| Edinburgh Fringe 2003 | home |
Another late start. They are happening a lot... indeed, they seem to correlate really well with the number of times I arrive back in the flat around dawn time. Who would have thought it... Actually, I didn't arrive back that late, but it was late enough and my body craved the pleasures of sleep.
I started the day with a trip to the nearby supermarket for a ludicrous quantity of feeding - this lasted much of the day, so it was worth the effort. I then had my hair cut. I discovered that a hairdresser with a razor does not have to make you feel like a sheep being shorn. I was most surprised. My hair actually looks and feels good - what there is of it. So, well worth paying just that little bit extra. I was even amused by something I read in the paper about Idi Amin confusing the conservative leader Edward Heath with the band leader Ted Heath, offering him the chance to come to Uganda to play with his band in return for some livestock and farm produce. Highly amusing!
Wandering back into town, this time with guitar and gig bag in tow (for possibly my last performance of the festival) I dropped into Starbucks for a nice relaxing drink. Pulling up my sock in the shop, I found it to come away in my hand - it was a dodgy sock. So a trip to M&S was in order, where I found some most expensive cotton socks, but dammit, my feet need all the help they can get - they're seriously troubled by the amount of walking I've been doing. Though, on the up side, I have worn in a new pair of shoes. Though, on the down side, having worn these shoes in, I may have to throw them away soon!
I took my new socks and my guitar into the upper section of Princes Street gardens and then proceeded to confused my companions on a bench as I casually slipped of a shoe, removed and binned a sock, and replaced the sock with a new one from my bag. Having given that bizarre street performance, I then took out my guitar and whiled away several happy minutes, tens of minutes in fact, playing to myself, occasionally singing quietly and enjoying the fresh air. I think my body was telling me that I was reaching festival fever pitch and that I should not push myself into any shows that day.
While in the park, I also watched the pigeons, one of whom had picked up the plastic rim of a bottle in its foot. This thing seemed pretty bedded in and looked painful. Bizarrely, I have since had a dream about this pigeon and its foot no longer being impeded by this foreign object. Having said that, my dreams are getting pretty weird at the moment. Possibly too much alcohol and performance watching. I suspect most of my dreams relate to my subconscious feelings of emasculation.
I had decided the jokes and running order I would use for my set that evening and had broken with tradition and neither memorised the running order nor rehearsed the routine at all. This was going to be an experimental set. I wanted it to be fresh. Still bleeding was the idea.
I met up with Mac, the organiser, a couple of hours before the show started and we had a nice jamming session on guitars, which sort of warmed me up a bit. Then we set up the sound system and got ready for the show to start. I attached my set to the guitar with blu-tac borrowed from a poster on the wall. It would be the set list and my stopwatch that would determine how much routine I did. The aim was to try new stuff, interspersed with existing material. The real experiment was doing an act with a guitar round my neck the whole time. Could I make it work?
A couple of friends turned up to see the show. I had already lowered their expectations of me by explaining that it was experimental and could go very wrong. We then sat together and watched the other acts. When acts die, or take risks, or overrun, and I'm later in the bill, I feel like I'm up there suffering with them. There were a few dodgy moments before I went on and I needed a small loosener (a few sips of Stella Artois) to keep my temper. However, the show somehow kept itself running nicely and I managed to get distracted from my own pre-performance anxiety by being drafted in to run the sound-desk for Mac, who preceded me in the running order and could not both run the sound-desk and perform at the same time. Really!
My routine went pretty well. Some bits of it may have been funnier to me than the audience, but they probably enjoyed it just as much as I did. If that performance is to be my swansong for this year's festival, then I'm happy with the standard I reached.
After the show it was time for more drinks, some chat and a rather lack lustre few moments in the comedy night of The Establishment, which I refuse to add to my show count because they did not count as performance. More as embarrassment. This from the organisers that gave me two bastard audiences and then dropped me from a bill that they'd overfilled after I was booked on it. I'm not bitter. Well, a bit... but never mind. I know where I rank in the grand scheme of things. Indeed, I may be dreaming about it.
Saw no shows... yikes! But I did perform and do one of my better gigs. At the day's end:
Total shows seen: 51
Total shows performed: 9
Total spent: £345
21 August 2003
Ashley Frieze