Edinburgh day 6 – the ending
The final day’s shows were different, we tried to bring a touch of culture to the day, starting with a talk from Nicholas Carr at the Book Festival. Put simply, Carr believes the Internet is destroying our attention span, he thinks we are inadvertently ‘training’ ourselves out of being able to concentrate on longer tasks – reading books, etc. An interesting theory and one that I’m sure to come back to.
Then we kicked the evening into gear with a tutored whisky tasting session at the Scotch Malt Whisky Society. The society is quite unique: they taste and bottle single casks (so long as they pass muster), without any blending, at cask strength. They deal directly with Scottish distilleries creating distinctive and always interesting bottles. It was a great experience, learning about tasting and trying some pretty unique whiskys.
So came the final show of the festival – Richard Herring’s Christ on a Bike. A last minute booking on recognition of the name, not a great way to choose a show, but worth a shot. Unfortunately Herring’s show was stale, cliched and pretty uninteresting; it seemed like he wasn’t trying, that or he’d performed the routine so many times he was simply bored. A bad note on which to end the fest.
We were still going from the tasting whiskies earlier but a night-cap was needed before the morning’s long train ride home. A Talisker 10 year was the choice: a simply, smokey, whisky but with a clean palette as well.
With that the festival was over, we stayed in a lovely house, Edinburgh is a beautiful city, and the festival is a great time. Thoroughly recommended.
Subscribe
That’s a very blurry picture of my face.