Four and a half hours listening to beautiful, beautiful music and my first ever performance of Tristan and Isolde @scottishopera.bsky.social

Spring has sprung

The shape and sound of Saturday mornings 🎼

I really enjoyed this, and inspired to find out more 🥃

A little sleepy today having binge-watched the second half of Bridgerton in one sitting last night but zero regrets

Pattern code cards in a Jacquard power loom - one of the first numerically controlled machines

Went with low expectations having read, and not particularly enjoyed, the book but I really liked #WutheringHeights - very into the hyper-stylised take and some good twists and interpretations of the characters (Nelly & Isabella for example). Played as a doomed ❤️ story, but got across the toxicity.

Thank you so much @scottishopera.bsky.social - our daughters’ school’s performance of The Dragon of the Western Sea was today. They loved it, we loved it - you’re amazing.

Or not - cannot find a recording link of the Milano-Cortina exhibition gala anywhere. Any ideas/links? BBC iplayer has the beautiful Ilia Malinin and Alysa Liu performances but that was all 😭

I have the Olympic figure skating gala to watch on catch-up tomorrow and no other plans ☺️

A brand new opera from composer Dai Fujikura performed by Scottish Opera - The Great Wave - about the artist Hokusai. Great to experience something very new to me, some very beautiful moments including incorporation of a traditional Japanese flute called a shakuhachi played by Shozen Hasegawa

Another great event at the Out of the Blue Drill Hall in Leith for Lunar New Year🧧 - loved having a go at calligraphy (this isn’t my attempt!), the Goose ring toss, jianzi kick, arrow throwing and a highly competitive chopstick bean race. Also lovely food - and a very talented spun sugar sculptress

Checked out Giants #NationalMuseumsScotland and loved the structures which really got across both the scale, and the scientific detective work involved in understanding more about these incredible creatures

Reminded me of the Everyman collections that the Millennium Commission sent to schools 1999/2000. I did work my way thro’ most but those editions - ouch. Long, boring intros/timelines, plain black & white covers & zero illustration. It felt like such a missed opp to hook more of us into good stuff.

An afternoon engrossed in the new #skimo event at #MilanoCortina2026 and loved it - though felt as if my lungs were burning just watching them going up the slopes (good intro to skimo here: www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02...)

Booked a day off tomorrow and had a wine geek evening at Smith and Gertrude trying Raúl Pérez’s wines from Bierzo in Castilla y Léon: Godello whites and Mencía reds - really something. The La Vizcaína Godello blend was gorgeous.

BBC commentator summed Alysa Liu’s performance up beautifully as the equivalent of jumping in puddles in wellies - just joy personified!

Happy pancake day 🥞

Happy Lunar New Year 🧧

That time of year when I revolt my entire family by eating cod’s roe. Nostalgia may factor - good memories of eating this in my aunt’s kitchen in Dublin

Not perfect but an intriguing book about the people who collected/published fairytales. Some really belonged in fairytales themselves - Charlottes-Rose de La Force who in 1687 disguised herself as a bear and smuggled herself into a castle, hid amongst real-life bears, to rescue her captured husband

Low-key obsessed with the graphic design on Chimac hot sauce bottles

Went to check it out in person yesterday and was pretty neat seeing for myself the traces of the Georgian townhouse on Princes St, the fireplaces, old paint and wallpapers

Catching up on the #SixNations highlights (and results!!) to round off a lovely Valentine’s Day 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 🇮🇪

A happy Valentine’s Day ❤️ and a Galintines dinner eating all our favourite foods (broccoli and soy sauce got nominated - taking that as a win), a ‘heartbreaker’ chocolate heart demolished within nanoseconds, and Gladiators/Olympic figure skating on catch-up

Rewatching the first episode of ER, remembering how exciting it was first time it aired (it stands up pretty well) and how everyone talked about it at school the next day - and utterly terrifying that that was in 1994

Christening my Tuesday run as a ‘recovery run’ purely because it always feels like I’m going through molasses

Somewhat brutal choice for a Sunday night and I did silently bawl my way through most of it but Hamnet was excellent.

Caroline Eden fast becoming my favourite travel writer. Just finished Red Sands - part of a beautiful triptych of books (Black Sea and Green Mountains are the others). This was about a part of the world I knew almost nothing about and loved it.

A pretty special evening at the Banff Mountain Film Festival: 1st two films kinda tone-deaf but *then* The Finisher about Jasmin Paris’ completion of the Barkley Marathons (with Jasmin in the audience!), the adorable Emil & Karl: Little Wheels, Big Mountains & the very funny Riders on the Storm (🍿)

Not read many COVID books and, by chance, read two this week: Pröpper’s autobiographical 27 Beats Per Minute which reminded me of some of the good things about the lockdowns, and Lee Baker’s horror story Bat Eater which equally reminded me of the worst of the worst of exactly the same period.

Edinburgh Lunar New Year market at the Pitt was a lot of fun - and some delicious food (on again tomorrow Sunday 8th)

This is a good challenge - and kind of a beautiful way to celebrate Edinburgh’s Victorian baths www.edinburghleisure.co.uk/victorian-po...

From Knowable Magazine: How scientists recreate historical scents | Knowable Magazine knowablemagazine.org/content/arti... Audience

Happy St Brigid’s day/Imbolc! First snowdrops outside 🙂

Cycling infrastructure ‘paired with low emission zones, pedestrianized streets, school street programs and a broader shift to people-first public space. The result wasn’t just cleaner air - it was a city where daily life became healthier, calmer and more human’

All this, yes and we will still also need more to cope with the demand now and projected: expanded trams, bike infrastructure, integration across the system with buses and trains.

Closing out January with the Giant Lanterns @edinburghzoo.bsky.social which was pretty magical. I really liked the underwater theme - and the mixing in of the fantastical (I will always love a kraken)

😢 www.theguardian.com/culture/gall...

First read down in a new year reading challenge (‘classics I never got around to, that aren’t Henry James’) and Wuthering Heights is 1st because I wanted to watch the Robbie/Elordi film. Not at all what I expected! Always thought this was a gothic romance/brooding shadow daddy redeemed tale: nope.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... 👀

Now desperately seeking sleep in the Caledonian Sleeper seating section - all my hopes resting on a large camomile tea

Last but not least a ticket high up in the gods to see Arthur Miller’s All My Sons with a pretty stellar cast. Loved it.

Next up was the Tate Britain’s Lee Miller retrospective. Absolutely packed which made it a little tricky to navigate (and I was lucky enough to see the incredible Miller and Penrose exhibition at the Scottish Modern in 2001). Her Egyptian photos remain some of my favourites.

Marie Antoinette Style at the V&A London was fabulous - clothing and textiles, jewelry and ephemera that beautifully told the stories behind her fashion over time and the impact that it had

Calm start to the day, and a view across London’s Docklands

This is a beautiful book and well worth a read. Deceptively simple - based around the most asked questions put to Hédi Fried during school talks - it is thought provoking and as relevant today as ever

To celebrate the birth of Scotland’s literary hero, Robert Burns, try your hand at our quiz on Scottish culture and Booker Prize–nominated authors, through their words, wit and... whisky Tap the link below for the quiz.

Having a lovely #BurnsNight - an afternoon ceilidh, a Burn’s supper (veggie haggis & cranachan) and a Glenrothes Speyside single malt 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

I enjoyed this - Anne Higonnet’s Liberty,Equality & Fashion about revolutionary post-Terror French fashions told through the stories of three extraordinary women: Joséphine Bonaparte, Térézia Tallien & Juliette Récamier. A good analysis of their motivations, and the backlash.