dual purpose

Instead of the more usual purpose these windows and some of their colleagues round the corner were this evening permitting the sounds being made inside the museum to reach the outside world. I was wandering up West College Street when some vaguely choralic live-sounding stuff started up which led to some vaguely dramatic-sounding synthy stuff which then suddenly stopped and did not resume. Could have been something in the lecture hall/mini-cinéma they keep at the back which might still be functioning whilst the big hall at the front gets modified. Could even have been some sort of show though it was the sort of noise after which one expects a load of clapping and "whoo" noises as something is revealed at the climax of the dramatic section. Then again the sound might have been coming from somewhere completely different and had just bounced around a bit before reaching me.

I was slightly pleased to see that most of the buses and coaches clogging up Chambers Street this evening had their engines switched off whilst their inhabitants watched the tattoo. The past few times I've passed a few have been running in a most unnecessary and wasteful manner, presumably just to keep the driver nice and cool and air-conditioned whilst he waits for his charges to return or so that the returning passengers are not greeted with the smell a driver creates when lounging around sweating for three hours. A few of the drivers had even ventured outside their vehicles into what remained of the nice fresh air after a bunch of coaches have driven through it. They were just sitting there smoking or eating crisps rather than walking up and down but it's a start.