I had my bout of post-Fringe tristesse early this year, on Tuesday night. As has often been the case, it was exiting a show in the Jura Unbound series at the Book Festival, in the late evening, and walking along a deserted Melville Street to where I’d left the car, preparing for the 50 minute or so drive home.

It wasn’t that the performance – Illicit Ink’s show, featuring the excellent Halsted Bernard – had brought me down any. Nor was it the fact that, instead of being part of the performance (as I have been at Unbound before, both with the self-same Illicit Ink and Writers’ Bloc) I was an audience member. In fact, quite the opposite: it has been a pleasure this year to sit back and watch my friends perform the hell out of stuff, when all I had to do was sit and watch.

It was the sense I had of leaving the party early: it was a school night; I was driving back over for non Fringe-related matters the next night; those were the main two excuses. But to be honest, I’ve had the same emotion after performing at the Spiegelbar too. Part of it, I think, is just how lonely that west side of the New Town is at that time, even during the Festival: you go in less than five minutes from the creatively spinning carousel that is the Book Festival at night to a place of solitude and parked cars, gearing up for the long drive back to central Fife.

I think it’s the feeling that, no matter how long you stayed up and how many shows you went to – or were a part of – you would always still be leaving the party early. There have been exceptions, of course. Like the year I was staying at Gavin Inglis’s flat, your man being something of a night owl at the best of times. I never knew a breakfast of Eggs Benedict could actually literally bring you back from the dead, but I found that out the next morning. Or it could’ve been the triple strength Americano. But my money’s on the Hollandaise sauce.

Anyways, mustn’t grumble. This year, as regular readers will know, your blog has been doing up a flat in Blackford, and two shows at Summerhall have been followed by a pleasant stroll down the hill to bed, instead of picking up speed past the Cramond Brig (or Miller and Carter Steakhouse, as it now is) feeling like I’m going in the wrong direction.

Plus I have musical plans for the rest of the year, lots of them. First up is the Venus Carmichael gig on 19th September, which I’ll start promoting next week when all this Fringe hoo-ha dies down. I had come hotfoot from a rehearsal with Kelly for that, via South Queensferry (see below). But there’s more, much more, so stay tuned!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anything below this must be advertising WordPress advertising. Do you really need it? Really?