This extraordinarily garish structure has been erected on the site of the northern gatehouse of the Roman fort of Housesteads on Hadrian's Wall to celebrate the 1900th anniversary of the start of the building of the wall.  Luckily the intention is to take it down later this year rather than leave it there for another 1900 years so Hadrian can stop turning in his grave.

I've long intended to visit the wall and have at last made it.  I spent a weekend in Hexham, which I found to be a charming town with some grand old buildings and a lovely park and decent places to eat and drink.  There is a bus service that connects various points of interest aong the wall.  I used it to visit two forts, Housesteads and Vindolanda and thoroughly enjoyed them both.  Vindolanda has a terrific museum where I could have lingered longer than I did but didn't feel up to spending another two hours in it which I'd have had to given the bus timetable. (Greatly reduced over the years according to one of the custodians).  

Should there be a next time I'll walk a section. 

Ewan and I had a day trip up to the Highland Wildlife Park so that he could, inter alia, see the Macaques that he'd gifted me adoptive fatherhood of.  We were extremely lucky in that respect because the monkeys were gathered en masse by the path that runs past their enclosure unlike when I was there before.  We had an excellent day, seeing lots of animals.

It was the day after the first session of the photography course that I'd signed up to so I took lots of pictures trying to use the knowledge that I'd gained the previous day.  Then and on the two subsequent classes I've attended it's been primarily, even entirely, learning how to find and operate a number of the multitudinous features that my little camera has.  Others in the group have much bigger and more serious looking cameras but they'd be wasted on me at the moment.

Perhaps by the time I go to Japan next year I'll feel that I can handle one.  I'm not now going there for the 19th World Saxophone Congress because after two postponements due to Covid, economic downturn, the war in Ukraine etc it's been cancelled.  The International Saxophone Committee have been canvassing opinions about where to go from here. They make interesting reading.  You'll see that it's not only me who is dismayed by the cancellation and anxious that a way should be found to continue the periodic worldwide gatherings.  There's a mildly bright side in that I won't now need to be away in July so could be available to rehearse for the 2023 Fringe.  I'm thinking about visiting at cherry blossom time instead.

The congress cancellation is not the only cultural blow to hit me.  The charity behind Filmhouse, the Edinburgh International Film Festival and the Belmont in Aberdeen has gone bust.  The cinemas closed overnight and next year's film festival is in doubt.  Just a week before Filmhouse closed I saw there Buñuel's "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie".   A beautiful new print and an enjoyable film.  Better people than me say it's a work of genius so maybe it is.

I went to the anatomy exhibition at the museum which didn't engage me quite as much as I had expected whereas I found seeing the Gutenburg Bible at the National Library gave me a little thrill.  But the soup at the museum was excellent.

Nicola Benedetti who has just taken up the role of EIF director was playing with the SCO at the Usher Hall in a super concert that I thoroughly enjoyed unlike an RSNO concert that didn't really appeal to me.  I'm not sure why I went to that one since it featured works on harpsichord and on organ neither of which instruments particularly appeal to me.  

Theatrewise I've had a few wee treats.  Rona Munro's James IV opened in Edinburgh.  I found it mildly disappointing in comparison with the previous plays in the sequences which I remember (rightly or wrongly) as containing much more about the events and the politics of the reigns. I think the keynote line of the play which we heard at the beginning and at the end was "we were real" or something like it.  So the focus was on the imagined personalities and relationships of both the real and the invented characters.  I thought it was quite successful in that respect and I enjoyed the play but I regret the change of focus.  Even the disaster of Flodden got a pretty cursory treatment though I suppose we may find that featuring as a foundation stone of James V when that is unveiled.

I came across a piece by Mark Fisher in which Rona Munro talks about her aims for the play which don't seem to include much about the events of the reign so suck boo to me.

Noises Off is a splendidly amusing farce that I saw on the last night of the Pitlochry Festival Theatre's summer season.  It was a good trip.  I enjoyed the play.  I like what the theatre is doing to upgrade its front of house facilites and I had a very comfy sleep in the Backpackers Hotel - note not Hostal.  Then there was Kenneth Branagh on the telly in the Billy plays that he performed in shortly after leaving drama school and which the BBC ran as part of their centenary celebrations.  They were well worth the rerun.

Lastly The Satyricon from EGTG and Arbery Theatre.  The play wasn't nearly as silly as my memory of it from a read-through suggested and I thought the production was terrific.

Finally here's another shot of Roman remains with a bit of lovely Northumbria in the background.

 

For about a week after the festivals I did nothing much.  I read a bit and watched TV.  I saw a wonderful version of Sunset Song that the BBC made in 1971 when I was abroad so I had never seen it.  I've since discovered that in the early 80s while I was still away they filmed Cloud Howe and Grey Granite, the other two books in the trilogy.  I do hope they broadcast them again.  

Then the queen died and I set off for a lovely weekend with fellow saxophonists at The Burn where The Scottish Saxophone Academy has organised twice yearly get-togethers for a while now.  I thought its grounds were looking particularly well cared for this September.  The food was excellent and its wifi was definitely 100% better than it has ever been over the years I've been going.  David, the manager, told me it will be even better next March which is when I should be there again.

Leaving all that aside I had decided to spend a couple of days in Montrose afterwards instead of coming directly home.  The picture above is from Montrose museum where they've had the brilliant idea of creating facsimiles of a couple of Pictish stones that they have and painting them up.  So instead of peering at distinctly worn carvings and thinking "well if the label says that's Delilah cutting Samson's hair down in the bottom right I suppose it must be"  you can actually see it.   

I thought it was a terrific museum.  I was only there because the House of Dun that I intended to visit wasn't open on the days I was in Montrose.  After the museum I took a bus up the coast to St Cyrus where there's a nature reserve and a breathtaking beautiful beach.  I didn't actually go onto the beach because my approach from the village led to the top of a cliff.  There was a very narrow treacherous looking path down.  I was not well shod for descending especially since my big toes had been shot to pieces on some slopes I'd encountered the previous day.  

Next time I'll get off the bus just after the North Esk bridge and walk along the beach from there. Here's what it looks like.  You can see the mouth of the North Esk top right.

After that I went further up the coast to Stonehaven passing through a number of pleasant looking places including Inverbervie, birthplace of Hercules Linton who designed the Cutty Sark.   Stonehaven has its own place in the history of Scotland, boasting not only the chip shop that invented the deep fried Mars bar but is the birthplace of Robert William Thomson who invented the pneumatic tyre forty three years before another better known Scot, John Boyd Dunlop reinvented it.  

I had a nice drink in the sunshine by the harbour before setting off back to Montrose.

