Calm Before The Storms

Taking advantage of the fact that I still have a couple of days off in order to get some writing down. Some of this is pure admin – answering emails, sorting out rehearsals and the like for the next bunch of Cast Iron Theatre performances – but a fair amount is to do with actual, ‘real’ writing. I always get in this sort of mood after I come back from visiting the Edinburgh fringe. Now that I’m back down south, I’m back on a normal civilian timetable, with no real understanding or appreciation of what my friends up in Scotland are still going through. And these people are performers – they were beginning to get more than a bit stir crazy when I left almost a week ago. They’ve been doing shows on a daily basis – sometimes twice daily, sometimes three times a day .. and I still think to myself that this is the sort of business that I want to get involved in? I am probably a glutton for punishment.

One of the things I’ve been working on this morning is an old novel that I managed to dig up. Well, I say novel. That’s probably a reasonably generous term. I hacked it out in under a month during a Nanowrimo – the annual event that gets you to commit to writing down 50,000 words in thirty days. At that, at least, I succeeded – with less than a minute to spare before the deadline, with aching typing hands on an unresponsive laptop, in between sets at a comedy gig I was appearing at that night. And in all fairness, despite my self-effacing dismissal of it, it’s not actually terrible. Well, obviously, it’s awful: it was hacked out in thirty days by someone who was making up the story as they went along while holding down a fulltime job, teaching acting classes, and directing plays. But, in real terms (and accepting all the above), it hangs together reasonably well as at least a first draft, or more accurately what might be called Draft Zero. Never to be shown to anyone, ever. To be honest, I have seen completed novels thrown up (now there’s a Freudian slip) onto the kindle that did not read as well as my incoherent hackery.

As well as doing the edit on that novel (because, actually, it might be worth salvaging once it has undergone a rewrite or twelve), I am completing some short stories, and a kid’s play for next summer. This is, in some ways, the part of the year that I love the most – when I have more than two consecutive hours in which to write. Right now, my mind is reasonably clear and not at all deranged: I can see how it’s possible to get the next draft of the novel finished by next month, the children’s play drafted by the end of the year, and a bunch of short stories bundled together by January. But that’s basically because I have time at the moment. I should acknowledge that I have exactly this conversation with myself around this time of year, every single year. Like a Tinder date with someone with a great profile pic who reveals themselves to be a bit racist, it’s initially thrilling, but ultimately disappointing. Because it’s a fair bet that – once again – once next week rolls into view, my timetable will be so packed that I won’t have enough space in my head to concentrate on as much writing stuff as I’d like to at any one point. How people who have not only a full time job, but also families cope, I’ve no idea.

I’m also managing to read a bit at the moment. While up at Edinburgh, we saw (amongst others) Bridget Christie and Robin Ince, both of whom were signing copies of their books. I’m a sucker for a book signing. Not necessarily because it’s a chance to meet the author (although that’s clearly part of it), but I somewhat over-romantically like the idea of putting the money directly into writer’s pocket., more or less. I’m loving A Book For Her, which is sort of like a stand up’s memoir mixed with the book Half The Sky (which is where I first read about the charity The Girl Generation), which is smart, funny, and makes me wish I’d caught shows like A Ant live. Robin Ince’s book is a collection of short horror stories written by various comedians. It opens with a pair of brilliantly nasty stories – one by Reece Shearsmith, and a genuinely upsetting one by Sara Pascoe. Again, it’s something that’s compelling me to get the hell on with my own collection. Not that it’s just frustrated writers like me that struggle under the yoke of procrastination. I was amused / not amused to catch an old episode of Mock The Week on Dave (where else?) where the stand up comic Ed Byrne provided a question for the answer ‘Four Years’ with the enquiry ‘How long have I been “writing” my sit-com?’ The wry and bitter grin he gave suggested that he wasn’t exactly joking.

Some Self Imposed Rules For Reviewing

I know quite a few people who are professional stand ups, actors, writers and directors. Occasionally, they are all of those, and more. What unites a great many of them is their shared hatred of reviewers. If it’s not hatred, then it’s a sense of bored dismissal, an agreement that reviewers generally don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. Their dislike includes the reviewers who actually like them, and give them positive write-ups, which seems at least fair. Another thing that all these performers share is the knowledge that I myself am an occasional reviewer, which as you might imagine, comes up reasonably rarely in conversation, presumably in a failed attempt to avoid any awkwardness.

