There's just a few days to wait

TOMORROW IT'S AUGUST IN EDINBURGH

And, in this household at least, that means one thing.  It's Fringe time.

Of course it isn't just the Fringe.  There's the International Festival.  The Art Festival.  The Book Festival.  The Festival of Politics.  The Tattoo.  But, mostly, it's the Fringe.

It's the Fringe that's largely responsible for the population of the city doubling for a while.  It's the Fringe that prevents you from walking down the Royal Mile with anything greater than mollusc momentum and emerging at the other end with enough flyers to paper your bedroom walls.  It's the Fringe that's putting on well over three thousand two hundred shows in hundreds of venues ranging from plush to slimey.  It's the Fringe that Edinburgh residents either love or hate.

And it's the high point of the city's festival season.  We went to a few gigs at TradFest in April and May.  Saw our fair share of new, and old, movies in FilmFest in June.  And, only a week ago today, rounded off a week and a bit of the Jazz and Blues Festival.  But none of them offer the variety and stamina challenge that awaits the dedicated Fringe goer.  Last year we saw sixty shows.  Last year we were knackered.  So if we make it to fifty this time that will be enough.  We're not getting any younger....

We have just over thirty shows booked so far, enough to be going on with.  I have a timetable set up, the tickets now reside in poly pockets (one pocket for each day of course), there's a list of other possibles waiting to fill in the gaps.  Past experience of these things (and having lots of time on my hands) tells me that this OCD level of preparation will be something I'm grateful for come the start of the the third week.  By then I'm starting to suffer from that dread condition known as "Fringe arse" from sitting in so many unforgiving seats, and I just want to know when and where the next show is.

Of course August is immediately followed by September, and in this household that too can only mean one thing.  It's ice hockey season.  But excitement at the prospect of seeing the new Caps line up take to the ice will have to be contained.  There's some serious Fringe going to get through first....