World Champions Are Made Of Marmalade, And Other Uplifting Thoughts

I am not, by habit, often to be found at film premieres, but I was happy to attend the screening of The Flying Scotsman at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. I must say, I found it to be a most peculiar event, not least because it was my first visit to a "multiplex" cinema, Cineworld in Fountainbridge.
The multiplex is every bit as ugly as its name would suggest. As architecture, it is roughly comparable with a cowshed at the Royal Highland Show; an effect which is compounded by the inclusion, near the foyer, of a brightly-lit trough selling luminous candies and sugar string by the hundred-weight. I have always been suspicious of foodstuffs which are served in a bucket, and I saw no reason to tarry here.
There were speeches by various worthies before the film, and I enjoyed them to the point where I found myself drifting into a fine sleep. When I awoke, the film festival director, an Australian, had taken to the stage in a leather kilt, which was worrying, because the Senior Retainer, Mr Jack McConnell, was in the audience, and he might have got ideas.
The film was quite decent. There was no fighting or amorous behaviour, and a good deal of cycling. One detail particularly impressed me. The cyclist, Mr Graeme Obree, whose story this was, apparently became the fastest cyclist in the world by eating marmalade sandwiches. Insofar as I am capable of being uplifted, I was.