UnorthodoxY Archive It's wasn't what you thought

And relax.

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe officially ended on Monday. The International Festival still has a bit less than a week to run and there’s various other bits and bobs going on but in general the city should return to normal. Monday was noticeably quieter than mid-week last week.

And so should my life, my last planned show (Frank Skinner) was on Monday night, he was excellent. Over the last three weeks, I’ll have seen seventeen shows, run several poker nights, attended a few nights out and I spent last Sunday at a wedding. All of which has been great fun but it’s been exhausting.

It’s been the usual mix of good, bad and indifferent but I have seen some excellent stuff. I’ve really enjoyed the shows I’ve seen in the Spiegeltent this year, and I’ve quite enjoyed their beer garden. So much so that I’m considering moving my traditional start-of-festival session there next year although it’s possibly the most expensive bar at any venue.

To make matters more interesting work has started on my bathroom, although it’s stalled again for various reasons. That means I have all the little joys of having work done like having to keep a torch by the bathroom because there’s no electricity in there, or of having a fine layer of dust covering everything and — possibly the worst part — of getting up extra early to get ready so I can let the builders in. It could be worse, at least I have running water. I look forward to being able to post that everything is finished and sorted. But considering I’ve just dismissed the current bunch of builders I guess we’ll see …

And now it’s time to turn my attention to planning the details of my next holiday. Currently I know I’ll be in Los Angeles in just under two months time, Las Vegas a month later and Mexico in between the two. Sounds like fun.

Hopefully more posts next month than I managed this month, but I’ve said that before.

If I’d have become wiser with age then I’d know that spending twelve hours drinking in the sunshine will not do wonders for your head the following morning.

I’d also have known not to try the same thing again (with less sunshine and more roast lamb) the next day. Not if I wanted work today to be a pleasant experience.

I’d also have been sensible enough not to leave my wallet in a taxi.

But that’s how it goes.

It was an excellent weekend even with the hangovers and lack of wallet. And I least I didn’t lose my wallet at a point where it was full of tickets as it had been the night before.

My recollection of the shows is a bit vague so nothing more than a thumbs up for Kirsten O’Brien — who is worth seeing if you’re around at the right time. And a thumbs down for Nick Doody who never really caught my attention.

Off to a few more tonight, we’ll see how those go.