flying from Toronto to Halifax
I've just moved at great speed from Terminal 3 of Toronto airport to Terminal 1 after my flight in from Glasgow was two hours late, and I made it to the gate with 5 minutes to spare. I was delayed further by the Air Canada guy who made me take 7lbs of stuff out of my case and put it into my carry on bag instead, to avoid paying an extra $75. All the stuff was going on the plane one way or another, so to me it seemed a rather pointless exercise from the airline's point of view. 'Hey, thanks for doing that for me' he said, confirming my impression of Canadian airport staff as unfailingly polite but unstintingly rigorous. Anyway, at least the flight from Glasgow was half empty, so I had a whole row of seats to myself and could lie down and snooze whenever I felt like it: economy has seldom been so luxurious, even on a tatty old Zoom 757.

Yesterday morning I was still on holiday in Islay: 13 days which included a lot of jumping in the sea: I'm not telling where all my favourite beaches are. New experiences include the excellent food at An Taigh-Osda just up the road, and Robbie and I making it to the spectaular canyons and caves at Gortantaoid with Hop (here are someone else's photos of much the same walk with lots of people in it - we didn't see another soul). And we rode horses along Machir Bay at last.

I didn't read as much as usual - I was probably too busy jumping in the sea - but I was enthralled by George Mackay Brown's An Orkney Tapestry, which I found in the cellar at home, intrigued and challenged by Clive Brown's excellent book on Classical and Romantic Performance Practice, and cheered by Charles Gore's latest offering from the Highland Music Trust.

The mighty Flipron are playing at the Edinburgh Fringe (hooray) - through frustratingly it's in the middle of the night at Late 'n' Live in the Gilded Balloon Teviot 4-8 August (I think - if you can get sense out of the Fringe website you're doing better than I am). Boo. I'll have had my body clock messed around with enough by then I think. 

Anyway, when not snoozing on the 7 hour flight here I was trying to get my head around the large pile of music I printed out last night, for concerts tomorrow and Sunday. I've been practising by  playing the tray on the seat in front with my right hand, and the side of my head with my left.