A bit of culture!?!

Yesterday a few of us from the U3A (University of the Third Age) theatre group took ourselves off up to Edinburgh, first for lunch, and then to a matinee at the Kings Theatre.  It’s been years since I was at the Kings.  When I was a kid, living in Edinburgh, Christmas wasn’t complete without a family outing to the pantomime at the Kings, complete with ice-cream in a tub at the interval, eaten with a small flat wooden  “spoon”.  I remember we used to take a taxi to the theatre – that was a big treat – and  we would count the Christmas trees in the windows as we drove along.  (This photo of the Grand Circle and the boxes isn’t too clear, but photography isn’t allowed in the auditorium so I sneaked this photo without flash.  It’s a beautiful theatre, built in 1906, the memorial stone laid by the famous “library man”, Andrew Carnegie.)

Since those days I’ve seen a few plays at the Kings, but back to yesterday.  We were there to see the Alan Bennet’s play The History Boys.  I’m never too sure about contemporary playwrights.   I have the same feeling about a lot of contemporary art, that it’s a lot of pretentiousness.  I did feel a bit of that about the play yesterday, but despite not always knowing what was going on or why, I quite enjoyed it.

Getting back to Peebles was a long drawn out journey as we had to wait for buses, take a detour because of a closed road and follow the long and winding route through Bush and Roslin, both set off the main road home.

By the time the number 62 arrived at the Post Office in Peebles there was no time for tea.  For me it was straight to the Community Centre, formerly the Drill Hall, for the second meeting of the Photographic group.  We had an interesting and enjoyable evening with discussion on what we wanted out of the club and how to move forward, followed by two  stunning photo presentations, one by the secretary on her visit to Antarctica last year, and the other of our own photographs with the theme of Spring.  There were some fabulous photos by the “experts” but the rest of us didn’t do too badly.  I would say there wasn’t a single bad photo among them.  

This was my contribution, which you have seen before.  I wish I could show you some of the others.

Anyway, before I finish I must show you some pics of the recovered daffodils after their swim in the river the other day.  How they are so resilient, I don’t know.  They look so fragile, and the river was flowing so fast and with such strength.  You can see on the left of the photo the detritus left behind from when the river was at its highest, so  you can see how much below the flood line the daffs were.

Here’s a close up of the daffodils themselves.  Not a lot wrong with these, eh?

Talk again soon.