Last Minute Shopping

Last Minute Shopping

Originally uploaded by miketransreal

Merry Christmas, everyone!
If you look closely, you can see a rare Christmas Eve shopper!

Healthy!

Madeleine’s just had her 8-week assessment following her 2nd hip operation, and everything’s fine!

That’s not to say that she’s fully recovered yet; she’s been advised to keep using both sticks until she feels she can do without them both – using only one would affect her posture adversely – and being able to sleep on her side, etc. will come when it feels natural and pain free. Some medication and various alignment excercises will continue as well and her stamina needs to improve also…

Anyway, excellent news although it does mean that soon she’ll have to back to work!

Prehistoric Creature Day

On-Line Research

Originally uploaded by miketransreal

As it’s Friday the 13th again, it’s also Prehistoric Creatures Day again!

As a treat, I let one of the big mammoths run the shop for a while; he spent most of the time online, researching his genealogy!
My Flickr stream has at least one other shot of this November’s PCD, as we also went to a restaurant for breakfast (not with a big mammoth, though!)

There’s a link here to the story behind Prehistoric Creatures Day

Silent Corner of the Empty Stage

Silent Corner of the Empty Stage

Originally uploaded by miketransreal

On Saturday evening it was Mark Eitzel time again! He plays Scotland at least once a year it seems, and this time the gig was in Edinburgh… Madeleine is still recovering from her op (see below) so it was just me this time.

I got there in time to catch the last song of the support guy (who also played accordian on one of Mark’s songs) and to discover that they didn’t have any beer on tap, only bottles. Grrr. £3.50 for a bottle of IPA.

Mark came on after a very short turn-a-round and proceeded to sing 9 songs (plus 1 encore) backed only by a pianist. No guitar this time around! But his voice despite his initial misgivings was in fine form and he often didn’t seem to be using the mic to it’s fullest advantage!
Eventually, he was standing in front of the mic stand and not bothering to use the mic at all, even as a prop.
A mix of new songs and several oldies adapted from guitar, so it sometimes took a little while for me to recognise them!
At the end he signed an Everclear Sessions cd to me,and I also bought his latest release, Klamath, named after the town he recorded it in. Good gig, and fairly well-attended as far as I could tell, but not the best I’ve seen him… I said to him I’d see him next time, and I probably will!
(There’s another picture, with him in it, in my ‘Gigs & Events’ set on Flickr)

On the Sunday it was a fine day and Madeleine and I went for a bit of a walk – all the way into town to Turquaz (ex- Rudi’s) in at Nicolson Street, which was I guess, almost 1/2 mile. This is pretty good progress for Madeleine since her 2nd hip op only 3 weeks ago!
She had some sort of filled roll while I had the Turkish Breakfast, which was really nice; spicy sausage, cheese, tomato, olives, fried eggs, toast, jam and a couple of other items. I then abandoned her to her caffatiere of coffee and nipped down to Holyrood to pick up an early Christmas present – tickets for the Queen’s Gallery exhibition of Antarctic photographs. We want to go see it then with my father and my sister.

en route via Hutton's Garden

Back up to the cafe, where Madeleine is by now enjoying a hot chocolate, and then home again, a little slower than earlier, but still making reasonable time, adding up to about a mile in total!

In the afternoon, I had fun crawling about on some scaffolding erected outside our front window, clearing accumulated detritus and mud from our guttering – which is pretty awkward to do usually! And hopefully the workmen will actually turn up soon to do the maintainance work the scaffolding is there for!

Last year’s gig (with picture of empty stage!) – AMC at Stereo

p.s. the title is a Hammill reference, but there’s no other connection than that I’m a fan of both of them.

Post Surgery

So Madeleine had her 2nd hip op on Monday just over two weeks ago, and came home last Monday. Things didn’t go quite as smoothly as they might have, but in and out of hospital in 8 days for a fairly invasive surgical procedure is still pretty good going!

Anyway, progress is made every day; yesterday was her first outing beyond practicing going up and down the stairwell – we went over to the Metropole for breakfast!
Today she’s out again, hospital visiting, but in theory that involves no more walking than yesterday’s expedition…

Not sure how far we’ll get on Sunday (it’s dark too early on other days to do much outside) but if the weather’s ok we should get a few yards at least! Maybe even to Peter’s Yard for coffee and cardamom buns! Bit doubtful about that, though, come to think of the distances involved.

Mark Eitzel plays at the Cabaret Voltaire on Saturday; pretty certain Madeleine won’t manage along, but I might!

Events and Happenings!

Last night I went to a discussion chaired by Ken McLeod, in his capacity as writer-in-residence at the Genomics Dept. of the university, down at Moray House.

Interesting stuff, about the perception of scientists as promulgated by works of written sf. And he had asked if I could sell some books during the intervals, so I made some money as well! And got free drink.

But the big news is that Madeleine got a phone call about her operation offering her a cancellation spot – which, after due consultation with her boss, she accepted.
So her 2nd hip op will be on Monday.

This Monday! 19th October, and we expect that she’ll be home by the weekend and the recovery process will start all over again! But this time she’ll have two good hips, not a replacement and one that has been becoming increasingly painful as the other side improved…

Surrounded by Art!

Not only have I still got the Alba ad Astra exhibition on show in the shop, I also have a window devoted to the West Port & Grassmarket Art Walk, with 6 pieces by art college student Robert Powell… There’s a picture on the shop blog.