The previous day I had walked out from the town via the fringes of the Montrose Basin and through Ferryden with its views of the modern harbour out to the Skurdie Ness lighthouse.  A very pleasant walk over which I took my time and enjoyed having a seat every now and then to contemplate land and sea.

When I walked back I didn't go into Montrose but headed a mile or so down the road to the south to a visitor centre where there's a great view of the basin, a little exhibition about its wildlife and excellent coffee.  You can sit for a long time peering through the telescopes and binoculars provided at what's going on on the mudflats and in the water.  I did.  I'm not too hot on bird identification and there were lots I couldn't name though I spotted a beautiful curlew and some cormorants.  For a while I watched a bunch of seals doing nothing very much.  Occasionally one would shuffle a few yards off then plomp down again for a rest that seemed out of proportion to the effort it had just expended.

I bussed back to town and set off to find a beach.  I walked a long way and the tide was in so no stroll on the sand.  Then I walked the long way back to the George Hotel where I was staying, had a tasty meal from their "small portions" menu.  Big enough for me but just a snack for the sturdy North Sea workers who form a good proportion of their visitors.  After that it was feet up and TV for the latest in the royal death drama.

An hour or so after I got home from Montrose Ewan arrived from the States.  He more or less immediately headed off to St Andrews with a friend to play golf, coming back in time to enjoy more sport at the weekend (on TV this time) when we watched the Camanachd Cup final and the Davis Cup together. 

Fiona's sister's husband Julian, who was one of the nicest guys you could ever meet, died last year when funerals were sorely restricted.  It was decided to hold a memorial for him this month and Ewan and I went down to Yorkshire, via Keswick, to attend.  The event was held in a Iarge country inn on a hillside with a grand view to the north over the Calder valley.  There were lots of guests the vast majority of whom I didn't know.  A number of his friends and relatives made interesting and entertaining speeches reminiscing over years gone by.  I certainly learnt a few things I hadn't known about him and his daughter said to me that if she'd known her dad was such a tearaway in his youth she'd have kicked over a few more traces in hers.  I contributed with a cut down version of Tam O'Shanter, a poem he loved, and got back to Edinburgh that evening only slightly disrupted by the UK's wobbly train service - refund agreed and awaited.

Before heading south we watched the state funeral on TV.  What a superb spectacle.  Every move faultless and precise.  BBC presentation likewise and praise be they allowed us to watch the procession to the abbey and the service without commentary. 

There was a send-off of a different kind on view at the weekend when Roger Federer played his last professional tennis match in the Laver Cup.  This is a team competition between Europe and the rest of the world which has a unique and attractive format and which was instigated and designed in part by Roger.  His doubles match with Rafael Nadal as partner didn't start till about 10pm so by the time we got through tearful goodbyes, hugs and entertainment I didn't get to bed till about 1.30am.  But I'm glad I saw it.

Our Thursday on-line theatre get togethers held during the pandemic have been revived but given that people are out and about again in the evenings I think attendances will be sporadic.  Only three of us made it to the first one.  It was an odd production from the Bristol Old Vic that was a mix of music gig and story telling with a bit of chat to the audience thrown in.  A story of the friendships and troubles of a group of teenagers growing up in rural Devon it didn't much appeal to me but for those with whom it struck a chord it might well have meant a lot. 

I also saw live theatre at the Brunton with Claire and her mum.  This was a show called 549: Scots of the Spanish Civil War.  The staging, lighting, sound, physical organisation and performance were exceptional in this highly energetic and admirable show about four men from Prestonpans who joined the International Brigade in Spain in 1936.  As usual Mark Fisher reviews it perfectly albeit the review is of an earlier production in Prestonpand town hall where I doubt that they were able to achieve such fine lighting. That merits a fourth star. Here's what he has to say.

My central heating came on this morning.  Should I reduce my thermostat to save gas?

Although I didn't much care for Dance Nights, I do like the venue it took place in and was reminded of enjoying shows there in previous years so I had a squint at what else they had on. 

One show that I particularly enjoyed a year or two ago was Are We Not Drawn Onward to New ErA and I found that Belgian theatre company Ontroerend Goed who did that show were here again with two shows.  So I booked a seat for one of them, Every Word Was Once An Animal.  It was odd but as often is the case Mark Fisher put his finger on it and has reviewed it in the same style as it was played.  I'd give four stars to his review but perhaps not to the show, or at least to my enjoyment of it.

One neat trick was that at one point the audience were asked to look below their seats for a letter.  I did and lo and behold there was an envelope lying on top of the jacket and bag I'd put there.  The envelope contained a card with a picture of a cut onion on one side (the picture above) and a letter on the other side (the picture below).  It relates to a scene in the show in which a letter is received from "Emma" who asks amongst other things what the show is about.  Answers on a postcard please.  Well here's the postcard.

After the puzzlement of that show came the puzzlement as to why Mary Queen of Scots insisted on seeking safety in England against the advice of all and sundry.  That act together with marrying Bothwell was the answer given by one of three writers to the question "What do you wish Mary hadn't done?"   Rosemary Goring's Homecoming is a biography that focusses on Mary's period of rule and places associated with her from Holyrood to Loch Leven.  Sue Lawrence's novel The Green Lady is about the women around the queen particularly Mary Seaton.  Andrew Greig's novel Rose Nicolson which I have read is a historical romance set in the turbulent years following Mary's departure to England.  As well as being a cracking story it is beautifully written as Greig's reading of an extract reminded me.  They had a lively and interesting discussion.

Hard on the heels of that event came Philippe Sands talking about his book The Last Colony.  This is about Britain's expulsion of the inhabitants of the Chagos Archipelago to give the USA a strategic base in the Indian Ocean on Diego Garcia and the numerous lawsuits and appeals to the UN that have ensued.  Britain has in essence been ordered by the international community to expedite the return of the Chagossians to their homeland but has consistently failed to do so.  Sands is an articulate and persuasive speaker as befits a prominent QC and is a powerful advocate of the islanders' cause which he has championed both inside and outside courts of law.  In response to a question from the audience about comparisons with the Falklands he suggested that had the Chagossians been white the story would have been very different.

My final Festival event was once again a booky one.  Brian Cox being interviewed by Nicola Sturgeon about his autobiography Putting the Rabbit in the Hat and about his current successes. The session was lively, entertaining and peppered generously with anecdotes.  Nicola's good humoured chiding of his previous allegiance as a "New Labour Luvvie" became something of an SNP lovefest as he professed his support for the cause of Scottish independence. The ovation at the end was undoubtedly a genuine expression of admiration for the man and his work and formed a triumphant fall of the curtain on what has been a wonderful three weeks.  Roll on the 2023 festavals. 

