Festival madness

This city is manic at the moment! The population has probably doubled or trebled since last week, the Royal Mile is crammed with jugglers, pamphleteers, performers of every shape, size and description, and of course tourists. Pianos on street corners, a man who looks half-Mexican, in a kilt, with the skinniest legs I've ever seen, on top of a police box. It is, of course, festival time.

Things started officially today, although there have been previews the last couple of days. Tickets are cheap just now, before anyone has figured out how to tell the brilliant from the crap amongst the 1500+ shows you could go and see, so we decided to check a few out. Hanging out at the Pleasance, we scored free tickets to two shows. The first was in the Fringe's smallest venue, the Lift (a real lift, parked on the lawn in the Pleasance courtyard). Audience and actor crammed into the lift, which got hotter and stuffier as the actor told her story - a NYC firefighter on the way to see her lawyer in Tower One when the plane struck on Sept 11. Very intimate, intense stuff - but not at all trite or sentimental (as anything dealing with this kind of subject could potentially be).

The second freebie was Gavin & Gavin - two sisters (you can tell from the pic) playing a bunch of different characters on a positive thinking course. Very funny stuff!

We forked out to see a couple of other shows this weekend - both from home. Flight of the Conchords, NZ's "bad boys of folk", were droll, deadpan and folking good fun. They played in an ancient underground dungeon/cave, complete with authentic mouldy smell and dripping roof. Another show from Wellington this morning - Pickle (known in NZ as The Pickle King I think). It played in quite a big venue to a reasonable-sized audience, and received a delighted response. Nice combination of comedy, slapstick, philosophy, music and masks.

Perhaps more amazing than any of the shows we have seen, however, are the outfits sported by Edinburgh girls for a night on the town. It's been wet and chilly this weekend, but it doesn't dampen the spirits or lengthen the hemlines of these hardy lassies. Negotiating ancient, well-worn cobbled streets in 3-inch stilettos, with bare arms, legs, chests, backs, they turn going out into a high-performance (or should that be endurance) sport. In my coat and sneakers, I'm quite obviously not a local (and certainly not yet acclimatised to "summer"). The weather forecasters promise two weeks of sunshine are imminent, though, so it might not be all over yet....