Raffles reads his biography!
Originally uploaded by miketransreal
Last Sunday was World Tapir Day, so obviously Raffles wanted to visit his big cousins at the zoo…
As expected, they were having a lie down!
For the first time, we sat and watched the ‘Animal Antics’ bird display near the top of the hill - good fun, with the stars being an owl, a hornbill and Audrey the Kune Kune pig!
Some of the Royal Scottish Museum has been closed off for a couple of years or so. Most of the stuffed animal exhibits (including the aging Malaysian tapir) haven’t been on show to say hello to!
And now this Sunday is the final day for THREE YEARS to see anything else in the rest of the museum! It’s being closed completely for major redevelopment until sometime in 2011…
Of course, there’s the Museum of Scotland right beside it which will be open as normal (I assume!) but that’s not the same as the old Victorian pile I grew up with and have visited hundreds of times.
Three years. I hope it passes more quickly than I fear! And it should be a revitalised, rejuvenated giant cabinet of curiosities when it re-opens. Hope the tapir comes back!
This Sunday, the 27th April, is the first World Tapir Day.
We’ll be off the zoo to visit the three they’ve got there but it’s really tapirs in the wild that need support.
http://tapirblog.tapirdesign.com/ has more news and loads of info and pictures… (don’t believe the mouseover; that’s not what it looks like!)
The official page for World Tapir Day is http://www.tapirday.org/
We saw Flatland again last night - on a bigger screen than the tv we saw it on a few weeks ago… definitely preferred the big size, although the inter-titles became a little fuzzy round the edges. The animation stayed sharp, though.
It’s big and bright, with sometimes annoying voices (like in the book, but toned down quite a bit for some characters!). Very trippy at times, and the audience seemed to like it - M had thought the inter-titles a bit patronising, but they mainly got laughs - maybe because of their obviousness!
Only disappointment was that the nachos in the bar afterwards didn’t seem as good as they used to be!
So, we saw Jackie Leven again last night. 
It was the first time we had seen him at Cabaret Voltaire but it’s a pretty good venue for him - several linked cellars under the South Bridge; bar to the side at one end, down a few steps to the main area with a low stage at the other end. The closer you get, the more the sound encloses you - the main section’s probably only about 10 feet high, 20 feet wide and 50 feet long.
Just him and his guitar and a fairly short set - maybe 75 minutes straight through, with no encore as they wanted to clear the venue for a club night later… No new songs, but new anecdotes! And some obscure cds for sale and signing afterwards. - one was Live at Bergen Men’s Prison, Norway!
Ian Rankin was there - they’ve appeared together a few times (we saw them maybe 5 years ago? at the Queen’s Hall). He was fine, but his little clique of friends took a couple of songs to shut up and listen to the music. Minor grr! We bumped into a friend who had come on spec to see what Jackie was like and ended up very impressed - he borrowed 20 quid off me to buy a couple of cds for himself!
Afterwards, he went off to Bannermans to meet up with Ian Rankin and we headed for home via the refurbished Wine Glass bar - now re-named something I can’t remember - and much improved with proper beer again at last. Until it changed hands a few months ago I don’t think I had been in for well over 20 years… it used to be pretty rubbish!
I recently started reading Aegypt by John Crowley from the beginning again and yesterday I overtook my bookmark from my first attempt. I’m now on page 147, having stalled on p145 for almost 21 years!
It’s recently been re-set and re-issued as The Solitudes and may I say that the new edition’s typeface and layout looks much easier on the eye and would undoubtedly make the reading go easier and quicker than the Bantam h/c I have… (All 4 volumes should soon be available this way)
I’m not sure if I’ll continue beyond volume one immediately I finish this one; there are other aging bookmarks to be rescued first!
To celebrate Madeleine’s birthday the other day, we went for a meal last night at a Jamaican restaurant not far from us called Coyaba.
Nice reggae background music - I recognised who maybe a quarter of it was, and I own a few of the tracks they played - and some quite low lighting.
A spinachy thing for my starter, followed by Jerk Chicken for me and Currie Goat for M - very good! Also included were wine, cake, coffee and good service
So, she caught up a year on me for three days but has now fallen behind again already! 
Well, not really a lecture, more a casual talk. An event called Cafe Scientifique takes place most months in a bar at the Filmhouse (arthouse) cinema and last night’s was presented by a mathy friend of mine called Hannu. Ha was talking about the history and perception of dimensions, from points and planes to multi-dimensional string theory ones. A fair bit of it was related to the book Flatland - a film version of which I’m partly sponsoring when it’s shown at the cinema in a couple of weeks…
It was pretty interesting, pitched at a general audience, so I didn’t feel lost at all, with some good questions afterwards. And a couple of slightly weird ones! If I had been surer of some half-remembered stuff about recent developments, I might have asked one or two as well… kind of wish I had, as it would have given Hannu the chance to refute what I had heard and also talk about some original research he’s doing in the same area…
Quite interesting, but the beer was awfully expensive!
There’s a film we want to see being shown on Sunday, so we’ll be back spending £3.05 a pint for that, I expect!
At last, a suitable header for the blog!
The address bar may read cowgatehead, but that’s not the actual name…
And, if I decide to spend ages more tinkering, I might even centre the title under the ducks!