Halfway through the bin strike this is how the city looks.  The refuse workers are amongst the most valuable and least valued of the city's employees and in my opinion should be given what they asked for if not more.  The well-heeled burghers of Edinburgh can afford it.  But am I wrong in believing that the Council said they had a contingency plan that would keep the streets clean?  No matter.  The mess is not self-generated nor the fault of the council nor of aliens from outer space.  It's made by the city's residents and visitors.  Don't the residents have the wit to take litter home with them and keep it there till the strike is over?  Don't they care what the place looks like?  Obviously not.  Harder for visitors but even they could take litter back to their hotels, B&Bs or rented flats.

I don't know how they are doing it but the Book Festival are keeping the Art College grounds litter free.  There's a lesson there.  Swayed by the enthusiastic advocacy of Katherine Rundell I bought her biography of the poet John Donne and have swiftly read it. Not quite so carried away by the book itself though if I ever look at his poetry again I may find it has cast some light.

Thomas Harding and Kojo Koram did a double act discussing their books White Debt and Uncommon Wealth.  Both could be called exposés of British colonial history.  Even though we have increasing knowledge of our past there is still a lot to learn especially of its relationship to the present which is what Koram's book in particular aims to do.

Away from the festivals I went to see the streamed to cinemas play Prima Facie.  In it Jodie Comer gives a brilliant performance as an ace defence barrister specialising in sexual assault cases for whom the tables are turned.

I also went to the dentist for my twice yearly check-up.  My teeth are ok but it's costing more to learn that.

Back at the Book Festival I found myself in a position that I had occupied four years ago when I went to an event featuring an author I'd never heard of talking about books I'd never read and realised that everyone else was an adoring fan with an intimate knowledge of the oeuvre.  Then it was Lindsey Davis and her detective stories set in ancient Rome.  Now it was Abir Mukherjee and his detective stories set in the later years of the British Raj in India.  Then I bought the first book in the series, enjoyed it well enough but didn't proceed to the second.  Now I've bought the first book in the series, A Rising Man, and we'll see how it goes.  The event was fun though.  Mukherjee, a west coast Scot, and Denise Mina, one of our queens of crime fiction and another west coaster, kept us entertained with wit and humour.

Not so entertaining was as british as a watermelon.  I struggled to think of what to say about it, then I read Mark Fisher's review and he says it all.

The programme for When You Walk Over My Grave tells you that the text was written in blood.  This turns out to be an untruth as is much of Sergio Blanco's play.  It is said to be a work of autofiction in which I think the fiction much outweighs the autobiograpy.  I certainly hope so.  It was funny, more chuckle than belly laugh, and intriguing in the way it dipped in and out of the action of the story and a discussion of the writing of the story.  The story itself is that Sergio has decided to commit suicide in one of those discreet Swiss clinics and have his body sent to London to give pleasure to a young necrophiliac.  Wikipedia doesn't seem to have caught up with him but you can learn a little bit about the man and his works here.     

After that show I went off to meet Claire for Night Dances.  The Irish Times declared on some occasion, perhaps after a pint or two of Guiness, ‘Raucous, loud, sweaty… a thrilling hour of relentless dancing and music’  It was certainly loud, so loud that we were given earplugs as we went in. Could they not just have turned the volume down?  It was relentless and I'm sure the dancers were sweaty but I didn't find it thrilling. It lacked anything in the way of narrative or development of ideas and had no emotional content that I could discern.  The dancing had very little grace or precision.  Turning to the Guardian review I see that I have missed the point.

In talking about his book Born in Blackness, Howard W French makes a very powerful case for the Atlantic slave trade having been the fount and source of our modern world.  The wealth generated in countries (the white ones that is) that carried on the trade he argues facilitated the development of industry and the pursuit of knowledge that led us to where we are today.  I look forward to reading the book once it comes out in paperback when it won't be quite so pricey.

French contributed with Dipo Faloyin and Tsitsi Dangarembga to a Book Festival session called "Africa's Rich Diversity" that went well beyond discussion of slavery.  The starting point of their conversation was the need to get beyond the stereotypical views of Africa that tend to be prevalent in European and American minds. It's not all poverty or safaris.  They reminded us that the national boundaries within Africa are a colonial invention that paid no heed to the coherence of the pre-existing communities.  They rejected the "white saviour" attitude that colours some peope's idea and the view that westerners know what's best for the inhabitants of "the dark continent".  Perhaps most interestingly they pointed out that China has crept in where westerners couldn't be bothered to tread.  We're bothered about that situation now though. Dipo's book Africa is not a Country will be out in paperback next year if like me you don't want to stump up for a hardback.  No room on the bookcase anyway.  Tsitsi's book of essays Black and Female is a hardback that won't take up too much room and is correspondingly inexpensive.

You Know We Belong Together is a warm, poignant and touching play that celebrates the everyday lives of people with Down's syndrome.  The writer and main actor, Julia Hales, has Down's syndrome and has long held an ambition to perform in the Australian soap Home and Away. The play is performed in a mock-up of the soap's Summer Bay diner and Julia performs with people on stage though a number of the cast had to cry off because of Covid.  She introduces filmed interviews with friends who also have Down's and who delight us with their humour and determination to be themselves and be independent and to live and most especially love.

My one and only black tied orchestral concert was given by the Helsinki Philharmonic.   They started with Vista by a living Finn, Kajia Saariaho.  It was loud, fast, shrill, cold and slightly terrifying.  Looking her up on Wikipedia I'm not surprised to see her connection to IRCAM.   The second piece was Tapiola by Sibelius. This wasn't terrifying but it's a pretty dark piece and not likely to be one of my desert island discs.  Finally we heard the Piano Concerto 'Gran Toccata' by the Swiss composer Dieter Ammann.  This is very lively. Wild might be a better adjective.  I enjoyed it.  It's on Youtube if you've half an hour to give it a shot.  Or you can listen here to the same soloist and forces as played it in the Usher Hall and if you like buy a recording.

Having disposed of the Film Festival in my last post I'll get back to a more chronological review of my festival going including the Book Festival which for the second year running is, as you can see in the photo above, at the Art College.

After the Grads' shows my next theatrical experience was Room in the EIF.  This show really does defy description.  The stage crew come on at the end to take a bow with the cast and thoroughly deserve it for their slick management of the complex manipulation of the set demanded of them throughout.  This interview with James Thierrée, the creative genius behind it, gives you an idea of the show.  My comment - fun, incomprehensible, on the long side.

The following morning, a Sunday, I rose early enough to get to the Art College by 10.30 to hear Henry Marsh the brain surgeon in the Book Festival.  Unfortunately thanks to an incorrect placement of the event in my diary I was 24 hours too late.  The silver lining to this cloud was that I was able to pop over to the Filmhouse and see one of the Kinuyo Tanaka films.

