Highs

We had another slowish start then walked down to the Mansfield Traquair church to see the Phoebe Traquair murals (finally!). Stunning….and good to learn about the artist and her life (eg she painted all the angels with red hair because she and her children were redheads), the motivation of the group that built the church (to be ready for Christ’s second coming) and see how meticulously it’s been restored. We stayed quite a while, then stopped at Broughton Market to share a delicious hot Scotch pie as we walked towards the West End craft market. On the way we passed the Stand and saw a Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas was about to start so we popped in and enjoyed an hour of chat first about generative AI and then archaeology…all good stuff delivered by slightly nervous academics which is the charm of these events.
We continued on to the craft market. The weather was strange today…rain was forecast but it was very close and uncomfortably hot (especially in shows) and although there was one short shower we didn’t need to have carried coats with us!
We wandered around the market but didn’t get anything, and K bumped into someone she used to work with (bizarre coincidence!). We were flagging, and getting hungry, so caught the bus back up the hill and picked up some wraps at the Nike Valley shop to eat at home. Think I misordered as I’m not sure I got one of the combinations I’d expected but we wolfed them down anyway as we rested on the sofa and saw some more Olympics.
Hard to get her ourselves to head out again but we walked down to the Pleasance to see Steen Raskopoulos in a slightly surreal hour of comedy, bringing audience members up at points and getting one, a lecturer in German, to act out a whole story with him which was very funny because the lecturer was a great sport and threw himself into it.
Saw an ex colleague there and we had a bit of a chat then we walked on down to the Playhouse to meet CR and see Grupo Corpo dance performance. Spectacular! They were incredible….absolutely synchronised yet all the movements were so flowing and loose, rather than a series of ‘steps’. The soundscape was a strange hypnotic beat, sometimes with a melody, speech, or buzzing sounds, and although odd at first it created the perfect context for the dance. Fabulous!
C gave us a lift most of the way home then as we walked the last bit we bumped into MH walking home after seeing Nina Conti’s show which she said was great. We chatted a while then picked up some chips, pitta, hummus and salad and grazed on them as we caught up on the rest of the day’s medals.