I spent Friday night nursing a view beers with Billy and Dave who I used to be at Stirling University with in the previous millennium.
We started in the Guildford Arms. Apparently this pub was featured in the "Trainspotting" film ; most memorably when Frank Begbie throws a pint glass over his shoulder towards the gathered throng in the bar below from the balcony. Interesting.
We then proceeded to "All Bar One" in George St, which has no historic notes of any interest, other than that I used to get regularly ratarsed in it of a Friday evening, after a hard week's slog twiddling with the computers at nearby Standard Life.
We finished up in "The World" in Thistle St, and listened to a Hen Party commit a variety of atrocities with the aid of a Karaoke machine.
It was overall a very enjoyable evening of chirpy banter with not too much of a sore head the next day. This is mainly due to the recent end of my close relationship with premium strength lager. I've gone back to "cooking lager". It's much safer, and I can actually do things the next day rather than spend it lying comatose on the settee.
I've pretty much decided to be involved in a Fringe show this year. The idea is to share an hour with another 2 newish comedians and do 20 minutes each.
However I've only done 10 minute spots up to now so need to crank up the quest for new material.
I've spent the last couple of days working on some new ideas. The content matter is ; tips for Alien invaders, unnecessary facial expression changes, and Golf...comedy gold, huh? Well it certainly had me chortling away, but that is not a reliable indicator of anything, as I have regularly discovered when some new comedy "dynamite" I've confidently added to my set prompts tumbleweed to roll across the stage.
It's unseasonably mild this weekend in Edinburgh. Yesterday was like a summer day. Weird. Last weekend was like a bad night in Siberia. You never get bored with the weather up here. It's like the Royal Variety Show. There's something for everyone.
I was amused to see that the supremely clever and funny Stewart Lee has a photo of himself on his web site (www.stewartlee.co.uk) sitting next to a sign pointing at him saying "Old Man".
This is in Orkney, on Hoy, on the walk to the famous sea stack "The Old Man of Hoy".
Pathetically, I felt smug in that he'd had the same flash of comic inspiration to get photographed next to the sign as me. I have the same photo with me cast as the "Old Man"
Of course, probably everybody who visits Hoy does this, and the locals will wearily roll their eyes as they see another tourist crediting his original, comic vision in coming up with the idea.
Orkney is a target rich environment for this kind of thing. You can also visit the village of "Twatt" and have a photo taken next to its sign as well.
The worst example of this phenomenum occurs in Pisa, where every day dozens of tourists get their friends to stand between them and the old leaning tower, and create a hilarious trick photo of their friends pretending to exhert themselves pushing back the tower. Hilarious.
I don't suppose the locals will be that bothered though. They're probably just eternally grateful that some extremely dodgy construction work has given them a very lucrative tourist attraction. There wouldn't be much other purpose to go to Pisa if the tower wasn't there.
