Topaz...

Playlist
Helene Grimaud – Chopin/Rachmaninov Piano Sonatas etc
The Yardbirds – Heart Full of Soul
The John Scofield Band – Up All Night
Weather Report – I Sing the Body Electric
Weather Report – Live in Tokyo
Yes – Tales From Topographic Oceans
Various – The Real Birth of Fusion Vol 2
Vertu – Vertu
Miles Davis – Best of the Miles Davis Quartet 1965-68
Glenn Gould - Images (Disc 2 - Glenn Gould Plays Not Bach)
Petula Clark - Downtown (Single)
David Bowie - Drive-in Saturday (Single)

Up 6:40 and to the shops at 7 as this is our 23rd Wedding Anniversary and I wanted get Anne some flowers...

I returned around 7:40 with flowers, a Cadbury’s Twirl and the latest edition of Planet Hearts (a local weekly newspaper about Hearts FC Anne’s favourite football team)...

Romance is not dead...



I also bought lottery tickets giving three chances to win tonight (our usual numbers, six picked at random by me and a Lucky Dip - update - two numbers out of eighteen) and two more CDs – a collection by the Yardbirds and an album by jazz guitarist John Scofield from a couple of years ago. They were sitting on a shelf at 97p each and I couldn’t resist...

I sat in the back room with Meg the Black Cat listening to the Yardbirds and reading about them in the Great Rock Discography...



And of course Yes is close to Yardbirds in there, so I made a list of the “contemporary commerciality” of Yes albums through the years (i.e. their highest chart placings)...

Hard to believe that, in 1973, a double album with just four 20 minute tracks on it went to No 1 in the charts...

We went to Vittoria's in Brunswick St off Leith Walk for breakfast – it’s where we had breakfast on 15 October 1983 before we jetted off to Salzburg for our honeymoon...



This beat last week at Valvona and Crolla hands down. And the latte may even have surpassed the best Patisserie Florentin has to offer...

On the way across town, we listened to Weather Report’s “I Sing the Body Electric” in the car, as it arrived in the mail just before we left the house...

Anne reckoned the first track, “Unknown Soldier”, is to music what darts is to sport. Later on though she was caught tapping her foot to one of the other tracks on the album...

After breakfast we took an amble down Leith Walk. We came across at least two Polish Delicatessens – it seems there’s a growing Polish population in Edinburgh. It can only add to the diversity of the place (and brighten up Leith)...

In a small hi-fi repair shop I found a lead I’ve been looking for to reposition the speakers at the computer – which was nice...

We drove home and Anne listened to the radio (Dundee Utd 1 Celtic 4) while I surfed YouTube and found videos of, amongst others, Alice Peacock, Dar Williams, early ELO, Wizzard and the pariah, Gary Glitter...

Then Anne checked out Jambos Kickback (Hearts Hibs Derby tomorrow) while I listened to some more tracks in the back room...

We watched the football results come in while I enjoyed the bottle of Erdinger Weissbier Anne had bought me as an anniversary treat – when I lived in Munich in 1979, I worked in a factory a short S-Bahn trip outside the city – I used to get on the train every day in the direction of Erding...



We finally visited the town during our Great Alpine Tour of 2003....

Goddammit Queens lost again and, to make matters worse, our closest rivals, Airdrie Utd won – we’re routed to the bottom of the league and are even worse than last year if that was possible (it is)...

However, by all accounts QoS could’ve won, and their first win can’t be far away (needs to be soon!!)Good news for Anne though as Rangers are beaten at home by Inverness – so Hearts must beat Hibs tomorrow to widen the gap...

It’s annoying when the pundits talk about Celtic, saying they’re now ten points ahead of Rangers – without bothering to mention that Hearts are between them just six points behind Celtic but with a game in hand....

In the early evening, as Anne watched "Strictly Come Dancing", I listened to some Glenn Gould whilst reading "The Glenn Gould Reader", a collection of articles, essays and liner notes by the great man, including one on why Petula Clark is better than the Beatles...

Then, we scrubbed up and walked down for a bus into town for our anniversary meal...

We had drinks beforehand in a nice little bar called Halo then on to French restaurant La P’tite Folie. A lovely bottle of French red accompanied our meal for which we, quite aptly after 23 years, chose exactly the same things:-

Parcels of Parma ham with Emmental cheese, slices of boiled potato, tomatoes and dressed salad
Sirloin steak with potatoes dauphinoise and fresh vegetables
Sticky toffee pudding (we were both going to have crème brulee but by the time we got round to the sweet there was none left)...

We caught the bus back home while Anne developed what seemed to be incurable hiccups – which stopped as soon as we got back into the house...

A good day...

Highlight of the Day : 23rd Anniversary Dinner