That evening I went to Leith Theatre to hear the Sons of Kemet.  A sort of jazz band with the unusual combination of saxophone, tuba and two drum kits.  The saxophonist also plays beautifully on a flute like instrument.  The tuba player is unbelievably skilled, bending his instrument to produce sounds soft and sweet and harsh and loud by turn.  They can play quietly but generally they didn't.  Such amplification seems unnecessary to me but luckily I had earphones in my pocket which kept the volume tolerable otherwise I'd have had to leave and miss 90 minutes of wonderful music making.

Muster Station by the site specific masters Grid Iron was brilliant.  We waited initially in what seemed like a tropical greenhouse but was in fact just the entrance corridor in Leith Academy. When the show got underway we were marshalled harshly through passport control like booths in the school sports hall that split the audience into four groups that were subsequently herded separately around the school and exposed to various scenarios.  The premise revealed itself to be that the UK was about to be submerged by a giant wave and we were seeking refuge.  The final destination was back in the sports hall which had been transformed into the sort of temporary refuge that you see on news report with blankets strewn on the floor for people to huddle together on.  I have to say it was rather more beautiful and tasteful than anything you'd see on the news.  Thanks to my correct answers to questions about Finland at an earlier stage (where refuge was being sought) I and some others had earned a special status.  We were given life jackets and moved to a special enclosure in a corner of the hall.  Unfortunately I then lost most of the ongoing development of the show because of the acoustics of the hall.  But it was a great experience.

Olga Wojtas is an Edinburgh writer of whom I had never heard who has written a number of comic crime novels featuring a time travelling incompetent detective, a graduate of the Marcia Blaine School for Girls. (That may spark a memory for some).  Miss Blaine makes an appearance in the novels too I learnt at Olga's talk at the Book Festival.  I bought her latest to check whether I find it as funny as her fans do.  Apparently her books were not accepted by a German publisher who declared them too zany for the Germans.

Coppélia from Scottish Ballet was superb.  It's a complete reworking of the original that preserves the essence of the plot.   I expected the setting and choreography to be different, and by jove they were, but I thought to myself very early on that surely the music had never been so powerful.  It hadn't. A new score that incorporates some of Delibes as well as all the tricks of the synthesiser age. The Guardian called it "...a successful stride into ballet's future".  Keep your fingers crossed that it is and read their review.

Anything connected to Cuba generally attracts my attention so no surprise that I went to hear Karla Suarez talk about her novel Havana Year Zero.  It's set in 1993, a year of economic crisis in Cuba, and is about the search by a disparate cast of characters for a document that will prove that the telephone was invented in Cuba.  There is apparently a strong argument that it was but that's not the point of the novel which amongst other things the blurb tells us is about "how people cling onto meaning in a country at its lowest ebb".  Coincidentally I recently bought a book (not yet read) which is the real story of how seven ordinary Cubans born in the 70s and 80s have coped with life there.  It's called How Things Fall Apart which chimes well with Suarez's novel.  As for that, it was a pleasure to listen to the vivacious Karla's Spanish quite apart from learning about her book.

That evening I was at the Usher Hall to hear Jordi Saval and his group of musicians give a programme of the type of music that Ibn Battuta, the medieval Moroccan traveller, might have heard on his extensive travels through Asia and Europe.  It was a good listen.  I had a ticket to hear Saval present Turkish music of the same sort of period at the Queen's Hall the following morning but couldn't go though I've subsequently heard the concert thanks to BBC Sounds.  It was lovely.

I went to Arkle's two shows.  Silent Night was the story of a family spending Christmas Eve in an Anderson shelter during the London Blitz.  It was reasonably well performed and staged but was the sort of play you might pick out from a list of available plays suitable for amateurs who need to deploy 3m, 2f.   Their other show, Tay Bridge by Peter Arnott was better material, the back stories of seven individuals on board the ill-fated train.  It was very well performed and staged with superb tableau moments as the cast were buffeted by periodic jolting of the train and then cast into the sea.  The accompanying light and sound effects were excellent.  Standout performances from Esther Gilvray and Therese Gallagher.

International Theater Amsterdam were due to bring three plays to the EIF which they would perform in Dutch.  All three were based on books so I determined to read the books in advance to get a Fosbury flop over the language barrier.  I got some way through The Magic Mountain yawning the while.  Then the show was cancelled so I didn't need to finish the book.  A Little Life turned out to be a convenient and appropriate birthday present so I didn't even start that one.  I did read The End of Eddy and I suppose it helped me to understand what was going on in the production.  However I much preferred the book and I am sure that was because as Hugh Simpson wisely says in this review -  "It is all done with the maximum of enthusiasm, but the lack of light and shade does mean that a certain profundity is lacking."

As for A Little Life language was not a problem except to the extent that I found it difficult to differentiate between the voices and found myself quite often checking the actor's mouths to see who was speaking.  Was that because they were speaking a foreign language?

The play was great, all three hours and fifty minutes playing time.  Even the twenty minute interval was enjoyable because most of the cast stayed on stage and pottered about doing things in character.

The play centres around the lifelong trauma suffered by Jude, one of the four friends whose relationship is the lifeblood of the story.  Blood there is in abundance as Jude self harms, the result of the horrific abuses he suffered as a child and young man.  These are shown in all their graphic detail in flashbacks.  Ramsey Nasr who plays Jude meets and transcends the extraordinary physical and emotional demands of the part triumphantly.  It's no wonder that he was given Holland's highest acting award in 2015 when he first played the part.

Over the weekend at the Book Festival I heard Marc David Baer talk about his book The Ottomans (which the library have obtained for me more quickly that I either expected or wanted), Abdulrazak Gurnah talk wisely and well about his life and work, Gulbahar Haitiwaji (with help from her daughter) talk about her internment by the Chinese in one of their so called re-education camps and Alan Cumming give an entertaining and humorous insight into his activities and attitudes.

After a couple of hours chatting with old friends in a pub on Sunday afternoon Fiona (here for a chum's golden wedding do) and I went to the Hub to see Liz Lochead's Medea.  It was an interestingly staged production with the bulk of the audience standing around a narrow thrust stage. The principals provided fine declamatory performances and the chorus, who at some stages mingled with the audience, gave the insightful commentary on the action that is their responsibility in Greek theatre (ancient that is).  I enjoyed it but as I admitted to Fiona I felt nothing.  My withers were not wrung.  So we can't give it more than three stars however generous we feel.

Festival crowds filling up the High Street once again, here to sample the 3000 odd shows on offer.  I've sampled a few more since I last posted.  Life being short I shall make only the briefest of notes on them.

I started the first full week of the Festivals having lunch with some friends up from the south.  It was a lovely day and after lunch they went of to board the Royal Yacht and I had a wee wander in the sunshine.

