Trio Mediaeval, Wigmore Hall Lunchtime Concert, 17 September 2018

I’m a big fan of this troupe. This is, I think, the third time we’ve seen them perform live, by which I mean we’ve seen them at least twice before…

most recently at one of those late night concerts about three years ago…

…and before that a wonderful concert at the end of the last decade, at which I bought one of their CDs, Words Of The Angel, which we listen to quite often and which I thoroughly recommend:

But back to the here and now – this 2018 lunchtime concert. This is one of those BBC lunchtime jobbies, so we were in the extremely capable hands of Sara Mohr-Pietsch. Sara stewards these lunchtime concerts with such gentle, kind authority and efficiency, it makes one wonder whether she should be running the country. I suppose the country is a slightly tougher gig, but it could sure use some of the positive characteristics I have just described.

I have previously introduced Trio Mediæval as the Bananarama of mediaeval girl groups. Much like that 1980s pop trio, Trio Mediæval (a product of the 1990s as it happens) seems to have two stable members plus one newbie each time we see them.

The consistent pair are Anna Maria Friman (from Sweden) and Linn Andrea Fuglseth (from Norway), whereas the newbie this time was Jorunn Lovise Husan.

If Anna Maria and Linn Andrea were to pair up with a couple of Swedish blokes, I could start describing them as the Abba of mediaeval vocal music, which might be an even more marketing-friendly epithet. A thought for the girls to ponder, no doubt.

And thoughtful they are. They sing with smiles on their faces. They sing like people who absolutely know and love what they are doing. You sense that there is deep scholarship about mediaeval music in their work, yet also the willingness to adapt, experiment and make the music accessible to modern audiences.

This concert was a mixture of early English chants and motets, plus traditional folk songs from Norway and Sweden. It reads like an odd mix but actually worked very well. It has, each previous time, been a joy to attend their concerts and this one was certainly no exception.

Lulled into a blissful sense of security, Janie lulled me into a gentleman’s outfitters afterwards, helping me to spend far too much money upgrading my rather tired wardrobe. Anyone fancy some second hand jackets and trousers from the Bananarama and/or Abba era?

But I digress.

Here is a link to the Wigmore Hall resource for this concert.

If you want to listen to the whole concert and are hitting this page within 30 days of the broadcast, you are in luck. Here is a link to the BBC iPlayer recording.

If you have missed it or only want to here a snippet or two, here is some of the Worcester Ladymass material we heard:

…and here is a link to a Scandinavian folk song, although not one they sang at this concert:

Sunday Lunch At The Orange With Kim, Micky & DJ, 16 September 2018

Well ahead of time, DJ invited us to lunch at The Orange in Belgravia/Pimlico. We had been looking forward to the day for much of the summer.

We weren’t disappointed for sure. It is always good to see DJ, Kim & Micky. As it turned out, it was a beautiful late-summer’s day, sitting in a very airy, well-spaced restaurant upstairs.

None of us had eaten in the restaurant there before, although Micky had previously been to the pub. We were all most impressed by the food the wines and the service. Janie and I both majored on the Sunday roast beef with all the trimmings, as did DJ.

Kim and Micky furnished me with a thoughtful bespoke birthday card and gifts, one of which was a tee-shirt emblazoned with the same legend as the card:

DJ, Kim and Micky told us about the Dalmatian coast, which they had recently been exploring. We pondered the lack of Dalmatian dogs in Dalmatia and wondered whether a themed boutique hotel, Villa De Vil, might be a winner. I expect Dodie Smith’s estate might have a question or three to ask about that one.

We didn’t realise that there is a glorious upstairs terrace at the back of The Orange, acting as a sun trap in the late afternoon. But under the guidance of excellent, interesting and kind waiter Gareth, we took up residence out there for after dinner drinks and to carry on chatting.

On learning that there is no house guitar, we tried some a capella singing…very badly.

Gareth was not only a maestro at serving food & drink, he is also a selfie maestro. The photograph below, achieved without a selfie-stick, is clearly the act of an experienced, steady hand.

Gareth also took a few pictures in a more regular or old-fashioned style, with the photographer excluded. A couple of those are shown below.

Many hours passed. It got dark. Eventually (at 21:00), the terrace had to close for regulatory/licensing reasons. Janie and I decided to call it quits at that juncture, leaving DJ, Kim & Micky to have “one for the road” by relocating to the pub’s outdoor seating, by the road.

Special, memorable times with special friends.

