The Makar

Liz Lochhead is Scotland's makar, or national poet, and tonight she was giving it laldy in good west coast tradition. A thoroughly entertaining night, though the citizens of Edinburgh were quite restrained in their reception to a couple of her more bawdy numbers - they certainly weren't sure how to take "Song for a Dirty Diva", with its references to sex in the seventies (that's age seventy, not the disco decade), along with free incontinence supplies. I suppose artists tend to draw on their own experiences, and she's pushing seventy herself.

Supporting the poet was a jazz trio which included, on bass guitar, my old Religious Education teacher. He only lasted a year at the school, but that happened to be the same year I won the prize for RE. He should probably have stuck to music all along.