I realise that a lot of my blog content recently has been very Scotland-heavy but that’s kinda what my summer has been like. Think I not-so-secretly want to live in Scotland tbh.
After many, many visits to Edinburgh and years of repeatedly saying I must come stay for the fringe, I finally made it to Edinburgh in the month of August, ready to experience the famous Fringe Festival.
And boy did I love it.
Less than 3 weeks after flying back from Inverness, I hopped on a v early morning flight (waaay too early for a Saturday; my body didn’t know what the fuck was going on) and was in the centre of Edinburgh by 9:30 ready to knock back a coke (I don’t drink coffee) and crack on. By half 11 I was drinking a gin & tonic so we certainly were cracking on.
Lucky for me, one of my oldest friends lives in Edinburgh so I got free accommodation, freshly baked cookies and my very own festival organiser – cheers Dan. As it was my first fringe festival, I was very happy to let Dan organise my weekend and go with the flow so I arrived to a pile of tickets and no idea as to what I was going to see over the next two days.
Spoiler: a lot.
The Festival Vibe … without the long-drop toilets
Realise it sounds kinda wanky to bang on about ‘the vibe’ but yeah, I loved the vibe, the feels; whatever you want to call it. It was that festival feelin’; happy, sunshiny, expecting the unexpected, plenty of weird and wonderful things going on, the smell of street food…. But all without the faff that comes with camping. I was clean, there were no long-drop toilets and I could sleep in a double bed. Win.
The Food
Sweet jesus, the food. THE FOOD. I will never not love the way street/festival food has developed over the past few years; it’s a flippin’ dream. You couldn’t move without finding an incredible-sounding food truck and we ate about 6 times a day. Halloumi fries, crème brulees, banana & peanut butter crepes, dumplings and cheesy aioli chips were just some of the highlights. Get in ma belly.
The Shows
The main event of course. I had made a couple of random requests based on some sparring research but otherwise Dan was in charge of the schedule. We managed to squeeze in 8 shows in 48 hours and each one was completely different; I felt like we saw such a wide variety. And that's not including the shows that were just happening in the street. A guy making up raps based on what people had in their pockets. A guy playing the most beautiful violin solo. Hundreds of people in costumes. I loved being surrounded by all the creativity.We were in the audience for the BBC new-comedy award semi-finals, had our minds blown at an Ethiopian circus (how the hell are they so flexible?!) and loooved Margaret Thatcher: Queen of Soho (80s drag cabaret: Maggie gets lost in Soho and accidently becomes a cabaret superstar – so funny).
There were some slightly smaller productions which I enjoyed just as much as the bigger shows. These ones made me nostalgic for all my years at a drama group and actually felt the more creative. We saw a musical called 89 Nights – about a young woman living in New York for the length of her tourist visa. There was 9/11 was a conspiracy; a one-woman show about your beliefs fundamentally differing from your partners, and Anya Anastasia: The Executioners which was a musical/comedy performance about attacking the technology aspects of the modern world.
Baby Wants Candy was probably my favourite – a completely improvised comedy musical based on a title the audience shout out at the beginning. Ours was ‘Haggis, neeps and titties’ – it was hilarious. The same company also did Voldemort and the Teenage Hogwarts Musical Parody which was also snort-your-drink funny. Favourite line; Dumbledore: ‘well, I’m just going to go and stick my dick in the sorting hat’.
And on that note… See ya next year Edinburgh!
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