Ride a cock horse . . .

Brilliant. Although, of course, that's easy for me to say - I don't live there. Note the usual whinging from the Scotsman's online following . . . how can you tell if you're in a plane with a Scotsman reader? Well, the whining keeps going after they turn the engines off. Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week.

About a year ago I went to see La Clique, featuring a contortionist called Captain Frodo who did something quite implausible with tennis racquets. Enjoy. And while you're at it (if you're at it, anyway) CJ mentioned an intemperate irreligious rant by Marcus Brigstock that someone had put there too. Both highly recommended.

I'm off hippyherding in the morning. Back Sunday. Take care until then - I don't want to return to news of you all being horribly injured.

( Neon setlist )

A couple more things:

The other week I came across a website with an early draft of Barry Hughart's highly excellent Bridge of Birds. If you haven't read the published version, then I'd recommend having a look at this to see whether it's likely to be your sort of thing. If you have read it then you're probably going to read that without my prompting.

niddrie_edge pointed me at a very odd story concerning a film called Darklands, made about ten years ago and in some ways rather like a version of The Wicker Man set in South Wales. The producers seem to have been putting it about that they and their film have been cursed by a scary gang of Edinburgh witches called the Beltane Fire Society (of which I are a member, and which is not witches). Now, in spite of the fact that this is very obviously the tallest Scottish witch story since the exceedingly tall Tam O'Shanter (or possibly even since MacBeth), they allegedly convinced Richard Stanley of this too, which I'm not sure I believe either.