In between "Palace of the End" at the Traverse (four stars I'd say - with an incredibly impressive performance from Robert Demeger) and Diaspora this evening in the EIF at the Playhouse, I dropped flyers off to lovely Ian at Leith Army Stores and tried to lure him to the show with tempting talk of the soldiers' drill.

I finished off some work that I'd had to rush away from last night in aid of "The Tale of Two Cities" by Edinburgh Theatre Arts. (Iain was lovely as ever. Other performances were hmmm patchy. Although The Evil One was very good.)

I frantically ran off some photos for the venue (so late!).

Ran off a ticket report from the fringe office (we seem to have sold 30+ tickets for Monday and Tuesday plus copious handfuls for the other nights - IF it's accurate).

Ran off a picture of Karen for the long neglected photo frame. Although at least my slackness saved me doing it twice.

Panically burnt the music tracks onto a CD.

Managed to squeeze in some play time with my new love edtwinge.

And then flew off to the Playhouse, courtesy of my father's fine new (old) camper van. Thanks, daddy.

(Incidentally, what could be a happier shout through the shower door than "can I defrost your fridge?" When the ice is growing out of the freezer compartment but you know you'll never do anything about it til you can no longer shut the fridge door, believe me, there is no happier call.)

Diaspora was, well I didn't expect anything much so it wasn’t disappointing, but well, maybe a little example of unfulfilled potential. It was billed as a multi-media extravaganza. Which is was. To the extent that they had four video screens behind the much-billed 52 piece orchestra and a screen over the front of the stage onto which they also projected moving imagery. Underneath the four screens, they had a small ledge so actors could wander along ‘through’ the pictures. It was beautifully lit. Multimedia stuff was pretty impressive. There was some ‘live’ art from a girl who drew onto a magical backlit board that was miraculously connected to the projector so her art (such as it was – though, be fair, she did it very fast) was strewn all over the stage sized cloth.

The concert / play / piece / art made an interesting point about the lack of roots or excess of roots when you’ve moved about a lot and have scattered parentage. Where does that mean you’re really from?

But I was left aghast at the fact that the 52 piece orchestra sat there mostly in the dark, sometimes picking up their bows to tap at their fine instruments, sometimes making unimaginatively shrill sounds – and we were far too near the front for this – but mostly sitting idle and silent. What a waste. I feel very sorry for the Chinese Singapore Orchestra. I do hope they’ll come back for a proper concert sometime.