Categories: uncategorized
Date: 19 August 2011 11:21:37
Adventures of a random nature in Edinburgh were bound to occur when I met Surfing on Wednesday...it's been the nature of things over the last 14 years since we bonded over DM's in church.
She has a magic card, apparently purchased at an age when most of us would still have been asking for a quarter of Cola Cubes. We used the magic card to go exploring within Edinburgh Castle. Have to say whilst not overwhelmed with it I did enjoy the wander around. The apartments belonging to Mary Queen of Scots where she gave birth to King James were my favourite bit.
Next it was off to St. Giles' Cathedral where they are having Art for Lunch - Free Concerts at St. Giles'. Enjoyed Gavin Pennycook - Celtic Nyckelharpa. Have to say I hadn't come across an nyckelharpa before and found it an amazing instrument to look at. It is sort of a pegged fiddle with some extra strings. Whatever the music was v. enjoyable.
Then we headed off down the Royal Mile enjoying the sales pitches of the comedians and thesbians trying to get you to enjoy there wares. Taking a break from the festival madness we headed off to the newly refurbished National Museum of Scotland. Enjoyed wandering around and that there was some randomness, (the thing I love most about Scottish museums), but it did seem very sanitised compared to those I'd come across in Glasgow.
Then it was off again - chancing it on a flyer we'd been given we headed of to Whistlebinkies. This bar, just off the Mile, is one of the venues for PBH's Free Fringe 2011. The act which had enticed us in was Chuckle 4 F*ckle. It was a three person stand up show which began almost promisingly with Sharon. Her material on teenagers was fun and overall she made me giggle lots. Then she handed over to some bloke whose initial appearance was amusing but who otherwise only produced groans - when the audience could be bothered to react. Claire the final part of the trio made the odd decent Essex joke but otherwise her material also failed to hit the spot.
Having paced ourselves so the second half of our drinks would take us through the next act we hung about for John Kearns' Dinner Party. This was a total contrast to what had preceeded it. The Dinner Party was slightly off the wall but very funny; the sort of thing you imagine yourself accidently discovering on one of the "minor" tv channels on a Friday night about 9:30pm and finding yourself getting hooked to. It actually got me saying that it proved not everything that came out of Norfolk was bad. (Ok, I know this is blatent Tractor Girl prejudice and we've talked about this before but.....hey, I'm from Ipswich so enough said).
This was my first visit to The Edinburgh festival and it was a sort of accidental stumbling into it. Another year I would love to do it properly - probably over a few days because I absolutely loved it. What really suprised me was that I had such a stonking good day where I enjoyed so much for practically nothing. Total spend for the day excluding the train fare there and back was £7.25 for me and £6.40 for Surfing and that included lunch, (admittedly a Subway and Surfing had a voucher, but still lunch) aswell as a drink at the bar - mine was that bit extra as I got a paper aswell to read on the train which happened to come with a free bag and a free packet of coffee.