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.

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…

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…

The Weekend’s Event!

Yes, yet another event seen!

That makes three!

We went out on Sunday to see Helen Keen’s show, The Primitive Methodist Guide to Arctic Survival at Teviot. It was a pretty small room, not sold out, but still an appreciative audience.
She opened with some silhouette puppetry from within a tent, setting the scene of one of her ancestors going on a whaling expedition from Hull in 1866 that met with disaster. Once she emerged, she related her relative’s story, with many discursions and related stories about arctic explorers (especially an early Swedish balloonist) and her own life…

One member of the audience was requested to portray Commodore Peary (not a polar explorer I admire much, but that’s beside the point) and, because I was near the front and had a beard, I was the one! I was given a sort of mask with his face glued on and had to answer various questions throughout the show. And later I had to wear the ‘God-helmet’ but that aspect wasn’t really developed it the show… Madeleine escaped all this but had to pretend to be an iceberg and wear an iceberg shaped hat! It was all good fun, with an artfully under-rehearsed look to it.

Several other people I know had seen the show earlier, and gave it good reviews – I concur! I have a feeling two of them went mainly because I had said I thought it would be good, so I’m glad they weren’t disappointed either!

Afterwards we strolled around to the Meadows to Peter’s Yard and had a light lunch – including a rarely-seen rhubarb tart for me! Then a walk home through the Meadows so Madeleine could have a rest.

Another Event! That makes two!

Vanessa Collingridge

Originally uploaded by miketransreal

I had seen Vanessa Collingridge give a similar talk several years ago, but was interested in hearing her again, and, as it transpired, the talk had changed quite a bit over the years – or maybe it was because she had to do a short version to fit the time slot!
She was speaking about Captain Cook, and her biography of him; she clearly knows the subject and has managed to get to some wonderful places in the course of her research! Madeleine hadn’t seen her speak before; it was another successful post-op outing for her!

I was disappointed that Vanessa didn’t do her manic penguin impersonation again, though! It was the highlight of her RSGS talk last time!

Halfway Fringe!

So we’re over half way through this year’s craziness. Except that this year it’s all much subdued for us. Madeleine is recovering well from her replacement hip operation at the beginning of July but is still off work and only getting about slowly. But she’s able to use buses now! And her stamina is increasing.
Just as well, as she’s already on the waiting list to have the other one done! That ought to be around late October/early November.

Her exhibition is hung in the shop, and going well, and she’s also had an ‘Open Studios’ weekend showing off her work down at Coburg Studios…
While that was on, I saw the Fringe Cavalcade in Holyrood Park, but soon retreated around Arthur’s Seat to the Sheep Heid Inn at Duddingston for beer and sausages!
Friends were up to see some shows and we managed to have two nice dinners (separtate evenings!) with them; once at Hanedan’s (almost on our doorstep) and then at Browns on George Street. The second time was after a Book Festival event they had gone to (I was at work). My friends (Keppet especially) really enjoyed hearing Ben Moor, and she got his book signed afterwards.
Of course, when I arrived shortly afterwards and met them, Ben almost immediately saw me and came over to talk to us and get his copy of the Alba Ad Astra book signed by Madeleine! So, everybody was happy!

Last night we were out again, at a reading/performance of Andrew Wilson’s Under a Bright and Hollow Sky in a rather dark little piano bar in the New Town. Six people took the parts of various characters and read articles, obituaries, interviews, letters, etc. building a picture of a mysterious local horror writer and how he may have met his end. Or not!
One of the interviews used was with me, and had previously been voiced by Ken MacLeod, but this time he restricted himself to only reading his own part, and Charlie Stross read mine. (I’m happier staying off-stage, but was in almost the front row and was referred to as having ‘lost my voice’)

We will be getting along to several more events; a couple of Book Festival ones, a show about surviving in the Arctic, and the Botanic Gardens soundscape event, whose name I forget right now…

Animals on Fire!

I just heard somebody’s ringtone – House of the Rising Sun, and I realised I should have posted about the gig we went to on Saturday night!

It was Madeleine’s first major outing (except for a funeral!) since her first hip operation several weeks ago – to the Queen’s Hall to see Eric Burdon and the Animals!

We got there a few minutes after the support had begun and, despite our seats being right beside the door nearest the bar, the usher insisted that we enter from the back and make our way in the gloom (with one of us on two sticks and slightly unsteady!) through the audience down to the front where our seats were. Pointless stupidity, imo.
Anyway, the female singer was pretty good – she played guitar and there was an energetic double bass player as well. Put me in mind of a young Bonnie Raitt.

At the interval we discovered that they’ve decided only to sell bottles beer – no taps except for Guinness! Bah!

Then The Animals came on! Great stuff, with Eric still belting it out, and the current Animals consisting of a 5-piece: organ, bass, drums, lead and what might have been an electric mandolin, played by the only woman in the group…
Several songs in, the fire alarm went off and we all had to evacuate the hall until the Fire Brigade declared it safe, and we all went in again after standing about outside for 20 minutes or so.  Three songs in to the restarted set, off it goes again!
And we all troop out again, and hang about while the Fire Brigade investigate the roof-space again until it looks like we’re being let in again, only to find that they’re only letting in people who left stuff behind, and the rest of the gig’s been cancelled. Apparently. No announcement that we heard, just hearsay through the crowd… A really disappointing way to finish off what had been a v. good concert.
And he didn’t get a chance to play House of the Rising Sun!

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!)