Prettiness, pettiness and pitiful preferences

A practically perfect day, aside from the grumpiness of certain people that might well have been me.

The boys have only been on a train twice, once for the sake of it: we got the train from Kirkcaldy to Burntisland and back; and once on the Bo'ness Steam Railway. So today we thought we'd take them on an adventure and we got the train through to Edinburgh. It is a beautiful journey, and one which I have been doing on and off for 20 years. I miss it a bit, there's all the sights along the way, many of which have changed recently. But how nice to have two new pairs of eyes to point it all out to, and eyes belonging to people that don't think you're bonkers for caring like fellow commuters often do.

And then we arrived in Edinburgh and took ourselves off to Princes Street Gardens to travel on the Big Wheel.

Marvellous, and I was most pleased to note that the only tears were of frustration at not being able to get on till we got to the front of the queue. I took lots of photos and played around with the camera settings a bit (not enough, I have more learning to do).

Edinburgh Castle on automatic

Edinburgh Castle with a little tweaking

And then the children insisted we ride on the horses on the carousel, which pleased me immensely having never succeeded in getting anyone else to go on them. Waiting for the previous turn to end, I decided which horse was to be mine, as you do. Debating whether it was in fact the done thing to pull a small child off a horse because I wanted that one, imagine my joy when that horse just happened to be the next one and I got it.

This is he:

and this is why:

I was almost as happy as my son.

This, plus lunch, plus trying to understand the new system at Waverley took most of the afternoon and then we got the train home again as the sun set. I took some immensely rubbish pictures from the Forth Rail Bridge (the pillars don't half get in the way).

Jeremy Hardy in the sticks

Jeremy Hardy is playing on my doorstep. Literally. He's quite little so he can in fact do this.

Actually, that's not too far from the truth, he is performing at the Adam Smith Theatre, KIRKCALDY later this month, which is about five mins from my doorstep.

I'm quite beside myself with joy. I am. See, that's me, right there, sitting next to me looking rather happy. Deliriously so in fact.

In Kirkcaldy, I can hardly believe it.

This is part of Kirkcaldy's Comedy Festival, making Kirkcaldy the "laughter capital of Scotland". Because it will be better than comedy festivals in, picking a town at random, Edinburgh? Uh huh.

Comedy and life

It's that marvellous time of year again whereby comedians come to Edinburgh and make me laugh. I think that maybe this isn't their sole purpose, but that's beside the point.

This year we were to see: Jason Byrne, Mark Watson, Richard Herring and Bill Bailey. Jason Byrne we missed, because I am an idiot and got the venue wrong. Mark Watson is adorable, I want him as a pet. He is also extremely funny, clever and an excellent comedian. Bill Bailey is next week, I can't wait.

Richard Herring was simply marvellous, anyone who can should go and see him. Totally different and very, very funny, one of my favourite gigs so far of the last 6 years, thus rendering him hero #1.

That was not my most eloquent of reviews. Ah well, noone reads this anyway :-)