Sunday 19th of August, 2001
edging out bear-baiting
Up again at 7:00 to catch up with this diary, which takes over two hours this time. There must come a point where the amount of time spent living a life and that spent writing about it stabilise, although obvously the more one is doing, the more one has to write about, but if one isn't doing anything a diary entry takes five minutes. Which gives you more time for hobbies.
Off to the newly finished Dance Base on Grassmarket for the Radio 3 morning programme with Stephanie Hughes. She has a sort of gleeful semi-maternal quality like a favourite primary-school teacher. Do you suppose radio producers all have to wear those half-glasses, or is it that I see the same producer each time I'm at a radio broadcast? I stay until the beginning of the next programme, check out the opening folk tune and leave during the panel discussion as a Spanish dancer is trying to remember how his press-release goes. On the way back to the flat I pick up some very nice organic tomato soup from the organic cafe around the corner and sit around listening to the radio and chatting for a while. At 3:30 I set off for On The Mound, where PMR is having his relaxed sunday session. It takes me a while to get there because the drizzle has turned into heavy rain and I'm becoming very soggy indeed. I try taking a bus, but it's one of those that begin by going off in the right direction and then veer off wildernessward leaving me as far from my destination as I was when I started out. But eventually I get there. There are several people hanging around the piano – these are (variously) Rick Solem, Kathrin Shorr and Tim Burlingame who are the musicians in J.D. Hinton's band. J.D. has some kind of cold or other lurgi and is back at the flat convalescing. Peter plays a couple and then Mr Solem (New Orleans and Boogie Woogie piano, fair rattling the room) (– I do Little Games, Where Did It All Go Right? and (by special request, that is to say Seami is in the house) The Things you Get. Then Ms Shorr (very fine folk-type tunes) and Mr Burlingame (perhaps a bit rockier than Ms Shorr). They are playing tonight before Mr Hinton, so I resolve to go and see them. It comes back to me again and I play Mr Wrong and Comforting Lie and then play along with Peter until closing-up time. Peter is mentally sizing the place up as a potential Fringe 2002 venue. And a hurrah to that. After the show I stop to say hello and exchange e-mail addresses, but have to get back to the flat to get to sleep, but not before I've seen some of the WWF programme on Channel 4. I know about Barthes and wrestling from Mythologies but in terms of mythic sophistication, WWF makes Jackie Pallo on World of Sport in the mid seventies look like Gielgud's Hamlet.
Out into the mist and drizzle shrouded Edinburgh. It's a sort of signature weather condition (like London fog, which was abolished in the early 1960s), but that doesn't stop it from being bloody damp. I fail to find any sensible breakfast, but do make a visit to Armstrongs (a personal Edinburgh tradition, since I missed getting caught up in the parade this year). I buy a giant (50" chest) corduroy jacket (because the one I'm wearing is getting a bit moist) and a pair of dress trousers. I don't know why the trousers. Because they're cheap, perhaps.
It it without a doubt the stupidest entertainment that the world has to offer at the beginning of the 21st century, and may be the stupidest entertainment in the world ever, edging out bear-baiting and watching people fall over in the mud.