A weekend down south is a rare event for me these days so en route to see Fiona's production of Bugsy Malone in Woking I lingered a while in London and walked down to and across the river, pausing on Westminster Bridge to check out the cityscape.  There was a new to me skinny pyramid shaped skyscraper going up that I later learnt is destined to be the highest building in Europe.

To see it from the London Eye I'd have had to linger all weekend but fortunately I had no wish to do so and sought refuge from the multitudes in the National Theatre coffee bar.  The Communist Party HQ in Paris is testament to the fact that you can create beautiful conrete bunkers but the NT, like the previous incarnation of the St James Centre, shows that mostly you can't.  But the coffee was good and the slice of ginger tiffin (a confection I had not come across before) was delicious.

A musical about gangsters and their molls and brawls doesn't seem on the face of it suitable material to be performed by child actors but that's how Bugsy started life.  It also started as a film but has become a popular stage show for youth groups.

This production was performed by adults.  I can't judge how much that added to or subtracted from the impact on the audience.  We were at least spared the oohs and aaahs of delighted grans and grandads though some of this cast must have brought along a few sympathetic followers.

The show looked lovely, was well lit and costumed and the singing and dancing was excellent as was the live band.  The plot and storyline such as they are didn't allow a great deal of space for drama and tension and not all the characterisations compensated for that.  But on the whole it was a good evening and I had the additional pleasure of a pre-theatre dinner with old friends.

Back in London on Monday I did see a bit of architecture to admire, the wonderful white fan of steel tubes that roofs the revamped Kings Cross concourse. 

You wouldn't think that religious controversy would make for a fun night out at the theatre.  Take  The Blasphemer for instance, a play I saw some years ago about Thomas Aikenhead the student executed in Edinburgh in 1697 for ridiculing christianity probably while he was in his cups.  It was one of  George Rosie and Fifth Estate's fine contributions to Scottish theatre but it was not a bundle of laughs.

Not so Anne Boleyn currently passing through Edinburgh on a UK tour. In many ways it's more like a pantomime than a play including as it does knockabout humour, songs and interaction with the audience.  The  actress playing Anne would have made an excellent principal boy if they'd only given her a pair of thigh-length boots.  The portrayal of James VIth and Ist (you'll gather there's a bit of time twisting to bring him into the act) is very much a hyperbolic pantomime performance, dreadfully funny but perhaps overegging his sobriquet as the wisest fool in Christendom.

It is an impressively clever script that gets across the arguments of the day concisely and effortlessly but, for me at least, with almost no emotional impact.  Given the fact that people burnt one another at the stake for the sake of the ideas being expressed I can't say that however much I enjoyed the entertainment the play succeeded as drama.

There was no particular tension built up as events unfolded either by the clash of ideas or personalities and at the end despite the enormity of the betrayals and counter betrayals I didn't give a toss about poor Anne having her head chopped off.  Thomas Aikenhead's misfortune affected me much more.

Another week of excellent snooker has unfortunately seen Stephen Hendry bite the dust but my second favourite, Ronnie O'Sullivan, shows every sign of making it to the final.

I've not spent all my time glued to the telly though.  I popped into the art college to do some oohing, ahing, grunting and muttering for the soundtrack of Matinee Idol and spent an afternoon in the sunshine grunting and muttering my way around the golf course.

Amongst the many good works of the European Union are the various agreements that have been reached on the mutual recognition of qualifications.  These cover varied fields as this little extract from Eur-lex shows

• 31996L0026
  Council Directive 96/26/EC of 29 April 1996 on admission to the occupation of road haulage operator and road passenger transport operator and mutual recognition of diplomas, certificates and other evidence of formal qualifications intended to facilitate for these operators the right to freedom of establishment in national and international transport operations
  Official Journal L 124 , 23/05/1996 P. 0001 - 0010
• 32005L0045
  Directive 2005/45/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 7 September 2005 on the mutual recognition of seafarers' certificates issued by the Member States and amending Directive 2001/25/EC (Text with EEA relevance)
  Official Journal L 255 , 30/09/2005 P. 0160 - 0163
• 31991L0670
  Council Directive 91/670/EEC of 16 December 1991 on mutual acceptance of personnel licences for the exercise of functions in civil aviation
  Official Journal L 373 , 31/12/1991 P. 0021 - 0025

But golf has so far resisted mutual recognition to the extent that the handicap awarded me by the Féderation Française de Golf is not worth the plastic it's stamped on in Scottish eyes.  So I am muttering and grunting my way through a specified series of trials to prove that I am as incompetent a player as the FFG says I am.

In the aftermath of celebrating yesterday the 30th edition of  International Dance Day the fact that today is the very first International Jazz Day has understandably slipped under most people's radar. 

Not a trumpet has sounded in Edinburgh but festivities have taken place from Algeria to Uruguay and Glasgow has beaten the drum for the UK.  Not a lot to look forward to now until the 70th International Man of the World Day in December.     

There's a very good little programme on Radio 4 called More or Less that lifts the veil from statements and reports of a statistical or mathematical nature normally emanating from government or the like to expose their shaky foundations.

I've done my own veil lifting of today's statement by Royal Mail in defence of the increase in postage rates asserting that UK rates remain half those pertaining in France or Germany.  I know nothing about German rates but I was very sure that this was nonsense with respect to France.

A straightforward comparison of the cost of first and second class stamps in the UK and in France shows that French stamps are cheaper, but Royal mail's assertion is not entirely nonsense. If for example you send a letter weighing 100gms by second class mail in France it will indeed cost you twice as much as it would in the UK.

But in looking at a dozen cases between 20gms and 1000gms that's the only case I found that supports their assertion.  In six cases the UK was cheaper and in six cases France was cheaper so the honours are even.

Vive la différence! Or should that be vive le match nul.

There's been some enthralling snooker on this week and despite three fairly long days filming I've managed to catch quite a lot of it.

It was wonderful to see Stephen Hendry back in form after several disappointing years.  I hope he manages to keep it up.  Another player who's slicing through the opposition is Ronnie O'Sullivan.

I'd love to see the pair of them in the final.  The last time I saw them play one another was the infamous concession, viewable on youtube. 

Habemus Papam!  In comparison to the real ones I shall be quite a young pope when I tread the boards in the Grads production of Marlowe's Faustus in August.  I'm also playing a chap called Wagner but he is not the composer which is a shame because I fancy waving my arms about musically instead of just making the sign of the cross.

It's hard to know how many times I've walked past this building but I seem to have been blind to its beauty until today.  I was on my way along the Water of Leith with a bagfull of goodies from Stockbridge market to the art gallery where I had a light lunch in the sunshine and then strolled around the current sculpture exhibition.  My favourite was the masked men on all fours.

Sated with both food and art I decided to Munch at a later date.