What then, is the point of a reviewer? Or perhaps more crucially, what is the point of being a reviewer? Is it just to see shows for free? Absolutely not (Obviously it is that a little bit). Is it a misplaced confidence in the importance of your own opinion and voice? Ditto, and (ditto). For me, it’s increasingly about my own learning. I myself am an actor, director, writer (at least that’s what I tell myself), and it’s fascinating to see what other people are doing with the same ideas that I’m working on in any given year. Plus, it’s just interesting to have a conversation about whatever it is you’ve just seen. It doesn’t even matter that, in the whirlwind of the internet, not many people are going to listen. Let’s be honest: that’s how usual conversations work, too.

There are certainly different types of reviewers, ones that are funny, ones that are incoherent, ones that simply retell the plot of what they see, and ones that are desperate to show off how much they know. I’m still trying to work out what kind of reviewer I want to be, and I suspect that up until now I’ve been all of those things. Well, perhaps not the first one. What I think a reviewer has no choice about is that they have to be interesting to read. That’s all a review is, after all: a collection of words in the same space. And as such, the only purpose – the only point – is to have those words read. So they may as well be at least not boring.

To that end, I try to impose upon myself certain rules when writing a review. These rules do not (and should not) apply to every single reviewer, and indeed I’m pretty sure I’ve failed at a couple of these rules in more than a few reviews, particularly when it’s the middle of the fringe festival and I’m trying to write six reviews in half as many hours and my thesaurus has given up trying to give me alternatives for ‘compelling’. But as self-imposed rules go, I think they’re pretty sound, and I share them with you now in the interests of making myself a better writer, and possibly filling up another blog entry.

·         Say Something Nice. I think it’s extraordinarily rare that you’ll sit through something that doesn’t have something to recommend it. It may be a production that has somehow missed the central message of its own script, but there may be a supporting actress that is always magnetic to watch. I’m not saying that you have to lie – after all, there are potentially audience members who are reading your review in order to sway their decision as to where to go tonight, and it won’t do anyone any favours if you say only good things when it’s actually a pretty shoddy production – but if you can’t find something positive to say (even if it’s a piece of backhanded hackery like ‘I liked what they were trying to achieve’), then you’re probably in the wrong job. Your parents managed the old ‘well, the set was impressive’ lie at your first production of Jocasta Baby Killer, so you can find something nice to say about the LX design. Oh, and by the way: when I say that you might be sitting through a bad production – do sit through it. Until the end. Yes, I know audiences say that life is too short for bad theatre, and if you leave early you might get hold of the good bratwursts before the stall sells out, but they have the excuse of being the public, and the public are expected to be rude. If you’re reviewing – for a newspaper, or for an online blog read only by you – you stay until the bows. It’s the only way to write an accurate review.

·         Say Something Quotable.  This gets at the heart of what the point of a reviewer is, I think. Your words are your stock in trade, even if you’re an unpaid freelance. I have read plenty of beautifully written reviews, full of fulsome praise, excitedly claiming the show as the best thing the reviewer has seen … but the review itself is useless. Because of the way that the sentences are structured, there’s nothing that the media team can cut and paste to use on posters. And, despite what you may think, most groups are wary of editing quotes from reviews to make more sense in shorter form. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen, however. It still has to be true, however. You need to tread a very fine line between being nice and quotable, and just hacking out a line that’s so relentlessly positive that you know it’s going to be used on the poster. Just remember, if it’s on the poster, your name is attached to it.

·         Say Something Funny (Or Interesting). I have problems with this, I admit. Despite that, I think it’s the most important of my own self-imposed rules. Local press are notoriously bad at filling up most of their word count with a bland synopsis of the plot. That’s not a review: that’s a bland synopsis of the plot. What I try to do in my reviews (and probably increasingly fail at, the deeper into a month long fringe I get) is to have a discussion. There are plenty of reviewers who are excellent at reporting what happened on stage, or how successful the costume choices were, and on occasion, I will be one of those reviewers. But I also like to be a bit chatty in my reviews, veer off subject slightly (as much as my editor will allow me), and discuss my own, personal reaction to what I’ve seen. I don’t mean that I’ll use the word ‘I’ in my reviews (the reviewer is the least interesting aspect of their own review), but I like to treat the reviews as an extension of the types of conversations I imagine audience members to be having on the way out of a show. At the most extreme end of this rule is benign arrogance: I would like to think that one day, some readers are reading my reviews for my voice, regardless of what show I’m reviewing.

