This is going to be tough. I mean really tough. This wasn’t even a proper day of the Fringe and I was so exhausted by the end of it I ended up coming back to the campsite about two hours earlier than I had envisioned. I think a pattern, a daily routine, will have to be formulated in order for me to not slowly turn into a gibbering wreck.
The morning started with an early wakeup followed by a prison shower – I think the two things I’ll miss most during my visit (besides friends and fa- no, actually these ARE the two things I’ll miss the most) are my own bed and a regular shower in my own bathroom. Sure, we got so much gunk in the plughole that we had to empty a bottle of some sort of acid down there – twice – but there’s no hard floor, strangers awaiting your quick departure and a sense that you may be dirtier than when you actually went in there in the first place – even if that last part’s only the case back home through hubris and denial.
Taking the bus into town confirmed another thing I’ll have to do when I do the fringe again – get a place closer to the town centre. The bus journey from the campsite to the venue (the bus I take does quite fortunately stop very close to where my show is on) takes about 45 minutes. Given that I’ll have to take this trip most likely four times every day I will certainly find this very annoying very quickly. I find this very annoying. I also find very annoying the fact that whilst I am to take the 11 bus to the campsite it is only every OTHER 11 bus that goes there. This after the previous day I commended Edinburgh buses for having their buses numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. instead of the random seemingly American football inspired setup of Travel West Midlands bus numbers. What I would suggest, though, is if you have a bus route that does have alternates perhaps bringing in a lettering system instead of relying on people to read a small white board placed on the front of the bus driver’s window. Just saying. Or typing in this case.
Wandering around Edinburgh the day before the festival started was interested. There was a sense of excitement for some but dread for others. A trip to the bus station to get a pass for the month led me to meeting it face-to-face for the first time as a Scot so dour you’d think the man who came up with the clichéd description of her country kin may have met one of her ancestors. She made it clear that she hated the whole thing – the business on the buses, the traffic, getting hassled on her walk home and having English tossers forcing flyers into her hand. No, I didn’t then thrust a flyer in her hand. I hadn’t picked them up yet.
I found the participants centre, which I hope to use as often as possible if just to charge my laptop and get some free Wi-Fi without having to be in a McDonalds or Starbucks. There was a meet-and-greet for fellow one-person shows. Even then I was one of the few to actually be up there on my own, and especially going for the full three weeks. Everyone was handing out flyers afterwards and again I cursed myself for not having my own. Everyone seemed passionate and a few shows I genuinely wouldn’t mind seeing. One that sounds like fun is called ‘Crush’ where this woman got in touch with all the boys and men in her life that she had crushes on and finding out how they react to her confessing to her old unrequited affections. Another one that proved a unique was a show from a woman based in New York who works in computer games event promotions. The show involves a dozen or so people arriving at a venue and being given an MP3 player each to then listen to and follow the instructions they hear as they interpret them, essentially becoming performers in the piece. I told Gyta – the girl behind the show – that it was a fascinating idea but she’d probably need to be vigilant since handing over video MP3 players willy-nilly (that caused Atlantic divide confusion) might result in some scallywags making a dash for it with their hand-out. She explained that she’d already accounted for this and solved it by buying Zunes for the show – meaning not even the biggest idiot would consider stealing the thing.
Returning to the campsite to pick up my projector for the show I ventured into the games room to charge my laptop and iPod whilst browsing the net. A family came back and forth into the room. I could tell they were foreign, I suspected German but I really had no idea. They flicked on the TV and alternated between live Big Brother and music channels. Occasionally they played table tennis. The father eventually turned up and he and his son, who could have been no more than nine or ten, engaged in a game that the father clearly took very seriously. The ball would sometimes bounce over to me so I was always had a corner of my eye on events. More than once the father slammed the ball towards the table with such ferocity that it would seem a point was being proven and a scar from a previous day’s tussle – be it verbal or physical – was being avenged. I get the feeling that camping families have a dynamic like this. They believe themselves to be closer to the hunter-gatherers of Raquel Welch times and watch Bear Gryls programmes with a notepad and pen. I honestly would have been a crap gatherer let alone an atrocious hunter. I think if I were a cavemen I’d honestly have to hope that they had comic relief jester/village idiot figures even then to keep their spirits up after another difficult day battling mastodons and yetis or whatever it is they hunted in those days. I’d have spent the day fretting over a routine along the lines of “don’t you hate it when you hack into the bone marrow of a carcass and you keep getting bone and no marrow?” making sure that every “ug” is in the right place. Hopefully it’d be worth three cave inscriptions out of five with a generous audience’s help.
