Salonnieres

16th century polyphony in the morning - singing, not listening, but only 8 bars and nothing like the sublime singing last night.

L arrived from Crieff and we had a 'city living' Sunday brunch at 'Toast'.

It was a lovely day, if a bit wee bit windy so off on the 'Majestic' open top bus to the coast with an hour's dalliance in the Botanics on the way. I saw parts of Edinburgh I haven't been in for years. I'm a Southsider you know!

Then to the Traverse for the event of the day The Salon Project. Telford students dressed us in our period costumes, did our hair and our make up and once transformed we entered 'The Salon', an unrecognisable Traverse 1. 3 glasses of fizz aided the conversation as we replicated a19th century salon. A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge. In this salon there was music from original gramophones and then on the piano, provoking nudes in a tableau vivant, discourse from Katerina Bonnevier, a Swedish architect, and Joyce McMillan and all the time meeting new people, admiring costume, being interesting. Joyce sang 'Ae Fond Kiss' with 'DJ' Donna Rutherford and I shed a tear - so romantic, so lyrical, so sad. It tells the story of exactly where I am, where I have been put. Sadly, after 2 hours it was over and we left to resume our own 21st century lives. It was a bit of a relief, though, to leave behind the hot, heavy, cumbersome velvet dress (not to mention the dead furry animal.)

L and I finished our evening with a Chinese and then came home to a lonely and hungry Molly.