Hoots mon! (etc. etc....)

Well Reader, it is 8am on my third day at The Edinburgh Fringe and the sun is shining! Which is very exciting, because yesterday I was flyering in the rain all day and ended up having to buy an incredibly attractive mould coloured cagoule and some sensible shoes. And you know how I feel about sensible shoes.

So far I've been trying not to go too crazy at the fringe because a) I'm skint and b) I really don't want to make myself ill. Saying that, the first night here I stayed up till 4am drinking and reminicing with long-lost university friends after their show (The Noise Next Door at The Pleasance Venue 2, doing their Comedy Lock In-go see it, bloody fantastic), which was awesome but made yesterday's flyering doubly hard. Today I have had a full eight and a half hours sleep so am feeling more ready to face the day with a smile on my face and a skip in my step.

Audience feedback has started coming in about the show and so far it's been amazing-one person described it as 'the best thing I've seen. Wept like a baby' and we've had loads more like that. We overheard an audience say, as they left the space yesterday 'That was so fucking good!' which made all of our days. Long may it continue!

I haven't seen many shows so far, but today I'm going to change that with one this morning and another after a launch party I'm going to. Then I'm rather intending to go drink cocktails and sing karaoke if I'm entirely honest...

So far I have discovered the following about the fringe

• You will probably find it hard to eat healthily-everything is deep fried and DELICIOUS. My favourite thing so far has been a crepe with cheese and peperoni...mmmm...
• The Mile is intense. Think hundreds of drama students with hangovers. Some really cynical comedians who won't do flyer swaps, a dotting of incredibly young students who can't quite believe they're there, a terrifying duo in white clown make up and inevitably someone pretending to be crazy dressed in period clothes.
• There are NO POST BOXES. It took me an hour and a half to find one yesterday! 
• The free fringe has some blooming brilliant stuff on it. Today I'm going to see a comedian who (like us) is supporting Death on The Fringe who we saw an excerpt of on my first day. She talks about the love of her life dying and her coping with it (she's only 33) and it is the most hilarious, tragic, bittersweet stuff I've ever seen. Will be bringing tissues and fresh make up.
• I am very good at flyering. I am quite smug about this. Scratch that. I am HUGELY smug about this.
•  I am already a little bit homesick for my local giant 24 hour Asda-Tesco express doesn't really cut it
• I should not hug friends just before they go on stage, because I will inevitably spill my drink on them (sorry Tom Livingstone!) making me look drunk even when sober. Scotland has done nothing for my hand-eye coordination it seems.
• I get lost very easily. Yesterday, not only did it take me almost 2 hours to get home (usually a 30 min trip), I also go disorientated on The Mile and forgot which end my theatre was at...
• Drinks are brilliantly cheap. Dangerously cheap.
• Sleeping on a mattress topper on the floor actually isn't too uncomfortable
• Sometimes you'll be half an hour into conversation with an eccentric when suddenly you realise that they're in character.
• Lots of tourists come to Edinburgh during the Fringe to NOT watch theatre or comedy. They are clearly eegits. 
• There is a ghost bus here. I want to go on it SO MUCH.

More updates to come (unless my liver implodes and I get scurvy or trench foot)

Ash

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Dramatics...

Reader, last night I did a show (which sold out thankyouverymuch), had one drink with the lovely friends that had come to see it, waved farewell to my wonderful, talented cast and crew, kissed the man I'm seeing goodbye and tottered home to bed in advance of today's 9am voice job. Although I still only got 5 hours sleep, I'm feeling pretty self-impressed. I'd also been up and out of the house by 8am that very day to do some Bikram Yoga, so now I also have aches and pains which give me a smugness boost every time they twinge (whilst simultaneously making it totally acceptable to be eating left over chocolate cake with a spoon right now). The voice job went well, and I headed straight home for an afternoon of work (both acting and resting-job related) which I did (along with a short nap and a bowl of quinoa with feta). Now I'm still working and mulling over putting on a load of laundry. I can't quite decide if I'm atrociously dull or commendably grown up.

The thing is, I didn't used to be like this. As I did online admin and planned my family weekend earlier, I remembered what the night after a show used to mean for me. When I was younger (specifically at university), it meant shots of various flavours and colours, dancing like a lunatic, smoking 40 fags in the garden with my girlfriends as we sent death rays at the boys who were pissing us off at the time (there were always a few, generally because they couldn't/wouldn't get their acts together and snog us), playing ill advised drinking games (always seeming to require a jug filled with mystery booze combinations that would end up with a rugby player's sock in it), yelling at the moon, being sick on someone's shoes and finally tottering home at 5am with someone else's jumper and cheesy chips from the local kebab shop. At that age, I was convinced that life was like a film and pithy one liners (inevitably said with a drink in one hand and a Richmond Superking Menthol in the other) would mean that I'd end up getting the guy, being remembered as a hero and building memories and...well...that was just the way one did things, wasn't it?

I remember giving someone a particularly elegant one liner about wishing him well (or something equally obnoxious), looking at him with a slight side smile, taking the drink out of his hand and sauntering off into the crowd-which would have been TOTALLY COOL had he not come over and started drunk-dancing with me (I loved it back then but I'm pretty certain we looked ridiculous). I remember sitting on stairs with friends, gazing moodily into the night as I puffed away and said things that I thought sounded Very Grown Up but now I think about it, were completely ridiculous (and mostly ripped off from old David Lynch films and episodes of Sex and The City). I remember sitting in a puddle of mud and refusing to move until I'd finished singing my song. I remember doing shots of tequilla at 5am and then falling over on the hill home, then sending a number of ill advised texts at 6am. I remember one deeply awfully sober night where I stormed out of a club in tears (never go to a club after the funeral of someone you care deeply for, no matter how much you're pleaded with. It NEVER goes well.) and then sat crying in my living room with packs of fags surrounding me (like fishes talking to Ariel or something) and all the lights off. Yes. I genuinely was TOO SAD to turn the lights on. How melodramatic is that? To be fair, it had been a sad day and I was very tired and thought I was heartbroken (I wasn't, turns out real heartbreak isn't melodramatic, it's just dreadful and sore and mind numbingly dull).

I won't say that those nights stopped at university, because they didn't. While I was at drama school they petered out (you just don't have the time or energy to get drunk when you're doing that many hours a day on top of a commute) but they came back with a bang once I did my first national tour. I even had one rather dramatic night at the beginning of this year. But since then, even when I get super drunk, I don't want to get dramatic. It's just too much. You say things you don't mean, you do things that haunt you for months afterwards and you inevitably have a cracking hangover. I've never been the type to be the crying girl at the party, but even so, I think there comes a point when you'd just rather let things lay and NOT confess undying lust to the guy who's oh so totally wrong for you, or vomit in a bush, or throw a jug of Snakebite over someone's head. It's just exhausting.

But would I change all of those dramatic, cringeworthy, messy nights of my past? Not a chance in hell. They gave me some of the best stories I have.

So Reader, may your nights of drama not be too painful in the present, but bloody hilarious in a few months time and your mornings hangover free!

Ash
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