When we were at the zoo recently, we noticed that they had an exhibition of animal art on beside the entrance and, as we went in to see it, Madeleine immediately spotted a print of a picture an old friend of mine (whom I haven’t seen for years since he emigrated to Australia) called Jon Hoad had given me years ago! The poster of his rendition of Troodon formosus (a raptor-type dinosaur) is still on a wall in the shop, although it’s only visible to me, not my customers…
Slightly further in to the exhibition we came to a cabinet with several sculptures of strange animals in it – one was an ancient, huge-horned rhino, and another was a… tapir! A big, happy-looking tapir! (the rhino’s at the top, the tapir’s quite far down towards the bottom). The price was very off-putting, though. Later at home we looked up the sculptor and discovered that he had recently opened a gallery in Perth  and was also an outlet for Jon Hoad’s art in the UK!

A few days later I saw my sister, who lives in Perth, and she presented me with a thoroughly bubble-wrapped gift (which I will insist is our joint Christmas present) and I deduced almost immediately what it was!

Yes, it was a Julian Jardine tapir!
He’s wonderful.
He’s smaller than the one on display at the Zoo, but he’s still big enough to take pride of place on our mantlepiece! We still have to agree on a name, though…

And, finally, one of Madeleine’s aunts is recently back from an Alaskan cruise and presented me with a lapel badge from my favourite enamel badge maker!  And she got it signed to me by Bill, as well.
It’s a little Alosaurus skull! Maybe not my first choice, but still very neat!

Update!

There’s no date set yet, but Madeleine’s 2nd op is approaching steadily – hopefully by the end of next month! In the meantime, her operated hip is getting better and bedding in nicely and we’re starting to get out and about a bit more, although now the other hip is the one holding us up… It’s taken a lot of wear while the new joint comes up to speed and is starting to show it badly.

Anyway, we went to the movies for the first time in months – the seats were too low while she recovered – and saw District 9. I thought it got off to a fairly slow start and I wasn’t immersed at all, but that changed as the film went on and, while I still have questions and theories, it was very good!

We also went for a meal at Oloroso, although we didn’t get to eat on the terrace. It was celebrating Madeleine’s birthday but her health had meant that we had put it off for almost 6 months! Very good once we finally got there, though… It had been even longer since we visited the zoo, so that was what we did at the weeekend, getting very good views of some of our favourites; the giant anteater (with cub), the wolves, the baby pygmy hippo, and others… saw Mercedes the Polar Bear for probably the last time, saw Indah, the young tapir for turned out to be the last time (emigrated to Kent a few days later), saw Ka, the male tapir out and about, and I also saw caught a glimpse of tiny Red River Hog hooves.
The papers had pictures of them a few days later once the zoo officially announced their arrival, but I saw them first!

In a reflective mood

Proper Festival!

last night we went to the premiere of Experimentum Mundi at the Traverse Theatre.

The cast included bricklayers, blacksmiths, stonemasons, coopers, cobblers, knife-grinders, carpenters and more! Even a chef, who seemed a little out of place among the other tradesmen…

The conductor stood in a pit at the front, chorus on one side and a narrator on the other, and 16 artisans of various flavours plied the tools of their trades to create a strange, percussive industrial music. Lots of clanging, crunching, rasping, tapping, etc, backed by a solitary percussionist, who played a wide range of ‘proper’ instruments and tied the sound together at times. The four strong female chorus also whispered (sometimes loudly!) to good effect, although I have no idea what any off them actually said… Given the narration, it seemed to me at times almost like a Tubular Bells for pre-industrial tradesmen!

After the Show is Over

Interesting stuff; it probably helped a little that we both like Faust and The Residents!

Margaret Elphinstone, signing

Margaret Elphinstone, signing

Originally uploaded by miketransreal

Another couple of events!
PowerPlant down at the Botanic Gardens was excellent; all strange music, fireballs and lights! Astroturf played on gramophones! Ticks and tocks and whirrs and sirens, all filling the glasshouses and complementing the strangely-lit plants!
We might have gone to see it again, but transport for Madeleine would have been difficult to arrange…
That was Wednesday; on Friday we ventured along to the Book Festival in the evening to see Margaret Elphinstone and Janet Paisley, both historical novelists, talk about their most recent books.
I’ve already aid a bit about ME’s Gathering Night on my Flickr site but basically, it’s a novel set along the west coast of Scotland some 8,000 years ago, in the aftermath of a tsunami hgitting the east coast!
It’s very good, although I chose two other books to get signed rather than that one.

Sunday, we were disappointed to be too late to see the live sculpture garden at the art college – it was being dismantled and packaged up when we got there, although Sunday was advertised as it’s last day. Which I guess it was, but not as we envisaged!
Also there is an exhibition in honour of Little Sparta, an artistic garden Madeleine much admires – I like it too, without liking the artist quite so much (Ian Hamilton Findlay). Given the vibrancy of the actual garden, we didn’t think wan watercolours really reflected it’s beauty particularly well. His early toys and doggeral were of some slight interest and we should really have ventured upstairs to a photographic section of the exhibition, but stamina was failing so we went for lunch at the Teatreetea cafe in Bread Street, which was nice and relaxing until a new customer adjusted a big fan so it blew right into my face! Time to go down Lothian Road and see just what was happening to the Usher Hall!

It’s still a mess, despite being in use for the Festival, and looks like there’s still months of work to be done. The extended raised terrace around the frontage was a bit of a surprise, but at least it allows the cultured theatre-goers to look down on anybody passing along Cambridge Street!
One more show at the Traverse, and that will probably be the end of our Festival season this year…