fringe diary iii
fringe diary ii
The flat is a rabbit warren. Nestled in a basement, beneath one of the multitude of Edinburgh University buildings along Buccleuch Place, there is little privacy. People share beds and mugs for coffee. I’m not sure how many bedrooms there are and I’ve lost count of the doors. The main hall is strewn with costumes and flyers, posters and props. And, oddly, a pile of A4 black and white portraits of myself. There is a staircase, painted black, that leads up to a solid wall.
The kitchen is miniscule and in a constant clutter. Empty beer bottles stand next to cups of old tea bags along with crumbs, wrappers, take away coffee cups and the odd dirty plate. No one lingers in the kitchen but does their business and escapes as fast as they can. Some of the girls cook breakfast, quite often eggs. The communal loaf of bread was eaten some time ago and has yet to be replaced. We drink each other's beer and pilfer each other's snacks.
Inevitably, the thespians spill out into the garden, our saving grace. We smoke or we don’t, we rehearse and recite, we banter and gossip, we stress and rant, we sip a beer or a whisky, we grab a bite or we simply lie there on the grass, exhausted and staring skywards.
Our call is at 530. We collate from all corners of Edinburgh. Those in other shows – most of us – report on the day’s performance. Some of us grab food and eat it quickly before changing into costume. The girls don their corsets, the boys their cravats. The show is, ostensibly, steam punk and the costumes reflect the style. Except for mine. I play a ghost. Ghosts are not steam punk. Well, they’re certainly less so.
Tea mugs drained, quick nips to the loo, costumes and props double-checked, and then out onto the cobbled streets towards the venue. It's a quick march.
Curtain's 725.
fringe diary i
August 1996 was my first Edinburgh Fringe. I was with some friends doing a couple of Christopher Durang one-act plays. I didn't really know what was going on, but I seem to recall having a blast. I lived on tins of Castlemaine XXXX and bagels with lots of Phillie cream cheese. I fell catastrophically into debt and discovered that I'd been thrown out of university. I smoked too much. Our flat had four or five people and only two beds; I slept on the couch in the sitting room. It was the summer The Spice Girls became famous with Wannabe and that England lost to Germany in the European Cup. Independence Day came out in the cinema and we all cheered to see the White House destroyed by aliens. We drank at The Pleasance and The Pear Tree and saw more comedy than we could afford.
I was 20.
The next festival for me was 2000. It was improv comedy that time. A two bedroom flat for ten of us, further out of town but a nice neck of the woods regardless. X-Men came out that summer and once again I was broke, bouncing cheques and living on boxed wine. I didn't see many shows that time out. I still smoked. We sat around the dining room table and chatted endlessly into the wee hours, squeezing the shiny bag of wine came until the last drop splashed into our cheap, tarnished paris goblets. David Gray’s White Ladder seemed to be on repeat. Sometimes we played Goldeneye on the N64, with the curtains drawn and the light catching the smoke from time-to-time. We shared the space without ever seeming to invade each other’s space. Hoppy discovered Piemaker, which we renamed Piemaster as they master all pies. Hoppy slept half in a cupboard, with his feet sticking out into the main hall. Our venue was in the basement of a church and we made our bemused audience laugh more often than not.
The following year and back again for more improv. A soulless student residence for home and a hotel lounge bar for a venue. I’d just graduated and joined the wine trade. I was still broke. Some friends ran one of the more popular venue bars and our local served good whisky. I drank a lot of schnapps by accident and lot of whisky on purpose. The show got smaller crowds than the year before and, for whatever reason, the vibe seemed a bit strained. There were love triangles and other polygons. The dynamic altered and the passage of time perhaps wore us down. The previous summer could not be repeated, in spite of our efforts, and it all seemed a bit of an anticlimax. It was still fun, but not as much. Maybe we went looking for something we weren’t going to find.
It’s been 8 years since I’ve performed in the Fringe. I’m still broke, but less so. I don’t smoke. I’ve got a degree and a job and a pet and a flat. I can drive. I’m in better shape and I don’t drink as much. I’m ostensibly grown up, in a city full of performers who refuse to do so. We’re doing Hamlet and improv comedy. Not at the same time. Last night, my first night in town, we went to The Pleasance and The Pear Tree and Piemaster. The city’s busy, in perpetual motion. I bought a bottle of malt and we put a dent in it. I bore the cast with my old man banter, my observations of change and my tales of Fringes past. In the past I would have been drunk. Instead I slept well and woke in the morning without pain, not missing the miasma of cigarettes smoked the night before.