The Human Voice by Jean Cocteau, Gate Theatre, 14 September 2018

I read this play “back in the day” – when I was in my twenties – and had long wanted to see this Cocteau classic performed.

So when the Gate Theatre, one of our favourite places, announced that it would be producing this play, I was one of the first in metaphorical line to snap up tickets.

Here is a link to the Gate Theatre resource for this play/production.

When this play was first written, the telephone was a relatively novel medium, so the piece will have been seen as exploratory – what might it sound like to be a fly on the wall hearing one side of a telephone conversation between lovers whose relationship has very recently broken down?

Of course, these days you only have to travel on public transport or sit in a cafe to eavesdrop on one side of such conversations all the time. Perhaps with that contemporary reality in mind, this production is performed with a mobile phone, bringing in additional opportunities for call interruption business while eliminating the potential for existential telephone chord business.

Also, to accentuate the theatrical “fly on the wall” sensation, the action took place inside a room-like windowed booth which we, the audience, observed from two sides. The photos below illustrate how that looked, from our seats, before the actress appeared. We all wore headphones to hear the actress as she might sound talking into a telephone. For this play, done this way, I think these touches worked.

 

Leanne Best did a grand job as the grief and panic-stricken woman who is the only visible and audible character in this play.

Janie concluded that the man was a piece of shit who was trying to drive the woman to suicide. That was not my reading of the play back then nor of this production of it.

We both thought this was a cracking good piece of drama- perhaps too good for us on a Friday evening when we were both tired and not really desirous of being gripped by the emotional throat.

Still in preview at the time of writing, but the reviews should be found through this search term if you click here.

We thought very highly of the production – if you are reading this while the run is still on, you might need to book early to avoid disappointment.

Tennis At Queen’s Followed By Dinner With Simon Jacobs At Brasserie Blanc, 12 September 2018

I have been playing real tennis at The Queen’s Club this September, as the Lord’s court is closed for refurbishment and a few other clubs, such as Queen’s, have, very kindly, offered us MCC tennis types refugee status for the month.

It’s been a somewhat sobering experience at times.

My first gig as a refugee was a singles friendly match against a 12-year-old…

…who absolutely took me to pieces.

To be fair, he is the champion player at his age group and, if “the book” is to be believed, he is even capable of beating the U15 champion now. Here is some film of him winning the French Open:

I’m pretty sure he’ll be an exceptionally good player. Remember where you first heard the name: Bertie Vallat…

…I know, you couldn’t make up a more Wodehouseian name than that…

…he’s the boy in the foreground at the start of the filum.

Anyway, point is, after that ego-bruising episode, I decided that I needed a lesson in technique, so arranged to play an hour-long friendly match with one of my Lord’s chums, then an hour of coaching, ahead of meeting up with Simon in Hammersmith.

I did well in my friendly match – reclaiming the handicap points I had lost to Bertie. Then I enjoyed my lesson too, which I think will help my lawners as well as my realers…am I starting to spend to much time hanging around the arcane language of this game?

Then, after killing some time in a couple of coffee bars along the way, I met up with Simon Jacobs for a relatively early dinner at Brasserie Blanc.

I explained my difficult hour at the hands of a twelve-year-old the previous week, which led Simon to suggest that I might have “done a Serena” and/or resorted to corporal punishment. Neither of these suggestions seemed, to me, worthy of Simon.

But then Simon might well have had other things on his mind. He was very kindly taking time out to have dinner with me just a couple of days ahead of the launch of his latest single; Top Of The Pops. How cool is that?

Well, you can judge for youreselves by listening to and watching the following YouTube:

We discussed without irony the increasingly ghastly political landscape. The absence of irony is not because we have lost our senses of humour – heaven forbid. No, it appears that we never did have a sense of irony,  due to ethnic accidents of birth. No point mocking us (we wouldn’t get it), simply pity us.

The food was very good indeed. The wine was also very good. The service was excellent, until we asked our waiter to leave us alone for a short while to consider what to have for, or indeed if to have, desert. Then we complained when the waiter returned because he had neglected us for so long.

The waiter laughed and told us that we were his favourite table of the evening. Poor chap, he clearly thought we were being ironic…he didn’t realise that we really meant it – he didn’t realise that we don’t do irony.

We talked a fair bit about music; not only Simon’s new single but his plans for the album and also the stuff that I am fiddling around with at the moment. Simon set me some homework around “I Only Have Eyes For You” and also “Nothing Rhymed”, the latter of which has yielded faster results than the somewhat tricky former.