·         Say Something Helpful. This is probably the most contentious of my self-imposed rules and certainly the one that I do the least. It again hits back at the heart of what the point of being a reviewer is. Is it liking the sound of your own voice? Or is it being some sort of half-assed dramaturg? Those two possibilities, I admit, are not exactly alien to one another. There is certainly some kind of arrogance in anybody – a reviewer, an audience member, an uninvited harasser on twitter – telling you that you ‘should have done it like this’ Presumably the stand up, the writer, the actors company, whatever – has spent several months making their show the best it can be. The last thing they need is some hack (who hasn’t spent several months making their show the best it can be) coming in and giving their unwarranted opinion. And yet. If there is an aspect of the show that frustrates you – pace, a sexist script, or a confusing ending, for instance, then I think it’s appropriate to discuss that in your review. After all, it is entirely possible that you are absolutely correct in your judgement, and if that’s the case, it’s only fair on both the audiences, and more importantly, the performers, that you bring it to light. If you’re wrong, then fair enough, all the other reviews will highlight that, and you will be ostracised as you deserve. But if you are correct, it may well be that your review is the first time they’ve had a problem that has been nagging them all through production defined, and your critique may be the thing that jumpstarts them from a mediocre show to a great one. And you will have helped, perhaps. Just remember point one. Say something nice.

·         Don’t Say What It’s About. I hate spoilers. I have a whole essay to bore you with another time about spoilers. It’s cheap, nasty and lazy. Essentially, by giving away parts of the plot – particularly the surprising and exciting bits – you are highlighting that you don’t actually know what to write about, that you don’t have an opinion. When you give away plot points in your review, you are filling up your word count by basically cutting and pasting the good work that someone else has done, and passing it off as your own. This is very cheap writing. I understand that some reviewers want to show off that they’ve ‘got it’, or that they have understood the more obscure references (I myself have sailed perilously close to this more than once), or indeed to communicate to the performer that they laughed (or cried) in all the right places. I understand also that it’s challenging to talk about a show that you’ve really loved (or hated) without discussing what’s happened onstage. But, not to labour the point too much, if you are telling me what the story is, then you are not discussing the production. If you are telling me the plot (Prince’s dad gets killed, he fails to do anything about it for three hours), then you are not telling me anything that I couldn’t read in a script, or probably in the company’s own flyer. I recognise that you don’t want your review to be too opaque or obscure, but if you can’t write five hundred words without giving away the ending or blowing all the best jokes, then perhaps reviewing isn’t for you.

So. Those are the rules that I attempt to impose upon myself in each review. As I’ve indicated, I more than occasionally fail. But I do try. It’s important to remember that reviews are not disposable and throwaway, despite what my performer friends might say and hope. It’s important to remember that the reviews one writes will actually be read by at least one person. And as such, there’s a certain responsibility. Now, that’s a rather portentous and pretentious line on which to end, but it has the ring of truth to it. Reviewing isn’t just about the sound of your own voice and seeing lots of shows for free. (I’ve already told you it is, a bit.)

All of Us Are In The Gutter ...

Up at the Edinburgh Fringe, star ratings are everything. At least, that’s what we keep being told in opinion pieces like this one. Obviously, they’re useful to plaster on the promotional material when indecisive potential audiences are drowning in flyers on the Royal Mile or panicking outside the Half Price Hut. The problem is, of course, that nobody nowadays seems to listen to – or even have basic respect for – any star rating below four. Which makes the whole thing nonsensical.

 

In all honesty, there’s nothing essentially wrong with star ratings, it’s just that absolutely nobody – with no exceptions whatsoever – knows how to employ them. Three star ratings are now a badge of dishonour, and there isn’t a theatre company who would feel happy using them in its press. This, clearly, is just a little bit silly: it suggests that the absolute baseline of credibility is four stars and above, ignoring anything below. That means we ignore almost 75% of the possible opinion. That’s like saying that nobody under the age of fifty is worth listening to. Yes, I’m well aware that some of you have no problem with that. But we’re missing out here. The very existence of three stars at the end of a review should indicate something of value. Three stars worth of value, in fact. Hell, you don’t even get three stars on your badge in McDonald’s without seriously impressing the management.

