Festival recollections

It's been a busy old week and a bit. Lots of culture. I'm going to try to track back through it, see what I remember. If my memory's good, this could be a long one. You have been warned...

Tonight's easy. It finished little over an hour ago. The closing gig of the Edinburgh Book Festival - Richard Holloway. A. asked me as we waited what he was going to be talking about. I had no idea. " Dunno. Philosophy, I guess." I'd booked the tickets on a bit of a whim, as we'd both liked his Looking in the Distance so much. Holloway used to be the Bishop of Edinburgh, but is not so hot on God any more. It turns out (not all that surprising, given his former life) that he's a fantastic, captivating orator - who can recite whole chunks from texts with scarcely a glance at the page. Tonight's theme was suffering - not an easy subject, "sacred ground" that it is - and the intellectual, theological and practical responses that are possible. He circled around his theme, reading from the book of Job, holocaust literature, Larkin, a Polish poet whose name I couldn't catch, and the ending of The Line of Beauty, as Nick contemplates his likely fate:

It was a love of the world that was shockingly unconditional [...] It wasn't just this street corner but the fact of a street corner at all that seemed, in the light of the moment, so beautiful.

I hadn't felt like going out, was feeling a bit festivaled-out. I'm very glad I did.

Yesterday
We had landed some freebies from A's work to the if.comeddies - the awards formerly known as the Perriers. Good sponsorship deal that - even though they've stopped sponsoring, everyone namechecks them. Not so sure about the new name. I read an alternative suggestion in the weekend papers - the iffys. Fortunately, the comedy was not remotely iffy. For the first time this festival, I laughed a lot. Especially at David O'Doherty, and his story about the other David O'Doherty - top in Google and a bit geeky too. Even funnier was Mark Watson - no cheap jokes, no sweary words (you could take your mum), just great observation and timing and a very endearing persona (again, mums would love him).

Earlier in the day, we watched Zidane, a 21st century portrait. Football and art cinema - an odd combo. For one game, 17 cameras are trained on Zizou. No narration, just a few quotes as subtitles, a soundtrack by Mogwai and the sound of the game, as Zidane hears it. I didn't even realise that other 'galacticos' like Beckham and Ronaldo were playing until well into the film. Like much art film, (and much football!) it was both fascinating and boring. I began to think maybe that was the point - to show how mundane football really can be, how much downtime, sock folding, spitting and sweating goes on. You get to see lots of all of these. How daft our emotional and financial investment in this game really is. And yet. There's something about Zidane - he's unreadable but not in Beckham's blank way. A bit more mystery. You never see his eyes. He smiles but once. Communication is limited to about three words. You sense his instinct as he roams the pitch, hunting the ball. And delight when he finds it, or it finds him, and he performs the magic we love him for. Beautiful - in spite of all the sweat and spit.

It's Zizou who says it best: "Magic is sometimes very close to nothing at all...nothing at all."