haraggan

Wow, August in Edinburgh is insane. I feel like I haven't had thirty seconds to rub together. Three Festival events the first (full) week, five the second, and four - possibly five - this week. So much to report! I think the last thing I described was "Get Your War On." That seems ages ago. After that we saw "The Master and Margarita," a play based on the Russian novel, which was good, and, the next night, "Waiting for Groucho," which is indeed a bit like "Waiting for Godot" with the Marx Brothers. Being a tremendous Marx Brothers fan I enjoyed it and was quite moved by it - the only real problem was the difficulty the Glaswegian theatre group had sounding like New York Jews.

Last week's events began with "About Suffering They Were Never Wrong," an opera based on Euripides's "The Trojan Women." That was quite good. On the same day we saw "Xenu is Loose! Cower Pitiful Humans as the Dark Lord of the Galactic Federation Rains Atomic Death Once More Upon Your Pitiful Planet - The Musical!" which was as funny as it sounds and included a lovely ode to the founder of Scientology, "He's Just Ron." At the end of the musical the heroine brings the entire world back to life through the Power of Positive Thinking (tm).

Thursday's big event was "Debbie Does Dallas - The Musical," which was the highlight of the Festival, so far, and had a fairly professional production. Not having seen the movie, I can't say how faithful it was or wasn't to its source material. It was extremely funny, despite the lack of Marx Brothers. The next night we went to Dennis Potter's harrowing play "Brimstone and Treacle." The laughter never stops, as today we're seeing the play "Breaker Morant." The movie, which is based on the play, always reduces me to a blubbering wreck. And there's still the new Athol Fugard play ahead to ensure copious tears.

Meanwhile, the pets are fine - Oakley has been very pokey and sociable lately, and spends much of his time exploring or posing attractively. Mojo Jojo is incessantly playful, when he's not being snuggly. Our pigeons still arrive in regular droves, although they might be getting a bit wary - a few days ago I grabbed one and brought it inside for a bath, because it has some sort of goo matted to its face. Pigeons love bathing, but they don't like doing anything against their will, so the fellow was a bit disgruntled, even if he seemed to enjoy the head-rubbing.