Royal Mileage

Up to the Royal Mile during my lunch break. During the Festival the High Street is really a marketplace for shows. The performers come out in their costumes and pose and preen and hand out flyers to all and sundry, hoping beyond hope that some of them will be converted into actual bums on seats.

For some, the street audience is undoubtedly much more numerous than the souls who will actually make it to their performance, so this is their moment to shine. And who can blame them? Bringing a show to the Festival is a huge and expensive endeavour, after all. (A friend of mine once brought a show up and clocked a maximum audience of seven.)

There were a lot of photographers about - many of them Blippers perhaps? - and this woman had a deal going where "if you wanted a picture you had to take a flyer" for her 'punk rock extravaganza' The Inconsiderate Aberrations of Billy the Kid.

These guys were very photogenic. As were these two (The Way to Keep Him, a swift Georgian comedy, it says here) and this woman with the pleasant smile.

In the end, though, I decided to Blip this one of a young lad enjoying a street act atop his dad's shoulders oblivious to the other salesmen who had set up shop right next to St Giles Cathedral.