Edinburgh Festival Day1, the start of a diary of sorts telling the great tale of me and my best friend James’ adventures at the Edinburgh Festival. You’ll laugh. you’ll cry, you probably wont actually.
Bit of background, James & I have been best friends since 4 years old … a shared love of Jimbo & The Jetset & Thundercats cemented our friendship! We have the same very dry sense of humour. The deal is, I pick the shows & get the tickets, James drives, I navigate. The planning is always meticulous but goes wrong very quickly! This is our second year cramming in as many shows as possible into a few days, see previous post for details of what we saw last year & our plans for next. There are twos side quest, we have to sit in the front-est seats available, front row if we can & James does not know what we are going to see each day, only the times & I have to try get him in without knowing what it is which sounds easier than it is, there are a lot of “is this the queue for …” “can everyone have their tickets ready for….” and the like)
let the adventure begin…
Travels
It actually works out a lot cheaper to drive from Loch Lomond to Edinburgh & back everyday than stay in a hotel (the hotel prices are absolutely ridiculous!). The plan was for James to pick me up from work at 4pm & go straight to Edinburgh, in the morning I made sure I had everything, change of shirt, trousers, shoes, money, tickets … everything was sorted. It wasn’t ’till I got to work I noticed that I couldn’t see 3 feet in front of my face … for some reason I’d left my glasses at home. I have been wearing glasses every day for over 18 months now, how I managed to get from my house to the train station without noticing I don’t know. So straight away the plans were messed up, I had to take a half day from work to go home and get my glasses (cheers boss!) we left from home at about 4:20ish, this put us 20 minutes behind technically but the first show didn’t start for 3 hours so we had plenty of time. It’s a pretty straight-forward journey, over the Erskine Bridge, past Glasgow Airport, through the city, along the M9 into the North end of Edinburgh, negotiate the tram diversions & into one of two car-parks depending on what venues we’re going to. Except a combination of hitting Glasgow just as everyone was russian (lolz) home to see/listen to the Celtic game, passing Ibrox just as thousands of people were heading to see Rangers v Man City & an accident up ahead (apparently) meant we got stuck in a crazily long traffic jam before even getting to Glasgow. We finally got out of it with about 55 minutes to go, we were pretty much resigned to the fact we were missing the first show. We got into our favourite wee NCP just off the Pleasance with 2 minutes ’till the start of the show, we made pretty good time through the detours considering we hadn’t been there for a year. We ran up the hill to the pleasance, straight in to the Pleasance One, I remembered that it was straight in the left & up the stairs from last year, we ran right up and almost collapsed into the arms of the event staff at the door, “sorry mate, you’ll have to go outside and queue up, 4 Poofs & A Piano is over-running by about 20 minutes”. I’m not sure if the guy was ready for the sweaty, exhausted hug he got but it was pure emotion, we’d made it! We we’re, of course, the last people in the queue which was by now round the entire perimeter of the Pleasance Courtyard.
Pappy’s Fun Club’s World Record Attempt - Pleasance One – 7:20
Seats: Row 2, James knew: In the queue “the doors to Pappy’s Fun Club are now open” cheers!
We had seen Pappy’s at the Glasgow Comedy Festival earlier in the year so i knew it would be a good bet for first show. This time they are attempt 200 sketches in one hour! The show probably isn’t for everyone, it’s all a bit silly, the Fun Club go out of their way to throw in ad-libs & put each other off, some of the sketches work, some don’t but the ones that don’t pretty much get bigger laughs, they’re quite happy to point out as we’d only paid a preview price we couldn’t complain. The more ridiculous, outlandinsh & forced the sketch the better! Do they make their world record? You’ll have to go check it out for yourself, of course. I enjoyed it, James absolutley loved it, it was definatly an improvement on the last show we’d seen them do. Well worth checking out if you are looking for a show in early afternoon!
Rhod Gilbert & The Cat That Looked Like Nicholas Lyndhurst - Pleasance One – 10:30
Seats: Row1! James knew: Pappy’s Fun Club mentioned what the next show was
After some high profile TV appearances &, of course, the Wales Tourism Board ad this show has already completley sold out. It was just as well this was in the same room as we’d have missed it otherwise! I had heard a lot of good things about his 2008 show “…and the award winning Mince Pie” and this years show follows on from where that left off. An hour of rants at a world where everyone is going mad, kitchen appliances take most of the brunt of his rage, he has a good point, they do conspire against you! Everyone isgoing mental! A thourougly enjoyable show, especially if you already hate everyone & everything already.
A quick jaunt a few blocks to what I can only assume is a Uni campus of some sort (as is the Pleasance Courtyard) a wee square that holds the Teviot, The Udderbelly & The Pleasance Dome. This is the first time we’ve been to the Dome, it seems like quite a nice place, a wee relaxed atmosphere & a newsagents that’s open till one!
Barbershopera II – Queen Dome – 22:45
Seats – Row 2, James knew – Success! He didn’t
I had booked the tickets for this quite late on (only a hour before leaving actually) I had heard a bit of them on Jon Richardson’s BBC6 show a few months ago. James & I love a bit of barbershop so I knew it would go down well, especially with managing to get him into the room with absolutley no idea what he was about to go see. We weren’t disappointed, a show about a matador who inherits his dead fathers Norfolk barbers. It was funny, had a decent story line & the singing is impressive, I would go as far as to say you MUST see this show, there will be a lot of people throwing flyers in your face proclaiming “five star review” for, let’s be honest, sometimes average shows. This show really does deserve the attention though. Quite embarrisingly we both admitted to finding it hard to stop focusing on the female of the group, mostley because she’s really, really, ridiculously good looking. I realise this makes us come across as a couple of perverts but …. well …. we’re not. Just go see this!!!
Travelling Home
Stopped off on the way back to the car to get a crepe, I only include this because I got one with toffee sauce & I can realisticly see myself getting one every day because I’m greedy & fat & love toffee sauce. ‘mon the diabeties! We wandered through the streets of Edinburgh back to the car park, £6 for 5 hours parking, very reasonable! got in the car drove to the exit “ehhh, this is a 24 hour car-prak yeah” asked James, the shutter was down on the exit! “ayeeee, look there’s no lock on the shutter, it must raise up when you put the ticket in” it didn’t. All of a sudden my mind was cast back to being 17 years old, missing the last tain home & having to spend a cold November night in George Square in Glasgow after a gig. We sat looking at each other for a bit & decided to phone the number on the ticket, we were told someone would be along in 5 minutes to let us out. We sat for a bit coming up with a plan to how we were going to explain to an angry on-call security guard. Turns out it actually is a 24 hour carpark, there are a few of them round the city &, for extra security, a guy has to come to open the shutters to let you out after a certain time. The journey home was extended further by us having to double back as the Erskine Bridge was closed, I can only assume there had been an accident as it was a lovely clear night. Got home at 2:30am, after a trip to asda as james “needed” cheere & biscuits … at 2:30am … cheese & biscuits … and just 12 hours ’till we have to leave to go back! Bring it!
‘Mon the diabetes!