AN ODDITY OF AN AUGUST
August in Edinburgh means Festival time. And for us that means three and a bit weeks of going to Fringe shows. In the end we managed to take in 62 shows, most of them excellent. We could have tried for just one more on the final day, but I think we'd hit an entertainment wall by then. Not to mention suffering from 'Fringe arse'. Comfy seats are a novelty in Fringe venues.
So we had a great time, but there were a couple of reasons why it wasn't our usual Fringe experience. The first was entirely self inflicted. Just for something to do I've started posting reviews of all shows, gigs and films I go to on my other blog. Easy enough most of the time, but it became a bit of a challenge during those three weeks. Not that it began to feel like work at all, that would be stupid, but on the days when we saw four or even five shows it did take a fair bit of time to knock them out.
The challenge was all the greater because of the second reason. About two days in I started to feel like I had a bit of a cold. No worries. Except for some reason that decided to develop into a chest infection, then my wife got the same, then I started to feel better only for it to come back again even worse than before. I, we, spent most of August struggling to breathe properly and, embarrassingly, trying not to cough during shows (thank goodness for comedy - you can always cough when everyone else is laughing!), with my worst experience being at the Blueflint gig. Not only did they decide to come up into the audience to do an acoustic number, but the lead vocalist stood six feet away from me. Guess when a coughing fit decided to hit me....?
Still, I'm not after any sympathy - we did see those 62 and had a fantastic time. I'll be posting my personal top ten in the next few days. And I still haven't mentioned the oddest moment of the whole Fringe, one that will make it stand out in my mind for years.
Our penultimate show was Joanna Neary. Not one we'd booked ourselves, but a friend had kindly bought us tickets in return for a favour. During the show Joanna indulged in a bit of audience participation and I was one of the people she talked to. Having got her head around my name (eventually) she asked me questions and had a laugh with my answers. 'Blyth' got uttered about ten times. I hadn't anticipated there would be consequences.
At the end of the show a man came up to me and asked if I was Blyth Crawford. Regular readers will be aware I only returned to live in Edinburgh last year after thirty five years down south, so I don't know a lot of people here yet. For about a tenth of a second my brain thought this had to be someone who remembered my name from School or uni, but he was clearly far too young for that to be possible. Maybe he had been at one of the places I worked before I left?
But no, this was Gary Bainbridge, a Liverpool journalist I've had Twitter conversations with a few times, but never encountered in real life. This was his first of only two nights in the city, he just happened to be at the same show that somebody else had bought our tickets for, I just happened to be one of only two audience members who got their name called out, and I just happen to have a weird name that you don't come across very often. I think that counts as odd.
Nice to meet you Gary. Even if it was somewhere on the extreme edge of coincidence.
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