Summer Time is here…

Saturday night was a great gig at the Queen’s Hall – Basskou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba, a band from Mali who mainly play electric gourd guitars! Seven of them on stage, BK himself on lead and his wife on vocals, a percussionist, a drummer and three more strung gourd players. In theory it was traditional music, but an awful lot of guitar solos (well, gourd solos!) crept in to the performance. The percussion bloke had a great time capering at the back – he could kick his height sideways! With their silky african tunics and non-Western tunings they occasionally looked or sounded more Eastern, and the vocals (great voice) also had a touch of the Far East about them sometimes.

another poor gig picture, with pillar

If this had been on at the Picturehouse, like last week’s gig, I strongly suspect they’d have doubled the audience; the Queen’s Hall just don’t seem to get promoting gigs quite right…

Sunday was the first day of Summer time but we didn’t lie in too much! Out for breakfast across at Henri’s Deli in Morningside before noon! We were there just in time to sit in the sun and then have it move off us, leaving us in the shade. Oh, well… A bus up to Colinton and a stroll down through the Dell to Slateford and a very nice pint of Stirling Crag 80/- (?) at the Dell Inn before heading back into town, a light tea and then a ridiculous movie! It was The Good, the Bad, the Weird. A ‘western’ set in northern China and Mongolia during the mid/late 30s when Japan had occupied Korea and large areas of China. Much galloping and racing about, gun fights, duels, etc.  as various parties (the Japanese army, Korean and Chinese gangs) fought over a map and (broadly) followed the plot of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly!

Stuff That’s Happened!

Maybe three weeks ago we had a quiet Sunday looking at various gallery exhibitions, some good, some not so good.

The City Art Centre had 3 different shows on, including the Bob Dylan one – perfectly good, but not really very appealing to me – and the Visual Arts Scotland show, with some nice-looking pieces. The other exhibition they had on was mainly of Scottish architecture paintings and photographs; also good stuff.
Across the road the Fruitmarket had a new exhibition on, but I don’t really remember that much about it – already! – except the cafe served very nice rhubarb tarts!

A couple of weeka ago we visited Newcastle for their Science Festival – especially the strand called Maker Faire, which is a successful American event for techno-crafters (or whatever you want to call them!) Good fun, with several exciting ideas, fire-breathing mechanical horses, robots, demos, etc.

Flame on, Tonto!

Easy trains, good hotel nearby (the Vermont); a nice joint birthday treat!

This weekend, we had intended to finally get along to see Watchmen, but I noticed a gig I had marked on my calendar months ago as being possibly interesting… so we went to that instead!
Three Mali tuaregs calling themselves Tinariwen were to do a joint set with an English electro-folk band called Tunng. Sounded like it should be at least curious!
It was at the Picturehouse in Lothian Road and we never imagined it would be as busy as it was! I walked across from the Filmhouse bar once their box office was open before the gig and easily bought tickets. But when we went across for the gig an hour later after a meal, it was mobbed and verging on sold out.
Fortunately we got seats upstairs (Madeleine using a stick helped a lot!) and sat down just as a fairly brief dj set (with added bits from some of Tunng) started. This was followed by an equally brief set by Tinariwen – a drom player and two guitarists – before they were joined onstage by all five of Tunng and the concert proper began…

It was great!

another poor gig photo!

The two groups hadn’t rehearsed much together but it all sounded good – 3 full-on 6′+ tall tuaregs in robes and turbans trading guitar licks with archetypal folkie-looking Brits, with a wee, barefoot singer in a cocktail dress backed by some seriously heavy drumming from both traditions… some electronics flung in the mix as well…
Apparently the blokes in Tinariwen like listening to AC/DC out in the desert, and it showed sometimes!
Good stuff; avoided most of the crush leaving by being allowed to use the lift, although then we just missed a bus… pint at Reverie, and home!

On the Sunday we were off seeing exhibitions again – a small one downstairs at the National Gallery of photographs acquired over the last 25 years for the Scottish National Photography Collection – and, in the RSA Building, slide shows of some classic (mainly Edinburgh) photographs from the middle of the 19th C (have to go back as we didn’t have enough time to see them all properly) together with a great little exhibition of recent 3-D work by Calum Colvin.
Very impressive!

And then home for tea!

The Joys of St.Patrick’s Day

The new, revitalised Grassmarket (still not finished yet, despite what anyone says) got it’s first test of coping with mass drunkenness yesterday, as the hordes of pseudo-Irish took to the bevvy.

Huge amounts of noise, swearing, disruption; giant crowds outside the pubs (quite probably beyond their licenced limits) and, within a few minutes of my closing for the day, bright yellow vomit on the shop’s front step.
Wonderful.

Fortunately the council cleaned up most of the vomit before I had to open the following morning, but, just as I was feeling relieved that wouldn’t be my first job of the day, I saw my front door had been attacked with lurid green grafitti.
More wonderful.

At least it scrubbed off, but, really, hordes of drunken, noisy, vomiting vandals is almost exactly what we were told would be reduced by the last 18 months of hassle and noise as the Grassmarket scheme took shape.

Prehistoric Creature Day (again!)

So it’s a Friday the 13th again already! Seems like only a few weeks since the last one! And unlike some people expecting bad luck on Friday the 13th, we look forward to it as another Prehistoric Creature Day!
I’ve still not put up photos of last month’s PCDay – they’re awfully shy sometimes, but that’s not very surprising for critters thought to be extinct! – but today they should be getting cake for tea! There might also be some wine, so who knows what poses we might see them in!

previous PCDay post (June 2008)
Previous PCDay post (February 2009)

Final RSGS talk of the season…

We’ve not been to many of them this year – there are usually 6 evening talks spread over the Winter months, and I’ve been to three and Madeleine managed along to this one…

The speaker was James Raffan, a Canadian author, who has written a biography of Sir George Simpson, one of the key personalities in the expansion of the fur trade and the Hudson’s Bay Company in the 19th C.

Originally from Dingwall, Simpson eventually came to be possibly the most influential man in what is now Canada but may not have been particularly liked!
Keen to make an impression later in life, he made an overland (mainly) journey around the world starting from London, including visiting Alaska, which was still Russian America at the time, before travelling right across Siberia and eventually reaching St.Petersburg and a London-bound ship… And I see a new edition of his trip comes out in April. May have to check it out!
Anyway, an informative talk about a period when Canada was starting to be knitted together and the wildernesses explored and exploited.

Common Frog – Rana temporaria

Common Frog – Rana temporaria

Originally uploaded by miketransreal

Not only was it good weather for ducks when we visited Blackford Pond on Sunday, it was good weather for frogs as well! We saw this guy, and another equally large, hopping about at the west end of the pond, presumably having hopped towards it from the restored habitat area at the bottom of the allotments…
They probably appreciated the two hail showers we got caught in more that we did!

Having got wet twice, we retreated via the next #41 bus up to TurQuaz on Nicolson Street for coffee! Very nice, and not appreciably different from when it was Rudi’s!