one day I'll remember it

New rules? Eeep.

"5.2: Posting links to individual images on other websites is OK, providing they relate to the entry being linked from."

Phew. Cheers Joe.

I occasionally (very occasionally, for I still have to work for at least as long as I have already lived and then some before the time comes) ponder what I might do when I retire (if I get the chance and don't have to keep working until I drop (or opt for voluntary euthanasia and recycling)) in order to keep the mind and body active and resist the pull into the dull and feeble world of inactivity and senescence. Hopefully photography will still exist in a recogniseable form which allows it to be used as a creative outlet for people with no ability to draw and hopefully we will still be permitted to take photographs of things without getting their or their owner's written permission first and hopefully there will still be things worth photographing. Hopefully I will have the necessary means and accoutrements to enable me to perform staples of codger-activity such as glowering at people over an hedge and pottering around in a shed. If I don't have my own hedge by that time then I would probably quite like to spend a large part of each day ambling codgerishly around the botanics, especially on slightly gloomy days in early autumn when it's warmish and muggy but not too muggy, the leaves are still present and green but the sun does not burn and the slight dampness reduces the amount of shrieking imps running around underfoot whilst their mothers discuss the price of swans in Valvona & Crolla compared to Harvey Nichols' food hall.
Perhaps if I make myself a small notice today saying "remember to take your sodding macro lens with you when you go anywhere near the botanics" and paste it to a prominent wall then by the time I retire the message will have been drummed in deep enough. As it was I was restricted to remaining at least 45cm from everything but it was still rather pleasant nonetheless.

After a few hours' pottering and ambling we bought a greasy meal of chipstuffs then sat and ate them (hopefully lowering the tone of the fancyposh Edinburgh Academy slightly in the process) before heading to a gig on their premises. Following on from yesterday's whine about the loud and posh... if you fancy a quick demonstration of That Type of Person then pop down to the doorway of Stage by Stage one evening this week between 18:00 and 19:00. Brrr. That school freaks me out at the best of times (I used to work in the branch of the Office just around the corner and would frequently see young, impressionable children going to school dressed in military uniforms or doing pipe-band-marching-stuff in the evenings) but hearing some people who (from what they said) were evidently alumni or the parents of current pupils was something else. It would have been quite fun to pop out of the auditorium and bribe the wee usher kid to stick his head round the door saying "excuse me, is there anyone here called Jacquinta? There's a call for you" just to see how many people stood up.

Unfortunately the show started a little late and went on for a little more than an hour meaning that slow-walking people felt that we wouldn't have made it to George Square (twenty-five minutes away in my shoes) in time for Tripod (still as funny as they used to be... tears-in-eyes laugh-yourself-hoarse stuff which made me forget my tingling nose and scratchy throat) so we had to get a taxi. I hate subsidising anti-cyclist behaviour but suppose one has to make allowances for people who didn't use to work at the bottom of Brandon Street and who did not spend a couple of years beating buses and taxis up the hill on foot in rush-hour traffic. It would have been interesting to see where the driver would have attempted to dump us had we not jumped out at Bristo Place... I wouldn't have been surprised if it had cost a couple of extra pounds to get the remaining couple of hundred yards along Potterow and Crichton Street given the (mostly taxi-based) congestion around the uni area.

The evening was completed by the Mitch Benn Music Club in the Reid Hall. Unfortunately we were stuck in front of a loudmouthed arsehole in the queue who was droning on and on to his female companion about how many different productions of MacBeth he'd seen over the years and how this one had literally a ring of fire on the stage in which the three witches sat and blaahblaaaahBLAAAAAGAHA *guffaw* and generally made my ears a living hell for fifteen minutes.
Whilst most of the songs in the show were not as funny as his old classics (Scary Weirdoes et al) Mr. Benn displays much more guitar noodlyfancyness with his fancy MIDI electric than he ever did with the wee acoustic AND there was a serendipitous moment in the second half when he slagged theatre-type people as exhibiting "a whole new level of twattiness" and then incorporated MacBeth into the funniest song of the gig. I did glance back towards the blahing git (didn't check the colour of the jacket... I think he might have had a beige one on beneath the red anorak) in the hope that I could catch his eye and raise my eyebrow but he wasn't paying attention. Still, hopefully he heard and was chastened.