 

Let’s look at things in reverse order. Five stars is the easiest to discuss, since, like standing in a line at for a show at the fringe that doesn’t have relatives of members of the company in it, it’s simply near-impossible to achieve. Five stars should be indicative of the very best of someone’s career: literally, it can’t get any better than this. That being said, we’ve all been guilty of throwing away five stars when we probably shouldn’t have. Even I have to confess doing so when overtired, distracted by a pretty face in a supporting role, and jacked up on far too many Tangtastics.

 

Following that then, is Four Stars. Four Stars is what we should be calling unmissable, what a few too many of us actually think is a five star rating. These are the shows that we excitedly tweet about on the way out, of the venue, the ones that we recommend to our friends when the show tours locally. But they are still not five stars. A four star show is merely excellent. Excellent is something to be proud of. What’s happened, of course, is that in recent years, we have got ourselves trapped in a ‘X Factor’ mentality – apparently, things have to be life changingly brilliant, or grimly awful. We’ve become embarrassed by thinking anything in between. We are now bewilderingly shy of being able to rave about something that we find wonderful while at the same time acknowledging that it needs improvement.

 

If all the above is true (cough: it is), this means that Three Stars is not, as we have tricked ourselves into believing, mundane and invisible, a rating to be embarrassed by. No, three stars is – or, in my not so humble opinion, should be – simply a very good show. As I’ve argued before, in any other industry you have to work damn hard to get three stars. Soldiers returning from battle are continually baffled by the amount of young dance troupes petulantly rejecting their three stars at the fringe.

 

If we accept that a three star rating is actually a hard-won compliment rather than a dismissal, then two and one star ratings can begin to make a lot more sense. A two star rating is for a show that is essentially sound, but fatally or near-fatally flawed by a couple of bad choices: perhaps the lead is horrifically miscast, or the dialogue is overwritten. What those two stars tell you however (or, should tell you, in this alternate universe I’ve just made up), particularly in an environment as volatile and cauldron-bubbly as the fringe, is that although this show has some way to go before improvement, it is still worth your time: the company deserves your attention and feedback so that they can continue to grow.

 

Which leaves us with the one star review. In this version of the world, a one star review would be exactly what it should sound like: a show with at least some merit. Yes, a one star show would be undeniably poor. It might be incoherent, or the jokes would be indistinguishable from the twitter feed of that old school friend you keep meaning to delete – but that one star would suggest that there was at least one saving grace: intelligent direction, perhaps, attempting to throw light on a half-baked script, or a clever set design.

 

I understand completely that I’m a lone voice. The star ratings aren’t going anywhere anytime soon unless you write – as I indeed do – for a site like FringeReview, which has adopted a policy of ‘if you can’t beat them, then refuse point blank to join them’, and has eschewed star ratings altogether. Equally, for those sites and publications that are still using star ratings, companies are only ever going to be interested in ratings of four and five, which, as I’ve pointlessly argued is insane. So it’s down to us to argue more eloquently in our reviews. Now, I’ve been known to dismiss myself as an online hack, but what I’m hacking still has some merit. Well, if not merit, certainly weight. Reviews are at their best when they are a discussion, the development of the reviewer’s own reaction to whatever it is they have seen in the theatre. It’s not good that we can have our arguments and thoughts reduced down into what is essentially a very unimaginative line of emojis. If star ratings are like a reviewer’s version of Schrödinger’s Cat – simultaneously meaningless and vital – then what we write below the line needs to be carefully considered. Lest we forget, the reviewers themselves can now punished (or rewarded) with star-style ratings, via sites like FringePig. A few more of those plastered over reviewer’s profiles could do more to change the ratings system than anything else ..

Back To Brighton

I'm in a coffee shop in Brighton making two significant mistakes. The first is having chosen a coffee shop that comes with its own wifi access, meaning that the first real bit of writing that I've done this afternoon is the sentence and a half you've just read, and the second mistae is reading a book called The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide.

