Edinburgh Fringe Festival

Edinburgh - ancient medieval buildings line the hilly roads, Arthur's Chair and the magnificent Edinburgh castle nestle the town and home of the Scottish Parliament. History, pride, dark ale in a barrow. Bleak, cloudy, chills to the bone on an August morning...

Land where they escaped from and then came back for some soul searching, and vice versa... I hear that if you are from either Edinburgh or Dunedin (NZ), and you got drunk in the middle of the night in the other town, you'd still be able to find your way home because the streets have the same names, same lengths, and same turns... spooky if you ask me.

outside the Andy Warhol exhibition.

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Welcome to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the biggest annual gathering of compulsive exhibitionists in the world. So I feel right at home. A kaleidoscope of performing artists gather from around the UK and the world and ensue in a month of comedy, music, drama, dance, and anything else in between.
High Street is explosive during the afternoon when all the acts come out to do short previews of their shows, and hundreds of actors and crew come out to tout for their shows. Beer gardens open till late and buskers who are not in the official program take over the pavements. Many actors just come out socializing and walk about in their costumes and make up, so it was hard figuring out whether a conversation at the pub or on the street corner was for real or out of a crazy script.
To make it here, pulling out a Statue of Liberty/poodle penis balloon ensemble/ Red Indian piping backed by tape type act simply will not do and simply met by pelting tomatoes from the highly critical audience. It is hard being creative when the good ideas and good jokes have all been thought about through out the last 50 centuries, and bloody competitive when the best of the world is also here. Everyone wants to be seen and heard, and many will do free shows or half ticket prices just to get their names out there. I did buy two half price shows but managed to get to quite a few just for free. The audience can be so desensitized that they could potentially not laugh one single time through out your entire session, so you have to be very very good, or very very bizarre.
Highlights – dirty rabbit man; children-eating vampires; Korean clown team that says nothing but ‘squeak’; the rugged Harley Davidson versions of celtic bagpipe band; church choir meet Backstreet Boys kind of ensemble; mutant super heroine; and soccer kneesupathon.

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I’d like to thank Jacky and Ruth for having me stay over, very kind of you gals I hope I didn’t make too much of a mess. And Fi for enlightening me about Pine Martins ;-)