Today I ran around Arthur’s Seat and ate bagels in Elephants & Bagels. Their coffee’s excellent and their wifi connection is free. Tonight’s the dress rehearsal for Hamlet. The cast has changed yet again and our time runs too long. Calamity befalls all productions, right up until the lights come up, and ours is no different. Right now we long for the routine, for the comfort and thrill of being in our stride. Until then it’s stress and unease, a sense of impending doom and the nervous banter that precedes unanswered questions.
sea glass and skimmers
It's like those images, memories, visions and experiences are like sea glass, or skimmers. They need time in the head to be worn, smoothed, softened and perfected in their shape. Pounded by the tumultuous waves of thought, worry and reflection until flawless, until every single syllable lies with the accidental perfection that comes with the musing of time.
Only after all that can they be written.
waiting in the rain
cat chat
a lighter shade of blue
kitten watching
stubble scratching
Luke doesn’t smoke, but he steals a lot of cigarettes. It’s a habit we used to share. I was more honest about it. I admitted I was a smoker but was usually too broke to buy my own. Luke’s a drunk smoker. After x number of beers (or bottles of wine, measures of whisky, etc. etc.) he starts chaining somebody else’s cigarettes. Usually they’re his brother’s. Marcus is younger and as such tends to put up little resistance to this mooching.
We sat in the pub opposite the British Library and drank away our hangovers, the three of us, and Luke looked in horror as Marcus started rolling a cigarette.
‘What the fuck’s that?’
‘A rollie.’
‘That’s no good – you’re going to have to roll two every time.’
‘Bugger.’
My hangover was particularly pronounced at this point, and I contributed little. There wasn’t much to add, really, just the odd chuckle. I rubbed my eyes a lot, and scratched my stubble – those little physical tics that seem to accompany the morning after.
Luke looked smart in a bespoke pin-striped suit, Marcus shabby in a blazer better-suited to a down-on-luck pensioner cracking open a tin of special brew. I wore shorts, flip-flops and a wrinkled shirt. I stood out a bit.
‘There’s a beer garden in the British Library.’ Luke’s kernel of information grabbed our attention. The bartering for cigarettes ceased. My beer slowly did its work and my hangover subsided. I stopped rubbing my eyes, though I still scratched my stubble occasionally.
‘Really?’ – Marcus and I, in chorus.
Beer garden was a bit of a stretch. There’s a terrace adjoining the café, and the café sells beer. Still, we pondered, it was theoretically possibly to organise a piss-up in the British Library. This delighted us. We set about a rough plan for such an event.
We’d have to be there for research. We agreed that the beers should be some manner of self-reward – we should do an hour or so’s worth of work before getting hammered. Luke chuckled mischievously, Marcus wandered outside to smoke his roll-up and I went to the bar to get another round in.
Walking back from the bar I was disappointed to find the table of pretty girls next to us had decamped and disappeared into the thronging London streets. Talk moved away from research-inspired drinking binges and into the generalities of life. Marcus and I described the antics of the night before to Luke, explaining the source of our hangover. Marcus drank slower that I did. I poured more ice into his cider and watched the sudden fizz as the new cubes splashed down. He rolled another and we watched them call the cricket for rain, after Australia pulled ahead of England. Marcus and Luke are big cricket fans; my interest casual at best. I turned around to check out the table of ladies and cursed, forgetting they’d left. Marcus placed his rollie on the table and Luke looked down on it with barely concealed contempt.
I looked at my watch and took another sip of beer. Time for the next pub. The British Library?
Not this time.
As we left, Luke clapped Marcus on the shoulder.
‘You’re going to be rolling a lot of cigarettes tonight.’
large books and reflections.
rusty hangover
sunrise and salmon bagels...
the passing of vintages
jostling tracks
the moments along the way
birds on the water, coffee on the boil
monday repose
sinking fowl
wee update.
I've been pondering ghosts and shadows and trying to work out the difference between motivation and purpose. Destiny and humanity play their part.
I've also been reading a lot about baseball.