It's always the same at this time of year. Having not been at work for a couple of weeks means that I'm beginning to feel - well, you know, a human being, and having spent a week at the Fringe seeing a variety of great (and terrible) shows reminds me how possible it is to do the same. At the moment, my days aren't packed hour to hour with demands on my time, and so, despite my claim earlier, I am actually completing a bit of writing, and my mind is firing on at least two cylinders, trying to work out how easy (or at least possible) it would be to bring a show up to Edinburgh.

It is, of course, all about the time and money. Even those performers and companies that latch on to the valuable free festivals that have become so important in recent years have at least some disposable income to make a month away from real life a viable option. I've always claimed, and indeed assumed, that I'm in no way bitter - that's the way that the cards have been dealt, and in any case, I don't personally know of a single performer who hasn't worked incredibly hard for whatever degree of success they've achieved. But now I'm thinking I may as well get a little bitter. It's something to do, isn't it?

I spoke to a lot of performers this year who had found themselves in terrible shows, the quality of which was reflected in low audience numbers, and savage reviews. One actor I spoke to mentioned the review that the show in which he was appearing. Not only was the review better writen that the show, it struggled to give one star: 'And that was generous,' he muttered darkly. It must be disheartening for a company to repeat a show for at least two weeks of what's one of the world's biggest arts festivals to increasingly dwindling audiences, fighting against the positive word of mouth that's buzzing around - as far as you can tell - any other show in town.

What seemed to link these shows - apart from the fact that they were by all accounts dire - was that they were bankrolled by the director. At this point we should acknowledge that in these cases, 'director' refers only to the person with money and an ego, and not, as you might hope, any detecable charisma or talent. In at least two of these cases, the 'director' was doing the show as part of their PHD. I'm still not entirely sure what this indicates.

All of this doesn't stop me, each year, from coming back to Brighton in a slightly more creative frame of mind, finally working out what cuts and changes are needed in the show that people have been telling me for about ten years now that I really MUST bring to the Fringe, of having new ideas for stories/plays/stand up that invariably jostle for postion alongside the incomplete ideas I had this time last year before real life got back in the way. I often read of all these people who managed to complete their first novel in the half hour between waking up and going to work, and I honestly don't know how they managed it.

This year, then, I'm going to see if there's any value in the small and short. There's plenty of short story and short play competitions out there, all with, if not some critical recognition, then at least cash prizes. In some respect, this is what this blog is about. While there are few things more boring than a writer talking about what s/he's writing about (while they're talking about it, chances are they're no-where near getting to actually writing about it), I can understand why they do it: if they announce they're working on something, they have witnesses. Not an audience, but witnesses - people who can pull them up in a years time and ask them how that novel/play/joke/to do list is going. And if they've got nowhere with it: well, clearly they're not serious about it all.

Goodbye To Edinburgh

Yesterday morning was my last in Edinburgh, so I spent some of it in the Elephant House cafe, which I hadn't had a chance to do so previously this year. The cafe gets an extraordinary amount of negative feedback on sites like tripadvisor and foursquare, simply because it trades on the fact that JK Rowling is supposed to have begun writing her Harry Potter books there. This - the negative feedback - is a trifle unfair on the Elephant House, as it's an entirely understandable angle to pull. People who gripe about the cafe celebrating its (admittedly probably quite weak) connection with the world of Harry Potter are like those who'd want to firebomb an old house just because it had a blue plauqe stating that Arthur Conan Doyle once lived there.

Why wouldn't you celebrate the fact that JK Rowling (probably) wrote (some of) the early drafts of Harry Potter there? Frankly, I'm somewhat unconvinced that the story is entirely true as it stands, since popular myth tells us that JKR began writing the books while a young mum, and there doesn't seem to be a great deal of room to get a buggy in there. Although I'll acknowledge that it's probably got a hell of a lot busier in the last ten years.

Of course, that's one of the main reasons people complain on tripadvisor: that it's always so busy, packed with Harry Potter fans (thereby presumably overlooking the resason they were there in the first place). It's probably about as busy as the Black Medicine cafe on the other side of town which is smaller and a lot more awkwardly designed, but has a better system for reducing waiting time and lines at the counter. Plus, it seems slightly cooler than the Elephant House. Well, I once sat next to Will Poulter just before Son Of Rambow came out. I assume that counts for something.