The evening whizzed by and I had no idea how late it was until we got to Hammersmith Station. Still, not so late that the tubes get tricky.

As always, it had been a very enjoyable evening with Simon.

A Few Hours At Lord’s For Middlesex v Kent And Some Memories, 10 September 2018

The plan was to show James Pitcher around the pavilion late afternoon, possibly having met up with Edwardian (one of King Cricket‘s correspondents) earlier.

But in the end, James couldn’t make it and I lingered at Noddyland, after a good game of tennis with Daisy, not least to see Alastair Cook score his fairytale century in his final test innings.

End of season has been a bit like this, this season. Chas was unable to join me as planned for Day One of the Sussex match a couple of weeks ago, so I only got to see a few hours of that match in the afternoon of Day Two, while showing Bikash and Shivangee around the pavilion, ahead of the Members’ Forum that evening.

Anyway, for this Kent match, I decided instead to go straight from the house to Lord’s in Dumbo and pay to park in St John’s Wood for a few hours rather than stop off at the flat to drop of Dumbo and get suited & booted – Edwardian is a Warner Stand chap rather than a Pavilion person.

Edwardian and I spent about an hour together chatting and watching – he is knowledgeable about cricket and very pleasant company at a game. I shared with him my master plan – shredded by James’s inability to get away from work in time for cricket, which was to get Edwardian to pretend that James is a famous cricketing meme on the back of his one piece of cricketing heroics back in 2004:

Match Of The Day & Play Of The Day, Z/Yen v The Children’s Society, Holland Park, 22 June 2004

Edwardian was pretty sure he’d have been able to pull that stunt off. A shame we couldn’t give it a try. Perhaps another time.

I had wanted for some time to see Ethan Bamber bowl live and this was, at last,  my opportunity. I witnessed the young man bowl well and take an early wicket. I explained to Edwardian that I had not previously seen Ethan Bamber bowl, although I had seen his old man, David, play Horatio opposite Daniel Day-Lewis in the latter’s ill-fated Hamlet at the National:

Hamlet by William Shakespeare, Olivier Theatre, 18 March 1989

I had left my thirst extinguisher in Dumbo, so when Edwardian had to leave, I escorted him off the premises – introduced him to Dumbo (who was majestically parked by the Bicentenary Gate) – rescued my thirst extinguisher and returned to the fray, taking up residency at the front of the Tavern Stand.

When Darren Stevens came in to bat, I realised that I was sitting in pretty much the same place as I had sat with Daisy many years before, when Daisy interrogated Darren Stevens somewhat inappropriately:

Middlesex v Leicestershire, List A Match, Lord’s, 9 August 2004

I also realised that Daisy’s Darren Stevens interrogation incident and James Pitcher’s single moment of cricketing glory incident had occurred within a few weeks of each other.

When Ethan Bamber then bowled at Darren Stevens, I thought I should take a picture of the scene from that seat:

Deserves a poetic caption…the new guard taking on the old guard…or something

Then a strange-looking fellow, with two beers in his hands and the word “chef” painted in white paint on his face in two different places, said, “excuse me, young man” to me in an effort to get past me.

My “young man” moniker years, even at Lord’s, are drawing/have drawn to an end now, so I was pleased to be thus addressed.

He then plonked himself at a polite distance from me. The beers were clearly both for him and he was, equally clearly, far beyond the early stages of his boozy afternoon.

He then formed a one-man chanting troupe – blaring out unfunny, inappropriate and rhythmically-challenged chants in support of his team, Kent. Some people in the crowd tried to shush him. One or two younger folk answered him back. He was in a world of his own.

One of the strange things about him was that his chants came out in very well-spoken tones and had an educated wordiness about them, despite their utter banality and foolishness.

When he left, one or two younger people in the crowd cheered…

…then he came back with more beer.

I got plenty of reading done and even extended my parking to the full four hour maximum permitted, before leaving for home when it started to get a bit chilly, shortly before stumps.

Unlike the Middlesex v Leicestershire game from 2004, this Middlesex v Kent four-dayer did not end well for Middlesex (on the Wednesday), but it was a good tight game of cricket – perhaps the pitch was a little too low-scoring to describe as a good battle between bat and ball – but for sure a good battle between closely-matched teams.

Per Sua Maestà Cesarea e Cattolica, La Serenissima, Wigmore Hall, 9 September 2018

I can’t really explain why this concert didn’t really float our boat – it just didn’t. Janie and I were both feeling unusually tired that early evening – both short of energy for venturing out. We had been enjoying following the cricket and tennis over the weekend, the latter until reasonably late I suppose, but that wouldn’t normally put us off.

