Fringe

Started warm but cloudy and although the cloud thickened for a while it eventually cleared into a lovely day, perfect for dashing about the town. I had an early hair cut and afterwards I met K and we made some plans for today over coffee. We spent a while having a browse around town where I bought some earrings but otherwise we just mooched a bit. Our first show was at 1pm so we grabbed a slice of pizza first then settled into one of the ‘Best of…’ comedy showcases and were pleased to find all of them funny….good to start with some belly laughs (and all the better when 10mins of each is just enough!). We then walked over to a show in George Sq gardens called Apricity which we liked the name of (K’s granddaughter’s favourite word) and gave us a tick in the ‘one physical theatre’ fringe bingo box. It was ok…a group doing acrobatics/standing on each other’s shoulders etc….but rather suffered by comparison from us having watched so much of the smooth as silk gymnasts at the Olympics recently! We sat out in the gardens for a while with a cold drink, soaking in the warmth and looking at flyers and thinking of other things we’d like to see.
Back to the Pleasance to see a show we’d been given a free ticket to…about Abe Lincoln, sometimes in his own words or telling the story of his early life (learned a lot!), interspersed with very well sung modern songs whose lyrics related to the story. Sounds typically Fringe weird but was very well put together and performed and we actually enjoyed it.
For the final show of the day we walked down tho the Stand comedy club to see Mark Thomas, full of his trademark Marxist anger and with plenty of material to work with given the defeat of the Tories recently, but he also strayed over material from Leviticus, poetry, his family background, and football (tricky moment when he launched into a massive rant against MK Dons, given that’s K’s local team!) amongst many other things. How he talks so
Fast and furiously for an hour I have no idea!
Walked back, starting to flag a bit by then, and tried out the Skua pop up in a local cafe, where we have a lamb topped flatbread and a basket of fried chicken. The chicken looked like Little Rock’s when it arrived…very dark and hard, but as you bit into it it was so moist and soft inside….delicious!
We crawled home for a cup of tea, the sofa and some Olympics then a pretty early night.
Good first day with a variety of overall strong shows.