What the Elephant House doesn't have, apart from the sign outside declaring that JK Rowling started writing her books here, is any mention of the boy wizard at all. There are, in respect of the cafe's name, a great deal of ceramic elephants, but Harry Potter appears to be wearing an invisibilty cloak.There's not even any reference to anything vaugely magical - not even a twig repesenting a wand, and you pretty quickly realise that the figure that Must Not Be Named is Warner Bros, doing everything it can to protect its product. That's understandable, but its a shame that its strength is so overeaching that the Elephant House can't even have anything on display like a witches hat, which by and large predate JK Rowling and the films by at least a couple of years.

I'm now wondering if it might not be a little too mean to write a film for Warner Bros that excusively deals with the adventures of a gang of elephants. Who live in a house. See how the cafe and WBs copyright department cope with that ...

What Show Are You Doing?

My last evening at the Edinburgh Fringe. I'm out in about a hour or so to see a couple of shows (and that in itself indicates all that is crazy about the Fringe ... for some performers and audiences, the day only really kicks in at around 6pm). One show that I'm seeing is research, of a kind. I'd meant to do a lot more research in the types of shows that I saw up here. I've got an improv show coming up in May, for the Brighton Festival Fringe, and since it's a long form style show, I thought that it would be instructive to see a few, 'specially as it's a type of improv I only have a bit of experience with.

But here's the thing. There weren't really a great deal of improv shows that leapt out at me. I think improv can be a bit of a tough sell, it's instructive to see how such a show can come across to me, someone who's actively seeking one out. The improv show that I'll be working on, due in May 2013 (since when did my calender start getting booked years in advance? Isn't that supposed to be a sign of success, or something?) won't exactly be an easy ride. Whatever else improvisation is meant to be, it certainly isn't simply making things up as you go along.

Had a lovely chat and coffee with a friend on what was her last day at the Fringe. Almost predictably, we got to lamenting how difficult it is to bring a show up here. Although, if we're being pedantic (which, all of a sudden, we are) she's already brought a show up here,last year. By sheer chance, it was the last show I saw at the Fringe before leaving in 2011, long before I'd met her. It was very good.

To be fair to her, and our shared laments, it was the uni that she was studying with at the time that paid most of the costs, otherwise it's doubtful that she would have been able to afford it. It's a depressing fact that money is a significantly more important factor in getting a show to the fringe than, say, talent. I've spoken to at least two people this year - who I didn't know - who felt trapped in shows that they absolutely hated, being directed by people who they thought were talentless idiots. The reason, then, that the show existed was because these directors had a bit of cash to throw around. And, bizarely, in both cases, because the directors were completing a PHD in Theatre. However, in both cases, the depressed actors involved said that I should really get along to see the show. Presumably after nearly a month, the flyering instinct never leaves you.

A Day Off. Sort Of.

Within the finishing line (for me) of Edinburgh this year, as I'll be leaving in a couple of days. I've enjoyed it more than I did last year, although it feels more like hard work this time round - the reviews I've been writing have felt like more of a struggle, particuarly in the instances where I've attempted to review things that are somewhat outside my 'comfort zone'. There have been a couple of things this year that I knew I was never going to review, simply because I liked the performer too much. I'm thinking specfically here of the likes of Daniel Kitson and Josie Long, who I happened to see on the same day. I knew that I didn't want to review them,  just see them as a punter, because I wanted to simply watch them without the need to make notes, and also (this may the more important point) there comes a time when it's entirely pointless to review performers you already expect to like and be positive about. There are a couple of acts this year that, keeping that in mind, I suspect I have written my last review for.

However, I feel like I've become a true Fringe veteran today because I 'almost' had a day off. In years past, I would feel like I was wasting a day up in Edinburgh if I wasn't seeing five or six shows. Considering it takes about five years to truly get a measure of the city, and there can be less than three minutes between shows, this way madness lies. But today was somewhat relaxed, and I had no desire to complicate matters. I still had one show to review at the end of the night, but the rest of the day was fairly empty. Which is not to say that I didn't fill it with a couple of shows anyway - Richard Herring's Talking Cock (actually the first time I've seen him live), and earlier in the day, Angela Barnes and Matt Richardson on the Free Fringe. Both shows were great fun, and both were crammed to the rafters with punters. It's very delightful to see such huge audiences attend shows headlined by performers you have at least a nodding aquaintance with. I'm sure I'll be boring people with 'I knew them' type anedoctes in less than a year.