La Serenissima is an unusually large troupe for the Wigmore Hall – there as a lot of juggling and jiggling to fit everyone on the stage, so it all felt a bit busy.

The chorus missed their cue to enter right at the start of the performance, which led to more jiggling for stage space after the orchestra had prepared themselves spatially and tuned their instruments.

The concert was all music from the Imperial Court of Charles VI

I wanted to hear Caldara live as I had never heard any before. I rather liked his arias, actually. Quite beautiful.

I was amused that the first set was from Ormisda, re di Persia, singing praise to the God Mithras, about whom I myself lauded a few months ago following a Gresham Society visit to the London Mithraeum:

The London Mithraeum With The Gresham Society, 15 March 2018

But I knew the Conti comic opera material would not please Janie – nor did it much please me. In truth, the whole concert was a bit busy and noisy for us that night.

Come the interval, when we realised that the only substantially different piece on the schedule was a Vivaldi concerto, lovely though the RV171 undoubtedly is, we decided to make an early exit.  Here is Europa Gallant’s delightful recording, with Fabio Biondi on the fiddle:

The following is La Serenissima playing Caldara, but a sinfonia, not an aria – beautiful it is, though:

…and finally here is a Caldara aria, performed by Concerto Köln under Emmanuelle Haïm with the superb Philippe Jaroussky singing the aria.

Edinburgh Day Seven: The Approach by Mark O’Rowe, Tremor by Brad Birch, Extinguished Things by Molly Taylor & Dinner Again At Roseleaf, 23 August 2018

This, our final day, started not so well, when I discovered that I had made a cock-up of our booking and that we were due to check out of our flat a day earlier than I thought; totally my own fault and a first time for me at this level of upcock. As luck would have it, the next occupant had been differently irritating by deciding at the last minute to arrive the morning after rather than that afternoon, so it was easy to make a bullet-dodging arrangement to stay on, as long as we could leave early the next day, which was in any case our plan/desire.

Again it rained in the morning, so we couldn’t play tennis and instead sorted ourselves out and had the last of the hunker-down food from the Farmers’ Market for breakfast. I had most of the splendid smoked trout while Janie enjoyed most of the remaining giant free range eggs.

As it turned out, this day then became a truly excellent day of theatre. We even pretty much dodged the showers; some heavy ones peppered the day today.

Our first gig was The Approach at the Assembly Hall. We faffed around so much over breakfast and stuff that I thought at one point we might miss this play. Instead, we arrived in time to join the back of the queue – only about 10 people behind us, so ended up sitting right at the back of quite a large space – a view to which we have both become unaccustomed for many years.

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Not that you could tell that we were at the back from this picture

The Approach is a rather cryptic play about the interaction between three women who had formerly been close but who had drifted apart as a trio, so we might have benefited from hearing it all clearly.  Three fine Irish actresses, Cathy Belton, Aisling O’Sullivan and Derbhle Crotty did a superb job open the whole but we struggled to catch every word and nuance at the back. Still, after discussing the play with other people later in the day, I think the play probably tells different stories to different listeners however well you heard the actual words. Well worth seeing; Janie even said she fancied seeing it again if it comes to London – from the aspect of better seats!

We had only ourselves to blame for that seating business and would really have only had ourselves to blame if we had failed to get from the Assembly Hall to Summerhall on time, with about 100 minutes between shows to stroll that 20 minute walk. By then Janie was very much into “we need to be at the front of the queue” mode in extremis, so I talked her out of the idea of queuing outside the Roundabout from the very start of the previous show, especially as it seemed to me that there were likely to be showers still during that hour. So we went inside and had some very decent coffee and shared a chocolate brownie in the shabby-chic cafe at Summerhall.

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It’s the cafe that was shabby-chic, you understand.

That still gave us time to join a small, orderly queue for Tremor quite early. We chatted to a nice couple and their drama student daughter in the queue. The queue never got all that long; a few dozen of us sparsely populated the Roundabout auditorium for Brad Birch’s latest play, Tremor. We’ve seen two excellent Brad Birch plays before: The Brink and Black Mountain, both at The Orange Tree. We’d spotted this one, Tremor, while at Summerhall a few days ago and had wondered whether it would be all that different from Black Mountain when we read the synopsis. In fact it was very different play; the only similarity being the gripping and suspenseful nature of Brad Birch’s writing.

