf but like the sport the entertainment may have roots elsewhere, Taiwan maybe? If you'd been in the George Square theatre with the Lord Provost and me watching 明華園 (the Ming Hwa Yuan Arts and Cultural Group) perform 鴛鴦槍 (Lovebird Spears) and 護國將軍 (General of the Empire) you'd have had no doubts that there was a link. They've even got a principal boy and there was audience participation - three volunteers and a pressed man.

It's quite a coincidence that having just mentioned Glenrothes in a post I should find myself within days setting foot in the town for what is probably the first time since a school trip to the shortlived Rothes pit. I think I remember that it was wet down there but that may be an example of something akin to inception.

Not that anyone has been talking to me about pits in my dreams but knowing that the pit was closed because they couldn't prevent the levels from flooding could easily over half a century have created a false memory.

I went to Glenrothes to see Beautiful Burnout, the National Theatre of Scotland's smash hit Fringe success. It's a magnificent piece of physical theatre whose athletic cast produce wonderful stage pictures. Such hard work. The skipping sequence alone left me dripping with sweat. God knows what it did to them.

I wouldn't say there was much of a plot though, but I guess the intention was to explore the paradox of boxing. The drive, discipline, self control, skill and athleticism that combine to produce a spectacle as delightful as any ballet but which can end in blood, tears and the obliteration of a human personality.

Mind you just as it's fairly obvious that filling your lungs with smoke day after day can't do you much good, the idea that having your head thumped repeatedly isn't sensible is surely a no brainer.

My own boxing career was fortunately too short to have had any deleterious consequences. I retired undefeated after my twelve year old opponent hit the canvas in the 1954 Dollar Academy inter-house championships. Some ill-intentioned spectators aver that he slipped but I know that I floored him.

As a native born Fifer proud of his roots I should probably have told you about this celebration long before now but to be honest although I was aware of it, it has largely passed without my participation.

Earlier in the year I went to St Andrews during the Stanza poetry festival and to Dunfermline for a Fife Jazz Festival concert, both operating under the year of culture banner. One day this summer I happened to be in Anstruther when something was going on but of the multitude of other events I can say nothing.

Until now that is. A film festival was launched in Glenrothes as part of the cultural year. It's intended to be an annual event but for it's very first edition it awarded third prize to A Lifetime, the short film in which I took part this summer.

Click here to see the proud directors being awarded their trophy on Saturday night and click on their picture to see the film if you haven't already or if you feel that now it's won a prize it deserves a second look.

Vichy has been somewhat demonised in many people's minds because of its role as headquarters of the collaborationist government during the war, but that was hardly the town's fault.

It's a pleasant place that nestles cosily in the valley cut through the hills of Auvergne by the river Allier. Standing there watching the trotters go through their paces on the Hippodrome track with at your back the beautiful spa that still attracts the well-heeled, waves of bourgeois comfort are almost palpable.

On the other side of the river stands Bellerive, named thus as though the opposite bank were not belle enough. Vichy Sporting Club, one of France's oldest golf courses stands there. I played it a couple of years ago but this week I visited Vichy's other course a few miles away in the forest of Montpensier.

The forest is a lovely place for a walk especially at this time of year when the trees present so many beautiful shades of green and gold and where mushrooms rise up ready to be harvested for the pot - provided you know your mushroom from your toadstool. The gorgeous weather that has prevailed this week would have been the cherry on the walker's cake.

But someone had the silly idea of cutting a few narrow paths through the forest and tempting us into thinking that we could hit little white balls straight down them. Believe me, my little white balls very seldom ventured onto the paths and couldn't see the forest for the trees they kept colliding with.
Now I'm in Dunkirk, someplace else whose fame owes much to the last war. A not so little boat will arrive tomorrow to take me over the channel in greater comfort than that experienced by the retreating armies - in pretty bourgeois comfort in fact.

I’m not sure that we hit 27 degrees yesterday but we were certainly in the warm 20s with bright blue skies in the morning that became progressively overcast as the day went on. One of the interesting side effects of this sudden, and as it turns out brief flourish of summer weather was its effect on the insect population.

I don’t, but no doubt some enthusiastic and dedicated entomologist does know where flies go at the end of the summer. It can’t be very far away for more than a dozen of them, fooled by this temporary summer, buzzed back to invade my kitchen yesterday. Most I am pleased to report were found dead on arrival. That’s my arrival back from the golf course.

A few were sluggishly hanging on to curtains and lightshades and a couple attempted brief flights. I killed them. Others hid overnight but by lunchtime today I had exterminated the living and disposed of all the bodies except for one that I have left struggling in a spider’s web as a warning to those who may still be skulking about.

In the evening several examples of another species, this time a beetle like creature whose method of locomotion is a cross between a scuttle and a hop decided to play about on the kitchen floor. They are usually about an inch long and not very pretty. They scurry across a foot or so of floor and then remain stationary for ages. Can they be imbibing some sort of nourishment from the tiles, or are they, on the contrary, laying down some microscopic excrement? Maybe they are just thinking about the glory days to come when the insects take over the earth.

Whatever they were doing it was a bit of a distraction to someone who was watching a DVD of a film that he had missed in the cinemas last winter. They were not welcome unlike the film which was in fact Welcome. Whether I had sated my bloodlust with the flies or hated the thought of scraping squashed beetles from the floor or was being softened by the moving movie I don’t know, but I carefully captured them one at a time and returned them to the wild, including several recidivists who squeezed back in under the door.

While I love warm weather there’s a bit of me that’s now thinking that it wouldn’t be too bad if it was just a bit cold and slightly miserable for my last week.

It's been a quiet week starting off on the cold side but summer came back again yesterday and they are forecasting 27 degrees centigrade on the golf course this afternoon. Too late I suppose to invite the Ryder cup teams to finish off their competition here.

One of my beefs about Radio 3 is that they don't give enough airtime to jazz and when they do it tends to be at unsocial hours, not to mention the constant moving about of Jazz Record Requests on Saturday afternoons to accommodate the Metropolitan Opera. Now France Musique certainly play jazz at unsocial hours but they also provide a regular weekday slot at 7pm which fits very well with my dinner hour and listening to it the other day I picked up a tip that I may pass on to David Milliband.

I know that Ed is for the moment only a prime minister in waiting and that a week never mind five years is a long time in politics, but David could perhaps protect Ed's chances even more by copying Dominique Fillon, the French prime minister's brother. He plays jazz piano.

I can see David teaming up with Ken Clarke for late night sessions at Ronnie Scott's with Bill Clinton dropping by to jam with them when Hilary is over telling our foreign secretary who to invade next. So much more fun than running the country.

Next time you are tempted to take a second helping of pudding spare a thought for the distress you may cause posthumously to your nearest and dearest. A French family eager to satisfy their deceased relative's wish to be cremated have been thwarted because the corpse is too big to fit into the incineration chamber. Could there be a better reason to exercise self control around the dinner pail?

Disturbances are taking place throughout France at the moment in an attempt to prevent the government from increasing the pension age from 60 to 62. In one of the reports I heard about this an expression that obviously meant work to rule caught my attention. Its literal translation is zeal strike.

Now don't you think that the crematorium employees could have gone out on a limb as it were and with a bit of zeal got that poor lady to where she wanted to be?