Tonight was a combination of drums and spectacular stuff. After work I attended the guilded balloon press launch and enjoyed mohitos from bacardi and people watched. We had no idea who most of the stars where but only at the fringe can you have a man in a suit trying to have a serious conversation with a drag queen in a sliver and pink striped body stocking.

After drinks we headed over to the Udderbelly to see the Tom Tom crew. They were last in Edinburgh in 2008 and also performed in the Udderbelly then. There show is hip hop circus, a combination of live drumming, DJing, beat boxing and spectacular acro. The show has changed since 2008 and they've now got even more dance crew who are able to do wonderful things. There drummer is great and has such energy that you can't help but shout, clap and raise the roof. The dance/acro crew end the show with seesaw thing that launches them ever higher and allows them to do an ever increasing number of twists and spins in the air. I love this show and all four of our group came away with sore hands from clapping so much.

Next on the evening's plan was the dress rehearsal for the Edinburgh tattoo. So still drums but this time the pipe and variety. I've not been to the tattoo since I was tiny so I was looking forward to seeing it. The press where allowed on the esplanade during the show and most of this year's photos will have been taken last night. Sometimes they got in the way and at least one of them got knocked over by a base drum that couldn't see them. This year's tattoo has the usual mix of pipe and drum groups, marching bands and highland dancers. Also there are visiting groups from china, who had people on stilts being horsemen, two groups from Switzerland, including a drumming group who set there drumsticks on fire at one point and a group of marines who demonstrated a evacuation of an injured solider. It was really interesting and didn?t feel like an hour and a half long.

Sleepy now.