10 weeks of summer would appear to be drawing to a close. If I were in Edinburgh just now I'd be looking ahead to the end of festival fireworks, which from a distance of a few hundred miles and a disputed border I shall have to enjoy vicariously. All the posts from 10 weeks of summer are linked through this #10wos tag. Before a few reflections here's what happened in Week 3 of the International Festival, which took in the final hours of the Fringe and the Book Festival.
- Edinburgh International Book Festival: Picturing a Terrible Conflict
- Edinburgh International Festival: Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
So there they are, just two events. The photo on this post is carefully chosen though, showing the end of the concert from my organ gallery vantage point. The end of the event, the closed music books, the covers back on the timpani and the audience filing out. They were superb: tremendous musicians who played so well together. (Even I could tell this, though others confirmed it to me.)Totalling up my 2014 festival events then... four gala launches for @LoveEdinburgh; four regular festival events in Fringe Week 0 and nine the week after in the same blog post; ten after that; eleven more; then the two above. That's 40. Add in the exhibitions I'm very glad I saw at Summerhall and the Edinburgh College of Art and you reach 42. Which is the ultimate answer to the question of whether this has been a good festival year for me. This could be a record.This is of no consequence to anyone or anything but me. I really shouldn't be counting, let alone putting the numbers in bold like that. Really, what have I become? A target hunting cultural magpie, taking little in and giving little in return beyond mere statistics? Then to put this online through a self-indulgent blog post? No wonder my readership stats are so small.Same again next year, then?___Way back when, the #10wos project was a way to get me back into blogging. A structure within which to record a few thoughts and avoid memories slipping away forever. Since Week 01 started (on 23 June) I've been to Edinburgh, England, the Netherlands, Paisley, Berlin, Riga, Positivus in northern Latvia, the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow; I've had a Twitter audience of 10,000 followers through @LoveEdinburgh, been in the audience for dozens of Edinburgh festival shows and events; swung through the trees at Go Ape; presented my thoughts through a festival panel and a conference presentation; congratulated scores of students on their graduation and, right about now, started preparing for the next intake. The next ten weeks may not be quite so eventful, which could be a good thing as there's work to be done. Speaking of which, I've also been contributing to Edinburgh Napier's blog on World War I events at the Book Festival.I am very lucky and very happy to have shared many of these experiences with Amy. They have been all the more important and memorable because of her.The sun is still shining on this Sunday afternoon in England. Many miles away a few tons of explosives are being lined up and checked before they punctuate the Edinburgh night sky and bring the 2014 summer festival season to a close. Tomorrow the city will wake up and smell the cordite in the air, hopefully smiling at the memory. Then the working week will begin... except it will be September by then. September 2014 in Scotland has a special ring to it. The count down to the #indyref Independence Referendum will no longer be counted in years or months, we'll be talking in days. Me and my vote? I'm still swithering, because although I know what the sensible, correct, right and proper answer is, the occasional shot of adrenaline makes me wonder 'what if?', 'why not?' and 'what are we waiting for?'. Well, Scotland?