The venue is really all I could hope for in that it’s a venue in Edinburgh during August. The location isn’t as far out as I feared and I think there’s decent chance for passing punters to take a chance on a show. It’s located right next to an Italian food take-away which I’m sure those who know me will enjoy knowing. I doubt my space can hold the fifty-five it stated in the program, but when I came in there were tables around and I’m rubbish at estimating these sort of things. I can safely say if fifty-five people as well as myself were in there for an hour and the weather was as warm as it is today I will be able to cover my fear sweat with a convincing alibi. The only worry is where the projections can be made against since there wasn’t a white screen at the venue. There’s a black drape to allow a backstage or sorts but it looks like it would billow too much. I could perhaps remove the drape and use the wall or duct tape the bottom part of the drape to the floor so that I can keep it as flat as possible. These are things that will hopefully be solved by the end of the first few gigs.
I picked up a large handful of flyers from the venue and stuffed them into my bag. Here’s where the source of the exhaustion probably came in retrospect. You wouldn’t think it but carrying around nine hundred A6 flyers along with a few other bits and bobs in your bag becomes quite a heavy proposition over time. Especially when that time is usually spent walking to destinations you realise you should know better by now since you’ve been walked there at least a dozen times. So, after walking from Princes street searching for George Street only to give up, walk back to Princes Street over the North Bridge to the Royal Mile in order to pick up a Fringe catalogue with a map to show just how idiotic I was for not spotting that George Street runs parallel with Princes Street walking back over the North Bridge back over Princes Street down one end of George Street to another just to pick up a Stewart Lee book that I could have easily bought from the Princes Street bookstore tomorrow if I’d shown a little bloody patience I trudged on to a pub where I quietly sorted out my flyers into bunches of two hundred and fifty whilst surreptitiously topping up my glass of still water with two bottles I’d bought earlier and still had in my bag. Yes, I am quite the bad-ass.
Took my first tentative steps towards handing out flyers and didn’t feel quite as shame-faced as I expected. I think the fact that I was approaching people with a slightly apologetic voice at the realisation I was probably wasting their time but was also taking the time to talk to them instead of wordlessly stick my hand out to anyone that passes meant they were a bit more willing to take in what my show was actually about than they may have been if they may have normally bothered. I have the feeling that out of the twenty or so people that I handed flyers to there were four that may come given their response. A 20% positive response would be remarkable and would guarantee a full house every day. The strange thing is, though, that I think the show may get an audience just based on the description and picture in the programme. On three occasions already people reacted after hearing the title of my show by noting they were already aware of it – two of them literally saying “It jumped out of the page”. As I’ve noted before to other people that never asked but I decided to talk to about my show anyway, I think the best blessing I could have had was this year’s programme including an image for each show. In previous programmes it was a mere show description – to get a picture you had to pay a fee. You still do to get an ad that is still much bigger than the show entries but images will always draw the eye first whenever you read a magazine or other type of glossy. Since I’m in no way a star and didn’t even put my name on the show’s title in order to save two words for the blurb I could instead use the picture not as a vanity shot like I’m in Spotlight but as a visual gag that best encapsulates the show – which was wearing a Mexican wrestling Luchadore mask whilst smoking a pipe and wearing a beret. That and the subject matter draws your attention. I know that it’s a show I’d go to as a punter and I hope that there might be a fair few like-minded people out in Edinburgh this year. I’ll find out soon enough.
I walked back up the North Bridge to Espionage just off the high street believing there to be a gathering of Laughing Horse participants to toast the start of the fest. That was my understanding but I guess I must have understood wrong since no one else was there. I was more than slightly relieved and made my last heavy-footed stumble to the buses and devoured as much of Mr. Lee’s book as I could before getting off and coming back to make this blog entry.
Lee has the precision of a surgeon. He strings out every single routine to its fullest potential – looking at it from all available angles to see if he can wring some more comedy out of it, not because he has a paucity of material but because he can surprise his audience with even more observation and thought on a subject matter he considered to be interesting. He had to consider it interesting otherwise he wouldn’t have bothered telling other people about it on stage. I suppose that’s why I knew I could do a comedy show about wrestling even with my limited comedy experience because it was compensated for by my extensive knowledge of wrestling. It’s the balancing act that has been the most difficult. It remains to be seen if it will be deemed a success.
Tomorrow: a full day of flyering and my debut Edinburgh performance. Stay tuned . . . for ‘Fighting the Frizzies’ at eleven.
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