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Tremor is a two-handler about a couple who survived a bus crash in which most of the passengers died. But their relationship had not survived and their physical health had recovered more readily than their mental health. Each had struggled in very different ways. The play opens with the young woman Having tracked down the young man who has made a new life for himself in another town. The drama plays out in a single scene of just under an hour.

We both thought Tremor was a really superb piece of writing and acting. We chatted afterwards with several people who had been in the auditorium, including a nice pair of South African women who I’m sure we’ll see again at the fringy-venues in London.

Part of my purpose in booking Tremor was to find ourselves in the right place at the right time to try and get returns for Extinguished Things, also at Summerhall, which was one of only a couple of productions we were especially disappointed to have found were booked out when we tried to book them. Tremor finished about two hours before Extinguished Things; i.e. about an hour before you could even try and queue for returns for that show.

We made ourselves known to a very sweet-looking young woman on the box office who promised that she would remember us as “first in the queue” for that show and/but advised us to return in 45 minutes or so. It was sunny by then, so we went into the courtyard, had a drink, watched a rather charming short puppet show by Strangeface, named Beached.

Strangeface were doing this mini-show really to promote their main show, The Hit, which sounds rather interesting. We then sat and finished our drinks, getting the opportunity to congratulate the “A Fortunate Man” team, which I recognised sitting at the next table.

Then back to the Box Office for some intricate timing to ensure that we were at the front of the queue precisely one hour before Extinguished Things. We had been promised nothing; our sweet girl had informed me that some days a few tickets come back, on one occasion just one had come back and yesterday none had come back. But her eyes lit up as the returns position was revealed – precisely two tickets had come back for this evening and we were there to snap them up. Sweet success.

In the happy intervening hour (which Janie considered passing by forming a ludicrously early queue) we had a look around some of the free exhibitions at Summerhall, including a closer look at the Jean-Pierre Dutilleux tribal photographs room – one of many unlisted treasures at Summerhall. I also booked us a table at Roseleaf for our last night meal.

Was it worth all that effort to see Extinguished Things? Well, once you have set yourselves a mission like that, the answer is “yes” by definition; it would have seemed like a failure had we not seen it. In any case, we both thought it was a charming miniature piece, written and performed by Molly Taylor, about a couple who went off on holiday never to return and the narrator’s reminiscences/imaginings when she enters their now permanently deserted nest.

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In truth it is a miniature piece; not the greatest piece of writing or performance we have seen. But it is beautifully written and charmingly performed by the writer. The piece gave us plenty to think about and talk about afterwards; again we found ourselves chatting with fellow audience members after the show. I’m really pleased we got to see it in the end.

Then off to Roseleaf, where Janie wanted to repeat her dose of satay prawns and skank. I shared the prawns with her and had a monkfish burger (unusual). We washed that down with a very nice Kiwi Sauvignon Blanc. Janie indulged in an Irish coffee afterwards too, which I think she might be regretting slightly as I write on the following morning just before we set off back to London.

Another really super day at the Fringe.

All of our photographs from our week away, mostly at the Edinburgh Fringe, can be seen on our Flickr album by clicking here on the picture below:

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Edinburgh Day Six: Vessel by Laura Wyatt O’Keefe, Sitting by Katherine Parkinson, #Pianodrome Live & Dinner Again At The Chop House, 22 August 2018

The weather really has mostly smiled on us for this visit to Edinburgh and in a way this day was no exception. Although it was drizzling hard in the morning, preventing us from playing tennis, the forecast said that the day would brighten up for our festival visit; which it did.

So we stayed home in the morning, making the most of the flat and having a cooked breakfast at home, using up some of the provisions we had bought in for hunkering-down purposes.

After brunch, off to town to collect tickets and then get to our first show of the day; Vessel at Bristo Square. Vessel is an excellent two-hander, performed by the writer, Laura Wyatt O’Keefe together with a fine young actor, Edward Degaetano, whom we bumped into and chatted with briefly after the performance.

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We thought this piece, about the abortion debate in Ireland and the effect the strong views on the issue can have on real women’s choices/lives, was a really excellent short play. It deserves a wider airing and it was a real shame that the auditorium was not full.

Our next show was at the Teviot with just over an hour between shows; plenty of time to pop across the way to Checkpoint for some reasonably refined refreshment and for me to start getting interested in the Middlesex score as the chance of a highly unlikely win started to emerge.

