Fringe reviews

Okay, so I recognise that I’ve just posted something that in some lights could be considered a theatre review. And as such I’ve no doubt there’ll be people who disagree with some or all of it. Fair play. That’s the nature of reviews after all, but at least I hope that the review itself is […]

No jokes

So, I had a day by myself at the Fringe the other day, a blank slate to fill with anything I fancied and, after an hour’s consultation with the Huge and Bewildering Fringe programme, I came up with a pot luck itinerary. Six shows, with a break for dinner at Brewdog on Cowgate, would not […]

Interim Fringe : 1

So, the 2012 Edinburgh Fringe has been going for a couple of weeks now. I’ve been through there quite a lot, but so far I’ve had little time to see much that I wasn’t directly involved with in a de Saw / Finkle capacity (I’ll talk more next week about how Israphel’s Book has panned out). […]

July Reading

Beginning to catch up on the reading front a little, although I’m still busy with too many other things to make much headway on the novel pile (and, to be frank, August is not looking promising on that front either. Ah, well). Anyway – for a bit of light relief I went with Terry Pratchett’s […]

Three things

In the last week I’ve done three things I’d never expected to do in my life. Two of them I enjoyed immensely, one of them went against every fibre of my soul. On Thursday, I was Maid-Of-Honor at my friend’s civil partnership wedding. It was a beautiful day, overflowing with love, and best of all […]

That old saw magic

It’s that time of year again where a young man finds himself carrying a piano up and down the old streets of Auld Reekie in search of some punters to weird out with the aid of his saw wielding sidekick. In short, the Edinburgh Fringe is nearly upon us and, as has become the custom […]

My Sweet Lord

Last time I felt like this was a little over ten and a half years ago. Some friends and I went to see Masters Of Reality at the Garage in Glasgow and, before the band came on, Chris Goss opened the set with a solo acoustic rendition of My Sweet Lord. Because George Harrison had […]

The recent reading

So I’ve been busy, so I missed the May reading update. Not that there was a *heck of a lot* to report. Anyway, June has now slipped by as well, so I may as well roll it all up in one post. I managed two novels over the last couple of months, and both were […]

Euro 2012 Final

Proof, if it were needed, that the TTA Press sweepstake finalists, Jim Steel and Chris Murdoch, congregated in a West End pub to duke it out during the final of Euro 2012. The occasion was a rematch of the World Cup Final of two years ago and, sadly for Jim (whose team were Holland on […]

Words and Music

Found myself in Edinburgh last night for a bit of a special books and music event in neat little bookshop that was new to me called Pulp Fiction. The shop itself, carrying a well chosen selection of crime and SF/Fantasy books, is well worth a visit. Its high-stacked shelves remind me of the old Murder […]