To the Playhouse in the evening to see Pulse which as I said before was the main constituent of the EIF free opening event.  I had a much better view in the theatre but the show was 99% the same.  The other 1% was the buiding of a tower of 4 people standing on one another's shoulders.  Astonishing.

Counting and Cracking the following evening began in 2004 when we met a 20 something first generation Australian of Sri Lankan origin and his Aboriginal girlfriend.  The play then takes us back to Sri Lanka in the 50s and follows the fortunes of his family through the tensions, upheavals and bloodshed that culminated in the arrest of his father and the flight of his mother from the island.  It was a good production.  I enjoyed it thoroughly, even the somewhat contrived revelation that the young man's girl friend's DNA analysis suggested that her forebears came from South Asia.  Sri Lanka perhaps?

Taraf de Caliu billed as legends of Romanian folk music played in the lovely but sadly underused Leith Theatre which could also do with a lick of paint.  They turned out to be a highly amplified electric lot who played at the extremes of dynamic and tempo.  Mercifully they stopped for breath after 40 minutes or so and I left.

The Grads presented The Merchant of Venice and Bloody Wimmin.  Shakespeare's play needs no introduction but Bloody Wimmin is less well known.  Its action starts with the peace camp at Greenham Common set up by women protesting against the coming of American Cruise missiles to the base there.  Protests that went on for nearly 20 years.  The play goes on to explore other protest movements, the role that women played in them and the significant impact on male female relationships that ensued.  Both productions were very good.  The Merchant's silent opening scene in which Shylock is taunted and demeaned by the Venetians was chilling.  A brilliant idea whosever it was.

The Film Festival has returned to August which adds to the delights of the season but also to the difficulties of choice.  I have rather neglected the Fringe to take in several films.  The opening gala film (which I saw at a cheaper re-screening) was Aftersun, the excellent debut feature of young Sottish director Charlotte Wells.  I'll quote the IMDB summary of the "plot" which sums up the bones of the film very well - "Sophie reflects on the shared joy and private melancholy of a holiday she took with her father twenty years earlier. Memories real and imagined fill the gaps between as she tries to reconcile the father she knew with the man she didn't." and direct you to Peter Bradshaw's five star review.

Kinuyo Tanaka was a very successful Japanese film actress who for about a decade beginning in the early fifties turned her hand to direction. The Film Festival are showing all six of the films she directed in newly restored and digitised prints.  I managed to see five and hope to see the sixth when the films are shown in Glasgow next month.  They are all different, ranging from sweet comedy through social realism to historical epic and all place women at the centre of the film.  I thought they were all brilliant.  Mind you, to the modern viewer much of the acting is somewhat "heightened".  I list them here without commentary as an aide-memoire to myself and in honour of my ongoing attempt to learn it, their Japanese titles. 恋文 ( Love Letter), 月は上りぬ (The Moon has Risen), 乳房よ永遠なれ（Forever a Woman),　流転の王妃 (The Wandering Princess) and 女ばかりの夜（Girls of the Night).

Official Competition is a Spanish comedy about the making of a film or at least the acting rehearsals for it.  We never see the cameras rolling.  It will be released in cinemas shortly and should entertain especially the amateur theatre practitioners amongst us.

I've always enjoyed short films so I put a couple of screenings into my schedule.  New shorts from Scotland were:

The Barber,   a refugee in Glasgow discovers something troubling about the man who cuts her son's hair.

Infectious Nihilism and Small Metallic Pieces of Hope,  is a gang the answer to a young man need to belong somewhere?

Kafia, love for the filmmaker's grandmother as she approaches death.  With Wrinkled Years she made an earlier tribute to her grandmother who recounts her son's death.  

Maureen, is a comedic tussle between aunt and niece over the ashes of the former's sister, aka the latter's mother.  It could also be looked on as a tribute to Tupperware.  The link takes you to its crowdfunder page though obviously they got the money.  However it's an interesting read.

Too Rough, is a tense drama but has moments of humour as Nick tries to conceal the boyfriend he has been foolhardy enough to take home for the night from his alcoholic and dysfunctional family.

Who I Am Now, tells the story of two trans refugees who having had to leave their birth families form new families from their friends.  Adam Kashmiry whose story was brilliantly brought to the stage by the NTS a few years ago is one of the principal protagonists.

The festival also featured short animation films.  I enjoyed the selection I saw at the time but for fear that I forget them and that the records of the 2022 film festival disappear I'm copying the programme blurbs.

Bird in the Peninsula, 
Children are dancing to music under the supervision of their teacher. A young lady witnesses the scene and disrupts their rituals. 

 

Holy Holocaust, explores an unusual relationship between Noa, a white Israeli woman and Jennifer, a black German, who for 22 years believed that their friendship could easily rise above historical and political obstacles, until horrifying family secrets are revealed and explode right in their faces. Jennifer discovers that she is the biological granddaughter of a notorious Nazi commander, while Noa is exposed to the untold Holocaust tragedy of her grandmother’s family. So now what? Can they overcome the horrors of the past and go on as usual?

Inglorious Liasons,
Tonight is the big night for Lucie, Maya and their friends. Even Jimmy came: he is here for Maya, and everybody knows it. But at the moment when everything is supposed to happen, Maya and Lucie discover they have hidden feelings for each other, tender and confused, and they struggle to find their footing in this evening punctuated by alcohol that flows freely, music that rocks and hormones that boil.

Meneath: The Hidden Island of Ethics dives deeply into the innate contrast between the Seven Deadly Sins (Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Pride and Envy) and the Seven Sacred Teachings (Love, Respect, Wisdom, Courage, Truth, Honesty and Humility), as embodied in the life of a precocious Métis baby. Brought to life by Terril Calder’s darkly beautiful stop-motion animation, Baby Girl’s inner turmoil is laid bare with unflinching honesty. Convinced she’s soiled and destined for Hell, Baby Girl receives Anishinaabe Teachings from Nokomis that fill her with strength and pride and affirm a path towards healing. Calder’s tour-de-force unearths a hauntingly familiar yet hopeful world that illuminates the bias of colonial systems.

 

 Well Wishes My Love, Your Love , A boy lends his friend a prosthetic arm for the day.

Yugo Testimonies from relatives trace the course of a woman and a man forced to leave their native countryside for the outskirts of Bogotá to work on the industrial manufacture of decorative pieces for trucks. On a lifetime scale, Yugo questions the capitalist and liberal economic development of Latin America and its consequences to humans beings, through the environmental and societal changes it generates.

I spent a little while at the Foodies festival today.  Laura MacDonald, the saxophonist, gave some tickets away at her gig in the Jazz festival.  In her other life she's been a Masterchef finalist and was booked to do some demos at the Foodies.  Unfortunately she wasn't there today.

