Arthur's Seat in blue and yellow

Isn't it interesting how that colour combination jumps out at us now?

I had known that there was a major Barbara Hepworth retrospective in Edinburgh at the moment but I'd forgotten until we were at the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art yesterday. So back we went this morning. I'm not sure whether I felt uninspired because of the art or because of the dismal call I had from a builder this morning, but probably, I'm afraid, it was the art because we went on to watch most of an 82-minute film commissioned by the Gallery and I was transfixed.

Bloodlines by Amie Siegel follows paintings by George Stubbs from their owners’ homes to a 2019/20 exhibition then back again. She filmed workers carefully lifting paintings from the walls of stately homes, painstakingly wrapping them and packing them into specially made crates, loading them onto a van and driving them to the exhibition. While at the stately homes, the camera had an occasional wander - to china dogs on a mantelpiece, stuffed birds, two black 'natives' riding leopards, someone winding an elaborate clock, a cleaner vacuuming. Sometimes it went outside, to dogs yapping round the heels of horses setting off for a hunt, or to some men shooting birds out of the air. Quite often it found a picture echoing what it had been off watching.

There is no narration but the editing is meticulous and it didn't take Secondborn and me very long to realise that we were watching an undercover film about privilege and class (who wears blue gloves when they handle the picture frames and who does not), colonialism and race, wealth and inheritance, possessions and labour. Then we saw people just like us looking at the paintings once the exhibition had opened, commenting, pointing, having paid their entrance fee, complicit in the system we'd been quietly critiquing from the 'outside'.

Ooh, it's good! The National Galleries of Scotland will keep the film in their permanent collection and until 23 July it's also viewable at the Thomas Dane Gallery in central London.

Back in town we found one of the coffeeshops on SB's list (she used to run one so is a lot more discerning than I am) then ambled to the so-far-unseen end of Royal Mile to gaze up at Arthur's Seat. Our meander from there meant we got a spontaneous half hour in the parliament building, including the chamber, then as we came out we heard massed bagpipes from the forecourt of Holyroodhouse. Bagpipes are up there with well-made coffee in SB's happiness stakes so we joined a small crowd watching five school pipe bands performing in front of some dignitaries.