Saturday began EARLY for me and Steve, as we had to be in town by noon-ish to queue up for Meet The Media. This is a KRAZY thing at the Fringe where various media outlets send representatives down so that hundreds of fringe people can ask them to come and see their shows. It's like a cross between a freshers' fayre and an extremely unbalanced speed dating night, with MILLIONS of people waiting for a chance to spend two minutes with someone who might ask someone else to think about maybe reviewing them.
When we rolled up the queue went out of the building, round the corner and up to the NEXT corner, and by the time we started moving half an hour later it was round the EVEN NEXT corner behind us. We spent the intervening time meeting various nice people, and also listening to the very excited Improv Troupe in front of us telling each other TALES of IMPROV. It was "delightful".
Eventually we all shuffled into the PACKED main hall and Steve and I split our resources, taking a queue each. After another half an hour or so we'd tried to persuade Broadway Baby (Steve) and Fringe Review to come and see us. Steve then lined up to talk to The List, while I LUCKED OUT and found a queue for Fest which had only just begun as their representatives hadn't arrived yet. Again, there were many nice people and also Excited Improv Troupes and also also a LOT of BRIDES. Every time you turned round there'd be a BRIDE going by - male brides, old brides, dusty brides and brides wearing carrier bags for headdresses. Maybe it is a THING? Or maybe wedding dresses are cheap in charity shops?
Another noticeable thing was that there were pretty much NO comedians - I guess this is because they're more likely to have SOLD OUT ... I mean, more likely to have been organised enough to hire publicists to do this sort of thing for them, so they can spend more time putting GEL in their hair. It was quite nice to be part of the other side of the Fringe, where everything was more THEATRE and ARTS. And, as I say, Improv troupes.
Once I'd done my BEST with FEST I found Steve still MILES behind in his queue. The List were taking it SLOW, talking to people for ten minutes at a time rather than the usual TWO. I held Steve's place so he could nip over to the Scotsgay queue (well, you never know - we ARE doing a musical) and another half hour later we were finally at the front for our 2 minutes (we kept it quick!) After that: PINTS.
Who knows if there was any point to all of it? We had not time to worry about such things as, after that much needed PINT, we had BUSINESS to attend to. Steve went flyering and I went back to distant Stockbridge to get our PROPS, for LO! it was SHOWTIME! Once fully laden with bag of props, hula hoop and guitar I decided to try getting a BUS back to town, and crikey it took a LONG time - I guess you don't appreciate how much Oyster cards speed up bus travel until you've sat in the same spot for five minutes waiting for fellow travellers to count out their change.
Still, I got to Sneaky Pete's in time to find Steve ready and waiting. The show before us finished so we went in to say hello to the staff, got ourselves set up, and prepare for SHOW.
SHOW! It went FINE - we were both a bit nervy during the start, partly because there was a Well Behaved But Mildly Chatty STAG DO in, but mostly because we were stood on the WRONG SIDE of each other. I've no idea how that happened, but we struggled through and, by the time we got to the second half, had a nice time. It felt good to be DOING it at last - it seemed like we'd been in Edinburgh for YEARS so it was GRATE to finally be DOING what we'd come there to DO!
A pile of PALS had come to see us too, which was lovely, so together we went round the corner for PINTS, soon joined by my NEPHEW Felix, who found that he and his pal had been adopted by ALL and thus had MORE PINTS pushed upon them. After a few of THOSE we all said our farewells and headed home... with Steve and I popping in for a CURRY on the way. It was GOOD!
So that was the show BEGUN - finally! It's happening!