I wandered round, watched the kids being face painted and doing cooking, munched on free samples, listened to music, imbibed free samples and generally relaxed in the sun.  Found the food outlet with the smallest queue (Slumdog from just up the road) where I bought a tasty plateful for lunch.

I didn't count them but there were probably two booze stalls to every food one.  I sampled a rather tasty whisky liqueur at one but at over thirty quid a bottle refrained from making a purchase.

At twice as much as I paid in Italy just a few weeks ago I likewise refrained from making a purchase at this aperitivo bar where spritzes of all sorts were on offer.

In Glasgow this week I had quite a decent lunch with Andrew at a place called Gloriosa.  We went on to see the John Byrne exhibition at Kelvingrove.  It made a very distinct contrast to the Vettriano in Kirkcaldy.  The art works were much more varied, though it has to be said Byrne does rather favour the self-portrait, but of course his work as playwright and stage designer and involvement in screen adaptations of his writing puts him into a different catagory.  The exhibition runs till mid September and is worth a visit.

The EIF's free opening event, MACRO, took place under this large canopy at Murrayfield stadium.  It consisted mostly of the extraordinary acrobatic building and disintegration of structures made from human beings by the Australian physical theatre company Gravity & Other Myths.  Under each of the spotlights in this picture is a tower of three people.  I shall have a second chance to enjoy their work at the Playhouse this week.

So far I've seen three Fringe productions:

Exodus - an amusing, indeed farcical tale of a Home Secretary aspiring to be PM, her SPAD, an asylum seeker who takes on the task of pretending to be her mother and a journalist who wants to interview her.  Dealing with the plucking of an infant from the sea at Dover by a politician who wants to put an anti-migrant thermonuclear barrier round the UK provides the situation from which the humour flows.

The Last Return - a comedy built from the behaviour of people queueing for a sold-out theatre performance in the hope of a ticket being returned.  It's very funny, very well performed and staged and very daft.  I loved it.

Bloke and his American Bantu -  a show constructed from the correspondence between the Afro-American writer and activist Langston Hughes and the South African journalist, writer and actor Bloke Modisane.  Hughes, albeit remotely from his home in Harlem, seems to have been a big support both materially and emotionally to Modisane who had left South Africa and was scratching a living in London.  I had the impression perhaps wrongly that when Modisane had some success he didn't fully repay that support.

I wasn't terribly excited by it, certainly not as much as the South African reviewer who saw the show before it left for Edinburgh.  But I was interested enough to order a copy of Modisane's book recounting how life was for a black man in the South Africa of the 50s.  The book was of course banned in his home country.     

Buses (and other traffic) now running in both directions on Leith Walk.  Hoorah!

Admittedly not the whole length of it and not all buses but it's a step further along the road to the completion of the tram extension.  The Shrubhill bus-stop on my side re-opened a few weeks ago and now its fellow on the other side has done so.  For the first time in some years I can get a bus from town to my door.

So far only the number 11, but that came in very handy when I returned from the Vettriano exhibition in Kirkcaldy the other day.  The train I was on stopped at South Gyle and it was announced that we were being held there while an "incident" at Waverley was sorted out.  We only stayed a few minutes but when we got going we were told that because of said "incident" the train would terminate at Haymarket.  I love that expression.

This was my chance to enjoy the bus-stop.  I caught the tram from Haymarket to St Andrew Square, nipped over to George St. and immediately onto an 11 that deposited me at Shrubhill.  

When the Macdonald Rd. tramstop opens next year Haymarket will become my arrival station of choice coming from the west.

The Vettriano exhibition was most interesting in its inclusion of paintings he produced under his birth name of Jack Hoggan.  These were almost all either copies or closely modelled on existing works by other artists.  That's all part of the learning process especially for a self-taught painter. They struck me as very well done, in particular a fine self-portrait of Rembrant and a work called Beach Concert whose original has not been traced.

The 1988 success of this painting, The White Slip, this photo of which I've obtained from www.artnet.com and which was not a copy of anything seems to be what convinced him to go all out for art and develop a style of his own.  There are hints of it here.  It's interesting to compare it with the picture below (taken from an exhibition site) also called The White Slip.  I haven't yet found when that was painted but it's clearly well after his personal style and preferred subject matter had bedded in.

The following year his application for a place on a Fine Art MSc was rejected but that has not held him back, certainly if commercial success is your measure.  Critics and the art establishment have been harsh on him but in 2011 a self-portrait went on display in the Portrait Gallery.

Having two prints and five fridge magnets of his work you might think I'm a devotee but the pleasure I take in his work tends to tail off when I see too much of that brooding darkness.

Go to Kirkcaldy though. The exhibition is on till October and if you don't like it too much then take in the roomfull of McTaggarts and Peploes from the gallery's permanent collection.

If you want a opinion other than mine try The Times.

Thanks to Claire my participation in this year's Jazz festival has been immortalised.  The gig is the culmination of the Napier University Jazz Summer School which I've done a few times.  All have been fun to do but I don't know that my jazz playing is very much better than the first time I did it.  However, my motivation to put some effort into jazz has been given a boost, especially since I'm no longer taking regular sax lessons.

One of the perks of the summer school is that you get free tickets for evening gigs during the week.  Adding on the gigs that I bought tickets for at the two weekends that comes to 10 in total that I attended.  I'm going to put brief notes here as a reminder to myself of what I thought of them.

Richard Glassby Quartet -  I enjoyed the music but confess to having gone home after the first set because sitting twiddling my thumbs for 20 minutes between sets didn't appeal at 10 o'clock at night.

Xhosa Cole Quartet - Super gig headed by a former BBC Young Jazz Musician of the year on saxophone.

Noushy 4Tet -  I was a little bit disappointed.  I've heard Anoushka Nanguy play with the SNJO and was looking forward to hearing her trombone in a more prominent setting.  In this gig she sang quite a few numbers rather than played and also gave a lot of space to her fellow players.  Nothing wrong with either of those but it wasn't quite what I had hoped for.  

Brian Molley Quintet Play Getz and Byrd's "Jazz Samba" - This gig celebrated the 60th anniversary of the release of that album.  I very much enjoy latin music and I admire Brian Molley as a saxophonist so this gig was right up my street.  Loved it. 

John Scofield: Yankee Go Home - This was one of my free gigs so I shouldn't complain and indeed I'm not.  I'm just saying that it didn't float my boat.  Scofield is a guitar legend and people who enjoy the electric guitar more than I do will have adored this gig.  I enjoyed some of it.

European Jazz Workshop Big Band -  This was certainly the most original and impressive gig that I went to and possibly the one that I enjoyed most.  It started innocently enough with four original tunes from a young Glasgow quartet that included Rachel Duns, a saxophonist to keep your ear on.  Then the stage filled up with players from another four European cities, around 20 players in all.  They played for 75 minutes a piece that they had developed improvisationaly over a week long workshop.  Hard to describe, for me at least, there's an informed minute by minute review of the work here. 

Laura MacDonald's Cooking With Jazz - A well known and accomplished presence on the Scottish jazz scene for 30 years Laura hit the big time with the public when she made it to the finals of the  BBC's Masterchef show in 2021.  There's a fascinating write-up about it here.  At this gig in which the tunes were all food related she laid aside her alto sax to demonstrate making honeycomb (puff candy to me) and to serve a tangerine cake topped with chunks of the stuff.  Accompanying her on tenor but not in cooking was another brilliant Scottish player, Helena Kay.

Haftor Medboe and friends -  Haftor ran the Napier jazz summer school for over 20 years and handed over responsibility for it only this year to Sue McKenzie who joined him on saxophones for this gig.  Accompanied by Tom Lyne on double bass and Signy Jakobsdottir on drums and featuring a couple of songs from Jessie Bates he explored music from his Scandanavian homeland, all of it gentle, thoughtfull and moving. So good.

Federico Calcagno and the Dolphians - Their mission is to celebrate and extend the music of Eric Dolphy and in this gig specifically his 1964 album "Out to Lunch".  Classed as avant-garde at the time it's still a bit of an effort to listen to for those who like the Great American Songbook but I enjoyed the gig.

Archipelagos - Led by drummer Francesca Remigi this band's music is definitely avant-avant-garde but if you stick with it, which I did for the first set, it's rewarding.  Just as at my first fetival gig I didn't want to twiddle my thumbs for 20 minutes at this the last one so I left at the interval.  Had I been more in touch with the music, (or should that be vice versa?),  I might have stayed.

Inside the catamaran taking me from Venice to Pula.  Not such an interesting experience as I had imagined. No deck to walk about on.  A bit of a view through the grubby windows while we were still in the lagoon.  After that nothing.

We arrived in Pula around 9.30pm.  The place was buzzing with pop-up bars by the water's edge doing a roaring trade and roaring pop music coming from the amphitheatre.  When I got through immigration I spotted a lonely taxi straddling what looked like train or tram tracks so I hurried over and found that he was free.  After loading my case in his boot he asked where to.  I told him.  He immediately started unloading my case declaring that he couldn't go there.  With this festival - gesturing vaguely towards the bars and booms - the road's closed.  Along there and up to the left were directions as precise as he delivered himself of.

I set off not in the best humour dragging my case over bumpy setts between the tracks wilting in the heat.  Me that is. The tracks were made of sterner stuff.  After a while I turned left and the going got tougher for it was now uphill.  At a little square stood two chaps chatting.  I explained my predicament and asked for directions.  They turned out to be taxi drivers and one said there was no road closure, he'd take me, it was no distance.  In the cab he said the obvious.  The driver at the dock wanted a decent fare not a piddling wee trip to my hotel.  When we arrived I felt he'd earned if not a decent fare then certainly a decent tip.

The hotel was a contrast to Treviso.  Perfectly adequate for my needs but had seen better days.  One of those shower heads that won't stay in its housing so no blissful standing under a stream of cool water.  Despite the sheet listing 20 odd TV channels only 3 gave picture or sound so no Wimbledon in prospect at the end of the day.  

I was up early and out to survey the scene after a cafe breakfast of coffee, orange juice and croissant.   Then a wander around.  You can't wander far in downtown Pula without coming across this

A really impressive Roman remain, in use while I was there for a music festival.  I didn't expect (judging by what I heard on my arrival the previous evening) that the music would be much to my taste and I'd never heard of anyone listed on the board you can see in the picture but I thought it would be fun to go one evening.  However, on looking up all the names I found that they were all DJs.  Not a single live artist was appearing. Now I know that the DJ's art has expanded since its early days when putting a record on the spindle and announcing the number's name was its full extent.  Even so I was put off.

I had a good walk around the centre and along the quayside noting the boat excursions on offer.  Later in the day I took an open top city tour that in fact was mostly a tour of the holiday spots to the south of Pula. 

Istria has the sort of tangled history you could expect from being handily placed for the Austrians and Venetians, their predecessors and successors to argue about, not to mention the Cold War, and is officially bilingual as in this street sign

extended to trilingual for the benefit of visitors as in this bakery

and in this poster for a celebration of the work of their famous one time resident James Joyce.  

In an earlier post I had a picture of a statue of Joyce in Trieste where he lived happily for several years.  In Pula he lived unhappily for only a few months but that hasn't prevented the Pulans(?) from commemorating his connection with their city.  This article expands on the relationship and records some of the scathing things he had to say.  But clearly no offence taken for here he is seated in the cafe Uliks (Ulysses in Croatian).

The cafe stands at the head of the main street of the old town leading from the Sergius Arch to the Forum where the Temple of Augustus still stands, the Temple of Diana having had to make way for the town hall.

 

      
 

 

 

 

Along Sergijeveca which is what the street is called there is lots to see though I couldn't find the Roman mosaic floor mentioned in my guide book.

And a bit of life.  The bike fell over and decanted the poor dog.

In another part of town there are markets indoor and out.

Elsewhere there's a bit of faded grandeur.

The next day I took a boat trip.  We went up the coast to the beautiful little town of Rovinj where they'd laid on a guided walk.  On returning to the boat a delicious lunch of fish with lashings of finely shredded veg that could have been cabbage but seemed too delicate was served as we went further up the coast and then some distance into an inlet called Limski Kanal. 

We returned to the sea and headed for Crveni Otok,  a very pleasant holiday island where we had a couple of hours to wander around or go swimming or simply contemplate our navels.  In that heat some shady resting and cold drinking was my choice.

Then it was back to Pula with a fine view of the amphitheatre on the approach.

On the way back to the hotel I stopped for refreshment and a snack.  I had a Negroni which was a bit on the strong side so I lingered to allow its effect to wane and watched a group of couples with their kids enjoying themselves in the warm evening air.  I got chatting with a waiter and was able to improve his rendition of "it's a braw bricht moonlicht nicht the nicht an aw" that he'd learnt from some other Scotsman.  When I passed his cafe on other occasions thereafter we'd greet one another with that phrase, to the bewilderment no doubt of passers by who overheard.

Having sailed up the west coast of the Istrian peninsula I decided the next day to take a bus to Rijeka which stands at the top of the east coast to which according to my guide book there was a 90 minute bus ride.  When I got to the bus station the next bus on the indicator board was at 11.00 and would take 2h40 for the journey.  Subsequent research revealed that not all journeys are posted on that board and that there is indeed a 90 minute service but only once a day departing at 21.30.