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On to the Teviot (what a grand looking Students’ Union that place is!) to see Sitting by Katherine Parkinson. This auditorium was full; probably because the play is by a known actress and had some exposure on the BBC. In truth, this was a rather contrived piece of writing about three life model sitters, apparently unconnected (although naturally connections emerge) and their relationship with an unseen and unheard artist.

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The performers; James Alexandrou, Grace Hogg-Robinson and Hayley Jayne Standing all did their best to rescue the rather slow, tame and at times predictable script. The audience whopped and applauded wildly at the end; perhaps because the BBC had endorsed the production…or perhaps it was one of the better things that many in the audience had seen.

We emerged from that experience feeling a little irritated that, of the two things we had seen today, the production with bigger names behind it was getting the bigger audience and plaudits, despite being the lesser production in our view.

Irritation that Middlesex still needed a wicket to secure a win turned to joy at that win, before we moved on to have a stroll across town…

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…in many ways retracing in reverse the stroll I took first thing in the morning when I visited Rohan Candappa’s show, a year ago to this very day:

A Day At The Edinburgh Fringe Festival With Old Muckers, 22 August 2017

Then we wandered around Charlotte Square for a while looking at the Book Festival and taking an ice cream in the sunshine.

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Then on to the Royal Botanical Gardens for some more irritation as we were told that we couldn’t see the garden ahead of our 19:00 concert there; we would have to walk all the way round the outside from the East Gate (where the fringe app had sent us) to the West Gate. This seemed ludicrously jobsworth-like to me during the weeks of festival if the gardens choose to play host to a venue. Being told that we weren’t the first to voice this grievance did not make us feel better.

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I snapped some genuinely dire cricket in Inverleith Park across the road while we waited for the Gardens to let the #Pianodrome Live audience in.

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The Pianodrome itself is a fascinating piece of construction, made from 50 recycled pianos, five of which can still be played within the venue. It seats about 50 people reasonably comfortably and another 50 uncomfortably. We had made sure to get there early to get relatively comfortable seating.

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A young woman in Edwardian drag with an infeasibly waxy false-tash acted as compère quite well.

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Janie and I already knew that we were to see a folk musician named Sam Gillespie (one half of The Brothers Gillespie) as a substitute for a prog rock band named The Brackish and were quite happy with the swap.  He was joined by Siannie Moodie who turned out to be an especially fine exponent of the Celtic harp (clàrsach). In fact they both turned out to be good instrumentalists but my goodness Sam Gillespie’s songs are dirgy and derivative. Imagine Donovan and Pete Seeger, both in a bad mood, writing songs together.

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Meanwhile additional people entered late (we guessed mostly the entourage of the substitute musicians) and some of them sat just under our feet. One young man who was clearly in with the in crowd made an especially redolent impression on us. What is it about people who hang around musicians and negligence with regard to personal hygiene?

There was also another musician involved briefly who played a glockenspiel-type percussion instrument but whose name seemed to be unlisted. Janie had unwittingly snapped him during warm up, so if anyone reading this recognises this man and his instrument, please message in his details.

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The act for the second half of the evening was also unlisted and the compère merely mumbled that name as we left for the interval; in our case not to return.

We fancied a nice dinner tonight and felt that we could get one of those if we were back in Leith at a reasonable hour, so I made a last minute booking of a table at The Chop House for another good red meat meal.

Again Ignascio looked after us very nicely as did the very sweet and attentive (if not the most efficient) waiting staff. One young waiter, on his third day, took a particular interest in helping us out with ice cream, so I invented a word for the equivalent of a sommelier for ice cream: Ísbíltúrier. Remember where you encountered the word first.

A very tasty end to another enjoyable day.

All of our photographs from our week away, mostly at the Edinburgh Fringe, can be seen on our Flickr album by clicking here on the picture below:

2018 August Edinburgh Festival Trip

Edinburgh Day Five: Falkland Palace Gardens And Tennis, 21 August 2018

After Sunday’s long-signalled washout, I had been keeping a close eye on the weather forecast for the rescheduled slot for real tennis at Falkland Palace; late morning Tuesday.

The weather was smiling on us first thing and continued to smile on us for our day in Falkland.

Worrying about the weather for real tennis is an unusual experience, as almost all of the functioning courts are indoors. In fact, the Royal Court at Falkland Palace is currently the only functioning outdoor court in the world. It is also the oldest functioning tennis court in the world.

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Falkland Palace is also home to the most northerly court in the world. Indeed, as neither Janie nor I had previously ventured further north than Glasgow/Livingstone/Edinburgh, our visit to Falkland was also the most northerly place we have yet been.

