Over the last year I’ve come to the conclusion that this column does pretentious, self-regarding nonsense very well indeed. Playing to those strengths, here is a review of my very own performance at the recent – is it really 2 months ago? – Leith Festival, in the style of a highbrow savaging:

When Paul Klee wrote ‘Kunst gibt nicht das Sichtbare wieder, sondern macht sichtbar’ he could have been referring to travel writing. That genre should not, afterall, tell but show and point rather than push. The value of Klee’s words came to mind twice recently, once while I was visiting the doctor and then when I was watching Daniel Gray batter his audience into indifference during a performance of ‘A Yorkshireman’s Scotland’. (I use the word ‘performance’ lightly here; the tediously parochial author performs in the sense that a dodgy service station condom machine performs when struck a glancing blow on the side by a spotty Belgian virgin on ‘a promise’).

Mr Daniel Gray suffers an attack of Metafiction fever ...

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In his book Stramash, Gray attempts to argue that football is a cultural phenomenon, rather than eleven repressed homosexuals thoughtlessly tip-tapping a vessel of flatulence around a dirty meadow. He visits himself upon towns in North Britain – as Scotland was known before English subsidy granted it a house where politicians could ‘put the heid’ on one another – and claims that their existence has been and is worthwhile. It isn’t: Cowdenbeath and Coatbridge are about as necessary as Aids or Sarah Palin.

Tonight, Gray gives us more of the same gruel; only this time his assault on the senses is an oral one. He reels through story after story, each congealing into a morass of hyperbole and linguistic nuisance (not nuance, dear reader). Gray’s punchlines take root in such stony ground that it is a wonder they do not threaten the venue’s very foundations. If one has to inform one’s audience that it is okay to laugh then things are probably not going well. I could’ve told him this, but that would be putting him out of his misery, and for this he deserves to wallow through desolation.

After Gray has hectored blood out of the walls with the – ahem – scripted part of the evening, he invites the audience to pose questions or offer comment. Remembering my dear mother’s advice to remain silent should I have nothing nice to say, I head for the door and conjure Klee whirling in his Jerry-built sepulchre.

Food Review Extra
Sometimes in the quest for gastronomic perfection, one has to venture outside one’s comfort zone. This may mean sampling foods the diner previously thought unpalatable, think bleached tripe or twice boiled baby chaffinch. Or journeying to faraway shores, think el Bulli in Catalonia or The Quick & Plenty in Thornton Watlass.

Fully subscribing to this sense of culinary adventurism, Mrs Portraits and I found ourselves travelling westwards in a maroon charabanc of classic vintage. The number 47 bus chugged and chuckled its way up hill and down dale, a romantic sleigh caked in errant diesel flak. Sadly and all too soon, we reached our dining destination; her slinky blue corrugated roof and giant golden lettering resembling the sun setting sleepily on a continental sky.

Tired of the ethnic dietary canon on our doorstep, we had decided to go Swedish and try out a little place called The Ikea Café. Once we’d surmounted the logistical obstacle of having to enter via the attached shop’s exit (the café’s owners recently branched out into flatpack furniture), we joined a queue bristling with stressed-looking couples. This hiatus gave us chance to appraise the menu, trendily displayed on a Day-Glo headboard; paper menus are just so not Stockholm or Gothenburg.

What we read was an innovative departure from tired Scandinavian fare, Swedish food only pecked on the cheek by the inclusion of meatballs rather than embraced. Mrs Portraits opted for the calzone (‘a squelchy riot of satisfaction and regret’), your paunchy narrator a hot dog dressed in a jaune paste, which brought to mind soccer moms on a hot summer’s day (never a bad thing). We shared chipped potatoes in the French style, which were triumphantly salty and reminded us of an incident in Marseille I shan’t go into here. Liquid sustenance came via a boutique vessel of carbonated citrus fruit, which sadly veered towards the higher regions of gaseousness. Overall, though, the Ikea Café is piping hot proof that travel can broaden the mind without broadening the bank balance.

Score: 8/10

Damage: under £4.94

Info: Dan’s book Stramash: Tackling Scotland’s Towns and Teams is still on sale, priced £9.99 (see stramashthebook.com) Buy it and file a highbrow savaging on the web site, if you like.