So I strolled over to the train station and no thanks to the loquacious lady in front of me in the ticket queue just caught the 09:05 to Pazin which is an inland town about 40 km away.  It took about an hour and then 15 minutes or so to get from the station to the town.  It was all downhill but I couldn't help thinking of the walk back in that heat.

It was a very pleasant little town.  The castle and its museum were shut thanks to it being a Monday and the church was covered in cloth-bound scaffolding for its once in a 100 year brush up so there wasn't a lot to do other than enjoy the tranquility, have a little picnic on bakey goodies and take the inevitable liquid remedy against the heat.  I watched some people whizz down a zip wire that went along a gorge by the castle but wasn't tempted to find its source.

When the train I'd gone to catch back to Pula didn't turn up I asked a woman in an office what the story was.  She went and called another guy who came out to the platform and looked at the timetable (as I had) but was able to interpret the markings (as I had not been) to tell me that that train didn't run during school holidays.  I'd had thought, given the number of trains that pass through Pazin per day, they'd have had that info at their finger tips.

A wait ensued during which I trekked downhill to buy cold liquids at a petrol station and slogged back up again.  On return to Pula I had an excellent dinner in a restaurant called Kantina.

The next day I was on the water again, this time to visit the Brijuni Islands.  These are a national park and the main island is where Tito had his summer home. Notably it's where he, together with Nehru and Nasser founded the Non-aligned movement.  A monument to the same stands in the museum together with innumerable pictures of the man entertaining statesmen, royalty and celebrities on the island.  Parts of it, off limits to tourists are still used by government ministers for holidays and I daresay they host foreign dignitaries too. 

There's also a very interesting gallery dedicated to the Viennese businessman Paul Kupelwieser who bought and developed the islands in 1894.

One floor of the buildings contains stuffed animals.  These apparently are animals that were given to Tito who established a zoo and was so fond of his animals that he had them stuffed when they died. l have to say that the giraffes must have died very young or they are from a pygmy species.  There's no longer a zoo but there is a safari park with various animals including an Indian elephant.  There's also a wierd statue of an elephant for which I found no explanation.

We had a little tourist train trip round the island, seeing the Roman remains, the safari park and the golf course.  You can cycle and walk around and of course eat and drink, which I did. 

 

Back in the hotel that evening there being as I said no tennis channel on the telly I finished my book - After Lives by Abdulrazak Gurnah.

Still keen to go up the east coast of the peninsula I decided next day to get away reasonably early and aim for a slightly shorter trip to Opatija instead of Rijeka.  What a good idea that turned out to be.

The bus ran inland for roughly half the journey amidst attractive scenery and then by the coast for the rest of the journey with equally attractive views, turning off the main road and swinging into the small bus station at Opatija thus relieving my slight anxiety about knowing where to get off.

I was charmed by the place.  It developed from a small fishing village into its present glory starting in the mid 19th century when it became what my guidebook calls "..a tonic for the stressed elite of the Austro-Humgarian Empire and beyond."  Luxury hotels began to be built and all the trappings that go with that came along.  Here's what's available today.

I enjoyed just wandering around admiring the place and enjoying its gardens and a small portion of the 12 km long Franz Joseph I promenade more cozily called the Lungomare which you can read about here. On my next visit I must walk the length of it.

My guidebook recommended a restaurant which I eventually found but which was not open at lunchtime.  This turned to be no bad thing for I had an absolutely delicious lunch at the Yacht Club Bistro.  I thoroughly recommend it.

The return bus turned up some 20 minutes late but since it was coming from Zagreb I wasn't too surprised but I was happy to see it.  The delay was made up and gave me ample time to overdose on ice-cream before bedtime.  

On my last day in Croatia I was up early and off to the bus station to leave my bag in the left luggage till bus time later in the day.  En route I was accosted by a lady looking for information in a language which I took to be Croatian. After must repetition from me of "no speaky you lingo" (well I was a bit more polite than that) she beckoned her chum over who had some English.  They were looking for a market to buy some fruit. I knew where the market was but my directions I'm sorry to say were much like my unwelcoming taxi driver's in their precision.

Having dumped my bag and had a leisurely breakfast at the bus station I set off to have a stroll around.  A text from Asda my mobile provider popped up saying a monthly card payment had been declined.  A consequence of RBS's move from Visa to Mastercard I surmised.  I'd tried to update the card info on the Asda website at the time but wasn't sure that I'd succeeded.  Now I was sure I hadn't.

I took a seat in the shade in one of the pop-up open air bars by the waterfront and rang their support line.  A charming lady who called me Mr. Brian throughout our conversation said she'd fix it but the fix wouldn't come into effect till the following day.  No sweat as far as I was concerned.  I've had occasion to call their support a number of times over the years and found the staff unfailingly friendly, courteous and efficient. I give them top marks.

I sat on in the shade for a while reading and watching some guys working in full sun.  There was a gentle breeze. It was perfect.

Then it was time to take some gentle exercise.  These two boats attracted my attention.     

On the left is the Aresteas, available for sale or charter.  You'll need deep pockets mind you.  Details here and here.

A cheaper alternative is the Linda.  You can have a cycling/sailing holiday on her.  See the details here.  I had a good chat with the lad working on deck.

Back in town I had a decent plate of fish and a nice beer for lunch and then bought some booze to take home, honey brandy to take to a social event and some fortified wine for myself. After that I went back to my shady rest spot for a while before going to the bus station to wait for the bus to Trieste.

The journey was not very interesting though I was struck by the wide fertile valley we crossed not long before or not long after we crossed into Italy.  Entering Trieste from the south you pass through a heavily industrialised and frankly ugly area and there's a lot of it.

It was raining when I got off the bus but it's only a hop, skip and jump to the railway station so I didn't get very wet. I didn't have long to wait for the train and consumed a little snack while waiting.  The air conditioning wasn't working in the carriage I got into so shortly after we started I moved to a much more comfortable location.  The journey was uneventful but gave me another opportunity to admire the mountain scenery north of the line and to wonder what the towns we passed through were like.  Maybe I'll explore this area some time.

At the hotel in Treviso I had a little chat with the receptionist to exercise my Italian then off to bed.  In the morning I pulled my case down to the airport shuttle bus stop, not having got around to sussing out the service bus route or the ticketing system. That's a task for next time because I'm sure I'll be back in Treviso.

The airport was busy and the wait was tedious as always but the plane left on time and bumpily arrived in Edinburgh five minutes early.  It was a bit windy (thus the bumpy descent) but reasonably warm and by tram and bus I was home in time to watch the ladies final at Wimbledon.  I've already forgotten who won or indeed who played!