WHAT caught the eye at the launch in Market Street of the City Art Centre's summer exhibitions (up to September 14) wasn't so much the pictures on the walls as Lesley Hinds' shoes. Black with snazzy in-your-face red ribbons in lavish bows.
The former Lord Provost well knows my shoes fetish. Goes back to when, outrageously, she wore a red pair with a black evening dress to meet the Queen at the Royal Variety Show in the Festival Theatre. Chronicled here often.
"Don't think I'm wearin
g these just for you," she said, promptly putting me in my place. But politely. "I've just had an honorary degree from Edinburgh University and I bought them specifically for the ceremony. They've already been dubbed my Wizard of Oz shoes."
Nothing to stop Lesley slipping them on again soon when she gets an hon fellowship from Telford College. She's been on the board there for 15 years. She's already had similar recognition from the Royal College of Surgeons. Nothing she doesn't deserve, she proved a first-rate Lord Provost.
The exhibitions are on several floors. I must get back to check out "Festival Scavengers" on the lower ground floor from August 18-24 only. Scaffies or gulls?
25 years rockin'Sixty gigs between now and the end of August. Can guitar-toting rock 'n' roller Nicky Johnson handle it? "Me and the band, Bluefinger, won't have a problem," promises Nicky, a Leither and well built to stay the course. "I intend to go out on something of a blast. Bluefinger have had a damn good run – we put NBs Bar at the Balmoral on the map when we were the house band.
"No live music there now, it's relatively mundane – and we made our reputation as a happy band dispensing gutsy rock 'n' roll.
"While I'm back for a few months from Spain, now my home, we'll be resident at the Whiski Bar in the Royal Mile in a Barca Beat Rhythm 'n' Blues Festival from August 1 to 31. Jack Daniel's are sponsoring."
Nicky will sink a few JDs on September 7 at the Masonic Club, Shrub Hill, in a celebration of Bluefinger's 25 years and his own farewell.
"Time for me to hang up the guitar, give the vocal chords a break and retire to a leisurely life in the Costa del Sol."
Can't see it, somehow.
The full article contains 404 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
