ninety degrees early

A very odd sort of day. Warm and sunny, tour buses full, tourists crawling over Calton Hill, stag and hen parties screeching about in rugby outfits and extremely tacky Hummer limos, people eating ice-creams in the Botanics, joggers wearing shorts rather than insulated tights and some other people not wearing coats yet there was no book festival in Charlotte Square and no leaves on most of the trees. The other signs of it being still just February rather than the actual calendar summer were that I was able to spend several hours walking around at high speed and only ended up lightly sweating whereas in the summer I can barely stand still in the shade without getting all horribly warm and unsightlily perspirative.

Nicky had to pop to Ayr to see a woman about some flowers and poke at bridesmaids' dresses so after dropping her off at the station (where the vast numbers of polices completely failed both to spot my camera and demand to know for whom I was working and of which terrorist-sensitive installations I was taking pictures) I spent the day wandering about in the sun to make up for the distinct lack of daylight-hour lunch-walks during the last busy week at work. Although the summery illusion didn't stretch so far as to provide a film festival the Filmhouse is still showing the odd exta Coen film and I happened to wander past it in time to notice it was shortly showing Barton Fink whch I've somehow missed up until now. The BP National Portrait Award Thing at the portrait gallery was also worth a look though I had unfortunately forgotten my earplugs and had to keep moving around to avoid the loud-speaking blare-people spoiling the morning with their critic-ism.