We allowed plenty of time to get to Falkland, but in truth it is only an hour or so’s drive from our digs in Leith.

We planned to look at the gardens as well as play tennis, but didn’t particularly want to wander around the old pile.

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On arrival, I told the attendant our plans and offered to pay for garden visit tickets, but she told us that we didn’t need to pay to see the garden if we were there for tennis.

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Then we met our hosts; Ewan and Kirsten Lee. An extremely pleasant couple bursting with enthusiasm for the game of real tennis. They had been unable to find a fourth player to join us, so, as planned, Janie gave it a go, despite her inexperience at the game.

I say, “Janie’s inexperience”…that court would make many an experienced dedanist feel like a fresher.

For a start, the design of the court is quite different from any other active court; it is a jeu quarré court, which means that there is no dedans for the receiver to aim at, no penthouse roof at the server’s end and no tambour on the hazard side for the server to aim at.

Instead, the receiver has a small plank of wood, the “ais”, to aim at in the right-hand corner of the server’s court. although hitting the ais only counts as a winning stroke if it hits that feature before the second bounce and without first hitting the gallery penthouse roof.

The other ludicrously tantalising and no-doubt mostly confounding targets for the receiver are four small apertures in the server’s side back wall known, as lunes.

We played a rather one-sided Scotland v England fixture for over two hours and had lots of fun, while only occasionally having long wrests. So passing visitors, of whom there were many during those hours of play, might have been forgiven, when told that there are four lunes on the Falkland Palace tennis court, for mistakenly assuming that the term “four lunes” referred to the players, not to the apertures on the wall.

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The surfaces are also very different at Falkland, the walls and the floor being unpolished stone and the balls, consequently, made with a rougher, more robust felt; another currently unique feature for Falkland.

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Indeed, Ewan added an additional characteristic in the hazard/gallery corner; some salt to make less slippery that part of the floor that gets no sun and therefore remains damp. Dramatic backspin was available for those talented enough or lucky enough to produce it.

For sure luck plays its part to a greater extent even than we see on indoor real tennis courts, but that adds to the fun and of course luck evens out after a while, allowing the better players to prevail, more often than not.

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I am pleased to be able to say that I managed to hit the grille once during our game and that I hit a winning shot to the ais. Both of those aimed and I think I might have had a couple more points from hitting the ais had it not been for Ewan’s determined defending of the ais with his increasingly successful volleys.

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But my moment of glory from the hours of play came from a rather frustrated, wild receiving shot, which I think would have hit the penthouse roof above the dedans on most courts. But on this one occasion at Falkland, my forceful shot went sailing through the lower lune on the main wall side of the server’s wall.

We had a brief discussion on the scoring rule for a lune shot. The most recent incarnation of the Falkland Tennis Club scores a mere point for the lune shot, which is clearly inadequate reward for such a risky and unlikely shot. Ewan announced that the 16th century rule was that a successful lune shot determined the game, so we agreed that particular deuce game had been been won by me and Janie, then moved on in the set.

But on returning to my many ancient texts and manuscripts, I learn that the phrase “determines the game”, in the sixteenth century, could not have referred to a mere single game within a set of tennis…no, no, no…“determines the game”, in those days unquestionably meant, “the side with the most lune shots wins the whole match”.

So despite the fact that the Scottish pair (Ewan and Kirsten) won most of the points, almost all of the games and all of the sets ahead of the intrepid English pair (me and Janie), it seems that, by dint of my single, lucky lune shot, Janie and I won the match. Scotland 0-1 England. An historic win for England over Scotland away at Falkland. Hopefully our opponents will demand a rematch to try their luck again.

In truth, of course, the winner was real tennis; the hours of fun and the conviviality that seems almost always to go along with that wonderful sport.

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We eventually had to stop playing when a large party of schoolchildren arrived on a school trip to see the court and watch people in 16th century fancy dress demonstrating the court. Janie took some photographs.

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We four modern realists retired to The Covenanter across the road for some drinks, snacks and chat. Ewan, who is a schoolteacher, is a great enthusiast for sports, in particular court sports, so he and I schemed about fives (another shared interest) as well as tennis. Kirsten is an artist and designer with a great love of gardens, so she and Janie had plenty to talk about in those departments too.

Much like our recent visit to Petworth, Janie and I lost track of time and ate into far too much of our hosts’ day, for which we are grateful and which didn’t seem to bother our hosts. But on this occasion at Falkland, with no further visits on our itinerary, after saying goodbye to Ewan and Kirsten, we thankfully did find time to look around the beautiful, peaceful garden.

