Festival Time

I think I'll just put the kettle on before I start. That's better. Like the old lady used to say, there's only one thing beats a nice cup of tea, and that's another one.

It's festival time here in beautiful Edinburgh and I feel I should make the most of it. But that voice keeps coming back to me and won't let me forget that this could be my last Festival.  I feel reasonably well most of the time, though I'm mostly incredibly tired and lacking in energy. It's difficult to accept  that I will never get my old fitness levels back.  I grieve for my old self and suffer constant feelings of loss for the person who I used to be.

But I've learnt to live with who and what I've become and I'm determined to make the most of whatever time I have left. With that in mind I bought myself a new car, which cost £250 more than I paid for this flat back in 1978. Or was it '77? It's a lovely wee car, Ford Fiesta Titanium Turbo they tell me. Very powerful and too fast, with lots of high tech which I'm finding difficult to come to grips with, but getting there, slowly. My first biggish trip will be up to Isle of Lewis, tickets booked for ferry on 31st August, will drive up on 29th and spend two nights in Inverness then a week in Stornoway.

I've been to see the Lee Miller and Picasso exhibition at the Portrait Gallery and also the Baileys Starburst at the National Gallery, both excellent exhibitions and well worth seeing. Lee Miller was a war photographer, who knew Picasso from about 1937, and from all accounts probably knew him intimately and went on to take many pictures of him over the years that followed. Some great photos here, especially one of the two of them together after Paris was liberated in 1944, when she went direct to his studio having arrived in town with the soldiers she was accompanying.

I loved the David Bailey exhibition. So many people I've known all my life, brought back so many memories, very moving for me. He seems to have known just about everybody worth knowing or sometimes not so worth knowing. Great photos of Stones, with Brian Jones always side on and never full face, maybe he knew he wasn't going to be around for long. Also couple of nice ones of Dylan from 1986. Bailey was born in Leytonstone and started taking photos there in the early 60s of the East End's bombed streets waiting to be rebuilt, landscapes in ruins. My first trip away from Lewis was at that time and I kept looking for myself in any of his pics, but no sign of me.

There's an enormous poster of a photo he took of Alice Cooper with a snake draped around his body from 1977. Alice kept snakes as pets. The snake looks vicious as does Alice. There are also some harrowing photos he took of Ethiopian refugees fleeing to camps in Sudan in 1984, at time Geldof and pals did their massive fund raiser Live Aid.

You will like the one of him and Warhol in bed with Bailey taking the photo. Very strange, but it's what Warhol wanted. Such a laugh. That's all for now as I'm going to my first Festival event, a play at the Traverse called An Oak Tree, by Tim Crouch.