The other way I know I'm a Fringe veteran actually started a couple of years ago, but I thought I'd gotten over it. However, it kicked in again today (or was it yesterday? It's the Fringe, I have no idea). It's the point where, as an audience member, you begin to take as keen an interest in the sightlines and lighting rig as you do the act on stage. I get frustrated by this, this niggling hope that at some point I might have the chance to bring a production up to the festival. Of course, at the moment, without recourse to a lottery win, this seems to be pretty much impossible.

These latter days of my Fringe visits are the most cruel - surronded by thousands of creative people, relaxed after a couple of weeks off, my mind begins to start actually having a couple of good ideas that might genuinely work as Fringe ideas, and just today I had an idea how to rewrite my Brighton Fringe play from a couple of years ago to get it to a Edfringe-manageable time of at least a hour and a half. Nobody seems to have told my head that in a very short time, it'll be back at work. It seems a shame to let it know ...

Where Is Everybody?

So, Edinburgh feels odd this year. Actually, that's an entirely meaningless sentence, since I'm pretty sure that someone somewhere is required to say 'Edinburgh feels odd this year' every year, no matter what's going on. I know that it felt odd to me last year, but I also know that was just me, that I wasn't really enjoying it, despite the quailty of the acts. This year, I'm having a better time, although I'm reasonably convinced the acts aren't.

I knew that I'd truly arrived on the Fringe this year when I'd seen a terrible show followed by a really good show (I think that's like, one of the rules or something). The good show was from Belt Up, an adaptation of A Little Princess, a book that I incidentally have never read, and now think that if I ever had a daughter to read it to, I might not be able to get past chapter one without having a massive emotional collaspe.

The really bad show, by the way, I'm not going to name. I feel bizarely lucky that I had to pay for it - I'd much rather wasting some cash on it than having to suffer a headache trying to think of something positive to say something about it in a review. It concerns me that some companies seem not to truly understand what the concept of this 'international' festival really is - you know, the idea that they might be seen by audiences.

Of course, that's what's odd about the fringe this year - audiences, or a seeming lack of them. For as long as I've been coming to the fringe (which isn't that long), the chatter has always been that the audiences are down on the previous year. This is always a claim that ends up getting shot in the throat the following month when the fringe society release their figures, and it's discovered that all manner of records have been broken. But this year, it feels different even when you're not sitting in a poorly attended show. It's out there - or rather, people aren't - in the streets, and in empty Pleasance Courtyards. You almost feel like this is what it's like in the other eleven months of the year.

On the plus side, at least it's easier to go down the Royal Mile. I even managed to get a flyer, and usually only the best people get given flyers. I know, because they told me.

Post Olympics

So, that’s it, then. Two weeks of watching the planet’s athletes doing what they do best are now at anend, and now Great Britain can go back to doing what it does best, namely, returning to a foul mood and not being quite so positive. It must have been quite a strain for the nation’s cynics over the last fortnight, like a middle aged man holding his stomach in when a pretty girl walks past.
Having little or no interest in sport, I ended up seeing little to none of the games. In fact, most of what I did see was essentially the opening and closing ceremonies, both at big screens – one in Brighton, on the beach, and the other, tonight, at the BBC Garden at the Edinburgh Fringe. There were, of course, these big screens in town centres all over the country, allowing people everywhere to soak up that atmosphere of fun, comradeship and support for the nation’s Olympians. Well, except in Worthing, where last week someone nicked the laptop and cable that were needed to transmit the footage from the BBC. Maybe in Worthing they assumed that basic thievery was an Olympic sport, and they were going for Bronze. And by ‘going for Bronze’, I do of course mean simply pinching it from a railway line.
However, the atmosphere at those screens was wonderful. A lot was said about how easy it was to get caught up in a sport that you had no real passion – or, indeed, fundamental knowledge – of, and that’s even more true within a crowd of amenable people on a sunny day getting swept up in all the high drama of, say, dressage.

We’ve learnt a lot from these games. We’ve learned that we’re in dire need of stronger role models than the cast of TOWIE. We’ve learned that despite what we’re continually being told, that actually most people are pretty fond of Great Britain. We’ve learned that an alarming amount of people want to sleep with Tom Daly, regardless of what they thought their sexuality was. And, I don’t know about you, but I’ve learned that every time from now one I use a taxi, I want it to be like the ones the Spice Girls use.