Paint, Paint, Paint

Some of Madeleine’s studio down at Coburg House in Leith needs painted prior to an Artists’ Studio Open Day later this summer and this week is pretty much the only time spare to do it, so this’ll be the 3rd evening in a row spent rushing down there after work to put a coat of paint on. Some of the walls are ok, but  some is plain wood-coloured board and some is very black board, both of which need a lot of white paint to look good, and match the rest.

The good thing is that it doesn’t take too long, and then we can go round to the nearby pub and sit outside on a bench with a pint or two!
It also means that no gardening is getting done this week, apart from some minor watering… Still a huge pile of lopped branches to deal with, but a lot more light is reaching parts of the garden than has done for years!

Big Red Writer’s Bloc

After a fairly quick exit for the shop yesterday, I met Madeleine at a fairly new cafe called something like The Tea Tray, where the old Web 13 internet cafe used to be.

Good, plain food, nice coffee, then off around the corner to what used to be Lawson’s Timber Yard – now known as the Big Red Door and run by a performing arts charity/collective called te POOKa…

Inside, it’s a large open space on the ground floor, with a small bar at one end,  a low stage in the middle, and some sofas and tables & chairs filling the rest of the space. The event we had come to see was a ‘best of’ selection by members of Writer’s Bloc, which was being recorded for future use as podcasts, etc.
It started a bit late, but no matter; it was all good fun and continued until after 12.00 – almost 4 hours of story-telling, and drinking gooseberry beer! Which was very nice.

Performers!

We recognised a lot of the pieces from previous shows, but there were a few we didn’t recognise, including various micro-stories which had first appeared on Twitter, etc.

The house dog was friendly, almost too friendly, sometimes sharing the stage with the performers, and Stef’s puppy was quite active, too!

Tonight? Probably back to gardening, if it’s dry enough; there’s a lot of branches to be disposed of somehow, as I’ve recently lopped off heaps to let more light through on to the grass, etc. And I’m trying to re-invent a completely overgrown flowerbed (or nettle patch as it has been until a few days ago!)

Son of the Tree – Jack Vance

Son of the Tree – Jack Vance

Originally uploaded by miketransreal

I’ve just blasted through Son of the Tree, a fairly early Jack Vance novel.
I quite enjoyed it – it’s only 120 pages long, or so, and originally appeared in the early 1950s in a pulp magazine – although it’s not really that good. Druids on a distant planet worship a giant tree. They think neighbouring planets would appreciate the opportunity to do likewise!
Into the mix comes our Earthan protagonist, looking for the man who stole his girl from him back on Earth. He becomes aircar chauffeur to a highly-ranked Druid and embroiled in a plot which isn’t unravelled until right at the end, in confrontation and disaster! But he gets the girl! Well, no, not that one, a different one…
It’s one of only a couple of Vance’s books that Underwood Miller didn’t publish in hardback; looking at the cover, I wish they had! Covers like this may explain why he never became as famous as he perhaps should have!