Ian R Stewart: End of Summer?

Thursday, 31 August 2017

End of Summer?

(For those receiving this by e-mail, remember this is best viewed directly on the blog -)

It's August 31st and the media are telling us that it's the last day of the meteorological summer - whatever that means. The weather's not been great - but not all that bad either. Good enough to wear shorts anyway.

It's been an interesting week, starting off the previous Tuesday when I tweaked my back lifting the Inverurie food box in to my car. It wasn't heavy - it was just the way I did it, and it was enough to make me cancel golf last Wednesday and Friday, plus any cycling. I think it's OK now, but I'm treating it with kid gloves.

Remaining on medical matters, I finally managed to attend Aboyne hospital this morning for the x-ray on my left knee. They say it takes a couple of weeks before my GP receives the results. Why? They check the images as they take them, so why can't they just send/e-mail them immediately? So the earliest appointment I can get with him is Monday 25th September.

Jo and I had an interesting couple of days in Edinburgh - the last days of the 70-year old Fringe, the biggest arts festival in the world. Having recently made contact with each other through the FaceBook page "I went to Victoria Drive Senior Secondary", I'd arranged to meet up with a couple of my old school pals who I hadn't seen or been in touch with for over half a century. One of them - Robert Rowan - remembered everything as if it were yesterday. He was telling me stuff about myself that I never knew or had completely blanked out.

One example was of a scam I pulled in our last year when dogging off school - usually on Friday afternoons. I had been attending hospital for some reason and, in those days, they gave you an appointments card with spaces for repeat appointments, which I of course then filled in and used as evidence to the school for my absences.

Robert also brought along more photographs from our school days and a subsequent holiday we went on to Morecambe. One of them was from the infamous Scientific Society Trip to Annan in 1965 - a couple of embarrassing photos from that trip featured in a recent blog posting. I hated - and was useless at - science, and what I was doing on such a trip, I'll never know. I guess it was just a day out for me. Anyway, here's that photo:

The Morecambe holiday came in 1967. Robert had booked us in to a boarding house and me and my pal John Duncan had gone along with him. These are definitely not how we normally dressed - we were obviously posing for the camera:

There's a cravat thing going on here - and what were Robert and I doing linking arms like this?

To compound matters further, John and I put on our pyjama tops for some reason!

While I was having a few beers with my old school chums, Jo was over with Ross at his work. I met them there in good time to attend our first show of the day - Alexander Fox - Ringo. It's almost obligatory to see at least one cringeworthy show at the Fringe - and this was it. It was staged in a small bubble tent at the Pleasance. All of us were sweating profusely, some of it from embarrassment, but mostly because there was no air.

Our second show was a whole lot better - Matt Forde, well-known TV political satirist and occasional impressionist. He savaged them all - which was pretty fair - but saved his best - Trump - till last. Seeing a "named" artiste up close in a relatively small, bare stage venue gives you some appreciation of their skills - and how hard they worked, going at it with nary a stumble for an hour. Impressive.

We went back to see Ross winding up his day at work and then all went to try to find something to eat - not easy at 10 pm on a Sunday night in Edinburgh. We settled for Bella Italia in the end, after being knocked back at 6 or 7 others, which were closing for the evening.

We never made it along to the free music at the Guildford Arms, but opted for a quick nightcap at our hotel instead. Amoretta for Jo and I, and Gin for Ross, if you're interested.

Our first show on Monday was to see TV comedian David O'Dougherty at noon and I'd inadvertently bought 2 extra tickets for this, which I'd kind of hoped Ross might be able to use, but he was working, so I offered them to Robert Rowan and he and his wife, Bridget, came along with us. We even had lunch with them afterwards at Miller and Carter, a recently opened branch of the small steak house chain. Not having seen each other for over 50 years and now this was two days in a row!

It was then off to the Jazz Cafe to listen to a Blues Guitar Duo - very nice, if slightly soporific. Our final ticketed show was a News Revue, almost a must at the Fringe. It's been one of the most popular genres ever since the heady days of the Cambidge Footlights' Beyond the Fringe in the early 60's. In turn, these early shows featuring Peter Cook and Dudley Moore spawned many other copyists leading to a multitude of satirical TV shows, culminating in Monty Python's Flying Circus. The Revue we saw was fast-paced and furious - the performers had to be young and fit.

I had earmarked another couple of free shows over the 2 days, but we decided to body-swerve them and instead, Ross, Jo and I opted for a couple of quiet pints in the Guildford Arms, with an occasional trip outside to view the Festival's closing fireworks. Jo and I shared a single fish and then we retired.

We caught the train back on Tuesday morning and drove over to Inverurie, via Banchory, to do the usual Tuesday Luca pick-up. We were under instructions to take him for a haircut - it was getting ridiculously long. I think we succeeded, without upsetting him too much. The stylist knew Luca well and handled him superbly. Here's the result:

We were about to head home for an early bed after a hard couple of days in Edinburgh, when we got a message that Ross was on a train on his way up! I picked him up at Stonehaven and we were back home before midnight: