4856/17515
Back to Edinburgh today, both familiar and alien when the Fringe isn’t in town. It’s a much nicer place when it’s not full of show-off idiots (meaning that I can show off more without so much competition), but I am used to seeing it full of show-off idiots so it’s like entering an alternate Universe.
I was a little bit emotional anyway, but then I had a FaceTime chat with my wife and daughter in the hotel lobby, which kept losing signal. It’s amazing to be able to see and be seen when I am away, but it’s also a meat skewer through the heart, reminding me of what I am missing. And with the picture coming and going and my daughter thus not really engaging with me and in any case being distracted by having her dinner, it made me a bit teary when it was over. I was much happier when I had no one to care about and just sitting alone in hotel bars with no one to talk to and nothing to get home to.
I then walked through town to have dinner with some friends before the gig. I passed Bristo Square where usually the upside down cow that I’d had an unsatisfactory time performing in in 2012 usually stands. But it wasn’t there and there was some major building project going on. A man in a cabin on the site shouted something at me. It might have been “Go away, this isn’t August. You’re not welcome."
I won’t be coming back to the Fringe this year either. I haven’t given up on it entirely and I think I will return for at least some of the festival in 2017 when it will be my 30th anniversary of my first appearance and I will be ruminating about having turned 50.
The usual flood of memories engulfed me as I wandered through this changing city. There were some regrets, but mainly of things that I didn’t do due to my foolish overwhelming self-consciousness and just like the phone call with my daughter it was bitter sweet. The spot where those two emotions meet is exquisite and awful, but in some ways preferable to being restricted to only one. Feeling simultaneously happy and sad is surely the human condition. And while it’s there you are alive and everything is real. Wallowing in sadness or blindly believing that life is magical and happy are self-indulgent illusions. Missing my daughter, but knowing I will soon see her again and appreciate her all the more as a result and enjoying the foolishness of my own youth, whilst remembering how lucky I have been to have this life was an overload of feeling. But I was glad of it. And sad of it. And thus I win.
And later to the Stand, again both familiar and different in March than it is in August, but another venue where many of the staff are friends of many years. The small venue was packed (which it isn’t always on tour), I presume because I hadn’t been here for the Fringe and it had the usual smart and savvy crowd. I had a lovely time performing for them and a good time drinking a bit too much whisky afterwards.
What a complicated relationship I have with this city. And though we’re going through a bit of a trial separation after years of a mildly abusive coupling, we are still friends. And I love it here.
And how lucky I am to be getting audiences that seem to really get what I am doing (apart from in Croydon). I am still struggling to find the right words in the show to express why the prize I had set my heart on wasn’t worth the winning and how I am luckier and happier to have things turn out a different way than I hoped. But a gig like tonight perfectly encapsulates that feeling. 150 people in a tiny, but brilliant comedy venue, all of us realising that this is something better than mainstream recognition.
See you in 2017 Edinburgh. One night of graveyard sex seems enough for now after everything we’ve been through.
And the story of what happened to me on the way home from Camp America is finally out (I am sure I must have told it before) in today's Metro. I retrospectively admire myself for insisting on making it home under my own steam and not wimping out and ringing my parents for help. Surprisingly grown-up of the tiny idiot me.
And there's another retro RHLSTP with the lovely Adam Buxton to enjoy
youtube
vimeo
itunes