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Highlights include a charming orchard, a small physic garden and also the lovely areas around the house and tennis court.

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We also revisited the tennis court to try to capture some better pictures of the nesting swallows who populate the galleries side of the court.

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On the way home, we stopped off at the David Lloyd Tennis Club on Glasgow Road (what a contrast) to pick up some of those ASICS indoor tennis shoes at that seem so hard to track down at the moment. Stephen at the Bruntsfield Sports concession there was very helpful, although they only had one pair that ticked all of my boxes.

Gosh we felt tired when we got home, but not too tired to go out again after showering to get some protein and carbs inside us by visiting Domenico’s in Leith for a spicy prawn starter and big bowls of the day’s special pasta; venison ragu tagliatelle.

We’d had a really lovely day, not least thanks to Ewan, Kirsten and the wonderful sport of real tennis.

All of our photographs from our week away, mostly at the Edinburgh Fringe, can be seen on our Flickr album by clicking here on the picture below:

2018 August Edinburgh Festival Trip

Edinburgh Day Four: Lunch With Marie & Joe Logan, The Roots Of The Blues, Let’s Talk About Porn, 20 August 2018

The weather was much improved again today; yesterday was a weather blip. So we played tennis again at Leith Links in the morning.

Then off to have lunch at Marie and Joe’s new apartment in the south of Edinburgh, not too far from Summerhall and The Meadows. It took just over 45 minutes to get there door to door with a change of bus.

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Janie insisted on taking some pictures along the way

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We had a guided tour of the new place, including the new kitchen and en suite bathroom, which we were thus seeing before Linda Cook gets to see them; which is sure to be a source of much consternation.

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Joe cooked a rather wonderful fish pie as the centrepiece of the lunch. We had a cherry roularde and some cheeses to follow, so that was us pretty much sorted for food today. Nice wines too.

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It was really good to see Marie and Joe in their new home environment; when I saw them in Edinburgh last year…

A Day At The Edinburgh Fringe Festival With Old Muckers, 22 August 2017

…their moving plans were still up in the air.

We had some very interesting conversation about the festival, Edinburgh generally, politics generally, death, siblings, niblings, isms and anti-isms. You get the idea.

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When lunch came to a natural end, I announced that I wanted to seek some indoor tennis shoes from Bruntsfield Sports in Morningside on our way back to Edinburgh. Marie and Joe volunteered to walk off lunch with us and chat some more.

It turned out that Bruntsfield Sports in Morningside doesn’t do those shoes; it is their branch at David Lloyd that sells them.

Still, we were by then near a convenient bus stop for central Edinburgh, so said a fond goodbye to Marie & Joe while stepping onto a bus to Princes Street.

We sought out the Apple Store on Princes Street in a vain attempt to get Daisy’s iPhone re-batteried (takes hours, we’ll need to do that in London). But I did procure the very iPad keyboard upon which I am typing right now, which should make my travelling blogs easier to write (i.e. wordier) in future.

On the way to Apple I spotted a show, Let’s Talk About Porn, at C, which looked interesting; a troupe of youngsters and plenty of time to faff around at Apple. Once I realised that’s we needed very little faffing time at Apple, I spotted another performance, The Roots Of The Blues, near to the C show (theSpaceTriplex) and just about enough time to pick up the tickets and fit both shows in.

So we ended up doing the very thing we promised we wouldn’t do; ran around like mad things fitting in a couple of shows at near-breakneck pace.

Both shows were worth it. The Roots Of The Blues was a mix of lecture and performance by Toby Mottershead. Charming, informative and he’s also a very able guitar player/blues singer. Toby’s slide guitar playing was exceptional and a new live experience for me and Janie.

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Then up to C for the play Let’s Talk About Porn. This was a verbatim theatre piece, performed in a physical style by a very young troupe. “Sadly” we didn’t see the dour bar-tenders at the upstairs bar, but we did grab some water and did see the Flamenco duo from the previous evening sitting around before and after the play.

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The play was good; we’d seen a fair bit of material on this topic before but it was an innovative, thoughtful, physical and interesting piece.

Then home, where we fancied little food and no booze – so we relaxed with just some toast and juice. Daisy managed to set off the smoke alarm by burning some toast – mercifully those things switch them selves off quite quickly and it was still reasonably early when that happened!

All of our photographs from our week away, mostly at the Edinburgh Fringe, can be seen on our Flickr album by clicking here on the picture below:

2018 August Edinburgh Festival Trip