It’s festival time again in Edinburgh, but I’m just not feeling it this year. Nothing in the programmes piled high on my desk — book fest, Fringe, international festival, individual venues — is really leaping out and grabbing me.
This is a not uncommon phenomenon among long-term residents of the capital. Some years you throw yourself into the August melée like an Aussie student on a gap year. Other years you practically ignore it.
Mostly my attack of “meh” is down to the lack of a big Scottish drama to get my teeth into. The international festival’s big production, The Divide, which is perhaps appropriately split into two parts, does nothing for me. Partly this is a reaction to the fact that it’s by Alan Ayckbourn, whose shtick leaves me cold. Partly because YouTube videos of rehearsals all seemed a bit mannered and failed to persuade me. Neither the National Theatre of Scotland nor the Traverse, both of which routinely provide my August must-sees, are lighting my limelight this year.
I’m after something that makes me think differently about where I live, something that challenges me intellectually and emotionally. If there is something like that in Edinburgh this year it has escaped my notice.
I take full responsibility for any failure on my part to recognise the great work in town this month for what it truly is.
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I’m sure The Divide is a perfectly good play. Douglas Maxwell’s The Whip Hand, about a man who has an announcement for his family at his 50th birthday party, looks intriguing. Jo Clifford’s work is always challenging. And there’s also Zinnie Harris’s take on the Orpheus story, but I am a bit allergic to reimagined classical works.
It’s not just drama. Come August I try to go to whatever Mahler symphony is being played by a visiting orchestra, but this year there does not seem to be one.
It looks like my festival will be mostly art exhibitions this year. Never mind. That’s the beauty of life in Edinburgh. Another festival will be along soon enough.
Digital dexterity
I like to think of myself as fairly digitally savvy for an auld yin. Then along comes a gismo that makes me feel like the tech equivalent of bootcut jeans.
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So it proved to be with my latest domestic purchase — a pair of house-phones to replace ones that were 20 years old and which had simply given up the ghost.
Being shallow, I picked the ones that looked the coolest — a slinky design with a fancy blue circular light on the base.
It was only when I got them home that I realised just how fancy, as I perused the range of features they offered the digitally dextrous.
It turns out I could tether these phones to my mobile and download all my smartphone contacts. Not only that, I could answer mobile calls on the house phone. And make calls on the house phone that went through my mobile account. And I could have a robot receptionist take my calls and then ask me if I wanted to speak to the person on the other end of the line. That’s before I got to the differential ringtone options for different categories of caller.
I sat holding the instruction booklet wanting to weep. I just wanted a phone.
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I wonder if it is possible in 2017 to boycott anything preceded with the word “smart”.
Is it possible to live a perfectly sentient life with a dumbphone, a dumbcard, a dumbmeter, a dumbfridge and a dumbcar?
Painful discussions
On the subject of advancing years, I have stolen a phrase from Midwinter Break, the new novel by Bernard MacLaverty. Yes, I know I keep mentioning this book. I will keep on mentioning it until you buy it.
The elderly couple whose story is told have an arrangement whereby discussion of each other’s ailments and illnesses is limited to a one-hour window every morning.
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Their name for this hour? The organ recital.
@kennyfarq